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So ordination is just around the corner.  We all have our invitations and the permission to mail them out as of this past weekend.  It has been a long, slow process that in hindsight got here quicker than I expected.  (It makes me wonder about obtaining a Master’s degree in something since it doesn’t appear to be too awful bad.)  And at times I wondered if I would make it through.  But I did and it has been good.

I never, never, never would have dreamed of this life path for myself.  I was kind of wild.  Sometimes a lot wild.  The lucky-I’m-still-here kind of wild!   The belief system I grew up with is undeniably different than the one I hold fast to now.  Some things I still firmly believe in and some I don’t.  I do not have the gift of foreseeing what the future holds and I am glad.  Some walks just have to be taken in faith.  Maybe all walks, really.

This picture I have is of me some twenty years ago.  I had no clue my path was to come to a sudden and unexpected crossroad.  It’s one path I would rather have not walked down.  I was happy there on the coast of California at Point Lobos Park.  If I only knew what was going to happen I don’t know that I could have changed the outcome.  But I do know that my outlook on life is drastically different because of it.  I know that I experienced something that made me change the way I think and feel.   It changed my very identity.   But not before it took me down a very long and very dark road.  Yet the whole journey allowed me to be who I am today.  It’s just another facet of what I have to offer to God.

So where my walk leads to is not something I want to foresee.  There will be that same joy and wonder in seeing it unfold before me much as seeing a rainbow, a waterfall, a storm, or even a natural disaster.  Life falls everywhere in between the rainbows and the tragedies.  If I knew what were to come I could not marvel over it as easily.  I would be too tempted to take something for granted, like I do the birdsong every morning.  On the days I slow down enough to hear them…. well, it is a grand and glorious time.  My private paradise.

Journeying into the unknown can also bring anxiety or fear.  I admit to anxiety right now.  I don’t know how I am going to accomplish whatever it is I will be needed to do.  I take with me a journeyman’s backpack of insecurity and lack of self-confidence.  I am not the most sociable of persons what with being private and reticent.  I do better, in my august opinion, with individual experiences.  But I could be wrong in my self-assessment.  I am wrong alot.  But I walk on with a Book of Instruction and a Spiritual Guide who cannot steer me wrong.

I wish I were wrong in the role I am about to take on.  Life would be so much easier if I could deny the call.  I abhor putting myself out there.  I detest any sort of limelight.  I wish this were not my life as I edge closer to retirement.  My idea of retirement was sunny beaches and a manicured-by-someone-else yard.  One dish, one fork-knife-and-spoon, no pets kind of life.  That was my dream retirement.  It’s not going to happen I don’t think.  Nope.  Not with a collar.  My friends have told me now I have to live to a higher standard.  I am hardly anyone to live up to anyone else’s standards.  I barely live up to my own!

I regret that some of those whom I care deeply about will feel hurt or rejected.  I dearly wish I could change that.  I wish I could have changed what happened twenty years ago too.  But I can’t.  It would be the easiest solution but not the right one.  I could hide right here, tucked safely away.  Only it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with Him.  But people being what they are… well, not everyone will see it that way from what I am told.  I am so, so sorry!  I will pray for you still in your pain.  Please try to understand I cannot live out my calling in guilt any more than I can live it out in fear.  And I walk boldly (by my standards) into something unknown.  Wish me well, please. Wish me Godspeed.  I am still right here though.  No further away than a short walk or a telephone call.  I love you still.  I carry you in my heart because you are my family.

It’s a strange new world out there.  It is bound to be filled with moments I can laugh or cry over.  And you are not living if you aren’t doing both of them.  And I have pledged to give my life over to Someone Else’s.  Which should bring plenty of surprises.  It certainly has so far.

I accept all prayers!  And soon I shall post a picture of me at this new crossroad.