The Best of Intentions

There was so much more I wanted to write about in this blog. There are things I didn't get to talk about at all - like my retreat at Tall Oaks where I spent time in silence, in prayer, walking the labyrinth and worshipping at the outdoor chapel. I didn't get to tell about my home improvement project - transforming my home office with its awful 70s wallpaper into a sanctuary space where I can pray and write and surround myself with art from all the places I've visited (this would have been an interesting post since early on in the project I discovered ugly black mold hiding behind the ugly wallpapaer, thus requiring a LOT more work and money than I originally planned.) And, it may seem a strange thing to brag about, but I read NINE books while on sabbatical. NINE books in three months. About half of them were ministry-related; the others were for pleasure. Since leaving seminary, I don't think I've read nine books in a year, and if I did, they were all for sermons or small groups at Living Water. How wonderful to re-discover the joy of reading!

I could also write about the things I didn't accomplish that I wished I had (besides the home improvement project mentioned above that is still underway). I had thought I would find time to try out a writing project, maybe working with a sermon series I did on the fruits of the Spirit a while back. But my head was never in the right place to begin that project. I had hoped to map out a year's worth of sermons and chart a course for the next five years at Living Water. I have fragments of ideas, the beginnings of things but nothing like a complete plan that I hoped to have. I also had hoped to write much more regularly in this blog. But once I got back from Africa, the things I had to say seemed very mundane and hardly worth mentioning.

I had thought I would spend the rest of the summer re-visiting the Africa experience and reflecting on it in this blog. So much happened so fast while we were there - and we didn't have access to most of our photos to post - that I was only able to give the briefest outline at the time. But moving out of that experience into the rest of my sabbatical - General Assembly, my visit to the farm, moving my daughter to Ft Worth, home projects - I never felt able to truly go back to all that time in Africa meant to me. Clif and I are currently looking through all the hours of video he took of the services I preached in Dodoma. Watching them, it seems as if it just happened yesterday. I want to find a way to share all my thoughts, everything I felt and saw and smelled and heard, but I'm not sure there is a way to capture it. I will share some of the video as part of future sermons, but I don't know what to do with the rest.

I hope to post a few more sabbatical-related thoughts in this blog. I want to share with you what it's like coming back. I want to tell you what the sabbatical experience was like for me, how it blessed me beyond what I imagined. But it's Sept. 1. I am back at work, albeit alongside Trish Winters, the pastor who served Living Water while I was gone. It is a time of transition, but I already have a to-do list waiting for me. The sabbatical is over. The memories remain. Thank you for sharing this journey with me.