I was so incredibly happy back in May to be called into our ward Young Women's presidency (specifically working with the Mia Maids). It has been a long time since I've been trusted to work in a presidency which has left me feeling bad for many reasons, the main one being that I haven't had the chance to really establish relationships with other adults and youth.
The call came in a very strange way. I was just getting down from playing the organ in sacrament meeting and was walking back to my pew to gather my things. One of the counselors in the bishopric (who had just been called weeks before) walked up to me and asked me if he could speak with me. I said "Sure!", and he proceeded to extend the call to me right there in the aisle while people were getting ready for Gospel Doctrine...and I was putting my shoes back on. All I have to say is thank goodness I didn't have any issues to discuss about my worthiness! ;-)
I worried almost immediately about that summer and me being gone for the time I normally work at Interlochen. I waited for contact from the YW president, but when I didn't get any, I shot her an email, telling her how nervous and excited I was about serving.
She sent me a very blunt email (I now recognize that this is just who she is, and I'm good with it) telling me that she had serious reservations about how much I travel, but when she would try to forget about submitting my name, it would keep coming back to her. I have also learned that she is very in tune with spiritual promptings, and knowing that now makes this all the more meaningful.
I won't lie (even though I don't want to type this)--I learned a lot from the loneliness of living in PA, and the crucifixion of my character by certain people who lived in our ward there. I knew that I needed to come into this calling with more of an "how can I help attitude" than "what can I improve upon" attitude. But boy was I nervous walking into the Young Women's room that first Sunday. Thankfully, Glo was with me, so we got to introduce ourselves together.
And I had some hard choices to make. I really didn't want to NOT go to Interlochen, but at the same time, I was finally being given an opportunity to serve where I would like to serve, and I felt like a sacrifice was necessary. It almost felt like the Lord was seeing how committed I was to all the promises I had made to Him if He would just give me a chance. So I prayed about it for a week, wrote an email to my boss, Nancy Crummel at Interlochen, and backed out of the job just a month before I was to begin. It just about broke my heart to get an email from the bishop there, asking if I was coming back and would I be willing to speak the first Sunday....and to see my job posted on a job board.
However, I have no regrets now...although if I'm being honest, I am suffering a bit from missing the catharsis that comes from living at Interlochen each summer. It's always a good reset for my spirit, and I'm having a hard time making that up in normal life.
And seeing that the YW president works full-time as a nurse, and the second counselor has a new baby (along with four other children under the age of eight), and the secretary has a husband who constantly travels and four children herself, it seemed that I was the ideal candidate to kind of pick up the slack in attendance.
So I was roped into going to Youth Conference with John, and I was the only presidency member to go to Girls' Camp. And while I will not be offended to not be invited back to Youth Conference, I loved every minute of Girls' Camp.
So that was my first big accomplishment with the girls--really forming some good, solid relationships with them. And there are a lot of them--the largest youth population in our stake with about 25 young men and 25 young women (ten active Mia Maids alone).
And I was so surprised to see how much they took to me right off the bat. We were laughing, and talking, and walking together, and wanting to be together almost immediately. I give a lot of credit to my kids who have taught me what's important to youth, and discussing over the years what they expect from teachers and leaders. When I'm not sure how to respond to something, I think about the Kennedy kids, and the answers usually come quickly.
From the start, I was kind of the fly in the ointment though for our presidency. All of them had already been serving together for a while, and I'm definitely the new kid on the block. They still constantly reference activities "that we did last year" and I have no idea what they're talking about. So I listen and try and figure it out, but when they ask me my opinion, I don't really have one...or I have the wrong one. In fact, I was berated over text by my YW president who told me that I was either negating everything they were saying, or not participating at all.
Yeah, that took a couple of weeks to get through.
But our very sensitive secretary could see that I was leaving the meetings feeling like a pile of poop, and took me out to lunch to share that she too felt that way all the time...as did the counselor I was replacing. As Ethan says, there's nothing to bring people closer together than a common enemy ;-)
No, just kidding, kind of.
I think our president gained an appreciation for me when she saw that I have some special connection with a lot of those girls. When I walk into an activity, I'm the one who is called over to sit by someone, or to play a four-handed hymn duet while waiting for an activity to start, or for some random question to be thrown my way, while our president is much more into standing off to the side and administrating the activities. It's kind of a Mary/Martha situation, I'm afraid. No judgement though--I certainly wouldn't want to be her shoes nor in her Inbox nor in all the ward councils.
I have also really tried to get the activities away from sports. No joke, every single activity is sports related, and remembering my anxiety as a kid about sports, I knew that there were girls who weren't going to activities simply because they didn't feel comfortable. Again, a fly in the ointment. I was pushing for art activities, or music activities, or any activities that might, as the church handbook of instruction says, bring the girls closer to Christ and increase their testimonies.
I do enjoy the one Wednesday a month when my advisor, Hilary Edwards, and I get to plan our Mia Maid activity. W get the girls' input, make some assignments, and go from there. The first month, after finding out that most of the girls never eat breakfast because "we don't have time", we taught the girls how to cook healthy breakfasts and lunches that they can prepare on the weekend, all of which tied into Personal Progress. Seeing as Hilary is a dietician, she had some tasty and fun ideas, all of which we made, and one of which has become a Kennedy staple now (hello Power Balls!)
And for October, we planned a Mini Mia Maid Monster Mash. Just fun things to do to spend time together. Mummy Rice Krispy treats, dipped caramel apples, carving pumpkins and apple bobbing--many of which some of the girls had never done. And we had the best turn out for a Mia Maid activity so far!
With all of this though, I haven't lost myself. I still feel the need to encourage the girls to be better than they are, especially with all the new challenges coming from the Lord via President Nelson. So for our combined lesson in October (which also happened to be ward conference), we discussed being grateful. Such an easy-peasy, Sunbeam kind of a topic, but so important. It was probably one of the best lessons I've ever had the opportunity to teach, and I couldn't even call on all the girls who had their hands raised for comments. And in the end, I sent each of them home with a gratitude jar to write down things they are grateful for, and a reminder on top to let other people know.
When I checked back with them this month, several raised their hands to share how they had met the challenge. I was seriously so proud of them and their examples to the other girls.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows however. Serving in the church is always work, am I right? We have one girl--let's call her Lena--whom the presidency sees as a "problem". She wanders off during activities to sit in a room alone and draw. I was told by the counselor I replaced that I was simply to find her and force her to come back to the activity. Knowing that I have many times needed to find a quiet place to escape stress, I couldn't imagine someone forcing me to do something that makes me uncomfortable. Too, she's socially awkward, and the girls feel uncomfortable being around her. However, when pressed for an answer in class, she usually shares very deep, spiritual insights that blow us all away.
So, one night, it was a "volleyball" activity in the gym. *massive eye roll from me* Volleyball is the bane of my athletic existence. As a youth, I would go home with the most painful wrists after playing the stupid game, and my own musician children have jammed fingers playing it. Lena probably weighs 100 pounds wet, and I've never seen her in an athletic piece of clothing (she wore jeans and long-sleeved shirts to 95 degree youth conference, but more about that in a minute). Well, I certainly didn't feel comfortable as the adults were trying to set up the nets and equipment because I don't know how to do any of that, and in our gym, there's no stage or anywhere to sit on the side. And balls were being thrown everywhere. Yeah, not my cup of tea. So I went out into the lobby to wait for things to start.
It was then that Lena walked by me, said "hi" and disappeared into the Young Women's room alone. And she didn't turn any lights on. She was obviously hiding. So, being the dutiful counselor I am, I went to lasso her back to the activity. However, when I walked in and turned on the lights, I found her sitting at the piano, attempting to play the accompaniment to her favorite song from "The Nightmare Before Christmas". I just sat down and listened, but when I could see that she could hardly play a measure (and her technique was atrocious), I asked her if I could play it for her.
[Side bar: My patriarchal blessing spends an entire paragraph explaining how the things that I will study in college will benefit me for the rest of my life. Reading that teeny tiny music on her phone with sixteenth notes and five flats? Yep, thank you once again patriarchal blessing. Those music lessons sure have paid off ;-)]
I started playing...and she started singing. Like, really singing. She was even using arm gestures and acting out what I guess are the movements from the character in the movie who sings it. Considering I hadn't heard her say more than a sentence at a time in her life, I was so impressed.
I figured she would be done with it, and we could move out to the gym, but she quickly opened the hymnbook, and we spent the next hour singing hymns together around the piano. Turns out, she's quite good at singing harmony, so I was put on melody, because, you know, I have such a high range ;-)
After the hour was almost up, she turned to one of all Mormondom's favorite hymns, Nearer, My God, to Thee. I asked her if she knew the significance of the hymn on the Titanic (turns out, she thought the story was made up), and I told her that I always feel badly that we leave the hymn after verse three with the angels beckoning to us but don't finish it with the fourth and fifth verses. So we sang the first three, and she kept going!
By the time we hit verse five and were singing "Or if, on joyful wing cleaving the sky. Sun, moon, and stars forget, upward I fly. Still all my song shall be Nearer, my God, to thee," she could hardly sing the words...and nor could I. She sat down next to me on the piano bench afterwards and said with her tears in her eyes, "I haven't felt the Spirit like that in a really, really long time. Thank you for singing that with me."
John has helped me in the past see that when I am swiftly released from callings (this happens frequently), and feel like it's because I'm a loser in some way, that there is usually one person whose life I have changed in that short time. As much as I don't want to admit it, I think he's right. I don't know if my spirit came to the earth as sensitive as I am, or if I have empathy because of my life experiences, but I have this weird view into how non-mainstream people can feel when asked to be something they're not.
I knew after that experience that if I was released (and I wouldn't be surprised because I'm definitely an odd ball in our presidency), it would be okay. I had helped Lena establish a good memory from an evening of Mutual. Yes, my president asked afterwards where I was, and I heard through the grapevine that she was speaking badly about me not being in the gym, but it's okay. I knew I was exactly where I needed to be.
And about those jeans and long-sleeved shirts in the heat of the summer? At first, Lena told me that she was suffering from flea bites because her house is infested with fleas from her cats. And the ward had a "come to Jesus" moment when they went over and spent a week trying to clean her parents' house--hoarding, and garbage, and a filthy kitchen. But the real reason is that Lena cuts herself--both her wrists and legs--and her biggest trigger to do so? Coming to church. She finds box cutters in the church library and cuts her legs after Sunday meetings, and cuts her wrists after activities. It's a physical release for her for the stress she feels. I can only that night that she went home with a bit of a different feeling, knowing that someone understands her anxiety and loves her.
I trust that Heavenly Father knew what he was doing when he encouraged my president to submit my name for this calling. She and I will never be the best of friends but we're definitely making it work, and she sent me a text, telling me that she's glad I'm able to reach out to some of the girls who have needed help for a while. I'm not the best about giving rides (I don't have a van), and I'm not fully-participatory in sports activities (ice skating will do me in if I fall), but there are ways to reach the individual instead of catering solely to our very large group of girls. This calling might not last for long (although I hope it does), but I do believe I have made a small difference.
The call came in a very strange way. I was just getting down from playing the organ in sacrament meeting and was walking back to my pew to gather my things. One of the counselors in the bishopric (who had just been called weeks before) walked up to me and asked me if he could speak with me. I said "Sure!", and he proceeded to extend the call to me right there in the aisle while people were getting ready for Gospel Doctrine...and I was putting my shoes back on. All I have to say is thank goodness I didn't have any issues to discuss about my worthiness! ;-)
I worried almost immediately about that summer and me being gone for the time I normally work at Interlochen. I waited for contact from the YW president, but when I didn't get any, I shot her an email, telling her how nervous and excited I was about serving.
She sent me a very blunt email (I now recognize that this is just who she is, and I'm good with it) telling me that she had serious reservations about how much I travel, but when she would try to forget about submitting my name, it would keep coming back to her. I have also learned that she is very in tune with spiritual promptings, and knowing that now makes this all the more meaningful.
I won't lie (even though I don't want to type this)--I learned a lot from the loneliness of living in PA, and the crucifixion of my character by certain people who lived in our ward there. I knew that I needed to come into this calling with more of an "how can I help attitude" than "what can I improve upon" attitude. But boy was I nervous walking into the Young Women's room that first Sunday. Thankfully, Glo was with me, so we got to introduce ourselves together.
And I had some hard choices to make. I really didn't want to NOT go to Interlochen, but at the same time, I was finally being given an opportunity to serve where I would like to serve, and I felt like a sacrifice was necessary. It almost felt like the Lord was seeing how committed I was to all the promises I had made to Him if He would just give me a chance. So I prayed about it for a week, wrote an email to my boss, Nancy Crummel at Interlochen, and backed out of the job just a month before I was to begin. It just about broke my heart to get an email from the bishop there, asking if I was coming back and would I be willing to speak the first Sunday....and to see my job posted on a job board.
However, I have no regrets now...although if I'm being honest, I am suffering a bit from missing the catharsis that comes from living at Interlochen each summer. It's always a good reset for my spirit, and I'm having a hard time making that up in normal life.
And seeing that the YW president works full-time as a nurse, and the second counselor has a new baby (along with four other children under the age of eight), and the secretary has a husband who constantly travels and four children herself, it seemed that I was the ideal candidate to kind of pick up the slack in attendance.
So I was roped into going to Youth Conference with John, and I was the only presidency member to go to Girls' Camp. And while I will not be offended to not be invited back to Youth Conference, I loved every minute of Girls' Camp.
So that was my first big accomplishment with the girls--really forming some good, solid relationships with them. And there are a lot of them--the largest youth population in our stake with about 25 young men and 25 young women (ten active Mia Maids alone).
And I was so surprised to see how much they took to me right off the bat. We were laughing, and talking, and walking together, and wanting to be together almost immediately. I give a lot of credit to my kids who have taught me what's important to youth, and discussing over the years what they expect from teachers and leaders. When I'm not sure how to respond to something, I think about the Kennedy kids, and the answers usually come quickly.
From the start, I was kind of the fly in the ointment though for our presidency. All of them had already been serving together for a while, and I'm definitely the new kid on the block. They still constantly reference activities "that we did last year" and I have no idea what they're talking about. So I listen and try and figure it out, but when they ask me my opinion, I don't really have one...or I have the wrong one. In fact, I was berated over text by my YW president who told me that I was either negating everything they were saying, or not participating at all.
Yeah, that took a couple of weeks to get through.
But our very sensitive secretary could see that I was leaving the meetings feeling like a pile of poop, and took me out to lunch to share that she too felt that way all the time...as did the counselor I was replacing. As Ethan says, there's nothing to bring people closer together than a common enemy ;-)
No, just kidding, kind of.
I think our president gained an appreciation for me when she saw that I have some special connection with a lot of those girls. When I walk into an activity, I'm the one who is called over to sit by someone, or to play a four-handed hymn duet while waiting for an activity to start, or for some random question to be thrown my way, while our president is much more into standing off to the side and administrating the activities. It's kind of a Mary/Martha situation, I'm afraid. No judgement though--I certainly wouldn't want to be her shoes nor in her Inbox nor in all the ward councils.
I have also really tried to get the activities away from sports. No joke, every single activity is sports related, and remembering my anxiety as a kid about sports, I knew that there were girls who weren't going to activities simply because they didn't feel comfortable. Again, a fly in the ointment. I was pushing for art activities, or music activities, or any activities that might, as the church handbook of instruction says, bring the girls closer to Christ and increase their testimonies.
I do enjoy the one Wednesday a month when my advisor, Hilary Edwards, and I get to plan our Mia Maid activity. W get the girls' input, make some assignments, and go from there. The first month, after finding out that most of the girls never eat breakfast because "we don't have time", we taught the girls how to cook healthy breakfasts and lunches that they can prepare on the weekend, all of which tied into Personal Progress. Seeing as Hilary is a dietician, she had some tasty and fun ideas, all of which we made, and one of which has become a Kennedy staple now (hello Power Balls!)
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| Salads in a jar. We only made two and two of the girls GRABBED them to take home! |
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| Me, Jessica Mauch (our secretary), Charlotte, Katie, Maddy, and Hilary (our fearless advisor). Check out those Power Balls!--those were also smuggled out in new lunch boxes. |
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| Breakfast eggs--I took three home to John ;-) |
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| The apple bobbing winners. Seriously, I was so proud of these girls for putting their heads in the water with a competitive fire! |
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| I thought these were darling, but in the end, the girls just scarfed down the second pan of naked treats :-) |
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| This was the only traditionally-carved jack-o-lantern. One of them was a picture of a phone battery with only 1% left. Yes, I guess that's scary as well. |
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| Probably my favorite young women (I know, I shouldn't have favorites, but talk to the Kennedy kids about Mark). Sage Barney is the all-American girl, and I adore her Air Force loving, European traveling family. |
With all of this though, I haven't lost myself. I still feel the need to encourage the girls to be better than they are, especially with all the new challenges coming from the Lord via President Nelson. So for our combined lesson in October (which also happened to be ward conference), we discussed being grateful. Such an easy-peasy, Sunbeam kind of a topic, but so important. It was probably one of the best lessons I've ever had the opportunity to teach, and I couldn't even call on all the girls who had their hands raised for comments. And in the end, I sent each of them home with a gratitude jar to write down things they are grateful for, and a reminder on top to let other people know. When I checked back with them this month, several raised their hands to share how they had met the challenge. I was seriously so proud of them and their examples to the other girls.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows however. Serving in the church is always work, am I right? We have one girl--let's call her Lena--whom the presidency sees as a "problem". She wanders off during activities to sit in a room alone and draw. I was told by the counselor I replaced that I was simply to find her and force her to come back to the activity. Knowing that I have many times needed to find a quiet place to escape stress, I couldn't imagine someone forcing me to do something that makes me uncomfortable. Too, she's socially awkward, and the girls feel uncomfortable being around her. However, when pressed for an answer in class, she usually shares very deep, spiritual insights that blow us all away.
So, one night, it was a "volleyball" activity in the gym. *massive eye roll from me* Volleyball is the bane of my athletic existence. As a youth, I would go home with the most painful wrists after playing the stupid game, and my own musician children have jammed fingers playing it. Lena probably weighs 100 pounds wet, and I've never seen her in an athletic piece of clothing (she wore jeans and long-sleeved shirts to 95 degree youth conference, but more about that in a minute). Well, I certainly didn't feel comfortable as the adults were trying to set up the nets and equipment because I don't know how to do any of that, and in our gym, there's no stage or anywhere to sit on the side. And balls were being thrown everywhere. Yeah, not my cup of tea. So I went out into the lobby to wait for things to start.
It was then that Lena walked by me, said "hi" and disappeared into the Young Women's room alone. And she didn't turn any lights on. She was obviously hiding. So, being the dutiful counselor I am, I went to lasso her back to the activity. However, when I walked in and turned on the lights, I found her sitting at the piano, attempting to play the accompaniment to her favorite song from "The Nightmare Before Christmas". I just sat down and listened, but when I could see that she could hardly play a measure (and her technique was atrocious), I asked her if I could play it for her.
[Side bar: My patriarchal blessing spends an entire paragraph explaining how the things that I will study in college will benefit me for the rest of my life. Reading that teeny tiny music on her phone with sixteenth notes and five flats? Yep, thank you once again patriarchal blessing. Those music lessons sure have paid off ;-)]
I started playing...and she started singing. Like, really singing. She was even using arm gestures and acting out what I guess are the movements from the character in the movie who sings it. Considering I hadn't heard her say more than a sentence at a time in her life, I was so impressed.
I figured she would be done with it, and we could move out to the gym, but she quickly opened the hymnbook, and we spent the next hour singing hymns together around the piano. Turns out, she's quite good at singing harmony, so I was put on melody, because, you know, I have such a high range ;-)
After the hour was almost up, she turned to one of all Mormondom's favorite hymns, Nearer, My God, to Thee. I asked her if she knew the significance of the hymn on the Titanic (turns out, she thought the story was made up), and I told her that I always feel badly that we leave the hymn after verse three with the angels beckoning to us but don't finish it with the fourth and fifth verses. So we sang the first three, and she kept going!
By the time we hit verse five and were singing "Or if, on joyful wing cleaving the sky. Sun, moon, and stars forget, upward I fly. Still all my song shall be Nearer, my God, to thee," she could hardly sing the words...and nor could I. She sat down next to me on the piano bench afterwards and said with her tears in her eyes, "I haven't felt the Spirit like that in a really, really long time. Thank you for singing that with me."
John has helped me in the past see that when I am swiftly released from callings (this happens frequently), and feel like it's because I'm a loser in some way, that there is usually one person whose life I have changed in that short time. As much as I don't want to admit it, I think he's right. I don't know if my spirit came to the earth as sensitive as I am, or if I have empathy because of my life experiences, but I have this weird view into how non-mainstream people can feel when asked to be something they're not.
I knew after that experience that if I was released (and I wouldn't be surprised because I'm definitely an odd ball in our presidency), it would be okay. I had helped Lena establish a good memory from an evening of Mutual. Yes, my president asked afterwards where I was, and I heard through the grapevine that she was speaking badly about me not being in the gym, but it's okay. I knew I was exactly where I needed to be.
And about those jeans and long-sleeved shirts in the heat of the summer? At first, Lena told me that she was suffering from flea bites because her house is infested with fleas from her cats. And the ward had a "come to Jesus" moment when they went over and spent a week trying to clean her parents' house--hoarding, and garbage, and a filthy kitchen. But the real reason is that Lena cuts herself--both her wrists and legs--and her biggest trigger to do so? Coming to church. She finds box cutters in the church library and cuts her legs after Sunday meetings, and cuts her wrists after activities. It's a physical release for her for the stress she feels. I can only that night that she went home with a bit of a different feeling, knowing that someone understands her anxiety and loves her.I trust that Heavenly Father knew what he was doing when he encouraged my president to submit my name for this calling. She and I will never be the best of friends but we're definitely making it work, and she sent me a text, telling me that she's glad I'm able to reach out to some of the girls who have needed help for a while. I'm not the best about giving rides (I don't have a van), and I'm not fully-participatory in sports activities (ice skating will do me in if I fall), but there are ways to reach the individual instead of catering solely to our very large group of girls. This calling might not last for long (although I hope it does), but I do believe I have made a small difference.
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