KatarinaTherese:
I wasn’t sure if this is the right forum for this, so sorry if it’s wrong…
Anyway, I’m helping put on this retreat. It’s this weekend, and I’m so excited!
Tonight I was at a meeting for our committee. But I learned something about another member on the team (who wasn’t at the meeting), that makes me really sad. Just really disappointed in him. I really love (in a sisterly, Christian way) and respect this guy. Now I’m just really sad and disappointed.
I’m so upset. He doesn’t even know I know this about him (Sorry if it makes this hard to read, but I don’t want to say on here what it is). Am I naive, though, for getting so disappointed? For never thinking that one of my friends is capable of messing things up this badly?
I’m so confused. Can anyone help me? Hopefully I’m not the only one like this…
KatarinaTherese:
Naivete is my Middle Name. I tend to be as Naive as the day is long…
It’s sounds like you need to find someone you trust (like a priest) and talk about this. At the same time, might I suggest a prayer from the “Big Book of Alcoholis Anonymous”:
God, grant me the courage to change the things I can,
the serenity to accept the things I can’t,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
I’m dealing with a situation involving a Pastor who’s just diappointed several members of a congregation, causing most of the major donors and several young families to leave. Many of the families who left left not so much because of what the man of God did, but because of how he responded to their repeated attempts to correct him and how the rest of the members of the congregation responded to their concerns.
I may have to leave myself, because I spent quite some time listening to the concerns of the young couples who left and trying to find a middle road that allowed the Pastor to be corrected by his Bishop while allowing him to stay and maybe bringing them and the donors back to the Parish (after taking a sabbatical or leave of absence to deal with the problems the young people were pointing out).
That’s made me fairly unpopular with the pastor’s fan club, who in the worlds of one of the members, "Didn’t care if their Rector belonged to the KKK! (Those were uttered by a black man with a broken moral compass - talk about dissappointment!)
Except from praying about the situation constantly, writing the Bishop about some issues that came up during the course of meetings and conversations, and trying to ride out the storm, there isn’t much I can do to change things. So, if I want to have any measure of sanity, I have to accept the Rector is the way he is and that his fan club will do whatever it is their going to do whenever they’re going to do it.
It may not be a very happy solution, but it seems the only reasonable one available, given that this parish was a refuge in a largely heterodox archdiocese.
I know that isn’t much comfort to you, but I hope that it let’s you know that you’re not alone on this, and that people will disppoint us from time to time.
There is only ONE I’ve known who can never and will never disappoint, and that is Christ Jesus the Lord.
Part of our problem is that we sometimes compare our brothers and sisters to Him and to His Mother, and we’re always dissappointed when we do that, for, “All have fallen short of the glory of God.”
As I write this, i know that, sooner or later, i will disappoint you.
It can’t be helped.
What counts isn’t that we never fall, because all of us will from time to time. What counts is that we get up, dust ourselves off and keep going. That’s why there are 3 falls in The Stations of the Cross.
So, Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, so that you may be kept unto the Day of His return."
And, ask yourself if this man who dissappointed you has gone about picking himself up or if he is still rolling around in the muck and the mire of his sinfulness.
Goodnight and Goodbless.
In Christ, Michael
Honestly, I don’t feel like summing up what I said, but I’ll reply later. I just want to let you know I wasn’t ignoring what you both said, I was actually on that retreat all weekend and so I’ve been pretty busy with it.