The first major women's conference our church held was in the fall of 2001. That also happened to be the final nudge that convinced My Sweet Babboo and me that this was to be our family's next place of service.We'd been in our previous church for 20 years; moving to a new congregation was...a process.
Our church has had a major women's conference every year since, with the exception of 2005, when we took all the funds designated to host the conference and put it towards hurricane relief to help those who had lost everything to Katrina. In 2008 we had a shift in the women's ministry; the conference that year was called SHE Revolution (SHE = 'Seeking His Embrace')...which led to the women's ministry coming under a new vision and a new moniker...She Revolution. Over the years, it's kind of morphed into 'She Women's ministries'.
A key piece to the puzzle was the 2013 (I think?) Color Sisterhood conference in Sydney, Australia. Somewhere around 30 women from our church went...including a number of our lady pastors (pastoring is a couple's calling here; husbands and wives serve together. Same for deacons and elders. Not getting into the background of it, just explaining the culture so the terms make sense.). That conference heavily influenced the direction our women's ministry took in the years following.
This year's conference, then, is probably a direct result of the seeds sown in 2013. It's titled 'Kingdom Sisterhood' and at our first leadership prayer time leading up to the conference we were all given an assignment: to read Bobbie Houston's book on sisterhood.
So I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived over the weekend.
But I have a confession to make.
I can hardly say 'Kingdom Sisterhood' without getting a lump in my throat and a heavy sting in my eyelids. See, I do not have a good history with this 'sisterhood' thing. It grieves me that I am not good at it, but there it is.
You folks who have been reading the blog for a long time will know this; I talk about it from time to time....that self-protection wall I have that keeps relationships safe. And by safe...I mean, hopefully, so that my bull-in-the-china-shop tendencies will not overstep those boundaries and I won't hurt someone's feelings without realizing I've done it. I do not always succeed. There have been conferences in which I have sat in the back, well away from others, and cried myself into a state of complete sinus shutdown. Because of this whole I'm-not-good-at-sisterhood thing. Oh, there were specifics to each time that reflected current events but at the core of it...was that. My ability to offend people without even trying, to so completely fail to explain something that I left folks with the sure knowledge that I thought something/felt something/expected something that had nothing whatever to do with my actual thoughts, feelings or expectations.
My friends, this is ridiculous. And it has to stop. I have to get it. This is the thing I wanted to leave in Israel...that social awkwardness that has plagued me since elementary school. I didn't know it would rise up and slap me in the face quite so quickly or emotionally, but here I am.
So you know, this is sort of an accountability thing here. I have GOT to get over this blocking hill. I have to figure out how to deal with my inevitable faux pas in a healthier way. I am surely not the only person who does this sort of thing...but pulling back and retreating and...sitting in the dark back seats alone...is not the way handle it.
Sort of like swimming...someone who knows how to swim won't be afraid of water. Someone who knows how to deal with conflict and miscommunication won't be afraid of close relationships.
It's time to stomp that down...and let it stay stomped down.
And experience Kingdom Sisterhood.
No comments:
Post a Comment