Moving On

Well, today was the last day of Mom's Time Out (MTO) for me. For those who are not familiar with MTO, it's a ministry at our church that started out as MOPS (Mothers Of Preschoolers), whose goal was to minister to just that, moms of young kids. We welcome the moms to a hot breakfast, coffee bar, adult conversation with moms, as well as a special speaker/discussion time and even a craft. All that came to a close for me today, as my kids are too old for me to attend any longer. It's hard to believe that I've been involved with this group since Jacob was a tiny baby and then moved on to lead the group for about 5 years. Come September, I'm not so sure that I'm going to know what to do with myself! I jokingly mentioned that one of the things I'm going to have to do is make my own breakfast every other Thursday morning. Part of me wasn't joking as we have this awesome hot breakfast buffet each meeting - really yummy and always something chocolate - I'm sure my Corn Flakes won't measure up!

This is just one of the really big areas in my life that is changing. I know that change is good, but right now, I feel like I'm losing a part of my identity. Most of my really close friends have been involved with MTO with me - some of them are moving on and others are not.

A lot of the same friends were also part of our mini-church. Eric and I have been with this mini-church for about 11 years. Some families have come and gone, and returned again during those 11 years but there are several who have remained constant. Regardless, we have developed many close friendships with these families. Anyway... our minichurch is "breaking up" and moving on. To me this is a little hard to come to grips with because I feel like part of who we, as a family, are, is this minichurch. The other difficult thing is that we live about 30 minutes away from almost all of the other families so without seeing them regularly at minichurch, a set time to share life's happenings, I feel like, in a sense, we're losing these relationships. Sure we will continue to see people at church weekly but it's not something where we get into life's struggles and triumphs with everyone - kind of a more surfacey sort of thing. We live kind of too far to just stop by for a short chat, or just pop in for a cup of coffee or whatever. So, it's going to have to be a more intentional thing, which is hard to do when life always seems to get in the way all to easily.

So, coupled with MTO ending for me, and the loss of our minichurch, - 2 huge aspects of my life - I'm struggling. Struggling to know that God has a plan, struggling to understand that God has only good planned for me (or us as a family) and that I have to trust Him. Struggling to know that I'm not out here alone to conquer life.

So... in the meantime, I'm looking to God for direction as to where He is leading us and me.