In the Spring of 2018, I stepped away from pastoral ministry – which at this point, seems to be a permanent change in my life. It is a role that I had thought I would fulfill for the rest of my years. I suppose that it was never meant to be. Life is strange in that it throws us curveballs, especially when we think something in our life was meant to be a straight pitch. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like curveballs in life. You’d think by the time one gets to their 50’s, life would be mostly figured out and accepted with all its ups and downs. I guess some of us are different. We all manage life struggles in different ways based on our personality types. Some of us internalize things more than others. I’m one of those. A melancholy personality if you’ve read anything about those types (a Melancholy-Choleric actually). Extremely sensitive when things don’t go right or go as expected is one dynamic of the melancholic personality, but we are pretty self-aware too, which I think helps to navigate through troubling times.
These sudden changes in the course of our life often present an emotional chasm that somehow must be navigated across. I freely admit that I often, and especially at that particular juncture in my life, will stand listless, hopeless on the edge of an apparent gulf that that change presents to me. Fixated upon that unexpected shift, and wondering how life moves forward in another paradigm since I had grown “comfortably numb” (thanks for the phrase Pink Floyd) with that pattern of life, it becomes natural for despair, uncertainty, or other negative emotions to rise to the top. Sometimes our path is diverted by choice and sometimes it is not, but even during those times where our will ultimately brings the change to pass, it is often under a strong influence that ultimately persuades us. Convinces us. We must detour here. We didn’t know when we rounded the corner there was going to be a detour sign in the road with a construction worker flagging and pointing for us to go down this other road. Of course we could ignore to our own peril, but this other road we’ve never been on. It seems to go in a strange direction – at least at first. Would it take us where we needed to go. I imagine that we simply need to have faith in the moment that the signs are pointing us in the right direction.
Speaking of signs, I took a picture of the sign my church had out front as I left the driveway on my final departure from the property – you know the ones where you can change the message on them every week, right? The first phrase of the saying that was displayed said, “Accept what is.” Here is a succinct and profound message to all of us who struggle with the emotionality of those sudden, uncomfortable, and certainly undesirable twists and turns of life. Simply. Accept it. Willingly receive it. My friends, if we are to overcome those emotional, and trying events; if we are to navigate across those dark, uncharted valleys that suddenly arise in our life, then the act of the will must come in to play. We must willingly choose to move forward. Receive the change. Accept what is.
The second phrase on the sign that day said, “Let go of what was.” Holding too tightly to the past is a personal struggle. I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I look at old pictures, especially of when the kids were little, I find myself fighting back sadness. When I think about the way things were, and the way life was “back in the day,” I almost have to make sure I kick myself out of a tailspin of despair! Let go of what was. My kids are no longer little. My ministry career is no longer a thing. Those seasons, and that particular season are no longer a part of my present, but they will always be with me in my past. I just need to let them go from the clutch of the present, and cherish the positive experiences that I had.
Here’s the last phrase in that sign: “Have faith in what will be.” There is a verse of Scripture that says, “faith is being confident of what we hope for, convinced about things we do not see.” I suspect that many scholarly men and women can unpack so much more than I can here, and certainly there is a spiritual component as it relates to Christianity (and the remaining context), but I feel the essence of the writer’s message was to instill trust that there are possibilities in the future that are intangible to us today. Possibilities, experiences, and outcomes that shine a bright light into the otherwise “dark night of the soul” that we are experiencing. We need to have faith that the new path we are on is ok. That we will be ok. That life is still good. Batters still hit home runs off of curveballs! How? They had a lot of practice with other curveballs, and they just had faith they could hit the ball this time around despite how it was flying at them. Interesting fact – according to an article in Popular Mechanics, “Baseball Physics: Anatomy of a Home Run”, a curveball can be hit further than a fastball! Keep swinging the bat. Keep moving forward my friend.
Accept what is. Let go of what was, and have faith in what will be.