Am I lazy? Reprimand # 3

The months were flying by and I was busier at the church then I had ever been. I was volunteering in children’s church, co-leading the junior youth, leading a dance team, starting a youth band, volunteering on the worship team, leading worship for the Thursday prayer meeting, and leading worship for the occasional Wednesday service. I was involved! And to top it all off, the Leadership were talking about opening up a Bible School and they asked me to facilitate the classes in exchange for my tuition. I gladly agreed because it was my heart to minister and I desperately wanted to go to Bible school.
I had previously attended a Bible School right after High School that was supposed to get accredited but it never did. So I had spent two years earning a degree and paying tuition for a degree that was not worth the paper it was printed on. I looked at this new added challenge of going to an accredited Bible School as my chance to finally get the education in ministry that I had been longing for since I was a teenager. But just as school was about to start, I was again called into the office for a reprimand.
This time I was brought into the office with the Pastor and Associate Pastor. The Pastor began to speak with me quite harshly with what seemed like a prepared speech, complete with scripture to prove his point. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
Right after the mission trip in December of 2005, I had a meeting with my boss who explained to me that he could no longer employ me because of the economic downturn that was happening in the housing market. The housing market bubble had popped and people were no longer buying homes, or the much needed insurance that goes with the purchase of a new home. I had gotten laid off.
When I got laid off, I immediately pulled my children from daycare because we could no longer, on one income, afford to keep them there. When this happened I lost both my slots in the local daycare at the reduced rate of the part-time status that I had negotiated upon when I first started working. Since it would cost double the amount than it had previously cost to place our children back in daycare that would allow me to work, my husband and I both decided it would be best if I stayed home and cared for our two children. It just wasn’t economical for us to pay the increased rate of daycare when my paycheck, after expenses, would be less than 80 dollars a week. Once we included the extra cost of gas into the expenses of my working, I would have essentially been working for free. There was no economical benefit to my working outside of the home. Besides, my children were 2 and 4 at the time when I stopped working. It was much more beneficial for our kids for me to be at home.
I tried to explain all of this to my Pastor as I sat there dumfounded that he was essentially calling me lazy. He made me feel so guilty for being a stay at home mom. He said things that were hurtful, like I was blessed to have a husband to take care of me and I shouldn’t impose upon my husband like that. He even insinuated that my husband might leave me if I didn’t contribute more financially to our marriage. I cried, yet again, as I was made to feel ashamed. I left that office promising them that I would go out the next week and go look for a job. My heart was incredibly heavy as I cried out to God when I left the church that day. “Why Lord? If I am doing all these things, in this church, in Your name, why is being a mom and servant not enough?”
It wasn’t until years later that that I received the answer to that question. God’s requirements and man’s requirements are very different.