The Week of Craziness!

That is what this week has been. Mike, my manager, has been gone all week. He finally went on a family vacation, which I am glad that he did. He needed to really badly. Everyone needs a break. But I have to say that the saying, When the boss is away everyone will play, is sooo true! Not that I haven't done my fair share of playing this week, because I have. But there is a time when even I know that you have to stop playing and get your job done. I love my job! Honestly, I do! Being back at Lifeway has been the best thing for me at this stage in my life but sometimes the people that I work with are what drive me to frustration! My coworkers here at the store are some of dearest friends. I mean, we hang out with each other outside of work all the time. Last Sunday (I know! Christian Bookstore Employees! Laying out of church!!) a bunch of us and our friends and families, went Six Flags in Ky. It was sooo much fun! We have to go and do things like that on Sun because its the only time we are all off of work and can go together. When we go and do things like that together, it helps bring us together as coworkers and a mini lifeway family. We all feel like that's what we are, a family. I have said, and have heard others say, that once you work here its sooo hard to work any where else. Especially this store. Mike is the best manager in the world. And yet at the same time, he can be the most frustrating!! SO he has been gone and I feel like I had the slowest, most boring week and the fastest, nonstop week all at the same time. There was stuff happening this week that never happens or happens once in a blue moon. One day I actually got to the point of where I hated my name. I mean it! Every time the phone rang or the little beep that you hear when someone is about to be paged went off, I would stop what I was doing and wait to see what I needed to do. Run to the front! Talk to this customer about a Special Order! Answer the phone! It was crazy! It seemed like everything that happened that day I had to be a part of it some way. THAT day went by fast and I left feeling like I didn't get anything done! But anyway, I am at the end of the week now and I have tomorrow off. My cousin Courtney is going to come and stay the night with me. We are going to go downtown Nashville and look at all the shops and stuff. She is so funny. We have really got close in the last couple of years. She is my youngest cousin, ten years younger than me. I don't know why all the sudden what changed but we talk to each other all the time and send each other messages on Facebook and Myspace. We just click these days. So I am excited that she is coming. I have a feeling that the weekend will be better than the week. At least I hope so!

Up Waay to Early...

I am at work and its 5:10 in the morning. Do I normally get here at 5:00? Heck no!! I am here because the corporate office has to shoot a training video and needed someone here to open the store. I live the closest and so here I am! But its not too bad. I am going to try and leave a little early. Andrew and I and possibly Stacia are going to see the new Harry Potter movie. I am sooo excited! Tired and sleepy but excited. I haven't made any coffee yet. Fixing to go do that! I will probably drink a whole pot by myself! Won't that be lovely, me all wired on coffee? By the time Rebecca and the others get here, who knows what I will have been up to in here.

Its been a while...

Life has been moving on by. Fast! Like always. I haven't been myself for the past few months. Well in all actuality for the past year. I have slipped in to the land of people who hardly ever go to church. A place that I never imagined I would be. Having grown up in church, I was always there. Anytime the door was open, I was there. And usually one of the first ones there and the last to leave. I loved it! I loved seeing all my friends, singing and worshipping. But in the last year, things have changed. I had been in a bible study group, with the same group of ladies, for close to 2yrs, if not longer. They had to move the bible study to a different day and because of my job I couldn't go. Well, that sent me down a path of borderline depression. I was closer to God at that point than I had ever been in my life. We had been in constant study and all of the sudden it was gone. I continued to go church on Sundays and Wed nights for choir, but I slowly started retreating from that as well. Somewhere during that time of feeling the loss of the bible study and the change in all of the relationships of the ladies in the group, I had started doing something that I wasn't proud of. Something I never talked about, never thought I would do. I never would say it out loud, because then it would be acknowledging that it was going on. I wasn't doing drugs or anything like that but it was something I knew was wrong. Overtime, without the study and all my girls, the guilt of the secret that I had was enough to drive me into some kind of hole. I wouldn't answer the phone unless absolutely necessary. I would go home and take a nap, but it wouldn't be just a nap. I would go to sleep at 4:00 in the afternoon and sleep til the next morning and never wake up. I was either at work or asleep. I would turn down opportunities to go spend time with friends and slowly found my self out of church, lonely and depressed. But the thing is I would go to church if I was at home or if there was something big going on in the life of a friend. I went to see a friend of mine get baptized. I don't know how I ended up in that place but finally one day I realized that the guilt of what I was doing and not going to church was pushing me further down. I was at a point of either moving forward and getting back into church or just not. Not trying to get back into church, not moving on. God blessed me with a friend who could see that I needed to talk and so she asked for us to go out and eat. The thing is, I have tons of friends that I could have talked to but I knew what most of the would say. But for some reason, when my friend said that she wanted to meet and chat, I was ready to talk. She was great and listened to all that had been going on. For the first time in my life, I actually understood the saying, it was like a physical weight being lifted. When I told her and explained all that had been going on, I literally felt better. I went home that night and took the steps to end what I had been doing. Made a promise to myself that I would try to get back into church or find a bible study. Since that time things have been better. I haven't been to church on Sunday still, but I have been watching the services on the web and have been with my parents. I feel better. I feel free. I still have my hard times but its soo much better. I am on the road to getting back to where I was before and hopefully will even pass that. Its been such a blessing to work at the store because, being there, surrounded by other Christians, helping the customers, has been one of the best things I could have ever done. I need the relationships that I have here at work. I love the fact that we start the day out in devotion, that we pray together. How we talk about things going on in our lives and how God is moving. Its the job that I needed so badly at this time in my life. God has been there with me through all of this and I knew it. I could feel Him there with me as I would just lie in bed, awake and wondering about the things going on in my life. I was still talking to Him but missed the time of learning about Him and His word. One of the times that I went to church with my parents, the choir sang one of my favorite songs. He's Been Faithful, by Brooklyn Tabernacle. The song has new meaning and dearness to my heart now. After all that I had gone through in the last year, God WAS faithful! He was there for me, waiting on me to come to Him.
I'm not where I was before but I am no longer headed in the wrong direction and I thank God for his faithfulness!!