No Rest for the Weary

It's late Sunday afternoon (or early Sunday evening) and I should be all rested up and ready to go for another week of school.  But I'm not.  Today was a too-busy day, too full of stress, and too-empty of rest.
Sunday isn't supposed to be like that.  I went to church this morning, kind of wishing that I could stay home because I really could have used a lazy morning.  But I was one of 4 mission speakers this morning.  Our stewardship drive kicked off today, and I had been asked to speak for about 5 minutes on "How I Live my Faith."  I don't mind speaking in church and in fact have occasionally preached on a laity Sunday.  But it did add a bit of stress to the morning.  What was difficult today was the church council meeting afterwards.  I am  moderator of my UCC church.  For those of you who aren't familiar with congregational-type churches, the moderator is the lay leader of the church and is the church's representative in legal matters.  One of the "perks" (??) of the job is that I get to run the monthly council meetings.  They take place on the third Sunday of every month right after church, and generally last about 90 minutes.  We have a large council - about 20 members and everybody has an opinion.   We generally have good meetings but today there was a lot of emotion and even some conflict.  Our church has several large mission ministries, and we have been having some difficulty with the leadership of one of them, and matters have come to a crisis point.  Despite all the efforts of a number of good people, today people got angry with each other.  I take that probably too personally - I can't control other people's anger, but I wish I had been able to find a less contentious path through a pretty thorny jungle.   The meeting lasted almost 2.5 hours and by the time I got home I was exhausted.  Since then I've had to deal with several phone calls from parishioners who needed to talk, and I had to write my monthly column for our church newsletter.  And of course, there was dinner to be cooked and cleaned up after (thank God for a wonderful husband who knows when to pitch in without asking!).  And now it's almost 7 pm, and it's time to get my things together for work, and maybe, just maybe sit and knit a bit --- if my hands cooperate, that is!