Said the Trump

I was fired a couple days ago.

I’m not going to lie, I’m irked. I’m vexed. I’m even perturbed. Partly this is because I assumed, and we all know how assuming turns out. I knew that the Sunday School President was getting released because he was moving out of the ward boundaries, and I assumed that as the only counselor, I’d become the Sunday School President. Also the fact that I’ve been president before and that I was doing all the scheduling and much of the presidenting already contributed to my assumption. It didn’t really occur to me when I was called into the bishopric’s office that I was going to be released. I wasn’t expecting it, and wasn’t prepared for it.

I am now a member of the temple committee. My concerns are numerous.

I haven’t been in a committee since, I’d guess 2000. It’s not that I’m not a team player, I just don’t enjoy committees. I hate being partially in charge of something. I’d like to be responsible for it, or not responsible for it, not responsible for 12% of it. I like to try out new styles/programs. I like to be in-the-know and I like to make decisions. In short, it sounds like I’m not a team player.

It’s not that I don’t like temples. They’re just my least favorite mission of the church. And I’m not overly fond of missionary work.

I was asked to help with the temple prep course, and I can’t tell whether this was because they liked my teaching style in Sunday School or wanted to cut my influence from 90 people to 5.

I realize this post sounds bad, but I’m writing it anyway because I think it’s interesting. We are specifically told not to aspire to positions in the church and in my mind I had rarely done that. I did on my mission, mostly when I was a greenie on a bicycle and dreaming of an AP’s Taurus. But since then, “moving up the ranks” hasn’t mattered to me. I don’t feel like being in charge of FHE or Activities, or Sunday School was ever about being promoted. Perhaps because no one is impressed by those callings. Being single, there really isn’t anything above Elders Quorum President, and I don’t even want that calling.

But I have liked being in charge of things for the last decade, and will miss that. I felt like I had a good benchmark of how I was doing. I could tell if people liked the activities better, or if more people came to Sunday School. I have no way of telling how well I’m a temple committee member.

People often express how receiving a new calling can be overwhelming. They say they don’t know how they’re going to do it. Being an egomaniac, that thought doesn’t concern me. I know I can do this calling. I’m just not very motivated. I feel like I was doing something I liked and was good at, and am now doing something I don’t particularly like, and I’m not sure you can be good at.

Which may be the point I suppose. IF I was an excellent teacher/leader and thus have learned what I needed to learn from that experience, THEN it would make sense for me to now do something else. The fact that I don’t particularly like it may well be the point, since of course I should like it. And if I was bad at it, I'd been bad at it for the last couple years, and why make people suffer for any longer. And while I used Sunday School as a bit of a crutch to make sure I did my scripture study, I now have much more immediate reason to be doing my temple work. I just wish I hadn’t been fired to get my attention.