A New Person, part 2

(I know it's been over three months since my last post....)

This next one may take a bit to explain....

I'm part of the main leadership team of our church...we call it the Council...it's essentially the elder board. There are 13 amazing people on this team...and each of us is pretty uniquely gifted and talented. We each have our strengths and weaknesses...and it's an amazing gift to get to work together for the Kingdom and for our church. It's amazing to see how well we work together and how perfectly our strengths and weaknesses work together. (Plus, we have a WHOLE LOT of fun together...what a gift from the Lord that I get to work and live life with these folks!)

That said, last summer, during a council meeting, our pastor passed around an article on how teams work together. It specifically highlighted how people with different Myers-Briggs results are key at different times in the planting of a new church (or in our case, a new site of our existing church). It was really a very helpful article....however, ever since reading it, I felt this funny thing of being disconnected or expendable on the team - ironic, considering the article was supposed to do the exact opposite.

And, really, ever since that moment (without realizing until recently that that was where it started), I'd been battling this feeling of not belonging or not being important. It was just so strange too, because it's not like anyone on the team specifically ever said or did anything to make me feel that way. It was just this thing in my head...where literally every time I was with any of them, I would just have these irrational thoughts about how they didn't really want me there, they would prefer to hang out with someone else, they're stuck cleaning up my messes, I don't have anything to add to the conversation/project/ministry/anything. So annoying....so debilitating....

But, then early this summer, it all broke (yes...I'd been battling this since AUGUST of '08). It was a few weeks after that conversation with my pastor so...things were already moving in this direction...but I was meeting with P, a member of the council, about a new counseling/inner-healing class I was about to start leading at church. We were just chatting and shooting the breeze and I said something to which P replied, "wow...I'm impressed you can just see things that clearly and aren't afraid to say it. That's so great."

"I guess," I responded. "I think I'm finally just comfortable with who I am and my place on the team...."

(Don't ask me where that confidence had come from considering the real freedom was about to come via his response....)

"It's just funny that you've ever doubted your place, Natalie. I mean, there's a vital reason you're on it. C (another member of our council and with whom I share the same "stage" on that church-planting/Myers-Briggs article I mentioned above...but who hadn't come up at all in our conversation until that precise moment) does get things done. But, he's like a military guy- he can get anything done at any time....he just pushes through with no thought to the casualties around him. And, that's truly, really valuable at certain points. But, the benefit of having you and me on the team too is that we can implement as well...but we also pay a bit more attention to the people around us. We can care for (and even prevent) the casualties."

And, literally, that's when it all clicked together. In that moment, I realized that I had bunched C and I together since we were on the same "stage" in that silly article...and then, that I had compared (to C) and disqualified myself because one time our pastor made a (very accurate) comment that C was "the best implementer we had on our team." I had subconsciously decided that since C and I were on the same stage of project implementation but that he was the "best implementer" we had, than I had no value or place. That was never what was said nor was it was my pastor intended.

P's words to me over lunch that day brought me such freedom....as I connected all those dots, repented to the Lord for believing the way I had and have thus moved on. I now can truly embrace that C really is our best implementer but that doesn't in any way mean I'm not valuable or have a vital role on our team. My value lies simply in who I am....and my role is and rightly should be different than C's.

Aaaahhhhh.....