Sometimes it just hurts so much!

On Sunday, my husband and I went to Wal-mart to do a little shopping (which turned into a LOT of shopping). We were totally caught up in looking at the Christmas decorations when we heard, “Hi Guys!” We looked up and there was one of the teens from our former youth group. His face was completely lit up. It was obvious that he was very excited to see us. We talked with him and his family for about five minutes and then we said our goodbyes and they went on their way. I however, turned to my husband with tears streaming down my face. I was glad to have seen the excitement of seeing us on the teen’s face, but all the pain of the past two months came rushing over me. Breaking my heart all over again.

We didn’t plan on leaving this wonderful youth group, but we were given no choice. Well, actually there was a choice, but the choice was between following God and following man. As far as my husband and I are concerned, that is NO choice at all.

You see, two months ago, my husband was called into a meeting with the pastor. My husband was then given instructions about how to conduct things within the youth group. My husband knew instantly that these instructions were not Biblical. The pastor said that we (my husband and I) needed to “conform and submit” to what he wanted us to do. There were a lot of other painful things said to my husband, but right now I just can’t bear to go into them. My husband felt blindsided by this “meeting” and left without saying much to the pastor.

My husband is what I call and “after-thinker”. He takes time to process things before reacting to them. By the time he told me what had happened, he was beginning to process things and realize just how difficult of a position that we were in. As we talked, we realized more and more that the things that the pastor had said were completely off base. I kept wishfully saying that maybe my husband misunderstood, but he hadn’t. We decided that we needed to talk to the pastor immediately to discuss this. We called him and told him that we had some questions about the things that he had asked us to do. We brought up Bible verses to explain to him why we were not agreeing with the things that he was saying.

His response was, “Do you trust me?”

My instant response was, “I only trust God 100%.”

His reply was, “If you can’t trust me 100%, then you can not work with me.”

I looked at my husband and his face registered the utter shock that I was feeling.

I said, “You aren’t asking us if we respect you.”

He said, “They are the same thing.”

We saw then that he was asking us for a blind trust. A trust that would overlook the unbiblical things that he was doing. A trust that would blindly do anything he asked. A trust that would cause us to follow him instead of God.

My husband said, “We will never trust man over God.”

And with that, the pastor said that he would accept our immediate resignation.

We loved our youth group. When we started, we had four teens. Within two years, we had forty. Forty teens who loved to worship God. Forty teens who would rather have a youth service than a party. Forty teens who knew they could all on us at any time and we would be there. Forty teens who we loved. Forty teens who we didn’t even get to say good-bye to.

So running into the teens at Wal-mart is indeed a treasure. But it is also like rubbing salt on a fresh wound. We see their joy at seeing us again, but we also see their confusion when they wonder why we left so suddenly. Our answer is always the same, “This was not something that we wanted or planned to do, but we felt that it was the only choice that we could make while still glorifying God.”

When they press for more answers our reply is, “The pastor wanted us to do things that we did not feel were Biblical or profitable for the youth group.”

And we leave it at that. We do not attempt to defend ourselves. We will leave that up to God.

But the pain still exists. And I still miss my teens.

~ by onbecomingnew on December 9, 2008.