Time?

I''ve spent part of this past week trying to figure out where the time has gone. I've been here three months. My three month review is being turned in this week. I've already started planning on when I'm doing my six month review with my committee. My family is coming on Wednesday. I'm preaching on Wednesday. A random email conversation I started a month ago has turned into a great, unexpected friendship including being adopted into a new group of friends. I'm already planning on when I need to come home in January/February to get my license renewed. So needless to say, I'm not quite sure how it all happened.

And I guess I'm not surprised. I knew this year was going to fly. But it makes me sad. I don't know this for sure but I pretty sure that I'm not going to be ready to leave in 9 months. I know I will need to go back and take the classes, put in the work, do my CPE, and everything else needed to prepare me for my first call. But I feel like a year is so short, especially at a place like this where I've made some great friends and built up a good relationship with this church. I feel like there is so much more this place to can still teach me and a year is just not going to be enough. But I guess it has to be.

I think what's made this hard is not only the fact that time has flown by but that this has been one of those weeks where I knew that this is exactly what I want and need to be doing with my life. I've felt the Holy Spirit work in my life in ways I never expected. I led a mini-healing service this past week for one of my classes. I had been a part of one I had preached at right at the very beginning here but I'll be the first to say I have no idea what I was doing. But somehow, it worked. I spoke and the words came from the Spirit, there was no other way of explaining it. And I saw prayers being answered in a very concrete way as one of the first people I visited in the hospital on what was originally a cold call (visiting someone I didn't know) being discharged. And ministry is filled with ups and downs just like any other job. So maybe the next part will be a down swing (I really hope and pray it isn't because I preach next week, gulp!) but somehow the ups always make the down part worth it.

And you know, I've been thinking of that Thessalonians verse lately, "Be joyful always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." So here's hoping and praying that in my next nine months here I have more weeks like these and also those that are the complete opposite. Each gives me a chance to grow. And I also hope that in the end I can be more thankful for what I have experienced than sad about the fact I have to leave.