Intermission: The Old Season pt. 1

Written 01/12/2011


So, what was the old season?

It lasted just over three years.

Beginning in August of 2007 I began saying a very slow good-bye to the old season. God had made clear the plans He had for my college education and the time I would continue to have to prepare for the rest of my life. After receiving my acceptance letter, I began making arrangements. I gave notice that I would no longer be able to continue working at the coffee shop I had been working at. Around that same time, the opportunity came up for my family to move to a new house that would allow us to have the kind of life my parents desired.

So, I spent the final months of 2007 helping to train several new employees at the coffee shop who would be taking up where I left off and helping to get my family moved out of one house and into another. Those were hard months, but sweet months. Much time was spent cleaning, packing, unpacking, and getting used to a new way of doing things.

January 15, 2008 was the very first day of my journey into correspondence college. That's right. I would be working toward a BA in Christian Education from the comfort of my parents' home. This is not an easy task. It requires planning and discipline. The first few days I spent over 7 hours a day figuring out the formating, how much work I actually needed to do, and so on. Needless to say I was very glad that I had quit my job at the coffee shop because between school, my responsibilities at home, and the work I did at my dad's office and babysitting my days were more than full. Within the next month or so, I had a more balanced schedule. There were still days that I took a lot of time on school but most days took only about 5 hours.

The season was not done changing. I began having to limit the amount of babysitting I was doing. For the six years prior to that I almost never said no to a babysitting job. I looked at babysitting as a form of ministry so unless I was sick or had a previous commitment to my family or another job I always said yes. It was during those first few months of college that I said no simply because I didn't "feel" up to taking the job. Little by little, people realized that I just couldn't be there for them as much as before and that my season was changing. Over the course of 2008 I went from babysitting for many hours each week to putting in a few hours each month. Over the course of the last few years that has turned into a few hours every couple of months.

It took a lot for me to come to grips with that. I wanted to be able to say yes, but really, I simply couldn't anymore. That was part of God's plan.

TO BE CONTINUED....