Last night a friend asked me if I had had time to reflect on the term. And I hadn’t. I was doing residual school work up until today and now finally it feels like I can just begin to sort through the rollercoaster that was this term. A year in review won’t happen for another few weeks. That will take a considerable more time.
I went into this term running. I’ve probably mentioned that before but it’s probably a good way to start off the description. I came straight out of summer running on camp high/low and then straight into welcome week. I haven’t even finish the welcome week recap post but in short, it was a good time and insightful but tiring. I was reminded that a lot of the work I do is more background oriented and long term and I’m okay with that.
Applications came and went and with the scrambling of writing essays and getting references and triple checking everything, September flew by. And then there’s really nothing to do until January though I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought about interview questions that I got last year and how to answer them more appropriately. Courses this term felt brief. Psych, while it did allow me to interact with ccf first years, came and went with little consequence and little intentionality. I will say global health was refreshing. Although I didn’t learn a lot of theory, it reminded me that I still have much, much more to learn about global missions and that I will most likely need to be some form of long term. It’s also been really eye opening reading the missionary blog and seeing just how different and limited things can be. It’s not to say I’ll end up in uber rural Angola where there are no clocks. I’m excited for next term. Christian ethics, one less elective, and Chari. It’s kind of insane though that I’m graduating so soon. Feels a bit like grade 12 where I flirted with the idea of taking another year just to take woodshop and cool random stuff. But I think it’s about time I moved on from BHSc. Fourth year and I still don’t know what I’m doing in there. I seem to be getting asked quite a bit (as would be expected) how fourth year is going and most of the time I can’t really answer that. It has passed in a blur with barely a discernable sign of it happening.
Probably the one place that I’ve been seeing the most differentiation is my time and role in CCF. I came back excited to be sage-ing. A bit nervous because I didn’t know how I’d handle it but excited. I understand the sentiment now that fourth years often describe of not really knowing the rest of the fellowship anymore. It was just a little bit funny that during the game time of pot luck, many of the fourth years lingered behind to clean up. It’s not that I don’t love the first years. I hear fantabulous things about thing but perhaps I am slowly learning that I cannot be everywhere at once. And while I will meet up with a few frosh, I don’t think frosh are really my ministry this year. This year seems a bit like watching from the outside. I haven’t been knowledge fed from CCF programs for probably two years now and while I’m not in overt leadership, I don’t think that’s changed very much. DG has been nice but as I said earlier, it is best that I am not considered in how to cater to the DG members. I am there to participate and to aid and to encourage but I’m okay if it doesn’t address my specific needs. And perhaps it’s a good thing because it means I’m struggling with the self-discipline faith now instead of after I leave. Reading through Psalms and Proverbs has definitely been a struggle but the verses seem to come up at just the right time. Proverbs was very insightful when it came up these last few days. I’ve really enjoyed the aspect of leadership development and being able to meet with leaders and walk them through their thoughts, things to think about, and to be able to pray for them and give encouragement. I can probably see myself doing that in endgame when in general my body doesn’t have enough energy to handle heavy front line stuff. But even with roughly four or so people I’m meeting up with, I’m struggling to do it consistently and with only one more term coming up, it feels again, all too fast. I know Ken wants me to come back to mac next year to help run meetings (I feel so ridiculously inadequate for that) and for now I’m entertaining it. I really would love to see what God is continuing to do at Mac in CCF. How the next few years play out. There’s a bit of a struggle in my mind wondering if anything we did last year really had impact in ministry but at the same time seeing that the fellowship is definitely heading somewhere different. They’re not really opposites. So I know that some people are just waiting to leave Mac and go to bigger places. I’m really okay if I end up getting placed back in Hamilton. I feel like I have yet to scratch the surface of what God is doing there. And maybe, I’ll never be able to grasp the fullness of that.
There’s a weird bit of dualism too. While I’m taking on leadership development mostly because I’ve been in these positions before, I am also relearning what it means to live when not in leadership. It sounds weird. But at the beginning of the term, I didn’t know what to do with all my spare time with less school and less leadership. I won’t say I’m leading H4H or retreat in the best way possible but I struggled to take control of my own time. And so it’s been a continual struggle of getting myself to wake up on my own terms (not because of thesis) and to make good use of my time. It is slow but I think it is one of the more intentional periods of my life with God in the past while. My excuses are thinner than ever now and I have to face Him and in consequence, myself. But it is a good and necessary struggle. Though perhaps I am experiencing less urgency than in prior growth periods. I feel like time has very little concept in my mind anymore. That this Christmas does not represent anything special in and of itself even though there’s the usual “Jesus is the reason for the season”. I’m not sure if it’s good that my mindset is more “this is where I am with God right now and we’re going to keep tracking this way”
Although November isn’t a theme, I feel like it requires a note here. I didn’t finish nanowrimo this year. 31k. And still not sure how to finish the actual story this Christmas break. I started off the month with a test of physical endurance. The month continued as a test of mental endurance to which I did better than last year. And then it ended with a wave of academic endurance. A week of late meetings and deadlines. I’m a bit sad that I didn’t legit win nanowrimo this year and it’ll probably be the last time I get to nanowrimo in November for a while as anything I’m applying to will be definitely harder and more rigorous than health sci. But it was a fun month and there was definitely some fun camaraderie in it all.
// As I was writing this a thought came to my mind. A friend had stated how she felt like God was taking everything from her hand one by one so she could hold them open and at the time it felt very specific to her. But as I think about it now, that seems crazy accurate of what has been happening in the past few years. First the uncertainty of where I would end up in the long range future and how I was going to raise a family potentially under persecution or in more resource limited areas. And then last year and this summer and a bit of this year, letting go of career future and not knowing where I’ll end up for school or whether I’ll get in. And now this year…God is slowly but thankfully opening my hands for that near, personal future that I was holding onto. And it is not an easy journey in the slightest and the shivering has been happening but…He disciplines those He loves and I know it is for my good.
The Unforced Rhythms of Grace 