I don't know what to talk about.....

 

I don't know what to talk about anymore. Well I kind of do, but it's been a bit weird not having the events of the work days as a topic of conversation. 

At the beginning of my sabbatical I went to a retreat centre where they specialise in exhausted ministers or ministers in crisis. I didn't fit the second category but I did fit the first. Arriving at a place where nobody was asking anything of me apart from to take care of myself and a small bedsit type room in the middle of beautiful countryside was the best thing I could have chosen to do at the beginning of my long pause. I was exhausted there was no doubt - I was carrying shopping baskets under my eyes the size of trolleys and my head was all full of stuff. 

The place I stayed had a few rules, but not the ones you'd expect. You were not allowed to ask people what they do or where they are from. You had to talk about other stuff instead. The rule is designed to protect those for whom any mention of work or the place they live or theology even might trigger in them the thing that they are trying to find rest from. We were encouraged, if we met anyone, to talk about books or music or what we had seen that day. I actually hardly talked to anyone whilst I was there - the person working in reception who showed me around was the main conversation I had. I actually didn't really talk to anyone for about two weeks. I found it much easier than I expected..... and I just about managed to switch off. 

But, then, once I began to see people again, my thoughts and words flew to what I do and what is happening at church whilst I am not there. At the beginning of the pandemic my life was only work - there was no opportunity for other kinds of fun - and so what I was doing became completely what defined me - and it has become a lot of what I have talked about as I sought to navigate the rocky road of covid with my church family. What I have been doing has been by main topic of conversation.... and as I have walked through the last month or so I've got quieter I think, because I haven't needed the words to explain who I am. Who I am is simply me. Who I am is simply who God made me to be ..... and I'm finding I am having to rediscover that. 

God didn't make me as someone who never stops. He didn't make me as someone who wakes up every morning and worries about the day. He didn't make me as someone who is always thinking about the next thing. He didn't make me as someone who finds herself overthinking every thing she has said. He didn't make me as someone who needed to keep doing more and more to make something of myself, because he has already made something wonderful in me. 

Our need to define ourselves by what we do means that we miss finding our identity in who we are - and who we are - I believe - is who God made us to be. He calls us to be faithful to his call, not the competing internal and external voices of the other demands in our lives, not in the way the person up the road ministers to their church or does their job, not in the way other people think we should be.

It is when we sit closer with God we find our identity. 

As I rediscover my passions and joys in life (a lot of that is actually work - I am beginning to miss it, I'll have you know...) I'm rediscovering who I really am in God's eyes, and I'm finding more new and old, interesting and mundane, slightly bizarre (I've been reading about clandestine marriage in the 18th century - let me tell you all about it if you've got the time) and random things to talk about. I am learning about my passions, about what makes me tick, about how to find joy in the every day and how to appreciate the world around me better. I'm learning how to chat to God about life and not just about work again, and I'm rediscovering what it means to live fully as me. 

And that..... that can only be a good thing.