24 hours to go

24 hours from now, we will be wrapping up my final church service as "Pastor Renata". 26 hours from now I will be driving to Sussex to begin my two weeks as piano player and band leader for the Exalt! choir, leaving my husband to deal with packing our apartment and getting us moved to Nova Scotia.

384 hours from now, give or take a few, I can shut down and REST, for the first time in three years. Praise God. Praise God.

There goes my worldview

Not really. But there was this poem I heard in high school, and remembered one line to this day. Apparently I remembered it wrong. For whatever reason, I looked it up:

Stevie Smith - Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.


Yeah. Anyway, I forgot what the poem was about. Because if I had remembered, I would have probably also remembered the line correctly. The line is "not waving, but drowning." And for years, I thought it was "not drowning, but waving".

That line (remembered wrong) has both inspired and encouraged me on many occassions. Many. I've thought about it and lived it. Yeah. So like I said - there goes my worldview.

Gross

Okay, so I still love Facebook - it's slowly fazing out email for my personal electronic communications. However, I don't much care for all of these new applications that are springing up all over. Now some people's Facebook's are starting to remind me of too many ugly MySpaces - cluttered, cluttered, cluttered. And I'm tired of getting a million invitations a day to this, that, and the other.

Life is just so hard, isn't it.

I found out on Friday that I am not just leading the band for Exalt! (the teen choir I'm travelling with beginning 14 days from now), but am expected to play the piano as well. This is gross, because I'm terribly rusty. I went to the church tonight, being far too bored to remain on the couch any longer (and hoping that the break in the "wow-I-need-to-puke-right-now" feeling would last a while), and with my mp3 player on max in my ears gave some songs a try. Wow. RUSTY. I figure if I spend every spare minute of the next 14 days working on Exalt! stuff, I'll be half ready to go. (Also gross - after 1 1/2 hours of playing, I was incredibly sore and my right arm was numb. This doesn't bode well.)

Today was the first day that I actually had to leave the platform at church. Thankfully, it wasn't in the middle of the ONE song I managed to half-sing, and also thankfully I have great team members who took care of it all for me. I can't believe how sick I am. I'm hoping that part of it (the barf-part) was just the flu, and it's on it's way out. The headaches and dizziness are a bit more of a concern, as they've been hanging on for over two weeks now. Gross. I have a CAT scan on Tuesday, and I'm waiting to hear back from my blood workk.

And no, I'm not pregnant. I promise.

14 days until I am officially no longer "Pastor Renata". I won't miss the politics, but I'll miss some of the people more than I think I'm really processing at this point. Once the crying starts, it probably won't stop. Gross.

"Be the Miracle"

I think God may have just changed my heart, and I felt the need to document it.

I just finished watching the 1995 adaptation of "A Little Princess". Now I'm one who will generally latch on to the first incarnation of story that I encounter and then unconsciously choose to dislike all the rest in comparison. So for awhile I was waiting for my favourite lines and favourite events from the Shirley Temple movie, but instead of being disappointed when they weren't forthcoming, I found myself starting to appreciate the screenplay as it was. While I'm sure I've read the book, I have no idea which movie is actually more true to the author's intentions. But all of that is, I suppose, beside the point.

In this adaptation, rather than Sara finding her father in the army hospital, the man who lives beside the school has taken him in. I found the transcript just now on IMDB:

[Randolph and his servant are at a military hospital, where Randolph has discovered that the amnesiac soldier there is not his son John]
Charles Randolph: All the hoping... you must think me a fool.
Ram Dass: Is it your wish to be wise, sahib?
Charles Randolph: I don't know. I suppose a wise man wouldn't have come here at all.
Ram Dass: But if he had, he would have looked more closely upon the soldier's face.
Charles Randolph: And what would he have seen?
Ram Dass: Pain, sahib. He needs to be cared for.
Charles Randolph: He's not my responsibility.
Ram Dass: A wise man would remember that this soldier was in John's regiment. If his memory returns... he might tell sahib what happened to his son. Perhaps sahib would learn that John is in British hospital now wishing a kind man would take him home... away from his pain.

And because he took responsibility for someone that was NOT his responsibility (and because Ram Dass had done the same in extending kindness to the thought-to-be orphaned Sarah) Charles Randolph was used to make a miracle happen. Sara was reunited with her father in the nick of time.

I want to be used like that. I want God to be free to work through me to bless the hopeless and helpless, and see miracles happen.

As I was watching this movie, I began to feel heavily the passage of time, realizing how much time I've wasted on selfishness and my own pursuits. And I made a decision that I pray God will help me live out - that starting today, and every day here after, I will be a blessing. In practical terms, once each day I will consciously speak or act in such a way that God can use to speak His love into someone's life. To not allow myself to climb into bed without knowing that I have BEEN JESUS to someone.

I'm entering into a new phase of life very soon, one that will be very different from the life I'm leading now. A life outside of vocational ministry. And as I had dreamed about what that might look like, I began thinking of beginning work on my ministry model for helping the disadvantaged meet their potential, of working on my MA in ministry leadership and eventually pursuing my doctorate in the same field. But in this moment I think that God is calling me to set those dreams aside for the time being, and take a season to not lead or prepare to lead, but just simply follow HIM. "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples: Love one another." "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me."

It's time to simplify. To leave my nets and go. Follow. And I can't think of a life more fulfilling.

They say it takes doing something regularly for a month to make it a habit. So for the next month I'm going to keep an online Blessing Journal and spend time seeking the Lord and reflecting in writing about the practice and the principle of being a follower. Thus, I probably won't blog here for awhile. Perhaps a weekly update, if anyone is interested.

For the record: I don't want this to be just a habit - I want this to be my life and breath and heart until my life is over and I'm out of breath and my heart stops beating.

"Be the miracle" is from Bruce Almighty, as you probably recognised. The theology of the statement seems kind of questionable, but I've decided it's not. God is in the business of miracles. And as Christians, we are supposed to be in the business of being the hands and feet of Christ. Makes perfect sense to me. If the world is hungry for miracles, it's because we're not doing our job; God has called us, he has chosen us. "Be the miracle". Day 1.

I learned some new words last night

And then I promptly forgot them all. The National Spelling Bee championship was aired live on ABC last night, and I found myself switching back and forth between it and "So You Think You Can Dance".

These kids blew my mind. They're in ELEMENTARY school, for pity sake!

I never really understood spelling bees, and never realized that ones for kids this small would have words that are incredibly difficult that no one has ever heard of. It didn't take me long to figure out how they do it, though --- they study etymological rules. So they can ask "What is the language of origin." Or, if they get a word that sounds like something else, they can ask "is that from the ______ root _____ meaning _____?" etc. Of course, that requires KNOWING the roots in different languages (like Greek, Latin etc.).

So, it was entertaining to watch. However I have to wonder if going to all of that trouble to learn etymology is actually going to enrich their lives and educational/career propects outside of the spelling bee world. It reminds me, though, that kids have a TON of potential to learn, remember and understand, and that they seem to be rarely encouraged to live up to it. I'm going to have to do a little research and find out if kids that go far in this are usually VERY gifted, or if some of them are just average and have worked at it.