So, This is Where I Am

I've been miserable sick for most of the last month. I had a few days to start a huge pile of projects at the Red Cross and then drop them, because I was too sick to roll over. And while I was gone, my team there did all sorts of things without me, and it is the very best feeling. (It's weird, because I am just noticing this, but it's the very thing that happened at St. David's and the very thing that Sara couldn't understand.) Maybe I am weird, but the best feeling is the knowing that I am replaceable - knowing that life was happening before I stumbled along, and will go along after I'm gone, but if in my passing, that life became brighter, smoother, more compassionate and maybe even a little more understood. Well, then I have done what I was sent to do.

While I was sick, I went off my meds. It was unintentional, although I had always planned to do so this January. One year was enough, especially since I have been feeling dissatisfied and looking around for myself lately. It has been interesting - the light headed dizziness aside - to find my tears again. I just feel more even though I hadn't really noticed. I suppose if I fall into depression again, I will be ok if I have to take the medication my whole life, but it is good to know the difference if that is the case.

I supposed the best way to describe it is being present. I'm really good, and have put a lot of work into being good, at being present to whomever and whatever is in front of me. Not trying to change it, just paying attention to what is really there, and being really honest about what I think and feel in the moment. It is what makes it possible for me to have such tiny profound experiences. And those experiences are what make me feel alive - how I know I'm doing that thing I am supposed to be doing in this life.

So, I have a few things to finish up, things I started while I was having my breakdown, and that I owe at least a little bit of cleaning up my own mess. But things that were good to keep me busy even if they are not things that make me alive. Yes, the PTSA and the Red Cross have been good to me, but they have not fed me. They have not kept me whole, they have only kept me from spinning out of control. And I know, with absolute certainty that those things are not my calling. Still, I will give them a couple of months to clean up.

I went through all my books from seminary. I picked out all the books that pulled at my heart, and filled two bags (about a third of the total) of books that didn't move me. This is the second purge, the first was the congregational development stuff, which was perhaps a knee jerk reaction, but this time, it was a lot of old dead white theologians. I kept the things that teach, theology that is a bit quirky, my strange collection of books by and about other denominations, my Benedictine Rules, and collections of prayers. And from there, I am thinking about what I am going to do next.

That strange collection of things tells me that I am going to be a chaplain. So, I am going to do my CPE (clinical pastoral education); that thing that I couldn't/wouldn't make time for during seminary. I'm going to see about doing the year long residency, but I might have to do the summer internship first. I'll just have to see.