our own sacred scared : Lynne

This is our second post in ‘our own sacred scared’ by my dear friend Lynne.  I am so moved by her courageous words.  Please leave a comment to encourage her and interact with this series of posts.

My first ever dream was to become a primary school teacher. I now am a primary school teacher but my journey wasn’t the”proper” route through teacher training at Stranmillis.  To add to that I got my first step on the teaching ladder through my husband’s uncle who incidentally is still my principal.  What’s more I don’t really care about English and Maths scores nor even class averages.  What delights me is the wee man who has a smile on his face having achieved something that delights him or when a child can sort out an injustice with a friend without needing me to mediate- but is that what my parents expect of me or what you would want for your child?

In for as long as I can remember my other dream was to be married and be a mummy. I didn’t dream about walking down the aisle or the big white dress but I did dream about the bump and the  pram and the snuggles and the long chats we would have and things we would all do together.  So obviously, in my first pregnancy I planned and read and equipped myself for the test of birth and becoming a mummy.  Then after only arriving at hospital,not even in labour, I met my daughter via cesarean  section. I had passed the test without having to do the ‘hard work!’ I didn’t earn it. Now don’t get me wrong I know that motherhood is way more than how your child comes to be in your arms but it felt like somehow I was a fraud.

My default is to tell you how many applied for the PGCE and I got through, or that it was an emergency cesarean  section because I was very ill  but these feel like excuses, justifications for standing where I am standing.

Then what’s more, is somehow in church there is this word ‘leadership’ and for some reason I decided to do a life group called ‘courageous leadership’.  Seriously, what was I thinking? The name scares me more now than when we started three weeks ago. Why? Because I am not a leader in the ‘defined sense’. We spent the first week discussing that we are all carriers of influence, that we influence many people whether intentionally or not, with title or not. But do I really believe that? Calling me an influencer, well that is just about ok. It feels like it’s safer and more people are doing it, but ‘leader’? That means you have trained for it, are an expert in something, that you have invested hard work and energy on it and it has been bestowed upon you.  So therefore I am set to fail – I am not a leader, I am not there yet.  You see the more you know me, the more you will know that  I don’t pray nearly enough or always trust God for the answers.  I prefer to try and speed it up for Him by trying things for myself.  I don’t even know my Bible nearly well enough.

But I want to live a new way. I want to be extraordinary; I want to step up and say “Me Me Me” and try new things, scary things that really make a difference in people’s lives but what I really, really want is to be successful at it too.

So God help me to be brave enough to fail. To be the unique, one of a kind, courageous leader in my family, in my work, in our church.