I guess it has been almost five years since I was officially an ordained minister.  Time goes by but some moments you are stuck in. 

Since the age of six I had felt a calling to be with people in all the moments of their life.  The happy, sad, regrettable, joyous. Most of my life that is what I did, even before I was licensed and ordained. My licensing interview was one of those holy moments in life. My ordination another.

The only other moments in life that rank that high are the birth of children and the adoption of some others.  My two master's degrees were good, but didn't compare to those.

My problem now - is I don't know how to get uncalled.  I am no longer ordained because of a life crash shall we say.

I guess I have waited the last five years for someone from my denomination to visit, to help me heal and to redeem my gifting, calling and passions.  Last Wednesday I guess I realized it won't happen that way, and as much as I have lived the past five years, I have still been on autopilot.  Coasting, waiting for someone to come and help me navigate back or forward.

There are things worse than silence.  There are sometimes moments of sharp clarity where you realize your naivete, despite your worldliness, your innocence.

God did not author this, nor a lot of other moments in life. I realized that a long time ago, with our free choices and personal freedoms.  We have a personal will that we cannot assign our choices to the will of a higher power.

My one son drove this home to me the night he disappeared.  It wouldn't have been so bad if he had been a brave son, or a son with his wits about him.  No this was a son, vulnerable and on a mission to nowhere - just away from the rule that he had to go to school.

Within a few hours I had conservatively 1000 people praying for his safe return home.  I totally believed God could turn him around and guide him home, though at most times he was directionally challenged.

Upon his arrival home, dirty, cold, hungry and bedraggled many hours later I asked him if he could not feel God telling him to come home.

Sheepishly he replied, "Yes mom, but I didn't want to because I knew I would still have to go back to school." WOW - it hit me like a ton of bricks what strong wills we have as humans - to go our own way - to do our own thing. No matter the consequences or the longing of our loved ones for the good in our lives.

I need to use my free will - to shake off this moment I have became immobilized on the phone. I had a faint hope the conversation would continue with some direction. In less than sixty seconds it wasn't dashed, it took a sharp turn to personal annihilation - I felt like a small child who had been left in a hot desert with ice winds and watching their father drive away, longing for him to realize the error and help.

"I told him I didn't really know you except to say hi at events and things." the context did not matter - it was the content that disengaged me from my lifeline.

I knew I did not know him well, but how could he not know me?  For many years I had shared many of the joys and sorrows of my life and ministry with this person alone. I had had to tell them all my secrets, in hopes of resurrecting an official calling.
I wasn't angry. I was beyond numb though.

In forward motion, and reverse scenes from the last decade of my life, moments of spiritual intimacy that I had shared my soul with him. It was like you feel at the end of the movie with Bruce Willis, "Sixth Sense" where all of a sudden everything makes sense.

But I became stuck without my permission, and was having a hard time shaking it off.

I had been out to pasture for the past five years, now however, I have had my oxygen line snipped and am floating.

 

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