Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Notes on a Tuesday that started early and is ending later than it should

Tuesday of a very busy week over here and things are chunking up pretty quickly.

Talk about chunking up, the internet here seems to be doing it's share to try to increase patience in me. Seems to come and go at it's own will, even with things mid post or download.

Father's Day is usually my favourite day of the year and I got to talk to the kids and that was great, but it was also a bit of a different day this year. My brother Jeff and his family came over and Dixie V. was over for Saturday night too. It was fun and we'll have a few memories to bring up in the years ahead. But it was also different and it feels like I missed something, but I don't know what...

It's a busy week too and like today I think I was done three meetings before nine am. Good people meetings to be sure, but it's nine pm and I am about toast. Tomorrow is more good people meetings and then it's time to get ready for the weekend.

Oh yeah, tomorrow. Tomorrow I believe is my co-workers last day here. Sigh. She's retiring from youth ministry and that's never easy especially if you want to stay and be a part of the community. How do you cut what relationships with what kids? That's a hard one. And whatever the kids say, I'll miss her most of all. I've only been here a year and a half, but we've talked through and shared a whole bunch of years of history and life in that short time.
Nope, I'm really going to miss her here. It's already so much quieter...

Tonight to sort of cheer myself up I bought a months worth of VPN. Think Internet access to Hulu, and Pandora, and British comedies, all from my home in Canada which isn't normally able to access those treats. Well it seems like my internet pipes going out of the field won't allow the pipe or tunnel to be created. Dang.

Maybe I should just go to bed.


I know that a couple of you are hurting a good deal tonight because, well, people are selfish and life can sometimes have that sucking noise as everything good is sucked out of your insides. It is the deeper and truer thing that we do to sit with our pain and not push against it in ways that just create greater pain for ourselves. Nor is it wise to deny it and create a lie that all is well anyways. The greater and more difficult way is to let the pain have it's way with us. To sit with it and not rush it's leaving. Not to wallow in it, but to let it be, for a time. To sit with others who understand and can be silent while you sit. This is a grace, and I promise, a way forward.

And I'm praying for you this night.
Peace to your souls.



From The Field.

4 comments:

  1. Hey Randall,
    Too bad you are all out there in the field, and not here in the city. I would die for a ministry job in a nice little church where English is the language of the day. You spoke about what was missing the other day. There you have more space to fill. Fill it with something wise and useful.

    Take care.
    Jeremy

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  2. Sleep and rest well my friend.

    As for VPN, it's the most bandwidth-hungry for minimal return form of internet communication I've ever seen. If you want to stream TV shows over a VPN tunnel then you'll need a very fat pipe indeed. Email over 2Mb broadband was slow but tolerable: over a 256kB connection it made a conventional 56K dial up look good.

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  3. V wise words in your penultimate paragraph. I hope, in the midst of life, that you too take time to stop and to receive ministry.

    Pots and kettles here, I know.

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