Self aware

Yesterday, my boss and I went to a college career fair to recuit summer staff for camp. At the fair, we had some down time. In our conversation my boss asks me if I'm self-aware. I haven't really thought about that term before, I don't really know what it means. He told me he thinks I am-- I asked for an example of someone who isn't. He told me a name of a girl on staff-- I get it now, this girl thinks she is the best thing that has ever walked on this earth-- and actually isn't. She thinks she works really hard and can do all these great things- she is a little less than average-- I see how she hurts people-unmeaningly- and it's linked to her selfishness and being unaware of her self. 

I often want to  watch me and my life from fresh eyes. I want to take away my own biases and self-thought and see me as others see me. Like watching a movie of me. 

I think you can be more self-aware than others. But I think it is near impossible to see yourself without the bias of you in the mix.

 I know that I screw up big time, I know that people don't like me and I am sure people often talk about me behind my back. But I'm not self-aware enough to where I believe those things happen. I can logically think that it occurs but my self image(pride) convinces me that no one has anything ill to say about me, that I don't make people mad, that people think of me before anyone else.

It's not all about me. I know that, and even though my sinful nature tries to convince me that everything IS about me, I need to remain level headed. 

I want to work on who I am with others. I need to be more self-aware of how I treat people and how I care for people. 

Struggling to keep up

I am struggling to get things done at work. They have been working on a giftshop that is attached to my office for 2 weeks now, which means that people have been stopping by desk and talking and it's been consistently loud and disruptive. I'm now so far behind, I don't know how to move forward. I felt the need to kill two of my co-workers because they decided to make my office the fun zone today.  

Dave from coaching from leaders sends out an email every Wednesday this was this week's: 

I wish that this article would help. It doesn't. Not at all. I don't know how to make it better, I don't know how to get everything done that needs to be done. I don't know how to keep all the details and things straight. I don't know how to build good relationships with 300 people a year. 

People do this job. They can do really well at it. I am sure I can do much better at it as well, but I just don't know how to get there. How can I be this person who can accomplish so much and still have time to have fun and encourage people at work. 

I wish I was doing better, I hate it when I'm a mess

Ode to paint

I needed to be an artist today. I was given this wall hanging by my roommate to repurpose, it creeped her out. 

I painted it gray, I wanted to do some word art or something of that nature I couldn't think of anything. What I wanted to do was: 

Calm, waves or storm

We follow the Lord.

But that seemed like too many words. I didn't know how to make it look good. So I used Google Image to get some ideas came across this picture (on my nemesis pinterest) and thought " I can do this"

So I painted my background and in 20 minutes started to painter's tape my design. I quickly learned that I was tearing off my background with my tape, and decided to go a different direction and use a stencil I got as a gift to create this: 

Very different,but I really like it none-the-less. 

The night ends at a quiet fire

It's been a crazy day! 

I started the day with a tour-- one of those tours where they speak English to me and Chinese to each other. It was long, but good. I'm always exhausted after having to languages thrown at me, and feel uncomfortable when I don't know what is being said in my presence. 

Camp was alive today! Lots of people needed rides, lots of people were in the store, lots of sign-ups and questions about activities. 

I was supposed to get off at 8:00pm tonight, but after being delayed a little, the phone rang. A parent needed to talk to her son. He was going to come and call in 20 minutes, so I waited for him to come, and as I waited, I learned the the night hike staff didn't arrive. Which meant I got on the phones and started to call every soul I knew to come and led a hike. The guide came, as well as a maintenance guy who has never led the hike before and loves stars. A fire ended earlier so now I'm sitting here looking at this, waiting for the next group to come, ensuring the forest doesn't burn down.

We are halfway through March-- nothing big has happened yet, I'm not sure if anything big is going to happen. I think about camp and I always see this really cool, inviting, fun person as the person that everyone sees and connects with. I see people looking up to her, I see people being mentored by her. I also don't see myself as that person. I would like to look more like her, maybe that is somethin I should strive to be!

We are the church

I wrote my last post, then went on to listen to church last week. I pretty much wanna take back everything that I said. We are the church. Listen to it, I can't do it justice. 

http://www.northcoastchurch.com/index.php?id=141 

http://www.northcoastchurch.com/fileadmin/tv-templates/ncc_templates5/sermons/player/player.html?theFile=../../../../../fileadmin/audios/podcasting/mp3/eph10.mp3

"Don't go to church" article and thoughts on it

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/i-dont-going-church-why-should-i-keep-attending

Above is a link to an article I read this morning. It is a well-written article, it goes into detail about how times are changing and our wants are different than what the church is currently doing. 

I think the article is good, but they missed one key item-the person poising the question is 29 and single. 

I'm 28.5 and single, and since I was 26, heck 25 and single going to church has been hard, because it's the one place where I feel most out-of place. Here I sit in rows of people who have on their cute outfits, their significant other and a pile of kids in Sunday school classes down the hall-- outside the service conversation is centered on those people that you see and how they are farther along in life than you, or a person they want to set-you up with. 

I go to the best church in the world, it's seriously the best. I have a pretty good friend base there (good for living an hour away from them all) And I still have days where I get overwhelmed in my singleness there. 

I struggle so much sitting in church without a person I know next to me- it is where I feel the most insecure. I can't focus on anything but how uncomfortable I am. 

I have it good, I have friends and co-workers who I have been real about this struggle with and they often invite me to ride with them, so that I'm not sitting by myself. 

But not everyone gets to have that in life- not everyone gets to go to the best church in he whole wide world. Not everyone who fights of the months of being uncomfortable will get to a place where they have support of friends there.  

I don't have a grand solution for the church to change it. It can only be done in small ways. 

People who look like me, over 25 and single--- get over your insecurity. Make friends with married people, be okay with sitting by yourself, look for people who are just as uncomfortable and you and befriend them. Put on your big boy pants and push through it. 

Married people- stop with the PDA! Seriously, save it for date night. Think of things to talk about outside your spouse and kids, spend time with people outside your spouse and kids at church. 

Do more than just attend Sunday morning. Volunteer, or join a small group, or do something more than sit in the rows of chairs Sunday morning. 

That's my thoughts, 

Casino vs pool

I live out near a few casinos and one of them has this amazing pool area- a big lazy river with inner-tubes, 8ish hot tubs, tons of chairs-- it's all over the top nice. 

I went there the other night and I thought it was so interesting, you walk through a crowded casino- it's not ugly-- well lit, nice carpet, it smells like smoke, but still fairly okay. 

Then you walk outside, to this high resort quality pool area, and you see no one! I think we interacted with 5-6 other people here, in this huge place! 

I don't understand why people would choose to stay inside when they have this great place just a short hallway away. It's so foreign to me! 

You are significant with or without a significant other

Please read this blog post, it's amazing. Once you are done, feel free to read my comments on it below the link.

http://shaunaniequist.com/significant-without-significant/#comment-96131

So many times I feel like a social outcast because I'm single, so many times do I see people treat me as less than married people. 

How often at my job I see married couples get the nice motel rooms, and only have to share their room with their spouse, where single people get placed in the rustic dorm rooms and share their space with 10 other people. Crude comments from co-workers saying I have nothing to live for outside of my job- and expecting single employees to work way more than their married counterparts (thankfully, that is not my department) 

I really was encouraged by Shauna's blog post. It's true that 

I'm significant with or without a significant other. 

And I don't need to listen to my culture telling me otherwise.  

Fear affairs

Yesterday I was telling you about hearing half-stories about a local pastor. I then learned the whole story, he was having a secret affair with a women for a few years. 

The secret doesn't surprise me. What other types of secrets come out of pastor's lives like this? It's almost always them having a secret affair for years. 

It doesn't change the fact that hearing these stories scare me, so incredibly much. 

It scares me in how easily I could potentially end up being in an affair with someone-- My whole job is working closely with churches (often pastors) to bring their group up to camp. So often I work closely-one-on-one with a pastor for weeks, if not years on a really cool event that brings him to this beautiful  place for a weekend, often without his wife. 

Now, there are so many other things going, and I don't think I ever have had a retreat leader pursue that type of relationship with me, but that could turn out to be my story if I'm not intentional of making sure that's not my story. 

My boss is a man who is just 10 years older than me, and we get along great. We work well together and we are friends. And because we get along and work so well together, I fear that someone is going to accuse us of having an affair, and make one of us get fired or other terrible drama. I am intentional about being in places where you can see me through the windows if we are working at night, not being alone with him around camp etc.. 

I just got a new manager who is super close to my age and we will be working more closely together than me and my boss, so now I feel like I have to be as equally carful with him as I am with my boss.

Me, being the age I am, single, and my job makes me so vulnerable to being the "other women" listed to any pastor's affair confession--their mistress's often fit my description. 

That's scary! I don't want to be that type of women or appear to be that type. I hate that so many people's lives who look similar to mine is wrapped up in this life. 

Shared about Skip

I'm in a small group that is working together in memorizing chapers of Romans. 

It is at my new managers and wife's house, tonight it was just me and them. Which was so good, as the night went on we started talking about the guys who liked me this past summer and how they would spend their free time talking to me in the office. My new manager asked,  

"becky what is the deal with you in guys? Are you looking for a relationship are you waiting, what are you doing with that?" 

I was taken back by his question, not it itself, but how I'm never asked that and expect to be more often. 

So I told them the whole story of Skip. It was quick but everything, I even included my season with Ham. 

I feel a little free with that. I trust this couple, but have been working and learning on how to do that in real life- like in the everyday things. 

I'm definitely more comfortable and confident in what God is doing, because I shared it fairly easily with them. 

Tell it all or nothing

Yesterday, a pastor came up to camp to pray for us as a camp and for our church that we attend -- it's actually not our church, only 2 families at camp attend it, I never been there, but pastor didn't realize that. 

In the conversation he kept talking about the pastor and the family and all these details that communicated to me that something really bad was going down but didn't know what the bad was-- 

At dinner, there was some people from that church eating dinner at camp (completely unconnected to the pastor that came and prayed for us) and I was telling my boss about the situation that occurred earlier. 

He had lots of questions, I had no answers, so we asked my new manager, who attends a church loosely connected to that one and has friends who attends the church of topic. He knew more than me, but still had only vague answers nothing had details. 

After dinner, I was getting a ride home from my boss, and he turned and said to me. " I hate when people don't tell the whole story, you either need to say it all or nothing at all" 

he constantly only tells me half stories, or make blank statements that tells me there's more to it, but doesn't tell me it.

So I perfectly replied "kinda like when you need to buy a pregnancy test and not tell the person you are with what or who you are buying things for?"

I got a laugh and "Yep, exactly like that" as a response. 

Snow

A subject that I am afraid to talk/think about is spiritual warfare, I don't understand it, and I'm afraid of what I'll learn and experience if I seek understanding of it. 

Well, about a month ago when everything at camp went wrong all at once and there was chaos in everything where the week before everything was going exceptionally well, 3 people told me this felt like spiritual warfare. 

I talked a little about it with my boss a teeny bit with another co-worker, but by my third conversation with my roommate I got real honest in my fear and confusion. She told me that I need to read a book on it "Beautiful Battle" by Mary E DeMuth. 

I'm barely in it. But I got to one part and I thought "SNOW!" was flooded with flashbacks of my past and how snow continued to ruin so many times of hanging out with skip. 

If you recall my story, me and Skip kinda/sorta knew each other for 4 years, then became really good friends for a year, then one day, I had a realization that I may like this guy a little more than just as a random friend I frequently hang out with. 

The timing couldn't be worst, Skip was starting to launch a real career and he started to travel all the time. But when ever he was home, it seemed to always snow-- like buzzard snow and we barely ever got to hang out. It was awful. I became so bitter at the snow. 

I never thought that it came just as the right time to keep us away. But what if it did? What would our relationship look like if we didn't have the snow blocking us from so many times from being together? 

I started liking him in September and by December of that same year he suddenly moved. In those 4 months, he was gone for half of it by traveling - 2 weeks home, 2 weeks gone. And in that very short amount of time, snow ruined our plans 4-8 times. That is so significant! 

I don't know if that perfectly timed snow was from God-to create this long and amazing journey of waiting. Or was a satan-placed stumbling block that was built with snow and God is now opening up the door that was closed before. 

Or was it just snow?! We lived in Denver, it's just how it is there, stop reading into it. 

I'm sure it's one of those, I personally think the second one- even though I understand that answer the least. 

Prophecize over me

Today while I was on the phone joking around with a retreat group leader, he quickly became serious and said"you have been so great to us, I can't wait how to have our speaker prophecize over you. He told me some insightful things. He is a really humble person, I'm so glad that he will be up at camp."

I'm not really charismatic, I didn't know how to respond to this statement, so I very poorly responded. I really wanted to hear more. I want to understand the Charismatic Movement. I have such a struggle between that world and the conservative side of Christianity.

I really love working at a non-dom. camp where I get to see so many different kinds of Christians-- where I get to see so many people who are different than me, yet I share the same faith in God with (at least mostly)