Funny how...

It's funny how often people choose to pull something negative from something positive. They have something critical to say about pretty much everything. You know the type. They're miserable in their own lives and they want to suck the joy out of the lives of everyone around them. I tend to avoid those kinds of people like the plague... I mean, who wants to be bothered with someone who looks and acts like they've been sucking on pickle juice all day?

You know, sometimes we get phone calls from "anonymous" people who see or hear something about us that gets them in an uproar. They get on their religious soapboxes and let us have it. Well, our usual response is that if a person doesn't leave their name and number with their "nice" message, we consider it pretty cowardly and we ignore them.

Hence, I figured what a great way to start this blog... For the past few weeks, I have been working on my blog site and I had a few articles posted. Well, today I decided to change the focus of the blog and make it something kind of fun called "A Day In The Life Of A Church Secretary" with little slices of the lives of some of today's busy church secretaries (dare I say you'd have to be one to understand). Anyway, as I was about to delete the old blogs I saw that I had received a comment to one of my posts. I was surprised to even have a comment because I hadn't started advertising the site yet since I wasn't done. Well, when I read the comment I was even more surprised by how something positive was "perceived" as something negative. I guess the story of a woman fed up with her situation and deciding to do something different that produced extraordinary results was a little lacking in theological foundational principles. Duh! It wasn't meant to be a sermon. It was actually a very brief recounting of a story from a magazine that I found pretty inspirational. Guess I should have done a little more research and dug up all the stories on Nadja I could find in hopes that I'd have enough data to support future ranting from anonymous "christians."

On any given day in the life of a church secretary anonymous noise can cause you to lose sight of your goals and all that God has in store for your life if you let it. As you go about fulfilling your purpose as the assistant to your awesome man or woman of God, don't let the useless chatter of pickle juice connoisseurs get you off track. For every person that tries to get you to become disgruntled in your assignment, ignore them... hey, hide under a table from them if you have to (just kidding). They'll nitpick at the smallest things, hoping to suck you into their joyless world. Don't let them. They'll point out all of your leader's imperfections. Ignore them. Well, pray for them too. Jesus said, with the hundredfold comes haters, oops, I mean persecution. Don't let fear of persecution from disgruntled others cause you to hold back your best from your boss...pastor...leader. Many times we sacrifice so much of our personal lives for the sake of what we are called to do. Sacrifice is not a dirty word. Many times, whenever there was a sacrifice made in the Bible, God was in the process of doing something amazing in the life of the one who gave her precious gift. As a church secretary you have many gifts that you give your man or woman of God on a daily basis. Trust, loyalty, diligence, resilience, and of course time are but a few. As you walk out your calling as one of God's trusted armorbearers (not usually a term used to describe secretaries, but it fits perfectly), know that God will reward your faithfulness.

Well, this wasn't "a day in the life" per se. Technically I'm not at the 'office', although church secretaries all over know that the 'office' is never one place. We work from whenever and wherever we need to :).

Also, I welcome any "a day in the life" stories you'd like to share.

-Tamala