the coalescence of worry

I think I figured out some of my unhappiness these past few days. It's something that's lurked in the back of my head for a while, and comes out every month about this time.

Tonight is board meeting at church. We are small. We cannot seem to keep a pastor to save our lives. Our funds are limited. We've been trying to get a formal interim (we have an informal person filling the pulpit but that will only be a few more weeks) but it seems the Regional is slow to help. And I keep worrying: is this going to be the month the bomb drops? Is this going to be when the moderator declares, "Regional has decided that maybe it's time for us to think about shutting down?"

I know I've expressed this worry before. All I can do about it is pray. I'm carrying as heavy a load of responsibility there as I can short of being the person filling the pulpit each week. And I can't do that. I can't and I hope I don't get asked. I hope tonight we have word that we have an interim at least through Christmas but I also have a hard time hoping as we keep seeming to have to go "back to the well" for more help.

So that concern is nagging at the back of my head - something very important, vitally important, to my life may end soon and I may be cast adrift to try to find a new place.

I've picked at the other things I must do today: I filled out the paperwork for my small grant but I feel like I've been groping in the dark on it as this is the first time I've had to do it myself and I seem to be infamous* for donking something up on this kind of office paperwork and getting it sent back multiple times for redoing.

(*Maybe I'm too hard on myself there. When I took it in to my chair to sign and I expressed my concern I'd messed something up, she kind of laughed and said, "I know. They love to send paperwork back to be redone")

I got a sort of cursory (I want to use a rude term here, the best polite translation I can give is mono-buttockular) assignment for each class posted for the students to do in my absence, and posted what material remains - all of it is the "this is stuff I usually never get around to during the regular semester" stuff so I don't feel QUITE so bad, um, mono-butting it.

I still have to do laundry but maybe I can toss in a load between getting home after office hours and going out to my meeting.

I usually like to do some kind of short devotional at the elder's meeting and I admit some months I am scrambling at the last minute to find something. But this month I put together a bit of information from an older PBS site about Mr. Rogers, and about his "look to the helpers" comment - that in bad times, when everything seems to be going wrong, you should look for the people who are making things better. (I first heard the comment in the context of first responders at September 11, 2011, but I think it more generally applies). And I think that's some of my frustration, maybe. I tend to be a very quiet person in some ways. My modus operandi is to be kind and loving and really frankly rather soft and in cases of real injustice to either passively resist or to be the person on the sidelines praying for a favorable outcome.....and yet, I hear people in the news telling me that not only is that response wrong, and that I should be angry and, I don't know, out there screaming at people, but also, because of who I am, my help and goodwill are not welcome. And that's what makes that part of me go, "Fine. I'm closing my front door and locking it. Come back when you're done being nonselectively angry at everything."

What it does is it causes cognitive dissonance. So much about this year has made me go "what the what?**: some days it seems like everything I learned as a younger person, everything that worked for me in the past, either no longer works or I am being told I am wrong and a bad person for doing it that way. And yeah, I know: I need to be more SELECTIVELY permeable but when I hear someone who doesn't know me from Eve telling me I'm a bad person because of who I am, I kind of shut down a little. (It's the kid-who-really-wants-to-be-liked syndrome. I'm tired of sitting in the dark corner of the lunchroom all alone).

I keep telling myself the meetings should make me happier, because I will be around people who are interested in the same stuff as I am, but I also admit I'm still failing to feel it. But another thing I've learned is that about 60% of adult life is either fake-it-til-you-make-it or pretend-you're-feeling-enthusiasm-when-you-aren't.

(**My new favorite euphemism for a stronger phrase, thanks to "The Amazing World of Gumball)