Man, it has been a while since I have posted anything here. To be honest, I am not the best with words nor do I find much of anything I do very interesting. This summer was probably one of the most stressful and discouraging part of my life. I have never felt more betrayed by a place that I hold a deep fondness for.
This summer had the chance to do my internship at my home church. I thought this would be a great opportunity to get to know the people more at my church and make things a little easier on the social aspect. I had pretty full summer, Wednesday night classes, Sunday morning teaching, three weeks of camp, a week of drumming, a mini mission trip, CIY, and VBS. Along with all that, office hours. I was fairly busy.
My first week of camp was awful, nobody listened in the class and straight up told me they would not due to my gender and the fact that I was not much older than them. Second week I was unexpected dorm mum and nurse. We also had a really bad sickness going around camp. I cleaned up a lot of vomit. I also had to fill in for someone on a class. Third week of camp was canceled. Between the first two being back to back, I was beat. I had about a week or two I between events that I spent in the office doing lesson prep and gathering my supplies. The kids had a blast on Wednesday nights. We walked through the 40 years in the wilderness. They even got to build tents out of PVC. It was also during this time that I let the stresses of life get to me and messed things up with my significant other.
The next big trip was to a school in Arkansas. I went on a mini mission trip with the middle school kids. While we were here, we cleaned up their gardens, transplanted tulips, and deep cleaned the school. It wad also on this trip that I got stung by a red wasp smack dab in the center on top of my hand. Within a 5 hour span, my hand was swollen to my fingertips all the up to my elbow. Freakin savage. I ended every evening with a small reflection of the day and verse or two from the book of Philippines.
Following this was CIY. Again I only had one day I between the two to do laundry. This week legit kicked me in the feels. We walked through the book of Ephesians each night in the main session and talked a little bit after them. Small groups were also different and were more about getting to know one another more and building a stronger relationship with one another. It was here that I shared my story for the first time, every detail with 13 kids that I have been working with the entire summer, with adults that had watched me grow up in the church and had no idea. I was not cool with it at first, but God uses that to impact more than what we think.
For our extended recreation, we went to and Escape Room. We were split into two groups and locked in a room. We had an hour to escape. My group was two steps away, the other group had four. Overall, the trip was a blast. I got to grow closer with a lot of the kids and even some of the adults.
Following this was VBS. I was in charge of games. All of them were water games, so that was fun. It was also during this time that I got to fix things with my significant other, so that made things better as well.
So as you read this you are like yo...what is so discouraging about all of this? My first week of camp made me feel like a failure, nothing went right, nobody really cares, and the kids smeared ink all over my stuff. Following this were two board meetings that I got to attend. In both of these, the role of women in the church was brought up. This has been an issue that I had fought before, but have been able to drop it. This went on for two months and the main elders basically decided that a woman cannot: Give communion meditation, pass offering plates, pass communion plate, speak doctrine, or teach a class even if it is not on a "standard" church night. She is to have mo authority over man at all. Heaven forbid a man show up and want to learn something from a woman. As you can tell I am a little bitter. To say that is stupid, if someone has knowledge let them share it. If God has blessed a female with knowledge do not let her keep it to herself, let her share it with others.
As an end result to all of this I was basically told that yes, we support your choice, yes we support you, but you will never be a youth minister; the only thing you can be is a minister's wife. This enraged me, it is an insult. It is basically saying you are not good enough, your voice does not matter. I got this from my home church. It crushed me. It made me angry, and it severely discouraged to the point that I do not even want to be here this semester. I still have the feeling, it is hard to battle sometimes. Even now, being here with my profs and fellow classmates it is hard to stay encouraged about such things.
Well that is about all I have for right now. Going to a steam punk festival this weekend, followed by a trip to an amusement park the next weekend. So many adventures, may post about them! Stay fabulous! X
