sifting

the majority of my time in the past year has been captured by sadness loss and longing. putting it into technical terms a little bit of depression and grieving over the loss of something i thought i would never get over.

i have been working through these thoughts and feelings over the past month or two, knowing that i would be coming face to face with people and a building that at one point meant so much to me. last week i had to go and sit in the parking lot of the building and work on a list i had made. the list was of things i had lost, people i am angry with and good things. as i sat there and did my homework i thought, it isn't hard to be here, because it is not about the building really, it is about the people. it made me sad to sit and look at the parking lot thinking of football games in the grass, time outside before the gathering, playing games with high school kids outside.

as i drove off it wasn't so sad anymore, i was okay. i knew that i would be back in a few days say good bye again. i cried the following day friday thinking of coming back and my thought was this is really it, the only reason i would have gone back is now leaving also. deep down there was a little hope that things would go back to 'normal' and i could go back. but i know that is not the case things were normal for a while before i knew better.

i went to camp this weekend for a young adult retreat. it was an incredible time. our speaker was very good and touched on a lot of points i needed to hear again and others also. he talked about going through hard times and not relying on your emotions but on the truths of scripture, something i know but have been struggling with a lot. it was convicting. saturday night i talked with a dear friend we chatted about how things were going as i worked through these thoughts and emotions and about the up coming event. i began to better understand why i was were i was. i know the moment my hope was striped and the next day i had to tell my jr. high students what was going on a little, i had to be 'strong/ together for them'. I am not saying i was fake but i had to hold it together then for the rest of the semester (a couple months). i proceeded to go right to camp for the summer where there is no time for grieving and sadness. while i was gone many people left and there were moving 'parties' and more farewells that could have been good for me to be a part of. upon coming home i went right to school and finished my degree. it was a little difficult but i filled my time with school work, two jobs and a relationship. no time again for grieving.

january came i had masked things over for so long that the numbness was so strong it disgusted me. emotions what are those, the only ones i felt were anger, sadness, and bitterness. it was repulsive, feelings of love, joy, and gratitude were no where in my life to be found, if they surfaced it was only for a moment. in talking to my friend on saturday night, she said it is like the death happened a long time ago and this week you will finally see the body in the casket. i knew this weekend would bring closure as it did. she also said, "over time it will not even be about the people that were there."

on sunday morning our the talk was on our identity in Christ out of Eph. 1:3-23. this has been a passage that has been nagging at my heart for the past couple of months. there have been moments when i long to memorize it, the yearning is even great now. as i sat and listened to chuck i began to realize that so much of who i was for so long was rooted in the building and the people. this is not to say that i was not rooted in God but not as much as i should have been. as i went to the final event on sunday night, there was a part of me that didn't want to go. but being there helped me to see that my ideal of church was not what it was and that even some of the people i missed where not who i had thought they were. this is not to say anything about these people really but all the relationships i was longing for so badly to have back, weren't really were it was at. i had placed people and events on a place in a place where they did not belong. you hear so often that people will fail you and that we shouldn't get to caught up in the event of church because that is not what God wants.

people are good God uses them and events are good God uses them but when they are on a higher pedestal than that of the Creator and savior of the world, it is sin.

i am not longer grieving the loss of a building and of people but of the sin that held me there for so long.