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Part 06

1/11/2009 5:50:25 PM

Journal Entry

This is absolutely remarkable.  Today I sensed God wants to tear my hands away—take me away from and towards something.  I’ve sensed for awhile something was stirring, I just didn’t know what it was.  I thought a new system or way of seeing to be given up.

But today, as I walked up the steps to my office, it hit me.  God is going to take me out of the ministry.  What that means, I don’t know.  I knew immediately it wasn’t a learning (being taken out of a system of thinking I identify as part of myself).  It felt as it did when I realized God was telling me I’d leave ----.  Tremendous loss, even when knowing something good is in store.

As I was getting in my car later in the day, it hit me: it was around this time of year God first told me of leaving ----.  I went back in my journals—I hadn’t realized I’d written so many—and there it was.  The date was ----, exact date as today.  I feel this is a way God is affirming to me what I discern.

I feel such sadness at the impending loss.  Does this mean I give up my ordination?  That I no longer work in the church as a church person, a pastor?  What lies ahead, and when do I tell Tim?  He’s handling so much right now.

I am stunned—sort of.  Exhausted with everything that’s taken place.  It remains to be seen how this will be revealed.

Journal Entry

I had a dream last night—can’t remember it too clearly.  First part: my kids were back as younger kids; usually they represent parts of me I’m trying to discipline.  I woke up (in the dream) and found one of them had pushed my bed down the hallway (transition) and I was angry.  It was that old feeling of trying to figure out who’s to blame.

When God calls me away from, do I see only my weakness?  Do I believe that God calls me away because I have failed at something?  And God has to find another place for me?

I know I’ve been questioning my gifts as a pastor, especially the administrative stuff, but also organizing people for strategy.  Somewhere along the way, I’ve let go of all that.  I was going to say ‘lost it’—but I don’t think so.

Journal Entry

When I realized God was calling me away from, I started to think of what I could do:  workshops, etc.—but at places close enough to drive to.  That would certainly reflect on my fear of flying—staying the same, living a restrictive life, allowing fear to determine choices.

As I’m reading Psalms, I feel as though God wants me to rely on him alone.  Almost as though the human race is a system that can’t give me an identity.  Weird.

It’s not that people aren’t important, and that we’re not to support, love and nurture one another—just that we don’t depend on one another to give life.

I can’t depend on a driver, car, pilot, airplane, doctor, etc.  There is only one Life-giver, and the different fears I have are constructs—or fears of constructs—thus they are groundless.  I will die.  Does it really matter what way?  Do I honestly believe I have control over that?

It’s weird.  A connection to God more closely drawn.  Yet not one that excludes the rest of creation.  Just a different orientation—a little more focused on God and a little less focused on this world.

Caring about the world and all that is in it, because God cares passionately for his creation.  But it doesn’t determine me or give me life—not even other people, because people can’t give life—certainly not life of substance and peace.  That comes from God alone.

I am free to go wherever, to do whatever, without fears to shackle or limit me.  I could see how someone might get to this point and believe that all is meaningless, but that’s far from true.  This is God’s creation and God chooses to work in it and within his people.  That means something, even if we can’t see it.

Maybe that’s what I can offer:  an affirmation that there is indeed purpose in this world, that even if we can’t see it, it matters.  And in a way that takes us far beyond all constructs.

Journal Entry

Life is a continual letting go, loss and gain, and without the loss there can be no movement forward.  To try to hold onto what is, is to clutch at emptiness, for the very moment we gain something, we begin to grow beyond it and to hold onto it, is to make it a hindrance.

How foolish to try to possess, when what we seek to possess is construct, and life and God would ever move us towards a deeper truth.

Journal Entry

It’s Sunday night, and I feel the presence of God with me, a longing so deep and terrible, nothing in all creation can meet it except God.  I feel a time of revelation, a discernment God would have me see.

I have no clue how to go about it, but that’s nothing new.  God has always shown me.

For some reason, I’m thinking of loss, and right away I think of Tim and am afraid.  Yet, thoughts of loss don’t have to mean Tim.  I’ve gone through this enough to know that loss comes in many forms, in many ways.

I sit here crying as though something very precious is being taken away from me.  And all I can think about is Tim.  I sit here and mourn as though I’ve already lost him.  What is going on?  Dear Lord, what is going on?

Perhaps God want me to see Tim differently—a little less critically.  Be a little more open to the gift of each day, and never to take for granted the time we have together, thinking there will always be more time tomorrow.  I pray that is the lesson I’m to learn, and that Tim will come home to me.  (Tim was away for the evening and I feared I was being prepared for his death: to hear he had been in an accident, etc.—which turned out not to be true.)

Journal Entry

Yesterday I had the feeling again that I would be taken out of the ordained ministry.  I was subdued, I know, and tired.  I feel that divine forces have been set into motion and when the time is right, I’ll know.

As I was driving, I was searching for a word to describe how I feel right now, and the word ‘restricted’ came to mind.  And I realized that the ordained ministry does make me feel that way right now, that my passions lay elsewhere, and God is showing me that in order to do what he wills, I’ll have to leave the ministry…it would be too restrictive.  I found myself crying even as I recognized that truth.  To no longer be able to give communion, baptize, etc.—my heart mourned the thought of that.

Yet I know in order to go to where God leads, there must always be goodbyes.  Else there can’t be anything new.  But I also must mourn whatever it is I’m letting go of.

I have no clue where this is leading.  No clue at all.  But that’s okay.  When the time is right, I’ll be given what I need to know.

Journal Entry

I’ve been to this place before.  This in-between time.  Not necessarily a time of disequilibrium in a learning, but a time between being shown/called and the completion/revealing.  I know what it’s like to mourn the leaving, the loss…and to look ahead and want so badly what God will do.

I’m not as impatient as I was before.  I can’t change God’s timing, nor do I want to.  It will come when it will.  Meanwhile, I have work to do.

Journal Entry

Yesterday as I was driving to ----, a thought entered that threatened to undo me, and yet, for the sake of my faith journey, I had to face it squarely.

What if Jesus Christ is a construct?

I think this has been there for awhile, but I pushed it away.  Then, I realized I must fact it if I’m to help others in their struggles…face the fact there can be moments of doubt even in strong faith.

I wanted to cry, scream, etc., but couldn’t, so was in prayer and commended the question to God.  I went to the hospital for a visitation and somewhere in the midst of real life, the question was resolved, and I didn’t even know it.  All I know is when I came out of the hospital, it was no longer a question.

I think God just wanted honesty from me, that such a question could arise, and to admit it.  I finally realized God is strong enough to handle honest doubt and struggle, especially as I experience it within his love and mercy.

As I sit here writing this, though, I realize something has changed—has shifted—and I don’t quite know how to describe it because it’s not yet clear to me.

Lord, help me to trust you in the teaching.

Whatever I’m undergoing is deep.  It is a wrenching away from what is known; I can tell that is certainly a major part of the process.  I’m adjusting to the idea of no longer being ordained.  Yet I don’t yet have an idea of what I’m moving towards—although whatever it is cannot define me either.

It will be a different system, but I’ll still function without dependence upon it.  Maybe that’s what I need to remember.  It’s so tempting to place oneself back into bondage, to join with a group and seek my identity there.  How much we humans long for something to tell us who we are.

Journal Entry

I’ve felt led or drawn to re-read Stephen Donaldson’s  “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.’  I’m not sure what, but I almost feel it is of the same importance as prayer almost.  Or that God wants to be at work in it to teach me something.

It’s about a man drawn unwillingly into a journey where he has responsibility he never sought, power he doesn’t know how to use, and a fear he will misuse it in service to evil.  He makes a lot of mistakes, offends a lot of people, and learns what he needs to know in spite of himself.

Journal Entry

I sit here, on a Sunday evening, trying to figure out what is troubling me.  I am in mourning.  I think it is mourning for letting go of the ministry.  Today was so good.  It felt right and good, and as I led worship, I thought, how will I ever get through my last service?  How will I ever speak my last benediction?

Is that what’s troubling me?  I’m not sure, but I think so.  As we mature and grow and answer God’s call, the losses become greater.  That they are necessary isn’t a question, but nevertheless, it’s deep.  I know God will bring joy and satisfaction into what I will do, and I know wherever God is leading, I want to go there.  But mourning and letting go are an important part of the journey.  An integral part.  The journey can’t be made without them.

I have an unanswerable longing right now, and for what, I don’t know.  For a knowing, perhaps, for discernment; I thirst and hunger, for something that will fill me—

dare I say complete me?  That means I seek something to tell me who I am and that is no longer possible.  I now know everything is a construct, and the only One/thing who isn’t is God.

In a way I feel empty, disconnected, so I do wonder if this is another part of the transition.  Maybe I placed more of an emphasis on my ordination than I thought.

I sit here thinking again about Tim, but losing him in another way I’d never thought possible.  What if God called me to leave the marriage for the sake of focusing on God alone?

And as I sit here thinking of all this, I realize God is taking everything away from me—that’s the feel of it—and so I know there must be tremendous purpose at work here.

Am I moving out of these systems in a new way?  I could always separate myself from Tim as a person, but had difficulty seeing myself separate from the system of marriage.  Is the same true about my ordination?

Is this what’s happening?  A further journey out of the systems that name me?  If it is, it doesn’t mean these things must necessarily be given up—only my dependence upon them.

A reassuring revelation but one I’m too exhausted to enjoy right now.

These entries show the process of naming systems which still comprise my identity and then, after recognizing these systems exist as part of who I am, beginning to let them go.  The letting go doesn’t mean I must physically leave these systems, but change ‘how’ they are meaningful to me.  I.E., I could no longer draw my identity from the systems of ‘ordination’ and ‘marriage’; they could no longer tell me who I am.  I live within these systems and relate to people within them, but the constructs of these systems no longer complete me.

This is a dangerous part of the journey, for we can easily confuse the transitional process with real events.  When we’re in the process of identifying a system that is part of our identity, we begin to feel the pull out of that system.  This can feel so agonizing and our need for relief so great, we might be tempted to give up things and people we wouldn’t if we stayed with the journey long enough to experience resolution.

Interesting to me: our marriage was so good I didn’t experience leaving that system as a need to leave Tim.  Rather, I experienced it first as a fear of losing him and then, as a possibility God might call me away from, even though that made no sense.  Now that I no longer identify with the system of marriage, the person Tim and our relationship together is most basic and what keeps us together; not the ‘idea’ of marriage itself.

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