Graduation Part 2

My parents had made the long eighteen hour drive down from Canada to see me graduate, and that should have been a great time with my family but it wasn’t. I was still required to work and was not allowed any time off. By this time I had just accepted the fact that I was a permanent fixture to the church’s decor and I made excuses for my Pastors as to why I couldn’t afford the time off. I remember my mom being just a little upset that I couldn’t even take the Wednesday night service off to visit with her. I also remember my Pastor speaking his frustration too. His frustrated musings went something like this, “Doesn’t she know how important you are to this church? How can she expect you to take time off when there is no one else who can do what you do? I think your mother is actually upset and angry because she is jealous of you. After all, have you heard her actually say that she was proud of you for completing Bible School?” These are the types of things that I heard for most of my parents visit. These frustrated musings did not stop when they left either.
My Parents quickly became the focus of my Pastors concerns and I was often asked to speak at length about the relationships that had with my parents. These conversations would always end with their exclamation of how they could not believe how my parents were not proud of me. Seeds of how my mother was obviously jealous of me were constantly being planted and the seed that was watered the most was the one that I was their adoptive daughter. They were my new parents and they were proud of me. Slowly, it was like my parents were weeded out of my life by my pastors constant demeaning of them and the relationships that I had with my family. My family was slowly being replaced by my Pastors.