removing my faith training wheels

the most stressful 10 minutes of my week are when reagan passes the sacrament. he does well most of the time. he's definitely come a long way in his passing ability and when i watch him i can see his brain scratching the place where his intuition should be. a few weeks ago he was acting erratically because he was distracted by the presence of a friend's grandparents. he started off strong but i could see from my vantage point that he was deeply distracted by something. he went out of order because he wanted to pass to abuela julia. he tried to recover but he was quite off for the rest of the sacrament. on christmas day we had an unusually large congregation and reagan ran out of bread and abruptly finished passing and got back in line. other deacons had to quickly jump to attention to finish his rows. other weeks, he is excellent. though he cannot stand quite as still as the other deacons and his shirt nearly always comes untucked at some point during the administration of the ordinance, he has had moments when he is able to dig deep and figure out what to do next with no prompting. last week he ran out of bread again. another deacon assumed he did not notice that he missed a row and tried to point it out to him. reagan stopped and rose a single finger in the air to indicate to give him a minute and held it there until he was at the priest's table to retrieve more bread.   he then proceeded to finish administering to his rows. it was hilarious and scary and my heart stopped for a beat and then i felt overwhelmed with pride and gratitude for that moment. 

so even though reagan struggles, he still has the authority to act in Christ's name. it's rather humbling. while i stress out to the point of wanting to vomit each sunday, i need to dig deeper and let reagan figure things out. i also need to let my fellow ward members be okay with him figuring it out too. i love my faith training wheels but i don't actually need them. they are the antithesis of faith. i always think that i should pedal cautiously and put my feet back on the ground anytime things get hairy. i really need to approach more gigantic downhill slopes and let it rip. i've got years of training from seminary attendance, church attendance scripture reading, prayer and temple attendance. i'm meant to ride up and down big hills. pedaling slowly on flat ground is not the point.