Let me explain these three posts that appear almost simultaneously on my blog.
I copied and pasted two posts (one; two) I wrote as notes on facebook from 2009, before I started this blog in April of 2010. They both were written around excerpts from the book Womanly Dominion: More Than A Gentle and Quiet Spirit. If you read them first, this post will have more context. I want to make a connection between the two and my current season of life.
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I like the role God has been giving me these past several years at our church. I have been one who is always here in Lancaster. Many of my friends come and go and come back again. I get to support them, praying with them and sending them out, then get to help them connect and settle back into life when they come back. I get to watch it all, and I feel like I'm living in the hub of our church "home" in a sense. I'm delighted to be part of that hub.
This is actually much like my job too. People come in and out of the church office, but Teresa and I are always there. It is very much like my home. The pastors work out of the office too, but it can be more like a base of operations for them (home base in a sense) - for us it is everything, we hardly ever come and go. Because we are so stable, we can have our "ears to the ground" and supply helpful information because we are living life in the middle of the hub.
These two hats I wear - 1) being a young adult who is "always here" and living vicariously through her friends' life adventures, and 2) being a church secretary who is tied to her desk, at times fighting against dullness to keep productive. They quite delight me in how they are connected to something I very much desire in my future: to be a wife and mother. I love the picture that Mark Chanski paints in his book Womanly Dominion of a mom being the hub of the home. It reminds me of my mom and fans the flame of my own ambition to be used by God in the same way some day. But also, in a very currently applicable way, it encourages me in the roles I find myself right now in this season of life.
Just as the first quote from Chanski highlights the delight to be found in this role, the second excerpt highlights how dying to myself is required. As my life revolves around the activities going on in other people's lives, and my own life seems to stand still, I can either be bitter that I am called to die to myself to serve others, or I can be thrilled at the generosity of God to allow me to play a small part of his work in their lives. If bitter in my service, I need to turn to see my Savior laying down his life for me and repent, finding it instead a great joy and honor to proclaim his salvation by following in his footsteps. If thrilled to have a hand in the hub of so many lives, I need to remember in humility that God does not need me, but instead be overflowing with awe and thankfulness that he delights to include me in his great story of salvation being worked out in many lives.
What a joy to make gospel connections with the nitty gritty of life's seasons, roles, and opportunities!
photo: Conestoga House & Gardens, summer 2010
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