That'll teach me to pray

Middle of last year we were doing a lot. All the ministries were kicking off their promotions, we had normal year kick-offs, were working on a new website, new graphics templates, oh and it was our 30th anniversary (I'll add pics tomorrow).

I was getting a normal amount of positive and negative feedback, but a lot more of both given the nature of how many things we were doing. I have to admit I'm a fragile flower and can easily get my feelings hurt. I know bad combo for a designer. Ya think?

My boss, Randy, as someone described him, is like a muscadine. Now I've eaten a muscadine but I was intimately aware of the nature of this grape like fruit. But as they explained a muscadine has a really tough outer skin but has a really juicy, sweet inside. Think grape with the skin of a lime.

So I set out to be a muscadine. I prayed for a thicker skin. If only I knew that was like praying for patience.

Fast forward a couple of months and we're launching the new site. Of course, no one checked to see if their stuff was up to date, if their ministry existed, anything. In the week prior to launch we DOUBLED the number of pages on the site. I'll post some stats tomorrow. Pretty cool.

Just the way it fell I became point for the launch. For two or three weeks people called me day and night in a panic, mostly thinking we had intentionally deleted their ministry. I think I answered the same three questions about 100 times.

This did two things:
1. Gave me an opportunity to think about what I would have done differently.
2. Gave me a really thick skin.

Fast forward to today, one of our clients called a meeting to discuss a particularly cursed project. One of those ones everything went bad, for a lot of reasons, some mine, some his. We were able to talk it out without any feelings getting hurt and actually our relationship is better for it, all because I became the muscadine.