Hebrews 9:27 states, ” it is appointed for men to die once.”
My dear friend and ward Grace passed from this life into eternity last night. I had just visited her in the morning. She was tired and a bit confused but we had a nice visit before she went off for a midmorning nap.
Is this grief I feel? It is not sadness really. I find it hard to be sad for her. I know where she is now and I know she has entered into a new life, an eternal life, which she had lived all of this life waiting for.
I feel an empty space in my heart where a connection once dwelt. It is a connection I had for nearly forty years. It is a connection I know I will have again when I make my own journey to where she is. But it is a connection that for now is severed. If that is a sense of grief, then I guess I am grieving. It is: A divine sense of emptiness; A reminder that God is brining us into a spacious place if we follow where He leads; Not sadness just an empty sort of hope and joy.
I wonder, what angel came to take Grace home? What was her first glimpse of Heaven beyond the veil of Earth? What is she feeling now in her new body in her opened mind? I doubt she is living with any sense of emptiness at all.
Isaiah 51:11 KJV
Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.
My life statement is , slow constant and intentional. I have trouble keeping my life between those goal posts. I have always thought that is mostly because I fill my life with too much. I have always thought that this fullness of schedule makes me end up going too fast. I often feel I have to rush because there is so much to do. This makes me lose the ability to be constant. Intentionality also suffers .
In prayer I was asking the Lord to teach me how to slow things down a bit. In answer I heard this line from Star Wars
It is Yoda rebuking Luke for letting his mind run too fast., Yoda says, “All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, hmm? What he was doing.”
Sooo…..Slowing down means taking in where I am and what I am doing? It involves learning to stop thinking ahead to the next thing and learning to be present in what I am doing?
Today was another trip up to Claremont, to see Grace. Usually I let myself feel rushed: Hurry Up, (pray along the way), visit, Hurry back (pray on the way back). I usually squish grocery shopping into the drive back and then when I get home I go quickly on to next thing.
Ashuelot River, Gilsum NH
I have wanted for several months to turn one of these trips into a photo trip, but I always feel too rushed to do it.
Ashuelot River, Gilsum NH
Today I decided to fight those feelings and to just stop for picture taking. In fact I INTENTIONALLY DECIDED to make several stops.
House in Unity
I learned something. Slowing down and stopping in a planned way did not really significantly change the time it took to accomplish my visit to Grace.
Sullivan County Health Care under construction
Slowing down did not really change my schedule. But it did challenge my attitude. I found the urge to rush was not actually time bound but emotion bound. My schedule was not rushing me my heart was. The problem was not an external scheduling issue to be solved. It was an internal mindset to be torn down.
Stone wall and old barn in Claremont NH
All day long I kept finding myself trying to rush to the next thing and I had to fight to keep my mind and heart from looking to the horizon away from where I was and what I was doing.
Church in Lempster NH
I am wondering if slowing down is about retraining my brain instead of rethinking my schedule.
WHAT DO YOU DO TO SLOW DOWN YOUR MIND WHEN YOU CAN’T SLOW DOWN YOUR SCHEDULE?
The ancient Chinese proverb says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
It is very true. I don’t have a lot of time everyday for the jobs that need doing around the Vicarage. I do have a little time everyday to take a single small step. Yesterday I took the small step of cleaning the sitting area of the front porch.
WHAT SMALL STEP ARE YOU TAKING TODAY TOWARDS YOUR GOALS?
As an instrumentalist I always struggled with timing. The instruments I chose to play did not help me with my timing at all. As a worship leader I was famous for slowing down fast songs and speeding up slow songs. I guess it became kind of my hallmark.
I have trouble keeping a constant rhythm in this life. Again my chosen vehicle for maintaining rhythm in life is probably not helping. Ministry is a constant switching up of rhythms. Each day is different in workload and pace: Yesterday I cancelled staff meeting, had lunch with missionaries and taught a group of young boys about Easter in the evening.
Today I am shoring up, the services I have for the rest of the week, my afternoon meeting cancelled and I am off tonight.
Tomorrow I have a meeting in the morning, in the afternoon and at night
Friday I am taking a three hour drive up to Claremont and back to visit a parishioner on hospice and then I have a medical appointment for my mother
Saturday I have a seminar in the middle of the day and have to get ready for the first preach of our new series on Sunday.
Each day comes with its own rhythm and so I find myself constantly trying to create new anchors for standard practices.
. I have figured out my morning schedule pretty well.
My afternoon and evening schedules…..well they are a work in progress.
I think what I struggle with is decision fatigue. The later in the day it gets the harder it is for me to decide how to maintain a rhythm once it gets knocked off kilter. Once a rhythm is blown it takes me hours, sometimes days to get it back into a semblance of order.
A good example happened on Monday. I had a funeral.
Performing funerals is a rhythm unique to my work. Monday is usually my day off, but when a funeral come,s a funeral comes and days off get switched up, rhythms get shifted. This funeral came between 11 A.M. and 1 P.M. followed by men’s group at 7 P.M Usually I have off from Sundays afternoon until Monday evening.
I handled the initial rhythm shift well. But I was not prepared for how it would back me for the next days. Since Monday I have been having difficulty keeping my rhythm steady. I am finding myself suddenly changing course or plans midstream, getting distracted, losing focus, making decisions too fast or too slow. Saying yes when I should say no and saying no when I should say yes in a number of little business and ministry circumstances.
This morning in my early morning prayer time I sat before God and said, “God I realize I have temporarily lost control. Help me to begin anew. I can’t seem to get my rhythm back on my own so help me.”
Prayer is always answered. He is helping. My writing this blog is evidence that a rhythm has been restored.
WHAT DO YOU DO TO RESTORE LIFE RHYTHM WHEN IT GETS OUT OF WHACK?
It is funny how we have come to rely on these little devices for so much of life and how much of an inconvenience they can cause when they don’t work the way we want them too.
I like to talk to my family in the morning on a group messenger call. I don’t get to every morning but at least every other day I like to try. Normally when I travel up to see my ward Grace, in Claremont NH, I don’t have service so I usually miss those days of chatting with the kids and my sister.
Since Grace has gone on hospice, I try to make the trip to see her every Friday religiously (pun intended).
Last Friday I discovered that the towns just North of our town border must have put in a new cell tower, because I got reception for a family call all the way to the border of Keene NH.
This morning I initiated the family call. Sadly whatever cell tower was working last week was not working this week because I lost the call about one mile past the border of Winchendon.
Well, that wasn’t the whole of it. When I got back to town and finally regained reception, I somehow butt dialed a whole Bible study group from the church on a call that lasted five minutes before I noticed it.
I never thought I would be a lead pastor. I was very content as an assistant. I always felt called to the pastoral lifestyle…the prayer ministry…the study….the preparation of sermons…the visitation and actual pastoring of the flock…navigating the supernatural move of The Holy Spirit… spiritual warfare. All of that felt like a natural fit for me. As an assistant those were the focuses of my work.
As a lead pastor I knew I would also have to assume leadership in the business end of the church’s work….The managing of staff… the balancing of budgets…the care of the building and property of the church. These felt like less of a fit. In spite of that I knew that when our last lead pastor left, I was being called to let my name stand for the position.
I let it stand.
I became the lead pastor.
It came with increased spiritual work.
It also came with three building projects which had been waiting in the wings for some time. The time has nowcome to address these projects as I reach my second and third year….the time when, according to my mentor, ministry really begins for a lead pastor.
The projects, we at Cornerstone, have affectionately named:
THE PINK
A tip of the hat to our Pepto Bismol-colored and very worn sanctuary rug.
THE STINK
A longstanding and undiagnosed smell that comes seasonally to our church building.
AND THE SINK.
The term we use for our pothole ridden parking lot.
THE PINK, we dealt with last summer with the help of a congregant who is a contractor.
Well, the chairs are still pink but the carpet is no longer a tripping hazard.
THE STINK, has a diagnosis in a rotted and pitted pipe in the floor beneath one of our bathrooms and soon will be dealt with.
THE SINK is a bigger need which we are beginning to deal with as we gather the quotes and prepare to contract with a paving company.
God is funny. He has chosen me to lead the church through this work. I have no inherent ability in running a business and certainly no ability in the building trades (in fact my inability is legendary among my parishoners). Nevertheless, here I stand!
Here is what I am learning about this end of pastoring:
Prayer is as helpful in directing the more earthy matters of the church as it is in directing the spiritual matters of the church.
I do not make any of these decision alone. God has made us a church and He has raised up a very talented leadership team in this church. He has placed voices schooled with the wisdom we need for each of these works.
Absolute agreement is not needed to move forward in the work of God. What is needed is unity and those two things are very different.
Mistakes can and will happen along the way. They are as important as the successes and have much to teach us as a church body.
God loves irony. He also loves putting His people in positions where they learn that what seems like irony is really just spiritual growth potential.
I had a board meeting with my deacons yesterday and one of our talking points was about the work of preparation God has been speaking to all of us about especially in light of what some of our sister churches are facing this Spring throughout the United States
Here Spring is coming in gently. I cannot imagine what it is like to pastor this Spring in Rolling RockMS Or Little Rock Arkansas or Nashville TN. My prayers are with those congregations as they face their incredible challenges. I am also praying that God helps us in, this gentler season for us, to prepare for whatever difficulty may lie ahead.
Our own thirteen hours blackout a few weeks ago during the ice storm showed me the need for us to obtain a secondary heat source for The Vicarage.
And the need for emergency packs has also begun to speak to my heart.
All those things aside, I am turning my eyes away from those things today to Sabbath myself (another very important aspect of personal preparation for what lies ahead). So today I am watching the Spring birds. Flocks have come to my feeders.
I have two flocks that visit daily on opposite sides of the property. The morning flock is between twenty and thirty birds and the afternoon flock is between forty and sixty birds. My soul is refreshed as I watch these troops converge on the house as I read the Scriptures and write down thoughts that have been waiting days to meet the page.
HOW ARE YOU PREPARING FOR THE SPRING AND SUMMER SEASON?
Yesterday I wrote about decision fatigue. Writing does help me get what’s inside out so I can look at it from a different perspective. As I thought about what I wrote yesterday a few thoughts kept rolling around in my head:
I FEEL OVERWHELMED BECAUSE I AM NOT GIVING MYSELF ENOUGH TIME TO RECUPERATE FROM THE WORK I DO, ESPECIALLY THE EMOTIONAL WORK. I NEED TO GET BETTER AT PRACTICING SABBATH.
I AM ALREADY AUTOMATING LOTS OF MY DECISIONS TO HELP MYSELF, BUT I DO NEED TO GET BETTER AT PRACTICING THE DECISIONS I AUTOMATE.
I THINK A PART OF PRACTICING SABBATH IS TAKING TIME TO STOP AND “CLEAN THE GARAGE”.
I don’t have a garage, but having an actual garage is not necessary to practice “cleaning the garage”. Cleaning the garage is a term I heard from a men’s lifestyle teacher, Neil Kennedy. Neil teaches that when a man is overwhelmed one of the keys to dealing with the blinding stress that comes with the overwhelm is to assert control over some area of his life. It doesn’t have to be the area or the thing that is causing the overwhelm. Just the act of organizing and controlling some aspect of his environment creates a sense of calm that helps put life back into proper perspective.
I think part of sabbathing for me is going to involve “cleaning the garage”. Doing and completing some task that betters my environment will help me to regain and maintain focus in the midst of the many decisions that lie before me.
Flocks of grackles and starlings are visiting my feeders once again. The air is filled with birdsong. The world is waking up.
In the midst of the waking world I have a side lawn that needs to be planted, and a giant pile of fieldstone to turn into stone walls and stone planters.
There is a rat warren to cement shut.
And then there is the other side of the house with all the overgrown gardens to prune and beautify. That should leave me enough garage to clean for a while as Spring springs into being.
Of course there is also the option to nap rather than clean.
My daughter says I need a real Sabbath. I do take one… sort of. I come home on Sundays after service and I try not to do anything other than my Monday devotional until Monday night men’s group.
Some weeks I do better than others. After last week, when I didn’t get the sermon done until Friday night, I got nervous. Since I already knew what I was preaching for this next Sunday I wrote the sermon on Monday which meant of course…no day off.
Yesterday I had staff meeting, came home to do bills and to work through my own health insurance options while also working on Grace’s next steps into the world of Medicaid. Then I got a call to attend the bedside of a man preparing for his eternal journey. So I decided to cancel my regularly scheduled evening meetings with other parishioners.
This morning I woke up to two e-mails pushing towards decisions for the health insurance and some changes around the Vicarage. Neither of them were pushy or terribly serious they just started the day on an emphasis of decision making before I had even had my first cup of coffee.
I have been learning in my NOOM app about decision fatigue. I know this is one of my issues. Too many decisions….Noom says one of the ways to deal with decision fatigue is to automate some of your decisions. Move them from the plate of conscious decision to automatic action. Things like: What to have for breakfast, lunch and dinner, The order of activities in the day, what clothes to wear.
I also think my daughter is right. I have to be much more intentional about building in a decision free day…a real sabbath. And I think I need to build some actual decision making/ planning time into my schedule. It is there I am just not using the planning time to its proper advantage.
HERE’S A QUESTION. WHAT ARE SOME TRICKS YOU USE TO INTENTIONALLY PLAN YOUR LIFE?
Notes From the Vicarage 