People Who Just Don't Feel Right...

I have been working with a retreat group that I have never felt right about.

Since we started working together, I have always felt like there very unsure about this group. I could not tell you what is wrong though.

They said very nice things to me, and about me. They always expressed that they were praying for me, for camp and wanted to be full partners with us.  They were the group that brought me gifts and were always asking about ways that they could help camp.

I have always felt this distrust with this group though. I haven't felt like this relationship is geniune.

I had no reason to say "no, they can't come to camp" everything on the outside was great. It was just this gut feeling I had that things were going to turn out awful.

Whenever we had meeting with the leadership, I made my boss come with me. He knew that I didn't have a good feeling about this group and stayed involved with this guest group. Their retreat is coming up soon, and the last month of preparing for it has been really tough. This group is the ultimate high maintenance group.

The group has powerful people within it. And they have been asserting their power on me, in very mean ways this week. This crushes your soul. It is painful and hard to experience a rich powerful guy yelling at you, for following the instructions that they gave me two weeks ago, and with that,not being able to go back to the plan they had 5 months ago.

Today after I read my Isaiah study, I felt the need to read today's proverb. This part really stuck out to me:

I knew that all the nice things that were being said to me weren't real. Not everyone is geniue. I really felt like I was being manipulated with their flattery words.

I didn't get severely burned in this situation. But it was a big conflict. There were lots of things that had to get worked out because of this. There were battles that I had to go through that aren't the norm. Thankfully I have both my manager and my boss that were supportive through this, and helped me every step of the way. Or else things would have been REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD!

We haven't gotten to their weekend yet. There are a lot of things that can still happen. But reading this scriputer today and taking time to process and prepare myself for the next few stages of getting ready for this group has been most helpful today.  It stinks, but not everyone is who they say they are and we need to keep ourselves guarded when we feel that gut feeling we shouldn't trust them.