A plan for the future

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As the number of weeks until my final acts as an itinerant Methodist minister enters single figures, I realise just how uncharted the territory ahead seems.


Our new home near Scarborough will be my 25th place of residence. The 24 so far have had one thing in common, they were never likely to be a ‘forever home’, not least because itinerant ministry means each new job requires moving home. Though once again we must move on, this time it might just be the final time we have to strike camp and set off to a new place.

Looking beyond where I lay my head, I am however very much experiencing something new. Throughout my adult life there has always been a clear next step and it has begun to have shape long before the actual move. From school to university, to teacher training, to teaching jobs, theological college and then the discipline of Methodist stationing. At each stage I have had some idea of what I would be doing, and the diary has begun to form long before hitting the new ground. This time, apart from two residual tasks, the diary pages stretch ahead almost totally empty. Even the recurring Friday entry ‘day off’ has been deleted!

I am asked often, ‘how does it feel?’. The truth for a while now has been that it has felt unreal. But, just in the last few days I have begun to experience a sense of burdens being lifted and an excitement growing as the horizon expands. My natural impatience sometimes serves to frustrate me – ‘I want to do everything now’ – but there is a real buzz in knowing that I can choose what and when I do things.

There is also something about this moment which comes as no surprise, but leaves me feeling a little sad and mourning opportunities lost. I have reached the point of handing things over to others, which in itself is liberating, but more significantly I find that I am not constantly trying to please others and as an unexpected consequence am finding energy and enthusiasm for the role I am leaving behind. This Sunday I even managed to preach a vaguely coherent sermon, feeling that after many weeks of ‘preachers block’ I did have something I wanted to say!

All this of course is a reminder that I have been suffering from ‘burn out’. The cause being finding myself repeatedly ploughing through tasks which are energy sapping, rather than energy giving.

So onward to a future yet undefined. It will involve some paid work (I hope), but also the one certain thing in the plan is to build and equip a workshop, where I can give old things a new life, including me!

 

This blog of course arose out of my passion for house design and builders’ sales literature. The house we are moving to is less than three years old and I have been searching for the publicity material used at the time of building. I had almost given up hope when after many searches it popped up on an obscure website. I cannot describe the joy that brought! So, I do after all have a ‘plan of the future’, of the homes and streets in our part of Cornelian Fields which are all avian themed. We will live in The Falcon.

The Falcon

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