September 1, 2009

The Road To Hell is Paved With Good Intentions . . .

How in the world did I get myself involved in this? 

Our church has a ministry called Visiting Angels.  It’s a group of about 13 folks who rotate bringing food once a week to our priests.  It’s a great little ministry and my hubby is involved.  When he got involved he asked me to be the contact person for him – that’s where this all began to slowly go haywire.  So when the last coordinator announced that she couldn’t do it anymore because of time constraints, I volunteered.  I thought this would be any easy, stress-free way to give my time and since I am very organized it shouldn’t be any problem.

I’ve only been doing this for about 2 months now.  I planned the schedule for 6 months out.  Dusted my hands and said great that’s done until the new year.  Wrong, wrong, wrong! 

First I get an email from the previous coordinator – seems like she forgot to tell me that so-and-so is no longer on the list.  Fine.  Re-work the schedule – send it back out.  Two days later – I get another email – seems one of the volunteers died.  Ok, no problem.  Re-work the schedule – send it back out.  Later the same day, another email.  Seems the previous coordinator forgot to mention that so-and-so volunteers – but doesn’t have email, so I’ll need to add her in somehow.  I ignored this email. 

Well today, I’ve been thrown another curveball.  Apparently, we have visitors coming in on two separate occasions and will need extra meals.  Fine – I send out a request.  Oh my hell.  Apparently, I confused the hell out of everyone and had to go back reassuring them of their time slots.  Then, I get an email telling me that this person can’t provide meals anymore.  Now I have to take her out of the rotation and find someone to take her place next month.

This was supposed to be easy and no-stress remember?  These people are making me pull my hair out.  This should be a 20 minute thing once every 6 months or so.  But it has morphed into this thing where I am thinking about it all the time.  And every time I send an email I get a response that throws a curve into everything.  Every, single time.  And once that response throws everything out of whack, I have to send out another email explaining why everything is changing.

This gig is making me question my sanity and my organizational skills.  I’m sure that with every email I send out; they must be thinking “Who put this idiot in charge?”

I’m truly not an idiot.  I do know what I’m doing.  I swear.  Who could have foreseen all this craziness?  All I wanted was to do something good – that’s it.  Now I cringe every time I see an email from one of these folks cause I know it’s just gonna give me a headache.

So, what do you think?  Will I get bonus points for all this after I – well, you know – die?  I sure hope so.

3 comments:

  1. So your husband asks you to be just a contact person and now you're spending an extraordinary amount of time on this! Soo doesn't seem fair. I hope it calms down for you!

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  2. Ms. Lovely - that's what husband's do. It will, eventually. But when you are dealing with this many people; problems are bound to crop up. What really has me worried is the holidays . . .

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  3. You are tooo funny, but so right in the title of this post (lol). Have you heard the phrase about how church folk can take you to hell? On that note, I'm shutting up (lol).

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