Hey friend,
Have you had rough patches in your marriage too? I know we have. Boy, we have. I could tell you stories that would make you cry for me but I really want to tell you about that year when God told me to change where I went to church but he told Brenton to stay in my old church.
That year had been rough, we were getting counseling and it was helping but Brenton is always so busy with the farm that we could only go a couple of times in a few months. The counselor we found was amazing and so helpful but going once a month or less was like trying to stop the bleeding of the main leg artery with a band-aid. It just wasn't enough. And Brenton, like always, was too damn busy.
So in the spring of 2018, Brenton and I were having a good day and he was telling me about problems he was struggling with on the board of my old church in Oyen, Alberta. Brenton was on the church board and they were picking a new pastor (for like the millionth time.) And he was upset because they seemed to be stalling to pick the pastor that Brenton knew would be great.
One thing that is great about Brenton is his decision making is like crazy fast and crazy accurate. He knows what to do and 90% of the time he ends up being right but you think he might be like a little crazy because it looks like he makes rash decisions but in reality he's been thinking about it for days, weeks or months before I knew it was even a problem and he has made up his mind what is right.
So one thing that really pisses him off is when people around him won't make a decision and he can clearly see what they should do but they won't listen to him. So he's telling me all about how the church board is dragging their feet on this new pastor and I'm like totally agreeing with my honey because we so badly wanted to see that church change and get into the current century.
So I go home and I'm all like, man I'm so frustrated that our church board is being foolish. Then I realized I didn't have any commitment at church that Sunday. No singing to lead, no kids Sunday School to teach, both of which I'm like really, really bad at. Well I'm like okay with the kids but being honest here, it's just not my passion to do that every week. It's not my calling.
Then I stopped and thought something I'd never thought before.
"I don't feel like going to church this week. I'm going to stay home."
Oh man, that felt good! It literally felt like becoming unchained and it felt sooooo good.
Then I had another thought and it really surprised me.
"Or I could go check out that church in Kindersley I heard about."
Looking back now, it was totally the Holy Spirit talking to me. Like I had a friend there saying, yeah you could stay home, or. . . what about this idea?
I had been visiting a new friend's house a couple of months before this, a young lady I had just started to get to know, and her husband happened to come home while we were having tea. His family used to go to my old church. He started going on and on about the new church they go to and how awesome it is. I sat there thinking, man I wish I could go to that church! It's my dream church! (Thank you Megan and Tyler!)
So there I am, standing in my kitchen, realizing I could go see this amazing church I heard about and there was nothing to stop me. And it started a bit of a war with myself. When you're about to change something in your life, especially something that big, you are going to have a mental war. I had been going to the Oyen church for years. About 10 if you counted right from when we first moved to the area. That's a decade friend. I literally argued with myself the whole way to Kindersley.
"I don't need to drive to Kindersley! It's twice as far as my old church! I'm wasting gas going this far. What if I don't even like the music? They might play really boring music too."
I tried and tried to convince myself turn around but I just couldn't. I was drawn like a magnet and then, guess what! I got there and they played my new favorite worship song, they rocked out with drums and guitar and an electric piano.
It was loud. So loud. It was mind-blowing awesomeness. The sermon was like, Ka-boom! They filled up my soul with God's perfect love! Earlier that morning I had messaged a new friend of mine who I met at my old church in Oyen, Alberta but she and her husband had just moved to Kindersley, Saskatchewan and I was like, hey you wanna check out this church with me? She was like, yeah!
(BTW - We live on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan, so my old church is in Alberta and the new is in Saskatchewan - just in case you were wondering why these churches are in two different provinces.)
We had the most amazing time there. After the sermon, the preacher asked the senior staff to go around and find people to pray for. This one beautiful lady with grey hair walks up to Brittany and I. Instantly, we both hold up one hand and the lady holds hands with us. She closes her eyes, prays for a few moments, then looks back up at us, puts our hands together and says "I feel the Lord saying that today He is making you sisters."
The lady leaves and Brittany looks at me and says, "I hope this isn't too forward, but I really feel like church shouldn't be an obligation." And the light went on. That was exactly what it had become for me. And Brittany and I have been growing closer ever since, to the point now that we totally feel like sisters. The amount of similarities between us and our husbands is kinda scary at times.
So the next week I was bummed out because I thought, well that was great but now I have to go back to the old boring church, hymns, and the organ. (Remind me to tell you about the time I was leading worship and the organ player called me to arrange practice that week and I told her that she couldn't play the organ with me anymore on my week when I sang once a month. Ohhhh man, talk about someone losing their shit, then calling the pastor and losing it on him too. She told me there are old people in our church who are close to dying and what if they want to hear the organ one last time? I'm not even making that up. Seriously.)
(Edit to add: I'm not putting this story in here just to be vengeful and get back at that lady. I feel like I'm supposed to share it because a healthy church doesn't allow people to treat other members like that. And she was overly mean to me again another time after that about worship as well.
I didn't do anything to provoke that kind of treatment and if someone in your church is treating you like that, and no one in leadership is doing anything about it, I'd suggest you take some time to consider if you're in the right church. If you are going through something like that, please read my post here where I go into more detail.)
But thank God for my sister Jennifer. She just happened to have started doing life coaching as a career and she changed my life. We were doing twice a month sessions and we just happened to have one that week and sometimes I didn't know what to ask for help with. But God already was working it out. She says to me, "Heather, I feel like I'm supposed to ask you about Oyen."
I was dumbfounded for a minute, like, yeah Oyen is still here. So?
She just waited for a few moments to let me think about it.
Then it hit me!
I was like, "Oh yeah! I'm bummed out today because I love the Kindersley church and it totally rocks my world but I have commitments in Oyen and now I have to go back."
She very gently asked me, "Do you really have to? Or could you make a way to go back to Kindersley?"
And then I realized, no I don't really have to go back to Oyen. I found other people to cover my singing that week and the Sunday school class. So I went back to Kindersley. And again, it was change-my-world-amazingly-awesome. God did the same thing the next week, telling me I could go to Kindersley if I wanted to and man oh man, did I!
Week after week I followed God's promptings and kept going back to get filled up with love, joy, and peace. I felt so filled up with love that I was spreading it around all week long. Just bubbling over with joy every day and lighting up people everywhere I went.
So what did Brenton think about all of this? He was pissed. And looking back, I can't really blame him. We have always tried our best to do our married life together, as a team, and here I am just taking off and going to a new church without even really talking to him about it. It was not like the super nice wifely thing to do. But for the first time in a long time, I could feel deep down that God was going to work it all out in time. I just knew that because God was leading me, He would work everything out. Including my husband, especially because Brenton follows God too.
The old me would have been worried, but the new me was too busy trusting God to fret. I have so many stories to tell you about what happened then, like how God spoke through a random guy at my new church about not testing the new boat. It was about my second or third week going to the new church and in the middle of the sermon, this guy goes up to the pastor and asks for the mic.
The pastor hands it over and this guy says that God was telling him to get up and speak to the church about Noah's Ark and specifically that Noah could not test the ark. He went on about it for a few minutes, repeating several times - over and over - no testing the ark! He was like, Noah didn't have a river to try it out on, or an ocean nearby. No, built it on dry land without ever knowing if it would float. By the time he was done, I was like, "Dude, we get it. No testing the ark. Sit back down already."
But God knew he needed to sink that message down deep. I was going to need it.
Later that week, my Dad is down on the farm helping out with irrigation and we are outside at our house, just me and my Dad. He says to me, "You know this new church thing seems great but I think you should find a way to test it."
He didn't say specifically how to test it and at first, I just agreed because I love my Dad and he is full of great wisdom. But later, when I was alone, God reminded me of the man at church who said, no testing the ark! That man at church had no idea what my Dad was going to say to me a few days later. It was God, reminding me of His trustworthiness and reinforcing my faith. I was so encouraged that I was doing the right thing.
There was so much more that God worked out in my life and I'm excited to write more about the things that happened then. But to sum it all up for those four/five months, God taught me how to face conflict and not freak out. God taught me how to be tough but not mean. How to stand up for myself without pushing anyone else down in the process, even if they are trying to pull you back down.
As my one neighbor put it, "When you try to climb out of the box, the other lobsters will try to pull you back down because they don't want anyone leaving the box they are stuck in." People don't want you to confront them but sometimes you just gotta. And sometimes, just the way you choose to live your life is going to confront them and they may not like it.
Did Brenton ever come around? Did he come and see my new freaking awesome church and fall head over heels in love with it? Yes, he did. But it took time because he felt led to stay in Oyen during that time. This was something I had to do on my own first. I had to be made strong by flexing my own emotional muscles and I had to do it without depending on my husband like I usually did.
Our marriage is actually about 100 times stronger than before we went through this. Not perfect, but definitely stronger. And Brenton did what God told him to do, which was confront the Oyen church with an email about what we didn't like there and what needed to change. After he did that, he very suddenly felt free to leave and at peace with going to Kindersley. And now I depend so much more on God for my self-confidence and less on Brenton. It is so much better this way. It is so right.
So what happened to the Oyen church? Well, they did get the new young pastor but the church there just still doesn't understand how to let the Holy Spirit lead. And Brenton and I love our new church more and more all the time. So tell me about your church! Do you see the Holy Spirit working there? Is it awesome? Or not so much?
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