I haven't blogged for a while... that's usually how blog entries start when a person blogs again for the first time in a long time, but then it ends up being their only blog entry for another long time and so on... I hope that's not the case. I miss blogging. I miss the conversations it sparks, and on a personal level I miss how it lets me sift through my brain, giving me the space to let my thoughts form more fully and completely and find a home, or maybe to let them go if they're no longer helpful.
As usual, I digress.
I didn't blog for a long time because it was summer and I was busy and I was doing a lot of discerning and for a while I didn't want to write about that here and then for a while I didn't know how... But now that seems silly and the dust is mostly settled and I can just say the thing plain...
After a lot of thought and prayer and conversation I'm taking a step back from the call process temporarily. For a year or two, probably. My boyfriend and I have talked about the long term - quite a bit - but we've only been dating 11 months and 1 day as of this writing. And when the reality of being far, far apart in a blizzard-prone state stared me in the face, I flinched, and I realized that I don't want to subject such a relatively-new relationship to the stresses of being long-distance, of being a solo first-call pastor all alone in a place I've never been, etc. I was lucky enough to find a job in the Twin Cities as a Proofreader, and I've talked with my Bishop and my Candidacy Committee contact, and for now... I'm waiting. I still feel called to ministry. But I also feel called to share my life with someone, and you can't always control when that someone comes along.
There are times when I'm doing marketing stuff in my gray little cubicle and I read another Facebook update about someone getting ordained or doing pastoral care or officiating a wedding and I stop and go, "What on earth am I doing here?"
But most of the time my work is okay, and I'm good at it, and I have a Lutheran understanding of vocation that helps me not feel like I'm squandering the gifts God has given me. I still love living in the Twin Cities, and I'm hoping that by being conscientious about blogging again and getting more involved with the congregation I worship with, I can feel more like I'm involved in something where my own gifts are being used to chip further away at the cracks where the Kingdom shows through.
Anyway... yesterday I was at church, and it was okay... I love Mercy Seat, I love the worship, I love the pastors, and I'm betting I would love the people if I would stop being so shy and bother to hang around after worship for their fabulous food-and-book-centric events. (I love food and books! Why have I not been staying and getting to know these lovely folks who also enjoy these things? Weirdo.) So yeah. I was at church, and it was just kind of okay. I wasn't really "feeling it."
I know there are people out there who are all, "feeling spiritual doesn't matter," and make fun of those people who earnestly talk about being spiritual but not religious, but the freedom to be "spiritual but not religious" in a 12-step community allowed me to experience God when I needed God and brought me back from complete hopelessness, so I get kind of annoyed at those people who find "spiritual-but-not-religious" experiences so worthless and meaningless. There are people who find the church profoundly, even actively unwelcoming, or who don't relate to what we do in church, or who have had really bad experiences of the church in the past, and who the heck are churchgoers to say that we have the monopoly on experiencing God anyway?
So yeah... I like that "spiritual feeling." I have been doing this long enough to get through those periods when I don't "feel it," but a big part of that is reminding myself of the times when I do. And I wasn't feeling it last night...
...until we started singning "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing."
There may be a day, someday, when I can sing that song in worship without getting choked up and overwhelmed with gratitude and whatever that hard-to-pin-down "spiritual" feeling is, but last night wasn't it.
It doesn't do that to me when I sing it by myself, around the house or in the car or whatever... but it gets me every time if I'm singing it with other people.
I may not know on a day-to-day, minute-by-minute basis what the heck I'm doing. A lot of times working in marketing feels at-the-very-best-neutral in the grand scheme of things. And I've always been prone to daydream through sermons. And I don't always "feel it."
But when I do, it's the most real thing.
More real than the ultimate meaninglessness of cubicle life where it's always about "taking it to the next level" and your job never involves sitting around and chatting and eating pie. (I miss that part.)
More real than the petty insecurities that hold me back from living fully in community, even when I really want to.
More real than the doubts that sometimes creep in about whether or not I really deserve to share my life with a man so fun and forgiving and genuinely kind, who challenges me and surprises me.
It's the most real thing. So I hold onto that when it doesn't feel real. And I hope that in some small way the words I write or speak can maybe help reveal the most real thing for others.
Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be
Let that grace now like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart oh, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
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