call me crazy...

I constantly am brought back to my early days of marriage when I had a conversation with someone who was in church work. They asked me, "Is being in full-time ministry anything like you expected it to be?" I chuckle at that question now just as I did many years ago in response to that question!

I think we too often romanticize our thoughts about most things in life, and for me, that has rung true for me feelings about going into ministry Don't get me wrong--I am so thankful and humbled with the calling the Lord has placed upon my family's life. But, if I'm being perfectly honest, I have to admit that ministry, like many other things in life, isn't always easy...

Take tonight as an example...once again I've been labeled as the crazy paranoid parent. I realize I don't always have the best tone of voice when I get upset over a situation--it's something I pray about a lot, but obviously could have used more prayer time on today!--but sometimes I think people just jump to conclusions about me and don't even try to hear what I'm really saying. I feel like people just don't know my heart, and whenever I try to let it out there on the line for people to see, they still just run right over it and don't even try to understand where I'm coming from. Yes, I'm probably a bit overly sensitive about this, but it just hurts to feel misunderstood... My heart is this: I love my child and want what's best for her and for her to be safe and well taken care of. But I feel like instead of hearing that, people just look at me like I'm crazy and overprotective and say, "This is a safe town and nothing is going to happen..." /sigh/ I was reminded tonight that the most important thing I can do in this situation is just to pray and ask God to be mine and my daughter's defender, and pray for safety for my child in spite of the unsafe conditions...

On other flip side of things...there's also nights like tonight where ministry sort of does meet up to those romanticized views, like with the youth group tonight. It's not that anything monumental happened, but it was just a really enjoyable evening--they really listened to the message and responded and it was just a fun night. I feel like the Lord is really speaking to some of them, too, and that excites me so much. There truly is so much potential in these students!

Anyway...I guess I just needed an outlet to vent for a bit tonight, so there ya have it;-)

Gonna give this a try...

I've been tossing around the idea of creating a new blog. I used to be a frequent blogger on xanga, but really got out of the habit and feel totally disconnected from there now. So, I think I'm going to give blogger a try instead...we'll see how it goes;-) I mostly just wanted to create a space for our friends and family, and also to have a place to share my random thoughts. So, here goes with blog#1 for the Toller Trio:-)

...

We just finished out a wonderful week of visiting with some of our dear friends from our previous church in Illinois. We were so blessed to have the, here for an entire week. It's always nice when you have those kinds of friendships where no matter how long it's been since you saw each other, you can just pick up wherever you left off, and that's exactly what happened. We mostly just hung out the first half of the week, and the kids pretty much kept themselves entertained. I also learned how to make homemade chicken and noodles (which may be a normal Texas dish for some, but I had never had it until we lived in Illinois.) we got to meet up with the bianco's and some of my family, AND, we were invited on their vacation to Great Wolf Lodge!! Omigosh, SOOOOO soooo much fun!!

So, here's a few pics from our week: