I have finally been
released from the Single Adult committee. At least, they have someone else
doing it, and I am gone.
It was never horrible,
but it started to feel like too much. When I was missing meetings because no
one else was free to stay with my mother, it became another source of guilt. I
don't need that.
I do need to take another
look at one of the To Do items on the list: Complete contacting singles.
The thing about the To Do
list is that while some of them (like creating a vision board and posting a
year of selfies) were definitely there because they related to my goals for
growth, others were there only because they were things that I was working on
at the time. Contacting single adults fell into that category, but there may
still be things we can learn from it.
Just to bring everyone up
to speed, the single adults committee organizes different activities and
invites single adults to them. It's not about dating; it's giving people a
place to have fun and feel fellowship and be nurtured by the spirit in a very
family-oriented church, which is completely reasonable and valuable. I had
nothing against that. Helping with the planning and putting on of these
activities was okay when my life felt like less of a train wreck.
However, I also felt it
was important to be aware of the single adults actually in my ward, and there
were two big obstacles there: the majority of them didn't come to church anyway
and the ones who did wanted nothing to do with singles' activities.
I believe some of that
was a perceived stigma on singles - me showing up with an invitation was a
reminder that I saw them as single, regardless of how accurate that was. It was
discouraging.
My goal was to at least
talk with everyone once, and find out what they needed. Is there a type of
activity they would like to attend? Is there something they hate? Except the
people who were at church were trying to ward me off like I was contagious and
that left the people who do not go to church, who might understandably not be
interested in church-related activities.
There were still a lot of
good conversations. Also some slightly hostile ones. A lot of people had gotten
married or moved, and I could update that information. It did feel like if the
home and visiting teaching programs were working well, more of that should have
been known. I was disappointed by how many people had been written off as
"lost sheep". I mean, if they don't want contact you probably
shouldn't keep pestering them, but was there a level of contact that could have
worked and just wasn't done? Because there were people that I got to know a
little, and while they were still not likely to not come out to activities,
that was also true of people who were attending.
I tried a lot of different
things, with phone calls, e-mail messaging, and some social media, as well as
asking others who might know. I worked my way through the list three times
using those methods, and was thinking about mailing post cards, but I had never
considered it completed. Now it no longer makes sense to work on, by default.
This is where it becomes
interesting to me for a second time, as I have to consider what counts as done.
So much of this ends up being cyclical. I may research something, and give
myself an assignment, complete it, and write about it, but then am I done? Have
I grown enough? Have I learned enough?
There are things that I
have looked at and decided that it's as far as I am going to get for now, but
it may come up again, and that can be okay. I like clear delineations, but you
don't always get them. Maybe you can only ask if it is enough for now.
Single adults was the
first time I ever remember asking to be released from a calling. I did not feel
good about that. Actually, I felt on the verge of hysteria asking for the
release. I did keep doing things for the nine months or so it took for them to
get someone else. Enough?
I did not complete
working on the list. I don't believe I could have had actual contact with many
more people, maybe one or two at most. Enough? Probably, I hope.
For myself, I am deciding
that it is done, and I believe it is reasonable.
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