You Will Find {it happened on a sunday} day 19

I climbed the church stairs.  The building was only a few years old, and most of the effort to make it inviting and comfortable had been done on the first floor.  Each progressive level got less and less polished, until you reached the "Attic" with its unpainted walls and stacks of old Christmas decorations.  The first floor was for families, for weekend services and the preschool that met there during the week.

The second floor was for the teenagers.  We met in a large room, with brightly painted walls and no stage.  But my husband and I had discovered that, though it was missing the polish and show of the downstairs services, in this upstairs room was a great teacher.  This is how we first met Jason.

We sat cross-legged on the floor with about 30 middle school students, and we sang along with the high school worship team, we listened to Jason preach straight from the Bible, then we clustered with our sixth graders and talked about life and God.  It was in this space that my beliefs solidified, that the course of my life was set in a new direction.

NRG Leaders 2009

It was strange to be appointed a "leader"; it was a new title, and one I didn't feel I deserved, since I was only a few months into my new life as a Jesus follower.  I have never figured out if Jason saw something in me that I wasn't aware of, or if he was just desperate for adults to help out.

Though it was Jason who named me a leader, it was Laura who helped me become one.  Laura, still in college, capable of being serious or silly, was the one who gave me books and CDs to learn more, she was the one who met with me to talk over issues I was having or questions that needed answered, she gave me more and more responsibility.  When I think back to that time when being an adult was such a foreign concept, it was Laura who taught me how to do it.

The staff went through transitions, and I volunteered for Shawn and Benny and John and Sandy.  With each of them, I felt a little like an imposter, like maybe I should tell them that I wasn't really qualified to be in charge of teenagers.  They should know about my dark times and my doubts.  But each of them accepted me at face value, looking only at who I was, never asking who I had been.

Maybe that's how it should be.  Maybe we should take each other for the person we are (or becoming, at the very least).  But it also felt like I wasn't being fully myself, like I wasn't being genuine with these people.  Was I hiding my past?  Was I afraid of what they would think?