There's always this crunch time between coming home from Thailand and going away for my summer Sabbath.
Both are incredible gifts, so I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining. Hardly! The community that is Highview is beautiful and generous to her pastor, allowing me to be away each year in March to visit our Thai family at Hot Springs AND to be away each year in July to sit by still waters in Cognashene where our family has a cottage. Amazing. And everything goes along just fine without me both times, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't surprise you, and long ago has stopped surprising me too :).
But this in between time can get intense. Catching up from everything that was happening while I was in Thailand, and preparing for everything to be in order so I can leave for the cottage. And that last part isn't just so things will be good over the summer only. This is the time of year when the bigger plans for the whole of next season, September to June, are talked over and prayed over and calendar'd over and schedules are set and people are contacted; all of it being continuously offered as an open book upon which the Holy Spirit is invited to write. It's the time of year for appreciations and thank yous and wrapping up in significant, honouring ways. It's the time of year we celebrate our church's anniversary - this year is number 15! - and that always includes new members and baptisms, and all the wonderful conversations around all of that.
I've felt that intensity over the past two weeks, especially. It's a dangerous place for a workaholic. So much to do, so little time (it always seems), all of it's important, and the rush of tending to it, feeling the wind in my hair, seeing good things being accomplished. A professor once told a class I was in that he didn't know the difference between work and fun because his work was fun. For me, much of the work of pastoring is fun. Not the conflict resolution or walking people through pain or the weight of leading, not that part. But lots of it is. And when the push is on and you're seeing it happen, and you've got good and honest people to labour with, well, it can get intense.
So I opened my journal this morning in the early sun of the quiet room where my husband still slept, and just sat for a moment and felt it. The nothing. And goodness was in the nothing. And for a few moments I just felt good. And quiet. And out of those nothing quiet moments nothing particularly spectacular happened in my soul, except to be reminded that sitting in the sun in the quiet is good.
It was bit of a strange day anyways. An interruption in the rhythms of the work week. A Tuesday trip to Lakefield to see Mom on a day that was originally scheduled to be a 'care counsel' meeting with the team that's looking after he in her new residence. It was cancelled, but we went on Tuesday anyway, instead of the normal Sunday/Monday thing. An interruption in the intensity. A pause. The whole day.
Fish and chips with Mom in the restaurant, and Hey Jude was playing and Mom said, "This is a pleasant tune." And I teased her because she didn't realize it was the Beatles. Growing up we weren't allowed to listen to that nasty rock and roll music. And she laughed at herself, and it was a good and quiet moment.
And later in the afternoon, talking quietly and openly about Mom's funeral service, which she had asked that we do together. And the goodness in her faith, expressed by a confident longing for what is to come. And her reassurances of her love for me, and appreciation for me, in the face of some hard family dynamics.
And just having those unspoken moments with Ken in the car, my faithful hero driver, because the drive back and forth has become too much with all the other responsibilities of my life, so he drives instead. And oh how I need the good and quite of being passenger instead.
I'm still a workaholic, I know. But I'm more mellow these days. At least in these kinds of pockets of sunshine and pause and interruptions like today, I am. I think maybe I'm finally learning, on these kinds of days, to watch for what God thought was so important that He would actually take me away from my 'work' to show me.
And driving home I was glad for choosing it. And I was looking forward to engaging in the fun again tomorrow.
