As I watch the last few hours of 2009 drift by, as I look back on the year closing out, 2009 has proven to be a year full.
Effective tomorrow, I start full time in ministry with a position at EvanTell as Chief Operating Officer. A journey that started two years ago with my retirement now moves off in a new direction. Ministry, not business, but a position that allows me to use 30 years of business skills to come alongside a ministry team and try to help them be better at what they already do quite well.
I have come to terms with the struggle I have had at seminary since I started in 2008. I am not a good student, at least I do not have good, student-like habits. I have been getting decent grades, but have not enjoyed the student-ness (I know that isn't a word but so what?) of being a student. I didn't in the 70's when I got my undergraduate degree; I certainly do not think a 30 year business career helped me hone my student skills. But I can accept that now and face my education with a better frame of mind.
As the year draws to an end, I am facing the fact that my Dad is dying and it is only a short period of time before he is gone. Given his alzheimers, in many ways I lost him some months ago. That is what is the most painful, watching what he has become while waiting until he is no more. A generation comes, a generation goes. All this as my niece is pregnant with the first child of the next generation on my side of the family, although my Dad will not get to be a great-grandfather as we may have hoped. All this as my Mom struggles with a situation in which she is soon to lose the man she has been married to for 61 years. I know I am blessed to have had both my parents for this long, yet the pain is there now. It will not be a good New Year's Eve for me. I will shed some tears tonight that I know.
Yet, 2010 is full of such promise and excitement. The Lord is sovereign, and I seek and struggle to walk alongside Him each day. There is pain in this life; I face it now, I have in the past, and know I will in the future. But I walk towards a future that will be joyous beyond the belief of the present world.
May you all have a blessed 2010.
Effective tomorrow, I start full time in ministry with a position at EvanTell as Chief Operating Officer. A journey that started two years ago with my retirement now moves off in a new direction. Ministry, not business, but a position that allows me to use 30 years of business skills to come alongside a ministry team and try to help them be better at what they already do quite well.
I have come to terms with the struggle I have had at seminary since I started in 2008. I am not a good student, at least I do not have good, student-like habits. I have been getting decent grades, but have not enjoyed the student-ness (I know that isn't a word but so what?) of being a student. I didn't in the 70's when I got my undergraduate degree; I certainly do not think a 30 year business career helped me hone my student skills. But I can accept that now and face my education with a better frame of mind.
As the year draws to an end, I am facing the fact that my Dad is dying and it is only a short period of time before he is gone. Given his alzheimers, in many ways I lost him some months ago. That is what is the most painful, watching what he has become while waiting until he is no more. A generation comes, a generation goes. All this as my niece is pregnant with the first child of the next generation on my side of the family, although my Dad will not get to be a great-grandfather as we may have hoped. All this as my Mom struggles with a situation in which she is soon to lose the man she has been married to for 61 years. I know I am blessed to have had both my parents for this long, yet the pain is there now. It will not be a good New Year's Eve for me. I will shed some tears tonight that I know.
Yet, 2010 is full of such promise and excitement. The Lord is sovereign, and I seek and struggle to walk alongside Him each day. There is pain in this life; I face it now, I have in the past, and know I will in the future. But I walk towards a future that will be joyous beyond the belief of the present world.
May you all have a blessed 2010.
