Fear, a Youth Retreat, and Crepes for Dinner

I’m having a weird sort of day so far.

I’m sitting at my desk drinking mango rooibos tea, and eating smarties. (I eat them by color – is that slightly obsessive compulsive of me? And, before you ask, no I don’t “eat the red ones last.” I eat whatever I deem to be the “prettiest color” last – today that’s probably the blue ones. I eat them in order of color ugliness. Okay, yeah, that’s a little strange once you write it down.)

We had our planning meeting last night for the youth retreat we’re holding next weekend, and picked a topic. We’re going with a general theme of “How can we be more aware of God in our daily lives?” So, on the Friday evening we’re going to do some teaching around the theme of “How does God speak?” The pastor I work with will do the intro, and set the context of the scripture passage we’re using, and then will do “God speaks in a whisper”. After that, we take a short break, and then I’m doing “God speaks in a scream/big event” and “God speaks in silence/When God is silent”. The following day, we’re taking the kids hiking for 3 or 4 hours in the mountains near the town where we’re staying. Over the course of the hike and the rest of the day, we’ll stop three times for reflection, moving inwards, applying some of what we’ll have talked about the night before. We’ll ask them to do some journaling, and then to share a bit with the group. So we’ll start with “God in creation”, then “God in my family and friends” and finally “God in me”. My only teaching responsibility on the Saturday will be to intro the journaling portion at the beginning of the hike, explaining why journaling can be important or significant, and that it doesn’t necessarily encompass only writing sentences, could be drawing, or whatever.

I was really excited about this topic all through the meeting. I felt confident that God was leading us, and I was excited about the topics I’m going to be teaching on. However, almost as soon as the pastor I’m working with left my house, the fear and anxiety set in. The sudden “Oh my goodness, what have I agreed to do sort of feeling.”

I slept really poorly last night.

I woke up this morning with a pall of fear hanging over me. I don’t understand how I can at some moments walk in such spiritual freedom, and at others become so overcome by fear. Fear has always been a huge issue in my life, and has at times kept me from doing and becoming who I really want and feel called to be. To be honest, I think there is also some generational stuff involved in the fear over my life, and I’m not quite sure what to do about that either. Anyway, I’m really struggling with it this morning. I feel this fear and almost depression hanging over my head. It feels almost ridiculous to be struggling with this. Those verses people have quoted at me for so many years play through my head, “God did not give us a spirit of fear…” And I can’t help but wonder what sort of help people think it is to quote a verse in this manner. I always wanted to scream, “you think I don’t know that? And yet, I’m still afraid. So great, we’ve identified that God is NOT behind my fear, which means that Satan probably is. I’m still afraid, what are we going to DO about it?” I was always too nice to actually say that, but now, today, I’m in that “What do I do about it?” place. I’m thinking I need to arrange a time to hang out with some praying friends, and pray through some of the reasons that this keeps appearing so very strongly in my life.

However, besides the meeting (which was great until it ended and I realized what I’d agreed to) I had a great evening last night. At lunch with a friend yesterday, I discovered that another friend was in town for a few days, and was possibly free last evening. When I got back to work, I gave her a call, and we ended up meeting for dinner in Kensington. We stumbled into this tiny little basement hole in the wall restaurant, with funky decorations, that serves crepes. Seventy plus varieties of crepes. SO GOOD. I had this fantastic concoction filled with whipped cream, mango, and apple, and drizzled with a mango sauce. To die for. I’ll definitely be going back there.

Hanging out with Rae for the evening was a god thing. There’s been some family stuff going on in my life for the last year, and it intensified greatly over the weekend. To be away from home and miss the intense family dinner hour was very much a gift from God at a moment when I needed it. Plus, Rae is one of those friends with whom there is little point making small talk. We don’t see each other often enough for that, and quite quickly get to the heart of what God is doing in each of our lives. It was great to be able to have that conversation, to empathize with each other, to be grumpy in that not really grumpy sort of way at the ridiculous, painful, and yet beautiful ways God has been showing up in our lives lately. To really be genuine. I miss that – not too many friends living in Calgary anymore that I share that with.

This is a REALLY long sort of post. The trouble is, I’ve got nothing but time on my hands at work these days. So I sit and journal in my word processor so that it looks as if I’m actually working, and then I stick a lot of it here on my blog for you to enjoy. There’s been a lot on my mind lately, and I’ve been writing a LOT. So, kudos to you if you made it through this post, and all of the other lengthy posts I’ve been putting up here lately!