I'm at a conference this week in Orlando, ALL BY MYSELF! I am an introvert and enjoy having quiet time, but its almost been too much. I have seen my brother for dinner and ran into a former staff member, and have of course talked to my hubby on the phone, and that's been just about enough to get my word count up to an acceptable level. I'm enjoying my conversations with the Lord too. He's been talking to me a lot.
What I did not enjoy was what he told me yesterday morning in our first session. We were having an extended prayer time where there were stations around the room and we were supposed to go to the stations or have prayer and worship in our chairs. I was journaling and praying and having a perfectly wonderful time between me and the Lord when I was rudely interrupted by these two ladies behind me who had apparently decided they were not going to participate and proceeded to talk to each other the whole time, not particularly quietly either. The longer it went on the madder I got. I fumed and said unkind things to them, in my head. I prayed and told God how rude they were. And then I was mad at myself for being so critical of people. I am a critical person by nature. Its why I'm good at my job, because I'm always looking for how things can be done better.
As I complained to God about the women and my own critical spirit, He gave me a blue print for how to deal with my critical nature in very practical terms.
1. Fix the problem. (I could have told the women to be quiet or take it somewhere else. But since I would never do that, on to #2)
2. Change yourself. (I could have moved somewhere else. But since I was comfortable where I was with all my stuff out, I didn't, so on to #3)
3. Deal with it. Fix your attitude. If you aren't going to do #1 or #2, then you just have to figure out how to over look it or change your attitude.
Seems simple. So I tried it the next two main sessions. The next one I ended up sitting by a women who made up motions to the songs, not sign language (which I love watching), but motions like she was in a youth choir in the 80s. She was breaking chains, and counting the 3 parts of the Trinity. So I tried my new blueprint. I can't ask her to stop worshiping in whatever way she wants to worship. So I did a mixture of #2 and #3. I shifted enough where I was standing so that I didn't see her out of the corner of my eye and then I just thanked God that I was next to someone so passionate about worshiping her Father.
Session three, I sit down and not five minutes later a couple of ladies sit in front of me and one of them has their child with them, maybe a 3 or 4 year old. Now I love kids, its what I do and I'm at a Children's Pastors conference. But that's one of the reasons we come to things like this, to GET A BREAK FROM KIDS! So nope. So I did #2. I got up and moved far away. No reason to sit and be distracted and fume the whole time about why she brought her kid. And it worked. I had a great time of worship and wasn't worried about that sweet child and his momma.
So that's my blueprint for dealing with a critical nature. Its helping so far in this bubble of a Christian conference. We'll see how it works in a few days when I get back to the real world!
I'm glad to be back in the blogging world. It feels good.
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