O God, What Have I Done

Editor's note: For those of you who have trouble discerning between deadly serious and tongue in-cheek-in these pages, please be assured, this is the latter--especially the title.

I am probably feeling just a little intimidated today. I know many of you are wondering why it has been almost a month since anything was published on this blog. The answers to both these questions are the same. We are going to go ahead and publish this even though it could cause a little discomfort if the wrong people read it within the next few weeks. After that, this will all be a recording of historical events.

I really was just frustrated, and maybe a little righteously angry. (I always hesitate to use and variants of "righteous" and "angry" in juxtaposition, but if this is not a case of righteous anger then my whole premise here is actually a deception.) For the third time in a matter of a few weeks, I was put in the uncomfortable situation of having to deal with a program participant whom I had already dismissed from the program for a rules violation. Each time, they had appealed my decision and were allowed to remain in the program. They had each managed to find other ways to violate the rules. Rather than being able to sit at my desk and say, "I told you so." to the person who had overridden my decision, I was asked to rectify the situation by telling the client a second time he would need to pack his belongings and leave. I was doing a slow burn. It was the end of the workday. After completing the task, I tried to put it out of my mind. That was working pretty well until I got into bed.

Now why is it the Holy Spirit waits until we are settling down for the night or just about to be awake in the morning before dropping important things into our spirits? Maybe you do not have that problem. I know, I should be listening all day long rather than just at those times. He is probably speaking at other times, but hey, I am a busy guy. I simply do not have time to be still and listen at other times. He must understand that. Why does He have to sneak up on me when I am trying to rest?

So I am crawling into bed and the anger over the event is just below the surface. That is when my mouth got me into trouble yet again. I said, "God, something has to change. I am tired of cleaning up his messes. Either he has to go or I have to go." It almost seemed like an innocent enough prayer at the time. Then why did it work so well when lots of others do not?

Perhaps you have uttered a prayer and BAM! it was answered fast enough to make your head spin. This one was all but that fast. The thing is I did not understand how much work God was going to have to do in order to answer that prayer. The prayer concerned my main antagonist, the person who had the authority to override mine. There were, however, two other, minor antagonists who needed to go before he did or they would have continued to inhibit the effectiveness of the program and be thorns in my flesh. (If this post were not satirical, I would probably remind us all that we do not battle against flesh and blood and that the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but spiritual. I read those things somewhere and I believe them.)

This all started, as nearly as I can recall, almost three months ago. The two, minor antagonists mentioned earlier are gone. The first one was gone within days of my prayer. So I could have titled this post something like, "Now There Are Three." By the way, if you read the previous post, you know we were sent an intern to fill in a few gaps in the schedule. That did not work out so well, but now we have another one. This time it is going a little better.

Currently, we are at a stalemate. We will have a new director in about two weeks. My strongest impression is that soon after that, my original prayer will be answered. God seems to have put everything in place for that to happen. Either he will be gone or I will be gone. There are a couple factors not mentioned here that make it more likely he is the one who will be going, but time will tell. In the meantime everyone at the mission, staff and program men, are holding on, hoping this is as bad as it gets. Right now no one with any authority has the will to make any changes. O God, what have I done? It seemed almost like an innocent prayer.

Often in counseling sessions with the men, it comes up that when we have a vested interest in one outcome over another, we subconsciously--or maybe even consciously-- attempt to make our desired outcome happen. I am doing my best not to have a vested interest in the outcome of this situation. If I stay, I will continue to work diligently and see lives changed at the mission. If I go, there are other things to do. It does not matter to me one way or the other where I work or even what kind of work I do. For now I am doing what I do and I am going to keep doing it until I do something else. Did I mention I could really use a vacation?