In the UMC (church where Bart pastors) we have what is called an episcopal form of church government. This means that the bishop and the cabinet decide where we live. Average stay for a pastor is 4-7 years. We are going to be finishing our seventh.
This means that some time between February and May we may be receiving a call saying that we will be moving to somewhere else in MN during late June.
I don’t think I’ve blogged about it before, but as you can imagine, this is a huge part of our lives. It is hard for us to take on new projects that are location specific. It is hard in deciding where and in whom to invest our time. It is a constant sense of internal upheaval with a series of What-Ifs going through our minds.
We also refer to our days as “wanna move” days or “don’t wanna move” days. I am an adventurer by nature, so the thought of new everything excites me. But we have very very little about our lives right now that we don’t like. However, when I’m feeling restless, or something is happening that I’m not particularly enjoying, I can just imagine everything being better somewhere else and I have a “wanna move day.” More often than not, however, we have “don’t wanna move” days.
I could list a zillion things that we love about where we live. It’s a near perfect set up for us in so many ways. But last night Bart and I provided the church staff with a Christmas party and it became a “really, really, really don’t wanna move night.” We had dinner at the steak house and were surrounded by people that we have grown to love. i can’t express it any way other than, “Some days you gotta hate the appointment system.”
Bottom line is I’ve learned to be happy anywhere, and that is good. But I don’t know that we’ll ever have it as good as this. Whether this is our last year here or we have a few more, we have known from the beginning that these would be some of the best years of our lives, and they certainly have been.
God’s good, all the time. And sometimes we realize just how REALLY good God is.
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