For 26 Summers

I'm not exactly sure what direction this post is going to take--it may be a rambling ride! I've thought a lot about "seasons" lately, and how our lives seem divided into seasons--sometimes literally by the weather patterns (ie: fall usually means back to school, winter--in Seattle at least--meant lots of time in coffee shops with friends or good books etc), or sometimes by the stages of life we go through. This is my "season" to be working on my master's degree, but I've also come to realize that this is my season of discernment, of inquiring into what it means to be a pastor, a season of growing pains as I adjust to a new identity and as I come to see myself as a pastor. We also have seasons that sometimes seem to be defined by our emotional state at the time--seasons of intense joy that might come with an engagment or planning a wedding, seasons of grief, seasons of healing from physical or emotional trauma. And sometimes, we are just in a season of waiting. I remember the spring before I had really gotten the answer from God as to what seminary or grad school program I was to pursue, I was living in Seattle and working as the children's intern at my church and one weekend I was on a retreat with some of the other Sunday School teachers. We were listening to the story of Jonah and were asked where we saw ourselves in that story, and I remember saying that I felt like I was sitting in the whales stomach just waiting for God to move, to make things clear. And He did, eventually, just not necessarily on my time table! I think Solomon was right when he wrote that "for everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven." And I think that sometimes we don't always know why we are in a specific season or have to go through a period of life. I was playing around on the wonderful world of myspace the other day and came across a new fabulous artist on a friend's page. Vicky Beeching writes some unbelievable songs (and has an amazing voice in my opinion!), and one that struck me right away is called "Twenty Six Summers" -- probably because it is summer and I will be 26 at the end of it...Anyways....if you want to hear it you can visit my myspace page and have a listen. I love the lyrics because I think they perfectly describe how I am feeling as I've thought through the seasons in my life:

"I don't know what the future holds

or what lies beyond my horizon.

The years ahead are just out of reach,

I think sometimes that You hide them

So I will walk by faith, not sight,

So that I'll take Your hand

Holding tight...

Through 26 summers

and 26 winters

I've laughed in the spring time

and I've cried in the rain

Though I've questioned the meaning

of some of these seasons,

it's true;

Faith left me holding on tighter to You."

The other thing I am realizing is that I have somehow entered into a new "identity" this past year. I'm still me, but I realized today in a very concrete way that as I have embraced this season of developing into a pastor, God uncovered some gifts and areas of my life I didn't really realize were there. Today my small group met to have a time of "closure" that we didn't really get to have during finals week for obvious reasons! We decided to have a time of affirming one another, and specifically naming the gifts we saw being developed in one another this past year. This is actually the third time in the last month that I have done this activity with different groups of people, and it's something we used to do in college a lot, every time we ended a leadership team or a staff of some sort we would have a time of affirmation. Anyways, a few years ago, I used to be able to predict what people would say about me when it was my turn in the "hot seat." My "role" was always the staff or team encourager, the one who would always be behind the scenes doing anything needed to serve the team. That was the skill set I had and thought that was how I was going to function in any staff I was a part of for the rest of my life. Apparently I didn't quite understand what God had in mind. In the past month as I have done this activity three different times, the comments I've received have changed drastically since the last time I did this about 4 years ago. I have been receiving words of "leadership," "teaching," "shepherding," "confidence," "firmness," "authority figure," "preaching," "communicating," and "joy." The first time I started hearing some of these things I tried convincing the speakers that they were wrong, that those words don't fit me. I'm the girl who is always in the back ground, supporting and encouraging from behind. The thing is though, I don't think I am anymore. I think that is how I acted for a good portion of my life because I was insecure in who I was, but in the past several years I have been put (ok sometimes thrown) into situations that have stretched me beyond what I ever had imagined possible, and as I have had to grow into these roles, I have had faithful people come into my life at just the right time (ok I no longer think this was a coincidence!) to specifically name the gifts they thought God was developing in me, and to walk with me through the seasons of "growing pains" as I continued to grow into the leader they all believed God was calling me to be. One woman told me recently "you don't get to hide behind the scenes anymore, you've been called to the front, and you need to now walk forward with confidence that God will equip you to do whatever it is He is asking."

I don't write all of this to say "see what cool compliments my small group and leadership teams have given me?!" I really am still in a season of wrestling with this new identity--who am I created to be, what role am I being prepared for, what ARE my gifts and how are they going to be used? I love that I am in a safe place to do this wrestling, and that I am at a wonderful church that lets me try out some of these gifts while making mistakes. It is just a crazy season of life is really all I can say! My good friend from high school, Jenn, and I created a saying when we went to college, that college was "weird." Everything from living with strangers, to sharing a bathroom with 40 other people, to the food runs at 2 am, to the moving in and out of buildings every 9 months--it is just not a "normal" stage of life (wonderful, but not normal.) Well, I've decided that if college was weird, seminary is crazy. Wonderful, fabulous, full of learning and wrestling and growing, but nonetheless, a crazy season of life unlikely to be duplicated anywhere else!