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Showing posts with the label Leadership

Privilege, by Jerika Perthuis

Taking stock on the definition of privilege is an ongoing check. An evolving habit often mandating little expectation on the other side of service, but a high expectation on oneself. I consider a lot of service a privilege. Stopping myself from defining a yoke of service, past privilege only, is a daily practice. When I allow myself to consider service to others anything other than an absolute, humbled, privilege I fall really short of where Jesus has asked me to be. I fall off this work horse constantly, throw my heart back on the saddle, and try to move forward. What is often considered burdensome has the potential to free, expand, or ignite another. I obsess over the "Pull Yourself Up by your Own Bootstraps" adage. Not to further on the miscontrued nature of the well-loved myth, but to knock the head off. My service to others, freely given, speaking only to holding the responsibility of someone else's potential, matters.  My children come to mind, alongside of those mu...

No Path is Ever a Straight Line, by Jerika Perthuis

Church leadership advises or asks us to not attend services at the campus we led; they do offer, in a conciliatory way, to attend services at another campus. This proposition is not readily accepted by Kevin or I, as he can barely hold his head above water when around others. Friends ask if we want Harper and Elijah to attend the kid’s program, the same program they had both been attending since birth. The same children’s ministry I had covered when we were down on volunteers, even though, I for the most part, had really never enjoyed being around children. I decline, as my realization of how to move forward in this impossible situation is murky, and I have to plug the hemmorrhage of suffering and confusion for the kids. A voice of reason is in me, but the roof is only over the kids and Kevin. All I do is cry. Then sob. I try to ask questions, to myself, and then to Kevin, but we are both caged animals, trapped under a magnifying lens, beaming a consistent concentration of immeasurable...