A New Year

For all intents and purposes, a new year has begun. The longest day and the lowest sun are behind us.

I did go to the Blue Christmas service tonight. It was a disappointment, which was a surprise to me, because the pastor leading it is a skilled and experienced counselor and caregiver. But she rushed headlong into reassurance and hope, and preached a sermon about God's enduring presence.

One first needs to take the time to acknowledge the loss and sadness and the very real experience of God's seeming absence.

And that verse about "all things work for good . . .". Seriously? Let's not use that one with people in so much pain that they are willing to leave their homes a few nights before Christmas to go to a worship service with a group of strangers.

Well. I am going to put that service into the category of "last year."

In my personal last year, I have dealt with the continuing fallout from my son's death by suicide, the very serious health problems of someone else close to me ~ unblogged and unbloggable ~ and my own little cancer scare last month (I'm fine), which caused a couple of blips on my radar screen but, in the face of my son's death, barely registered overall. (Honestly, I am so absorbed by that loss that I'm not sure I would notice if I died myself.) I finished another year of seminary, I more or less finished my training as a spiritual director (still some loose ends to tie up, but the ball's in someone else's court), and started my stint of field education in a church.

I'm not doing much of a job of studying for the ordination exams, which is unlike me, but I don't feel terribly motivated. What seemed so clear two years ago now so ~ isn't. It wouldn't be a terrible thing to fail one or more of the exams next month, which would push my whole process into next fall and give me some space. I'm very glad to have gone back to seminary when I did, and to have spent this time learning with my friends there, but I'm not wanting to feel pressure toward the next thing, whatever it is.

I have come to one new realization over the past few days, and perhaps it means that my "ministerial voice," which has gone underground since Josh died, is beginning to re-emerge as something new. What I have come to understand is that I have a whole new freedom to listen and to speak to loss ~ partly because I have been to a very scary and seldom-traveled place, partly because I know how isolated and in need of companionship people in that place are, and partly because it has stripped away whatever fear I had about looking into the face of death and of terrible, terrible sorrow, and of saying what I see.

It's an odd place in which to find hope for my future.

(Image: Here.)