It is time for another episode of “Don’t Do It This Way” or as Amanda calls it “Without A Recipe”. This is one of the ways Amanda is keeping our congregation connected during the pandemic.
This was Amanda’s birthday addition. She made ice cream sundaes this week. While she was doing this, I was home making her cakes. I made her two favorite cakes (lemon and carrot) as a consolation for not being able to go to Pennsylvania (which was the plan pre-Covid-19).
Social distancing has changed the way we do church work for sure. That said church work still needs to get done. Tuesdays is still staff meeting day and we have continued to meet using Zoom tech. While it is called Zoom that is no indicator that our meetings are any shorter. Today we met for two hours.
I know most people think that pastors only work on Sundays and Wednesday nights, but nothing could be further from the truth. Our Tuesday meetings as a staff of nine cover a lot of territory, and there just is no way to shorten up the weekly business. I have actually been to weekly staff meetings which take up to five hours. One deacon board meeting I attended recently engaged us in six hours of business, and that was with us pushing things along.
Now with Covid-19 entering the discussion we have even more to talk about as we plan for the future. Like the rest of the country, we are looking forward to reopening, and discussions are being had on the regular about just how to do that, and of course when. Here in the North East we are bracing ourselves for a long haul.
All that to say Tuesdays- Meeting Days are busy days and sometimes I don’t really realize how busy they are until I take a look back at the agenda and see all we have done. For instance: The house started stirring this morning around 6 A.M. By 9 I prayed, ate breakfast with Amanda and Mom, walked all three dogs (which is something of a process as Mercedes is in heat), got ready for the day, got Mom’s morning supplies, fed the birds, washed a load of laundry, changed out my pillow cases and folded yesterday’s laundry. At 9:30 we found out that we lost a congregant last night to the disease (she had several other health conditions as well) . At 10:30 we found out another congregant was being sent home on hospice after a long battle with a series of health issues.
Then staff meeting. While Amanda and I had staff meeting, Brenda took some time and sat with Mom and then with the dogs who were beside themselves with heat. Then she did some writing in her study.
After staff meeting Brenda and I finished up some errands Amanda had started yesterday for an elderly congregant. Then it was back home for afternoon prayers and the afternoon dog walk (in the rain).
Brenda had an on-line meeting with an artist from the South and I made dinner for the house while Amanda got herself ready for youth group.
In the midst of all of this I have even had time to write! Amazingly, I have not felt rushed at all. I’m kind of marveling at that in fact, and I am wondering how it is possible that I do not feel half out of my brain. Maybe it is just the fact that most of this did not involve me leaving the house…..hmmm. Ok it is time to walk the dogs again because one of them is beginning to howl like a six pound wolf.- See Ya Soon!
So I haven’t posted here in a while. The skinny is that I have been keeping myself busy with distractions. Well, at least they are distractions now. You know how it is. Yesterday’s priorities can easily become today’s distractions.
A few months ago God told me He was going to be shifting my focus and that I would be entering a new season of life. In December He clarified that a bit with these words which have become my words for the year :“Shift focus to wonder.”
I guess I didn’t anticipate how hard it was going to be to shift my focus and to begin to concentrate on the new priorities God has given me. I also didn’t realize how much I have allowed other people to make decisions about what the important things in my life are. God warned me that people wouldn’t understand.
When Mom’s health took a turn, I understood that as the gateway to the changes. Everyone has been so supportive. It has been arranged that I should work more from home. Things have been put in place to make all that possible. Everything should be going so smoothly but I can’t seem to adjust to this new rhythm I am called to. The problem is me you see. I am finding it hard to say “No” to the things I used to say “Yes” to. I am having trouble giving up my freedom to use my time however I want to.
I was chatting with my boss the other day and telling him how I would love to join a certain committee in town, but that I really need to be careful of my commitments now. It made me kind of sad and yet at the same time felt like destiny was being unleashed.
I understand this is an exercise in crucifixion, a dying of a part of me that has to die. Yet I miss this free part of myself everyday and so I keep resurrecting it.
I know I must decrease so that He might increase. I must surrender my plans so that His plans might be accomplished, but honestly I really loved my plans. And here’s the other thing. People don’t understand. They have gotten used to me following a certain pathway and being a certain way and pursuing life a certain way. I have revealed to them intrinsically over years…even decades that I consider my ministry to be a certain way and they don’t yet know that the ministry plan has changed. The world around me can do nothing else but encourage me to keep going after the same old plan. They don’t fully see that God has made a change and that a new plan exists for me…for the church.
My sister asked me the other day how she could help me make this adjustment and I honestly don’t know. I have to get the new rhythm myself before I can play it for others. I think my time with my Son and Daughter-in-law in the Philippines really began to clarify for me the size of the change which was upon me. I understand now it is going to take me a little while to figure it all out. I think I am becoming better every day with understanding and implementing the changes.
Here are two things I know:
QUESTIONS?
It was such a busy weekend at the Vicarage, I haven’t finished all the work it created yet…and it is almost Thursday. Part of that work is this post which I started writing on Monday morning and had to keep putting off until now.
The sad thing about getting behind like this is that life events don’t just stop so you can catch up. Oh no! They just keep rolling in so the work you didn’t get done when it was supposed to be done, keeps getting pushed back behind the work that you have to do today until saying things like “It was a very busy weekend”, really don’t matter because it is almost next weekend.
But I really want to tell you about the weekend we had here at the Vicarage.
Amanda started the weekend off when one of her friends who works at an adult dayhab in our area was burned out of her home. Amanda put out the call for clothing and essentials and spent a good deal of time gathering those items for delivery this week.
In the meantime Brenda left for a weekend tour of Connecticut. She performed her show, My Hiding Place, in Bristol on Friday night, taught a teen seminar in Greenwich on Saturday, and then preached twice on Sunday in Farmington.
Monday she started jury duty and got selected for a case she has been sitting panel for since.
For myself, I have been holding down the home front. Saturday our artist’s community set up an art show at one of the local libraries.
Sunday of course was church and then housework. I think I did something like nine loads of laundry this week! Of course none of us including the people who stayed here in Massachusetts have yet recovered fully from our trip to the Philippines. Some things have changed with Mom since we left and that leaves us all a little worried about her health.
So we watch and wait and work and wonder what is coming next for the ministers of the Vicarage. In the end, we can only deal with things as they come along. All of us are learning to just live in the moment and rejoice in the busyness and the blessedness of serving God in it.
I awoke again this morning at 2 A.M. and finally rolled out of bed at 3. The dogs yawned sleepily as I rousted them from bed. Mercedes snorted at me with disdain as I put her in her crate so I could get ready for the day. Her white fur stuck out at indignant angles and she glared at me with the one eye which was not blocked by her wiry hair.
I filled the food bowl, got dressed and shuffled downstairs to finish getting the dogs’ breakfast and mine made. As I spooned the wet food into the dog dish and popped it into the microwave to warm (my dogs like a warm breakfast) I found myself wondering if I was ever going to get over jet lag.
It’s a week today and my days and nights are still reversed. I kind of thought I had it licked the other day when I stayed up until 1 A.M. to pray and then slept until 6:30 A.M. That is until noon rolled around and my body once again spontaneously shut down. It doesn’t really matter where I am when that happens. I just fall alseep!
That all said, this has been really good for me concerning this season of prayer we are having at the church. I have been able to go in at 11 at night and pray through until 1 A.M. without a problem. This morning I am in the church by 4 A.M. catching up on some writing until 5 and then I will pray until 7. No worries folks I imagine I will be taking a nap by 1 this afternoon anyway. Maybe this is my new normal.
We landed in Boston at 9:30 A.M. this morning. This girl was waiting for us at International Arrivals.
Well our trip to the Philippines is done. Now we are on the long trek home. We have arrived in Seoul South Korea. It is 6 A.M. Our flight leaves at 9:30. Time to pray!
Waiting in Manila for our flight to Seoul. Hour 11 and going strong.
Our last morning in Iloilo. We had breakfast with the kids one last time.
Notes From the Vicarage 