Minister’s Kid Blog

What an adventure it is growing up as a minister’s kid. Yet so many times you might find that the road you are traveling is a little bumpier than you thought it would be. This can be exceptionally difficult if you are truly trying to live out your faith and things still seem to be extremely difficult.

Now of course it’s in these times we start quoting the Psalms of David crying out to God, and start empathizing with Job, but I believe we have to be careful not to get “Putting on the full armor of God” with “Diving onto the Sword of Ministry”.

I ran across a quote from Dr. Maya Angelou today about the road of life. She says:

“If you’re on a road that somebody else has laid out for you and you look ahead, and you don’t like where you’re going… and you look back behind you, and you don’t want to go back there… step off the road, make yourself a new path.”

Waking up every day feeling like there is “no way out” is a terrible place to be. And if you feel like this as a minister’s kid, there may be a particular path you are on that you need to step off of. This is not the Discourse on Quitting, but I believe that I have had times in my life when I was trying so very hard to please people around me in ways that they weren’t interested in being pleased. It was only when I stopped trying so hard that I realized how LITTLE people were disappointed. Sometimes they didn’t even notice.

This is a small principle that you can apply to parts of your life. You may be a teenager who spends their life trying to smile and please every church member you come in contact with, never really searching out who you are. In some way, you need to “make yourself a new path”. You may be 25, still living in the town where you grew up, going to the same church where your dad has been a minister for many years. If you’re feeling stuck, UNSTICK yourself. Start packing. “But I don’t want to be a quitter.”, you might say.

It’s time to figure out if you are doing what God wants you to do, or simply filling in the blanks so that you feel better about what you’re doing. Are you completely miserable? Remember, Job praised the Lord on the day he lost everything. And he didn’t do so just to look or feel spiritual.

Just ask yourself this question… Would you trade your life for what you’re doing?
Well… you are trading every moment you spend for whatever you choose to do with it.

Be encouraged, and if you need to… take an exit ramp to something new.