I Love This Job...Really...and I Love This Life...Really

The last few days have been very busy ones---getting all the database entries done; Pathways today; a charge conference one night this week; two "Apportionment Breakfasts" at two different locations in the district to say thanks to the pastors of churches which paid out at 100% this year; and trying to pay more attention to a great group of mostly lay persons in the district who are on fire about a new way of resourcing our local churches around the bishop's Five Practices; dealing with a church where there is unfair and unkindly criticism of a pastor who is doing a good job of holding his tongue; and the ongoing saga of Wellington UMC, where the pastor turned in his orders November 1 of last year and has applied for the position as pastor in another church in town--the PPRC chair there, who has been, what I call, "stand-up" and kindly during the last few months, has experienced the sudden death of her husband; and Court Fischer, our pastor there as well as Napolean, has been doing such a fine job...and of course there are other calls and concerns and advice to be given, and pastors to be loved and prodded. And on top of the professional stuff, I suffered through two mornings of taking a VERY surly Caleb to school, who seemed not to be able to help himself from making me miserable...as wonderful as he is, listening to the audio tapes of those two mornings this week would be the best form of birth control for a bunch of hormone-raging preteens than any abstinence pledge could ever be.

And then, there is my own inner life, which is shifting and moving me toward something that I am beginning to see. All of us come to stages in our lives, me right now, when we have to listen to our lives and to claim who we are, claim our strengths, claim the fact that we really are as precious as we are in the sight of God, and that we are being called to go deeper in faith ("push out" Jesus said last week in Luke, "into the deep water") so that our lives might be a greater thing of beauty and grace. As I have been wading into that deep water over the past year, dealing with this new position, and dealing also with the chemical depression, there have been times I have been brave and strong ... there have been times when I have wept and ate a pint of ice cream and thought I was the most miserable of all sinners. Lately, in my dream life and in my prayer life, I am sensing that I am slowly moving toward something...moving toward something less like a village along the road, than the truth in the middle of the labyrinth. But I am thankful in a way that words can not express that as I move, in ways that are sometimes imperceptible to myself, God through grace has provided me with those who have chosen willingly to journey with me, and who affirm me when I am brave which makes me brave, and who let me wallow a bit when I am sad, but choose to come near, and not turn away, and then to gently call me back to the braver way. There are a handful of people--Susan, Kendall, Dick, Nancye, Linda--who are these people for me. And there are many others whom God has placed at the right place and the right time to listen and to prod and to not make me feel stupid for talking like I am talking here. So thanks be to God, that's all I gotta say about this.

And then, Sunday, we, the twelve d.s.s and our bishop, are off to Camp Windermere on the Lake to officially start the appointment making season...the "assessment" time. I really am looking forward to being with colleagues, to hearing about the churches and clergy, and to do this important work. Really. And I miss the emergent element of my life right now, since so much of my time needs rightly to be dedicated to the more traditional duties of d.s.ship. I will have missed Jacob's Well three weeks in a row, which I don't like to do. But I will be back.