The Drive Home...

I'm back!!!! Kevin Buckrucker wrote me a note this day at AC saying it might be a good idea to go home and hug the kids and write on my blog. And thus, so directed by the best darn District Lay Leader a district and superintendent could ever have, I do.

I just strolled through Facebook and saw gobs of positive comments at AC. I believe it to be one of the, if not THE most inspirational ACs of the 38 (!) I have attended and apparently many others do too. Lots of lots of VERY high moments---for me Bishop's morning presentation today was the most transformational (not to dis at all Rev. Cleaver II of course) of the presentations, although the three-bishop ordination sermon was transparentally transcendent.

There was one moment today that beat them all for me, though---We sang We are One in the Spirit at the end of the fixing of appointments, after the pastors had moved to their new churches/districts on the floor. While we were singing. Barbara W, my admin asst, grabbed my hand, held it, and raised it up holding hers. And then I saw that our entire district had become one surpentine maze of clapsed hands, held high in the air, winding up and down our long tables, over the tables to the next table, all four rows with hands raised in unity and love. Not sure exactly who started it, but it wasn't me. That one moment exemplified for me the family that is the Heartland North District. There is so much love here, love for all, in all, Christ's love that has created and is creating authenticity, compassion, laughter, and tears in the HND. I am proud to be the superintendent of this fine, fine part of the body of Christ.

Now, to the drive home. Driving home from conference, 38 of them, has almost always been an experience of inspection of my insides---how am I going to enter into the world in more effective ways for Christ to those "someones out there?" was the question this year, along with thinking about my finances, my kids, my office, charge conference schedule, talking with Kendall and concerns around the district. Over the 38 years, I have driven home from : McKendree College in Lebanon Illinois (Southern Illinois Conference); the Ramada Inn in Mount Vernon (again Southern Illinois Conference); Central Methodist University (Missouri East Conf); Holiday Inn Select in Columbia (Missouri East and Missouri Conf) and now from Springfield Mo for the Missouri Conference. In order, I have been alone in the car coming back, then with Philip, then with Cana and Philip, then with Cana, and once with just Caleb and Philip, then four of us again, and then with Cana, and then alone. Sometimes that last "alone" feels fairly lonely, but usually only for a moment or two. That drive home, is really, every time ,a drive HOME--back to where, I live with whatever family is living with me currently (now Cana and sometimes Caleb) but always headed toward HOME. Robert Gail Woods (a former Canton pastor), when I made my move in 1992 from Wesley Memorial-Plattin to Canton, saw me crying as I walked from the old St. Louis South district to the Hannibal-Kirksville district, said to me "Susan, don't cry...I'm sending you home!" and to be honest Canton was as much "home" as anywhere has been for me. Whether going back to the same appointment or moving to a new one, God is bidding us to take one step closer to home---the kingdom of God---and to do all that we possibly can as God's servants to search for those along the way who need so desparately his life-changing love. We who claim the name of Christ are being led along the sometimes dark and sometimes lonely way home, the home where we will rest in the arms of Christ. The truth is that we will be most at home when there are others with us whom we have met upon the way, who may not have heard until they heard us calling out for God's guidance, that there really is a God to guide. Praise be to God! One in the Spirit, one, at last in the arms of our Savior.