I remember the first time that Kevin put me in charge of the entire junior high school summer camp. For a couple of years at that point I had been shadowing him, but this was the year where he really wanted me to take the reins. Of course he was at camp that week, but it was a lot different knowing that I was the camp director, now responsible for over 500 students and leaders.
In the years prior when I was learning from Kevin, he gave me a lot of good advice, and all of the information that would set me up for success for my current situation. Unfortunately for everybody, I didn’t really pay attention the way that I should have been during that time. I mean, how hard could it be, right?
Well, that week was pretty tumultuous, and we dealt with so many situations that I had never seen before. Except for, I had seen them all before. The only difference was that in years prior I was not the one who had to make the decisions, but just had to watch Kevin do it flawlessly. He made it all look so easy.
The culmination of that camp was when I had to sit down with the site director to square up on the final bill. By this time Saturday morning all of the other churches were long since gone, probably halfway home, and I was still sitting in this office, slouched in a beat up old chair that Kevin had probably sat in so many times before. I thought that everything was good to go, until the site director reminded me that his staff, while making the final sweep of the camp early that very hour, found one of the bathrooms where tons of shingles had been ripped off of the roof, unbeknownst to anyone, including me. How could this have happened… and how were their kids on the roof of any building without any of us staff members knowing? Well, I did not have time to think about any of that. I was stuck with figuring out how to pay for the repair of that roof… a pretty penny.
And of course, I did not factor that into the cost of the camp so many months before, which I should have. It was a serious blow to my ego, and speaking with Kevin later that summer, when everything was over, he gently reminded me that he and I had had the conversation about making sure that I was ready to deal with those kinds of incidentals. I was not, And learned the hard way that I was nowhere near where I needed to be regarding my Camp Director intuitiveness. I was so engulfed in what I was doing in the run-up to camp that I was not listening to the wise counsel that Kevin was trying to throw my way for months, and really years at that point.
That reminded me of a story in Exodus when Moses was leading God’s people out of Egypt. At one point there was so much coming his way, and so many people that wanted to talk to him, that he got overwhelmed. He was stuck in the middle of a management nightmare and had nowhere to go; and even worse, he did not rely on the people that probably could have been helping him up to that point. Until, somebody older and wiser than him came and gave them some advice.
The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, “What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?” ~Exodus 18:13-14
Moses was pretty new at leadership and he had no idea what was going on. Anybody could have told him that he was breaking his back trying to get all of the stuff done on his own. And I’m sure a lot of people did know, and probably told him; he most likely just did not listen. Until his father-in-law let him know how much time he was wasting.
Jethro was the voice of reason, the person with intuition due to his life experience. It was good for Moses to have him as wise counsel, otherwise Moses probably would have been frustrated for a lot longer. So I guess my question is this: where in life do you have the most intuition? My hope is that just like Moses, you have people in your life to help you see what you do well and where you need a little bit of guidance. All of us are good at something, and are probably pretty intuitive in that area. And although Moses was leading the people pretty well, he had a blind spot that needed to be pointed out. I pray that you are open to the same in your life.
Praying for you,
MO
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