I have just handed in two of the last three assignments of my ordination training and by Friday, when God willing I will have written 800 words on contemporary mission, it will be over. The last few months have been some of the most intense I can ever remember, with a series of major pieces of work to complete, an increasing amount of work for the Parole Board (what possessed me to volunteer for extra sittings in May and June I simply can't imagine) and the usual busyness in church. Not to mention making arrangements to let my flat and move into the curate's house in August.
Now, suddenly, the end of the assignments and the evening teaching sessions and the weekend residentials and the Saturday study days is at the end of the week -- the end of this week. All the rest will remain, but this whole strand of my life will be cut: a strand which has been running since the days of Mary the Regional Director (Central) of the (late) Greater London Magistrates’ Courts Authority (what a mouthful): the same Mary who alongside this ran a home for two or three adults and two sons and two cats. So I've never lived anything like the life I have now – carer for one cat, part-time mother of one half-resident son and intermittent contact and resource for the other (not that any of us love each other any the less that), Parole Board member and increasingly full-time church worker -- without that constant sense of guilt and pressure from impending assignment deadlines.
Way back when I first started this blog, in the spring of 2005, I was musing about who I was if I wasn't the Regional Director. Well there's an easy answer to who I am if I'm not an ordinand any longer, and I have three shirts (although Wippells call them blouses) shoved at the back of my wardrobe in case I forget. But it isn't the whole answer, and the next few months until ordination on 30 September, always assuming the Bishop approves it which he hasn't yet, are a strange limbo period. I need to try and remember the things I used to do before training took over. I need to get fitter and lose some weight now I haven't got quite as good an excuse any more for not doing so. I need to read some books which have nothing to do with church. I need to relearn to do nothing occasionally. I need to……
I may even rediscover how to blog with reasonable regularity… but for now I need to stop because the briefing for the final 800 word assignment has just pinged into my inbox and the sooner I get them written the sooner I can get on with the rest of my life. Back soon, possibly.
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