Breaking up is hard to do

This time of year is a real challenge for me. It took me two years to stop panicking at the phrase, ...CHARGE CONFERENCE. I know I wrote about that early on. I still get a jolt, but nothing like I used to. I can manage the grueling reports and other assembly work involved, but now that I am beginning to know more church members, this time of year has become a heartbreak for me.

Charge Conference is the time we change out committees, and chair people and the folks I have come to know over the past 12 months sometimes disappear. This makes me sad in my heart. Today, i broke up with Missions. Did you not see the eclipse as I realized what was happening? Did you not????

I sent out an email inquiring about an upcoming meeting. The person I have come to know as friend, replied that someone else was in the chairspot now. Since I keep up with this, I, on some level knew this. Since I am very much a creature of habit, and since I tend to hold onto the good things in life as I find them, I chose to ignore this fact. The news hit hard.

I sent her a note saying, "Are you breaking up with me?" It was a tough moment. I haven't been broken up with since high school. What does one do in such a situation? Get to know another chair for another year? Who created this system anyway? Some Methodist on an overload of sugar? Let's switch out annually. Heck, let's change every week, why not? Some positions last a couple or three years, and sometimes those turn into 10 years or 20. Why do the chairs, the people I have contact with have to keep leaving? Oh, woe is me. The sense of abandonment reigns heavy in my heart.

She wrote back and said something like "Heck no, we're good. Just send the reminders to the new guy." How sad is it to become attached to people you only send reminder cards to ? Don't tell me, I don't want to know. Let's just say people matter to me, and leave it at that.

The thing is, I like the new chair too.