Humble pie

First night back at Candlelit Church. I was strangely hermit-like until tonight, lying low and pretending I wasn't really home. For all my griping about England, my wondering at how I ended up in Brum, the people never fail to delight me and humble me. That is why we stay. The people I know from my work at Church have genuinely changed me. When Iam working at Church doing what I do and being who I am I always think that 'working' is an inadequate and innappropriate word. This is because it is pure joy. I love it so much that it transforms me. Being with these delightful people and hearing their stories, being changed by them, shaken up by them, challenged and touched by them. I can never understand how they wake me up and keep me where God has told me to be. If only they knew that I would not be there if it weren't for the knowledge of God's call to me in that place at this time doing what he gives me to do with the gifts he gives me to do it with. I do it for love, yes, but really I do it because he told me to. It seems so much less noble when you see it for what it really is, a reluctant obedience. I have enjoyed having time away from our Church, although I couldn't keep away from Church while 'on the Mainland'. Nipping in and out of 'Mass' and the Feast of the Assumption like a fraudulent Catholic. I tried to convince myself I'd got it wrong. That we should be travelling the world, doing thrilling things, we didn't need to stay here. The world, forgive the use of the word, is our oyster.
But it is always like this with me and God, I try to talk myself out of it and then an extraordinary person will floor me with their certainty about the Church's need of me. On this occasion, knowing nothing of my yearnings to be free of this vocation, a simply remarkable young woman of 17 picked a perfect time to remind me of why I must be where God has placed me. She looked me in the eye and said 'you and this Church, you saved my life, thank you'. She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me with undeserved gratitude. If you knew her story as I do you would find it impossible to understand her survival. Only a miracle would have kept her alive. I feel so small and inadequate in the light of her gratitude because all I did was say a squeaked and angry 'yes' in a frankly very bolshy and petulant manner to what I thought was God's most unreasonable request. I always thought that if I had only known the joy of it, the warmth and the love, peace and bliss that would come from that one absurd decision not to walk away it should have been easy. But the wrestling and sulking didn't stop there at all, I still resist, I still sometimes fantasize about fleeing. Even with the countless and priceless gifts I am given by these people, I still think my work here is dispensable. I wish for a simple, standard, more predictable, less unusual job, somewhere more exotic than the industrial Midlands. Couldn't God have made me a different character, a more tickbox human being in a more interesting landscape? But there she was, genuinely convinced that the Church has saved her life. If I am a part of this Church then it is true that my being here has helped God to save her life.
What was I thinking? How do I live with myself? I don't really, I just about tolerate myself and even that isn't easy.