2023: Start as I Mean to Go On…
Knowing that I have memory deficits… God decided to make some things hard for me to forget like the day I accepted Jesus. Kinda hard to forget New Year’s Day. I will never forget that I met Jesus on a beach on Maui on January 1, 1994 even if my only actual memory of the day is what I wrote about it in my journal. Evidently, some details are best left between me and God.
Well…New Year’s Day 2023 started on a surprising note: San Francisco was hit by major storms and tons of folks (including your’s truly) were left without power. I found out that morning when my space heater cut off and I was left literally in the cold. Yet, even in that I say, “PRAISE GOD,” because it set me on an adventure that day that was WAY better than anything else that I could have planned. SO, while all the lights were out in my unit (including in the kitchen)… my fridge, microwave, and gas stove were still working.
Oddly enough, it seemed like only some of the other residents in the building were experiencing the same problem. Others appeared to have full power. Go figure. PG&E kept sending text messages bumping the expected return of service later and later so I went to Target to stock up.
The power came on in my unit the next morning but I didn’t care. Worship by candlelight on my spiritual “re-birthday” was actually quite cool. Maybe I’ll make it a regular thing.
But that’s not the point of this post… just wanted to share that since the first day of my new year started out on a decidedly different note, I knew that I needed to have my eyes wide open to see what Jesus was going to be doing in me, for me, and through me in 2023.
Unfortunately, I still have De Quervain’s tenosynovitis in my right thumb/wrist/forearm… so everyday functions like typing, getting dressed, grocery shopping, cutting my food, or even taking care of normal bodily functions is painful. I’m right handed. I can’t really hold a pen properly, so I can’t even journal my thoughts without pain. My thoughts need an outlet. STAT. But what’s a girl to do? It’s not like I can stop doing most of those things, but I can modify how I do them.
Like blogging. I STILL need an outlet because I’m battling some pretty thick emotional distress and toxic thoughts and emotions are piling up in my mind. Yet I can’t continue to overburden my one real friend here or my supervisors at work with all the stuff that’s taking up said mental real estate and clamoring to get out.
SO… if typing hurts…I need to get creative about my online sharing. Hence, the revival of something I used to do back in the day to get extra mileage out of whatever I shared on Facebook by sharing it here. Most times, it was something that Facebook offered up as a “memory” from years past and I’d reflect on how far God had brought me since I first wrote it. Or it was something I’d posted earlier that week generally related to whatever message the pastor had given in church that I needed time and space to process. I called those posts: From the Annals of Facebook and just cut and pasted them here.
Since I intend to resume blogging… now seemed like as good a time as any to resurrect The Annals. I posted this on Sunday (January 8th) before church. It felt like Pastor Ben’s message was made just for me. I’m including his message at the end because it is another reminder that Jesus knows exactly where I am and exactly what I need to hear.
From the Annals of Facebook: Trials and Temptations
HAPPY SUNDAY Facebook Ohana!
Tomorrow is my first REAL day back at work in front of children. I have a lot of mixed emotions about that because working with kids takes a HUGE toll on my emotional, mental, spiritual, and even physical health. Some folks are gifted with a deep and abiding love for children and ministering to kids is easy for them.
I am not one of those people. My feelings about children are ambivalent and ambiguous which creates a lot of stress, anger, guilt, and shame. Yet Jesus calls us to love children and welcome them. I don’t always know how to do this. I don’t like working with kids and being around them is challenging.
As a result, teaching is a struggle (a trial AND a temptation) for me… and yet God has called me to be a teacher. Believing this, I taught elementary school for TEN years so nobody can accuse me of not trying. After I quit teaching in 2008, I felt called to return to teaching so I taught at Job Corps for another TEN grueling years… which says a lot about my ability to persevere.
Teaching is not an easy job and is NOT for the faint of heart. Often, it can leave teachers feeling drained wondering what the heck happened. For me, it left me feeling angry at God for calling me to do something I CLEARLY struggled to do.
While I still believe God has called me to be a teacher, I do not believe he intends me to teach children for the rest of my life. I feel called to teach adults and while I’m not sure what that looks like…I know that I’m on the right path.
So what does that have to do with church?
Online church has been a HUGE blessing to me when I was too mentally, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually depleted to attend in-person church. I WISH there’d been online church back in the days when I taught elementary school because I would avoid the overstimulation, guilt, and shame of church by isolating myself. I would disconnect from church out of exhaustion and then feel like a backslider when all I REALLY was was exhausted and broken.
Today I’m going to attend church online because I need to be mentally and physically ready to minister to the kids that I will be working with tomorrow during the 826 Valencia field trip that I’m coordinating. It’s a bit like herding cats and requires A LOT of mental energy and emotional bandwidth. It’s going to be a full week of field trips and I need to be ready.
In order to do that…I need to do things TODAY like meal prep and other things that I didn’t have time to do this past week. PRAISE GOD I can do all of those things today AFTER watching Pastor Ben Day give another really thought provoking message.
I’m not sure if you can identify with ANY of this… but if you are weak and heavy-ladened or you just don’t have the brain pellets to go to church in-person, won’t you please consider attending online church? While I’m partial to FirstSF… it doesn’t even have to be my church. All that will matter is that you found a church where you feel like you belong and that you go… ONLINE.
I believe that Jesus will meet you where you are at. [End Facebook Post]
Now that right there would’ve been cool… I said what I needed to say. But Pastor Ben’s message was a serious word from God. He spoke into the heart of ALL of the things that are causing me distress and gave me hope of overcoming many of them as the year unfolds. So whatever it is you’re going through, know that there is a God who understands and wants to reach out to you exactly where you’re at.
Comfort for the Neurotic in ALL of Us: 