The Weirdest Church Calling I Ever Had (and probably none of you have had)

While chatting with a young lady who is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime, attending my alma mater, Brigham Young University, I had the chance to reminisce about church callings.  I shared with her the story of meeting my husband through our mutual church calling during my second year of college, which was teaching Sunday School together every other Sunday.  We couldn't get our lessons planned, so. . . .we decided to date and the rest is history.

Anyway,  in a BYU ward, a VERY high percentage of the students accept church callings. Student wards lack nursery (really little people), Primary (medium little), and youth groups (bigger young people). The only  "old" people are in the bishopric, so pretty much every single ( no pun intended) person is able bodied and excited to serve. This presents a bit of a challenge for the bishop who must create and assign callings for an entire congregation within the first few weeks of school starting.   It's a daunting task, and to add to the challenge, there just aren't enough traditional callings to give one to every person. So, they get creative, resulting in things like two people teaching a class at the same time and only teaching every other week.  On top of that, BYU wards have multiple Sunday School classes, whereas most family wards have only one or two. So, we had something like 16 Sunday School teachers instead of 2-3. This was a pretty smart way to come up with callings.

However, in my Freshman ward the year before, the calling that I got wasn't quite. . . legitimate.  They say there are no small callings. They say there are no made up callings. But, well, I'm not sure I can agree with those things that "they" say. My calling was Relief Society Board Meeting Spiritual Message Leader.  That sounds good, right? Right? It's a nice long title and it included the word "Leader".

WRONG.

There's a chance that it could have been a decent, albeit incredibly easy calling.  But, it wasn't. And it was so disappointing.  I came to college straight from Vladivostok, Russia, where I was the only LDS teenage girl in a city of many millions of people.

I was used to being needed.

I was used to playing the piano for sacrament meeting, going on splits with missionaries, and doing anything and everything that was needed. I was used to being an example to the new members of our church.  And I was used to sacrificing- traveling an hour to and from church on public transportation with bad weather most of the year, going to more than one branch, being cold and hungry, all for the sake of the Gospel.

So, let's get back to my made up calling.  A Relief Society Board consists of the presidency of the women's organization, the teachers, the music people, the visiting teaching people, and the activities people.  It's a bunch of people.   I was asked to come to their monthly planning meeting and give them a VERY short inspirational thought. Think 5 minutes or less, but they really wanted it to last about 60 seconds.  After the prayer and my thought, the girls would divide up according to the different groups and plan things.

I was awkwardly excused to leave.  See, they didn't know what to do with me.  I wasn't needed, wanted, or welcomed to join a committee and help plan anything.
I'm not sure what the bishop intended with that calling, but the way it was implemented was an epic fail.  Instead of feeling needed, I felt like the fat kid on the playground, the oreo cookie that missed the frosting machine, like the banana popsicle, like the overpriced leftover Easter candy at Reams: nobody wanted me.   Luckily, I had good self esteem. Even though the monthly snub was hurtful, I didn't let it seep into the rest of my life.  I adored my experience in college and most of my experiences were truly wonderful.  But, the unintended lessons I learned remained.

People need to feel like they are needed.  If somebody wants to help, let them. That seems so obvious, but sometimes people in leadership positions can't let go of control enough to allow others to contribute. It would have been nice to be invited to stay for the meeting and maybe help formulate ideas for activities, or something.  Sometimes Moms get so good at being "domestic goddesses" that they fail to teach their kids how to cook, clean, and do their own laundry.  Sometimes people get stuck in a rut of doing something themselves because they can do it better than the people "under" them.  It's easy to think this way and it takes some conscious effort to turn this kind of thinking around, to see the damage that is being done.  People not only need to feel needed, but they will never become better at doing laundry by watching Mom do it for them.  Just like I have to do my own physical therapy for myself if I want to get stronger, I have to apply that principle to my work with others.  I have to let my kids do their own homework, laundry, and room cleaning, with assistance from me, but responsibility on them. And when I rule the universe next year as PTA president, um, I mean, when I facilitate the PTA program and activities next year, I need to let every person help who wants to help. And I need to step back and let them all do their best, even if it's not as good as I could have done. And let's face it, most of the time it is going to be so much better than what I would have done.  I am one person struggling to hold it all together.  I don't need to rule the world.  Maybe Relief Society Board Meeting Spiritual Message Leader is just right for me.