This week has been a series of hurdles, although they have been amazingly positive.
After getting through the wedding last weekend, the first of three over four weeks, church went as usual. Truth is I have been feeling much better about our contemporary services lately. There have been more people in attendance and it seems like I am feeling more of that old feeling when I used to lead worship back in the day. Again, maybe it is just I am more aware of His presence in the services lately. Also, it could be I have been spending more time reading the Bible lately. It has a way of making us more acutely aware of our spiritual surroundings. I probably ought to be ashamed that I have not been as diligent as I should be in prayer and Scripture study, but I am not really. But, we do what we can, and I am feeling more compelled to do so as I continue in this journey toward ordination.
Speaking of ordination, I had two meetings this week that were significant to this process. The first was an impromptu meeting with my candidacy mentor on Monday morning. It had been several weeks since I had met with her and I had some questions and we needed to look over my psychological evaluation. She was very supportive and told me I likely would not need to take all the courses I thought I would have to take. I still have to confirm this, but it is looking like I will only need to take about 5 classes. This is a good thing. Although I like the book learning, I am still not convinced I want to spend several more years of my life in school. Who can say?
I also had to meet with our Staff Parish Relations Committee at the church to receive their approval. Truth is I kind of missed this step and needed to have it done before I could go much further in the process. I was not exactly thrilled about this Tuesday evening meeting, but it was a wonderfully affirming get together. Everybody seemed to be pleased with me and with my work and decision to pursue ordination. That was nice, especially when you consider that I basically work for them and if they had not been in favor of my entering ordained ministry, it might call into question what they think of my performance in my current churchly duties. Anyway, with that hurdle down, I now get to prepare to meet the District Committee on Ordained Ministry in early September to be certified as a candidate. Once I pass this process, I will begin taking classes, but here is the kicker, since I already have a Masters degree and some hours toward my basic graduate theological studies, I will already have all the requirements to become a probationary deacon. So, it is conceivable that in about three years, I can be completely finished with this process and be deaconing away.
The question was put to me: What will change in your ministry once you are ordained? And this is a good one and hard for me to answer, especially on this side of the equation. So, I will leave it for another day.
My class at the community college ended this week. I liked the class quite a bit. It was probably my favorite in a good while. Fun, no pressure, and nobody to be. It looks like my class for the fall has made, so I will be teaching a whole new slew of children, and they are mostly children, considering they were all born around 1990. People keep popping up from the past to remind me that I am only 2 years from my 20 year high school reunion.
Thursday I had what might be the worst experience of my life this week. A few weeks ago, Misty signed up for a $500 gift card at the Home Depot. What she did not know was that in order to qualify for the prize, you had to set up a time to let this nut from a water softening company come test the water at your house and present their system. Well, he said it would be about 45 minutes. It was like going through the time share spiel all over again. Both of us had to be there or he would have to come back another time. Not thrilled to say the least. Granted, we will get a whopping $20 gift card for our trouble. I make a good bit more than that an hour when I teach privately, so I was really not happy to sit there for over an hour and a half for a measly $20. We told the guy "no sale" and then he gave us a better deal and we said "no sale." One more time, and I told him to leave and respect our time. He left. I hate confrontations, especially in my own home. Later that night, we went to Hobby Lobby to get some things to help organize our new coin collection that Misty's dad gave us when the girls went back to Texas in June. We bought I nice trunk and some other coin organizers and got to work on the collection. It was kind of fun and reminded me of doing the same kinds of things with my father when I was a child. We would go to coin stores, flea markets, and other such places in pursuit of nerdy delight. It is funny that we would go to these flea markets that also sold bongs and other drug paraphernalia and I was blissfully ignorant of their presence. I probably would have tried to cast the devil out of them. Dear God I was uptight.
So, Friday we slept late and took a trip to Destin. We stopped for lunch at P F Chang's. Very happy. I got a coupon in the mail so we went to the Polo store and I bought a couple of things. The girls got some shoes. We went to Target and then to Angelo's Steak Pit (I love saying that) for dinner. It was a good way to spend a rainy Friday. Hopefully we will have some sunnier weather tomorrow so we can go to the beach. This is our last weekend before Misty starts back to work and I have weddings and other such events each weekend for the next month, so we want to make the most of it.
And last but not least, I started running again this week and I have been very diligent so far. I was needing to start back for some time. I think I gained a few pounds over the summer and I want to make sure that I do not allow myself to get to far gone. It is my best trick, getting fat. The good thing is that I can still wear all of my thinner clothes which is nice. And, even better, I have been able to stay pretty close to the same weight for over 18 months. Sadly, this is probably the longest I have had weight stability for that long. But, besides all this, within the next year I will need to have a real physical examination and I would rather be on the lower end of the scale than the higher end when I go to the doctor. I want my baseline to be as low as possible for me. My mental health is much better when I am running, I should remind myself of this when I fall off the wagon. Or maybe someone else should remind me . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment