Lots of tears!

For the past four years I've been volunteering with a youth group at my church. I've been in a presidency where I was the secretary for a while and then was moved to help oversee the 12-13 years girls. I taught classes on Sunday and helped plan and run Wednesday night activities for teenage girls.

At times that job has been really hard. At times I have kind of wanted to quit altogether. But overall I have really loved the opportunity to serve and make a difference to those girls and it has enriched my life.

And today it was time to say goodbye to it. They rotate presidencies eventually and today was that day. It was time for our presidency to step down and hand it over to a new group of wonderful women who will take over and do a fantastic job.

I've kind of been ready to be done and especially with starting school in the fall I'm getting too busy for it, so I thought it would be a relief to finally be done.

But then I went in there today for my last meeting with the girls and suddenly I realized how much I have loved serving them and how much I have grown attached to them and saying goodbye seemed impossible. I try not to be a crier, but sometimes I can't help it. The girls stand and recite a theme each week and standing up today to recite it, knowing it was the last time for me was so hard! I was going to sit in on one last class with the new leaders, but the tears wouldn't stop coming and I finally decided to go home and have a good cry about it.

So here I am, crying about the leaving the job I thought I wanted to leave. If you had asked me a week ago I would have told you that I was ready, but now I'm just sad. I really loved those girls and I loved teaching them and leading them and watching them learn and grow.

And it's not like anyone is going anywhere. I'll still see them at church, I just won't be in their classes and planning their activities. I'm going to miss that a lot. When they asked me to be a part of the program four years ago I was terrified. Teenage girls are kind of scary, lol! I was afraid that I wouldn't have anything to share with them and I wouldn't know how to relate to them. But I have grown as I've served and I have loved the opportunity to be a part of something special and wonderful, and I'm really going to miss it.

My new church job is designing and distributing the weekly church bulletin. That is a much less time consuming job that will work better with my upcoming busier schedule, and I'm sure I will enjoy serving in that capacity too.

But I sure will miss my girls. I'm going to have a good cry this afternoon and then pull myself back together and keep moving forward. On to new adventures!