Well I hope everyone is out enjoying their summer. Wait….what?!?!? It’s September 1st?!?!?!? It’s quite cold outside?!?!?!? School started today?!?!?!? But… But…. But….. there’s nothing we can do to change it?

Every year around this time we all start saying that summer just flew by faster than any other summer.  Apparently summer is once again defying the laws of time and continuing to speed up.

It was an interesting  summer for me and my family. I said bye to a grandma and a young man I use to spend a lot of time with. I realized how fast my children are growing up as I watched both of them learning to swim and my son play his first season of t-ball. During my baseball games I once again displayed a wonderful and positive attitude (note sarcasm).  I grew an extra limb in the shape of an iPhone.  I became busier and busier with work as my business continues to grow but am wearing down a little as lots of it is not in the core area I want to be focusing on.  (Not that I’m complaining. Lots of people are without work all together right now and I realize how blessed I am to be working steadily as a full-time freelance artist).

As a family we decided it was time to once again begin committing to a family of believers and we chose a congregation we were going to investigate and begin worshiping with. We promptly followed that up by missing four Sunday services in a row. Oops. (I’ve missed more Sunday worship times  in the last 7 months than I have in the last 10 years)

It’s now been 7 months since I finished my time in paid ministry. In some ways it seems like yesterday I was done and other ways it seems like ages ago. Some of that time has been spent in lowly places filled with struggle and resentment. However, I “tweeted” the other day that I’ve been feeling some rumbling in my spirit  (For those of you that replied to that tweet I mean spirit not stomach).  I am all about doing things full out, 100 percent and wanting to do them as correctly as I can and since I left paid ministry I’ve been having troubles figuring out how that works for me in my journey and as we look at getting seriously connected to a church somewhere.  I am in no way saying you need to be staff at a church to be full out for God or the church, not in the slightest. But I’ve spent the majority of the last 10 years leading in some form or another on staff at a church so I’m trying to figure out my place.

So I’m declaring right here and now that I want to rejoin the conversation.  I want to regain the passion in my faith and spiritual walk and do my part for God’s kingdom. I want to be part of the larger church community as we together wrestle with what a journey of faith looks like and how the church is called to minister to the world. I want more (sorry I know that last sentence was pure cheese).