Discernment

Right now I am in what many candidates in the PCUSA think of as the in between. Basically this is the time between when you're ready to receive a call and when you are called to a position. In non-seminarian circles it's when you really want a job but don't have one yet.

Luckily I have some really great friends who have come before me and set the stage, figuring out what works, what doesn't work, and reminding me that sometimes churches just don't call back.

This time could be really tough for me, and I'd be lying through my teeth if I didn't say that at some points, it's more than I would like to handle. But then I do something that luckily I am good at: I sit back and realize that things are not quite so bad as they seem when I get sucked into the bleakness. I have a job where I am fulfilled and doing work that is not simply to set me up for the future, it is what I feel called to do.

Sometimes I realize that I have a little extra time to catch up on my tivo'd shows. So what? The times when I have more time free than I would like, I sit back and realize that other than my YAV year, I went to school non-stop for twenty years. TWENTY YEARS. Of school. How does a person do that? Honestly, thank you God for a break.

I know that somewhere there is a campus ministry or a church that is just waiting to find me, and me them. Until then, I will watch Friends re-runs and catch up on Weeds, anxiously await Dexter, and watch any old movie involving a Texas small town; then, I will explore said town. I will mountain bike at Sansom Park, and listen to music in Sundance Square. I will marvel at the White Elephant Saloon, and ride on the back of a KTM 990. I will adore time with Jake, and continue to cultivate new friendships while cherishing the people already in my life. I will try my darndest to visit my best friend and my sister, two of the most important people in my life, and the two hardest to live far away from. I will watch from afar as my two best friends raise their kids, but be thankful for the fact that it's 2010 and I can watch through cyber space.

In the midst of all this craziness of wanting an ordained position and feeling stuck, I find comfort. The comfort comes in all of the above, and in all the unknown. I've always had a weird fondness for the unknown, and a weird optimism for what is to come.

If what is yet to come is as amazing as what is now, I can wait. After all, is waiting for me.