When I first started working at my job, I was still in college and Saturday and Sunday were the only days I really could work because of classes. It wasn't a big deal for me at the time. While I believed in God, I can honestly say I never made Him a true part of my everyday life. Yes, there were points where I was closer to God than at other points, but it wasn't an everyday thing for me. So when I started working I didn't care that my weekends were gone. My friends and I hung out during the week, and there was no big change for me. Not going to church didn't phase me. My ex-boyfriend didn't really care much for church at this time either, so despite having been with him for twe years off an on the whole time, I didn't have anyone in my life convincing me or guiding me towards church and God. In fact, college was a lot of the opposite for me. At least my first year.
My second year was when I really started to get out of my comfort zone. My ex had left the summer before to joing the marines after basically flunking out of college. I moved in with two girls that lived in the same hall as me my freshaman year (one of them was in the same pod of four girls to a bathroom with me, the other had the door directly across from mine). THen we had our wild card. A freshman who was a very strong believer in God. She and her friends helped to found the Christian sorority that now exists on campus. She is such a sweet person, and I found myself talking about God and life. It was at this point in my life where I had met my now husband. He did not believe in God at all when we met, and at the time, everything worked out fine, because I believed that God was just something you believed in and prayed to and everything, but I never believed that you should really study the Bible every day, or close yourself off from other things in life because of it.
Then my now husband and I moved in together my junior year. I also was starting my upper level classes and I couldn't find anything interesting to take. WIth a history major, I didn't want to take all history classes and go into overload, so I started sifting through my manual on classes and found an interesting one called "Romantic Love in the Bible." It was offered by the Judaic Studies department at my school, and would actually end up being my minor. It thrust me into classes with people who really did have deep personal relationships with God. This whole new concept of making God the center of your life, I had heard about it, but it really clicked as I started studying the Old Testament as the Jewish people believe it. These classes, mixed with then seeing the show 17 Kids and Counting on TLC really made me rethink a lot of things in my life. As well as the show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. My husband realized they had the entire seaason on Hulu. And I started to watch, and really enjoy it. Written by Aaron Sorkin, it's a fabulous show. He also did The West Wing. But I'm going off topic here.
So there I was, a junior in college, and I realized that I wanted to start going to church again. Only, it was really difficult. Most churches meet on Sundays, a very few on Saturdays, and I worked all weekend. Yes, they had midweek Bible Studies sometimes, but I couldn't make it to any of the times because of my work schedule. So I started feeling the blues on Sundays. Wishing I could make it to a church service, but realizing that I'd be unable to. Could I change my availability at work, sort of. It's not a very easy thing to do, and most of the time they need people to work weekends, so it's hard to remove a weekend day from your availability. That, and if I remove the day, I need to add another day in its place, and that usually conflicts with my husband's days off. Working in Florida's tourism industry, you get very strange days off, and they don't usually coincide with church, or anything really. Spending time together as a newly married couple is extremely important to both of us right now though. So we don't want to mess our relationship up by having opposite days off and never seeing each other. So I'm kind of stuck. My husband has become more open to going to church and open to believing in general, which is something I pray about everyday. But he at least understands my desireto go, whether or not he actually wants to go himself.
Every Sunday, I start to wish I could be going to church instead of work and I get a little blue. Like I said, the title is misleading. It's not really worktime blues, its "not being able to go to church" blues. But that's just too long of a title.
1 comment:
It is really hard. Been there done that. The church I attended while I was there had a kind of solution. they held their regular meetings sunday mornings. then held another shorter service in the evenings. this way they figured if you had to work in the mornings you should be able to attend the evening. if you had to work in the evening you should be able to attend at least part in the morning.
But I think that if you read and study the bible with Chris as a family, you will be alright. attend church when you can and study when you can't. that is what I did while I was there.
I hope this helps.
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