Tuesday, November 9, 2010

This is hard!

Sorry I've been away for so long. I promise I will still blog about my learnings from the sabbatical. It just takes a while to process so much information.

In the meantime, I've been back to work for a little more than a week now. I'm not sleeping as soundly. My breathing is punctuated by heavy sighs. I'm seeking out calming music in my iTunes. Tonight I bought a bottle of Arizona RxStress tea. This is not an easy transition. I am trying hard to use some of the tools and skills I learned at Iona - exercises with a labyrinth, praying while holding prayer ropes or stones (I have a stone from the beach at St. Columba's Bay on Iona, one from our renewal of the baptismal covenant in Israel, and one that a friend gave me that says "Hope" that I use in rotation, depending on my mood.). I am trying to remember that it is not my church but Jesus' church, and so to listen to him on what to do, instead of fretting and sweating and stewing about it myself. I've been down that road, and I know where it leads.

So I can say it is good to be back among the people of CPC, but I am not quite ready to say it's good to be back. In fact, it's really hard. But I'm taking my friend Kenneth's advice that someone gave him when he returned from his sabbatical: Take it easy at first, and promise not to quit for the first thirty days.

Prayers are always welcome.