Accepting Community

I am sitting here thinking how I can’t believe this internship is about to come to a close, how working two jobs has made this the fastest summer of my life.  Each time I finish a season, I try to reflect on what I learned, what was valuable about that time & what I discovered about myself.  I feel like as I continue to “grow up”, it seems I need to learn the same things over and over again.  This summer, my supervisor here at KCB gave me the charge of planning Bella Art Fest 2012.  I was slightly terrified, but decided to be optimistic and hit the ground running.  Bella is this Saturday August 4^th—we’ve held volunteer meetings, purchased supplies, created layouts and rounded up volunteers, artists and musicians in a frenzy to pull this thing off, and here we are two days away! In the craziness of sending what feels like a thousand emails a day, getting excited, disappointed, stressed out, and calmed down, what I’ve learned is that it is really difficult for me to ask for help.  I think at my deepest point, my truest self, I believe that I am Superwoman.  Even though I know how much I need to rely on others and rely on Jesus, the simple humility of needing help is difficult for me to accept.  I want to have it all together, to be the capable one, to be excellent at everything I take on (can you tell I’m a firstborn yet?)  But what happens when I seek to do everything myself is emotional breakdowns, fear of failure, and distance from Jesus.  I think this summer it “clicked” for me, that if I want to be involved in Kingdom work, I need to accept and understand partnership.  I need to not just say that I need others, but get really comfortable in the position of needing others, and work on identifying the places where I lack in order to accept help, to accept community. 

Written by: Michelle Roberts