Big Changes

[chadkmiller]

Just wanted to give everyone an update and explanation as to why I felt the Lord moving my wife and I on from our Children's Pastor position. A few things have been happening that have helped me to make this decision.

If you did not hear or were unaware, my father suffered a tear in his aorta on September 11th. I went and spent a week with him, which was truly a life changing week in so many ways. I vowed when I came back from Kansas that I would slow down my life and be more healthy in all ways.

This has caused me to reconsider just about everything in my life and really look at what really matters the most to me. Selfishly, as I looked over my life there are a lot of good things happening, but only a few great things.

1. My wife is the greatest thing happening for me and has been since I met her. I feel like she has received the left overs of me for years, as I chased my career dreams. I realized I needed to put more time into our relationship and just enjoy being around her.

2. I think I am greatly needed as a public school teacher, I can see my impact every day. Not to mention I just finished my Master's degree and desire to really put the education to use. I am a very different kind of teacher, I have learned how to embrace my differences compared to others (I am the only male teacher in my building). I used to think I wanted to leave my teaching career and become a full-time children's pastor, so much that I think I used to feel like a failure after every "botched" interview. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be more than I needed to be.

3. The last great item is a mixture. I would simply put it as my friends. I have made a lot of good friends over the past few years, but I feel like I am about an inch deep with all of them. I know their kids' names and their story, but I struggle to embrace a real close friendship with most of them. I realized that I needed to grow in this area more. I am not sure what this looks like, because I rarely am around men with really close friendships, but I am going to do my best. I want friends who disagree with me, friends who live without homes, friends who are much richer/poorer (in spirit, life, money, joy) than me, and I want to work this year on being a friend to more people. I want to hear their stories.

I hated to leave my position as Children's pastor, but I saw it as something I was not doing a "great" job at. Not sure what the future holds for me as a Children's pastor, but I am open to whatever God brings along on my journey. Right now, I am considering producing some curriculum that will deal with issues of poverty. There are a lot of other things happening that I will continue to post you on here as they happen!

Two things I know...

God loves me and wants me to show others that love.

Peace to my friends on CMConnect and other avenues...