July 6th (Day 53)

Today's verse is Ephesians 4:2, "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." There seems to be a constant theme here huh? Haha. It's funny because it seems that when I was making out this chart weeks ago, God knew what I would need to be trying to apply and reading later on in my internship. Well in typical Pat fashion, I burnt out again. It began to reach that point 2 weeks ago when I had that "Week from Hell" according to some of my co-workers and friends up here, haha. I was worried and was trying hard to avoid getting this way at all costs, because I've been here before. But unfortunately it came out into today's Creative Arts meeting. I kind of blew up on some guys and just had to vent. I felt (and still do) and apologized the two that took the brunt of it. Funny thing is, they seemed more worried about me than angry or hurt. I guess that's how you can tell you have true friends in the ministry world. There's a statistic out there that states ministry is one of the most health-hazardous occupation one can enter into. I second that, haha. It was a pretty rough day going through the meeting, however once I was able just to let go of some of my built-up frustration and talk about it with the rest of the team, I felt much better. The most humorous thing about all of this is that it's nothing that anyone else did, it's all my doing. Ever since studying Ephesians and Colossians, I felt convicted by Eph. 6:7 and Col. 3:23 because I wasn't doing my very best on everything (or hardly anything for that matter). I guess you could say that I was on the bottom end of the spectrum. After making those a part of my life, I jumped exponentially to the other side of the spectrum and put forth lots of effort to do my best on EVERYTHING that I'm involved with. Normally that's not a problem, however when you're Pat, it is, because I am usually involved in A LOT. All I can do right now is just laugh about the whole situation because the place where I never wanted to visit again is the same place that I now find myself standing in. I have learned SO much in this internship this summer and wouldn't trade it for anything if I had the opportunity to go back and pick again what I was going to do this summer. But I know there are many more areas in ministry that I need to learn the ropes of. The main one being how to effectively do ministry, put forth 100% or more constantly, yet avoid becoming burnt out and having a wrench thrown in your gears. Tomorrow is my day off and shockingly, not a moment too soon even though the week just started, haha. I'm confident that as the week progresses I'll be able to analyze where I'm at, figure out where the transition from healthy productivity to overload happened, and then begin making adjustments in my life to accommodate for that. This internship has already helped me somewhat in that area, largely in the way of implementing volunteers and training them to help with the workload and daily wear in ministry. I guess you could say that I'm a mixture of emotions right now. Sad and disappointed in myself for not learning from my past experiences and falling prone to burn out once again. Yet at the same time, rejuvenated, excited, and happy because I'm surrounded by creative arts teammates that are willing to step in and help me out by taking some of the workload off and assisting in areas that desperately need it. Haha, wow. This blog was pretty deep compared to all of my other ones, haha. Sorry about that. =) Well I guess that's all I'll dump on ya for today, haha. =) Until tomorrow! 24 more days!

Pat