THIS POST IS WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO DAWN’S SPRING FESTIVAL CHALLENGE.
Well it is early Spring in New England. The temperature today is 30. With the wind it feels like 15.
The Vicarage is soooo ready for some warmth and some color.
Still there is hope.
Soon the world will be green again.
In the meantime it’s time to clean up from the winter
In my last coaching session I used a couple of similes to describe how my mother’s hospice care makes me feel. I said it makes me feel like Nemo at the edge of the reef staring out at the open ocean.
I also said it felt like the training wheels were about to come off of my bicycle.
In ministry, I have always struggled with not getting consumed by the expectations of others. It has been hard to navigate the waters of what other people think I should be doing as. minister. I have a problem with approval addiction.
Since I moved in with my mother over a decade ago, her health has been a concern and a governor for the amount of ministry I could do. As her health has declined over these last three or four years the ministry has become more governed. I have had to prioritize the things I really felt God telling me to do, THE FOUR THINGS, and let the rest of people’s expectations go.
Now as our family faces Mom’s passing I am faced with a question about how I will navigate ministry after her passing. Without her health concerns to guard, guide and keep me focused, will I fall back into old habits of being consumed by the ministry expectations of others? Will the old monster of approval addiction once again rear its ugly head and take control of how I work?
My coach asked me a good question in my last session with him: “What will be the new governors of your ministry work?”
I do worry about my ability to say “No!”
I do worry that my agenda will not be enough.
I know I need an intentionally thought out plan or I may just go back to…. old ways….old days.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS YOU USE TO KEEP YOURSELF FROM GETTING DISTRACTED?
Today I am preparing my heart for what passes as Sabbath these days. That will be tomorrow; So today I am making a list of thoughts I will be meditating on as I pass through my times of prayer on the morrow.
As 2024 began The Lord gave Cornerstone Church a directive we are calling the congregational sentence. It reads: “Prepare! Prepare! Prepare! Prepare you Spirit (come out of the decay of your strongholds). Prepare your Souls(Prepare to practice and feel compassion). Prepare your facility (your structures, infrastructures and plans). Prepare for the storm (Pray for action plan, Pray for a spirit of perseverance). Prepare your witness (know your gifts, earn the right to speak, build your relationships with those outside the church, build your example). Prepare your hope and faith (think hope, speak hope, act in hope). Prepare your love (love each other, love the people in your towns, love those who disagree with you, love through the doors that open).“
Over the course of the next several weeks these seven “prepare statements” will be broken down into 21 weekly devotionals. This is devotional number 8 in our series. It is entitled,
Prepare your infrastructures (your structures, infrastructures and plans)
There is a certain sense, when we talk about preparing our structures that we understand we are talking about very practical activities. We understand it means to clean our bathrooms before company arrives. It means to stock up on some extra groceries in expectation of guests. We can even understand the very practical nature of preparing our hearts to be more intentionally welcoming when guests arrive at our church door(make sure you introduce yourself to the new people). But what does to mean to prepare our infrastructures? What even is an infrastructure?
Infrastructure-the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities of a community.
In community/ church life there are three kinds of Infrastructures we are concerned with preparing:
As I have been in my place of contemplation during the days of my Mom’s hospice care, I have come to realize that as a minister I am focused on four things.
The first focus of this part of my work is prayer. By prayer I mean five to six hours a day of deep abiding prayer. It has become my call and when I miss one of my prayer sessions I feel it.
The second focus of this work is the study of the Word of God, the Bible, and teaching it.
The third focus of this part of my ministry, is congregational visitation. One of the directives I feel God has set for me is to sit with every congregational member in an order for the purpose of encouraging and giving spiritual direction. This is not hospital visitation or counseling it is not crisis intervention. I feel I will be writing more about my ideas concerning crisis visiting in the future. In fact I am making a note of it right now. Suffice it to say, that crisis visits are a part of my work but not a focus of it. My focus is just visiting and being in the lives of the church body. Being a rather severe introvert I am surprised by how much I am enjoying this focus of the ministry.
The final focus of my work just now is leadership development. My desire is to see a second tier of leaders raised up in Cornerstone to replace those aging out of leadership (including myself) and to fill the slots of growing outreach in the community.
As my coach says, “What you say ‘Yes’ to automatically makes you say ‘No’ to other things.” So this is what I need to say yes to. It is what I have been saying yes to during the last three years and as I launch into the deep beyond THIS NEW THRESHOLD, I feel like I will be saying yes to these four things in an ever increasing measure.
WHAT IS YOUR BURNING YES?
This week I am participating in SHARE YOUR WORLD as my blog community connection post. The questions and my answers for this week are below. When you have finished reading my answers feel free to go on over to Pensitivity’s blog and read her other subscribers.
THIS WEEK’S QUESTIONS:
1. What was your favourite pastime as a child? Pretending I was a superhero
2. Did you use colouring pencils, fibre tips, or wax crayons for your childhood drawings? I used crayons when I did draw or color, which was an infrequent occurrence. I was too busy pretending to be a superhero.
3. Did you use a paintbox or have a ‘magic’ book where you only needed to brush the page with water? I do remember these fantastic little inventions with my kids. I didn’t have one but I do remember having an etch-a-sketch.
4. What kind of books did you read as a child? I loved comic books! My Favorite was the Justice League and the Avengers.
When I was a bit older I would play hockey from school and stay home to read fantasy novels. I did that with the whole Lord of The Rings series and The Chronicles of the Unbeliever
MY GRATITUDE FOR THIS WEEK:
I am so grateful that my kids gave me and Brenda a day off from hospice duty yesterday to go furniture shopping and to see Dune II.
One of the things I do to “sharpen the teeth” of my leadership saw, is a monthly coaching session designed to help me talk through issues I am concerned about. In these sessions I do almost all the talking. The coach is my “thinking partner”. He helps me by asking questions regarding my take on the subject matter I am discussing.
These last two months the coach has asked few questions during our sessions. I have come ready to talk…a lot…. about…thresholds.
I realize that with the imminence of my mother’s passing, I am at one of life’s thresholds, one of those places where life changes from one thing into another.
From past experience I know threshold experiences can be jarring, even emotionally violent. Going back I can think of four or five threshold experiences: My Conversion
My marriage
My Father’s death, My divorce
Covid…
and now…this.
In the past I was mostly unaware that I was standing at a threshold. I was certainly unaware that with a little forethought I could have turned change into a self directed chance for the life God wanted for me and deeper fulfillment. I just kind of walked through the doors and let life play out in all its glorious confusion.
Don’t get me wrong with most of my thresholds I have ended up mostly where God wanted me to be. I am living the life He desires for me now. I think some of my thresholds were unnecessarily painful… maybe even entirely unnecessary. The past is past and the only thing it is good for is as a lesson. With this threshold I feel like I am Nemo at the edge of the reef getting ready to launch out into open ocean. There are many things I know this time that I have not known before. One of the those things is that as I near this threshold I need to be more intentional than ever before about how I intend to walk on the other side of the door.
WHAT ARE SOME LESSONS YOU HAVE LEARNED FROM YOUR THRESHOLD EXPERIENCES?
One of the things I have not talked too much about this year…or ever really I guess… is my weight loss journey. I have been on it for over a year now; so far I am further away from my goal than when I began.
I chalk that up to my current stress situation… Strange sleeping hours and weird eating schedules coupled with not enough water and a lot of emotional eating as well as eating the easiest thing to grab (like McDonald’s or pizza from my fav local pizzeria).
I realize life could stay like this for a while. I am now at the point where my belt doesn’t even fit comfortably.
I bought some suspenders the other day to get me through this TEMPORARY season of life.
I know I have to make some decisions that will get me going in the right decision, even if they are really small ones. in fact from my recent studies, I know the small maintainable decisions are the most helpful types of decisions, when trying to make significant lifestyle changes.
The small change that I am making today is to hydrate everyday. Specifically I am going to drink eight 8 oz. glasses of water everyday.
In order to do this I am going to stack my new water drinking habit with my well established prayer habits. I pray eight times a day…so now I will just add a glass of water to each prayer time.
From previous experience, I know that even small changes take a little while to turn into consistent behaviors…so the journey begins!
HOW DO YOU MAKE LIFESTYLE CHANGES?
Mom slept for twenty eight hours, waking only once for the bathroom and a bowl of ice cream, all of which she did with her eyes closed and a great deal of protesting. Even washing her face with her PCA was difficult.
Last night at family prayer we discussed our next steps, what the future might look like. We always have two of us “on shift” now at the house as Mom’s health fails further. We reviewed the hospice protocols with everyone and talked through what Mom’s funeral will look like according to her pre-planning.
Today, Mom woke up at about 8:30 and has been a bit more more wakeful. She has eaten a few bowls of ice cream and an egg with most of a piece of toast. She is also drinking again. The PCA says that the back and forth is to be expected at this stage of the hospice journey. But it does seem with each occurrence she slips a little further away from us. Even her “wakefulness” is different from what it was a week ago.
Amanda and I are on shift today. I have been sitting quietly with Mom as she naps and have begun going through old pictures.
The time is drawing closer, I think when we will need to be putting these pictures together on memory boards.
It is a bitter sweet time as I rehearse memories, retelling myself and the kids the old stories of our family in this place we call the Vicarage. It is a sad time. It is a sweet time. It is violent with inevitability and quiet with a rhythm that feels so deep…so poignant. I sense this quiet planning time is some of the most consequential time I will ever spend.
HERE ARE THE THOUGHTS I WILL BE MEDITATING ON THIS WEEK DURING MY SABBATH
Notes From the Vicarage 