It's funny how the questions come in the night. I can barrel through my day going from one thing to the next, effectively pushing thoughts and decisions out of my mind.
But so often when I crawl into bed and pull up the covers my mind loses its inhibitions and bounces like a kid on a trampoline.
This has been a crazy week in my Operation Christmas Child world. On Monday and into Tuesday we had a snowstorm that might have seemed ho-hum for us at this time most winters (we are the #1 snowiest city right now.) But we've had a mild winter so far so the 20" or so of snow we got within 24 hours was a bit of a shock. Then my husband announced he thought his chest felt a little tight while shoveling snow so I pushed him aside and took that job (don't worry, he had a cardiologist appointment this week, too.)
On Tuesday I got a call that we had another truck delivery coming on Wednesday. I prayed hard again and God blessed--the truck driver called and gave us a half hour notice. That gave me time to get to the church and get the three foot drift shoveled from the front of the container so we could open the door. The snow had stopped by then and there was no wind, so even though it was only 13 degrees the weather wasn't a problem and the pallet of items that were delivered were pretty easy to get stashed away. Whew!
On Wednesday evening I decided to send a Facebook message to someone local whom I've never met outside of social media. She's been posting some awesome things about her prayer life and I had a prompting to ask her about joining our prayer team. She quickly responded to my message and at around 9 pm I sent her an e-mail telling her more about our team and sent her an Operation Christmas Child volunteer application.
On Thursday morning I discovered she'd completed the application by midnight. I called Linda, our Prayer Team Coordinator and asked her if she could do the interview, and before long she had an appointment set up to do the interview at 4 pm that day. I called to do reference checks and had them completed before 1 pm. We had everything completed within less than 24 hours--a record for sure!
That makes three applications in the past two weeks. That's a miracle only God could accomplish.
On Thursday morning our team Network Coordinators met with our Collection Center Coordinator to do a debriefing, then I spent the afternoon cross-referencing the shoebox drop-off logs with our records from last year.
It was disappointing to see we had a lot of information missing on the logs this year. We really need to focus with our relay centers on how important that information is. I'm not sure how we're going to be able to successfully affirm the donating churches with such sketchy drop-off logs.
That leads to Thursday night when I met with Heather, our Church Relations Coordinator, who has been on our team since we started in 2007. Actually, Heather and I have been packing boxes together since several years before the team even formed. As we talked she told me she feels it's time for her to step off the team. It was hard to hear, but she wants to be more involved in local church ministry and I want her to be in the place God wants her to be serving. Man, I am not a fan of change, and this one is hard.
As I prayed this morning it was one of those times of prayer when there just aren't words. I told my Father I wanted Him to hold me. Now, I know God doesn't have a human body but sometimes I still like to picture just lying down and putting my head in His lap--the way I used to do with my mom when I was small. I'm glad I have a God who holds me.
Today was scheduled with some fun visits with people I love and ended with our small group meeting tonight. It was a full week and a good day.
But...when I crawled into bed and pulled up the covers...my mind took off again.
How will we handle these changes on our team? What can I do to make sure our new team members get a good start in their roles? How can we become the high-impact team we aspire to be? We have our first team meeting of 2016 next Tuesday and I have no idea how to make it a good meeting. Several people told me recently they don't like to come to the meetings.
So...how do I plan a meeting that will make people want to go out and drive on a cold, dark night when the wind chill is -2 degrees and there's two feet of snow on the ground? Maybe we should switch our meetings to daytime? I'm already thinking we need to alternate days. Maybe I should have catered meals or dancing elephants? Sometimes it feels like casting the vision for changing the lives of children for eternity just isn't enough.
Maybe I should rent a trampoline.
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