The (nearly) Last Hurrah

Well, life is throwing me a curve ball at the moment, to steal a phrase my wife would be familiar with...

As of 1st July, I will be no longer training as a Baptist Minister, as my 'ministerial formation' (sounds painful doesn't it!! :p) will be put on 'hold' for a year or two.

Before anypone panics, I've not done anything silly, or been involved in any kind of scandal, it's simply down to lack of funding (my placement church) and some personal issues, which I'm not going to go into detail on here. Needless to say, I'm a little bit gutted and fearful and excited about the future, all expressing itself in a horrible nauseous feeling of 'aaarrggghhh what am I doing!!!'

My placement church weren't planning to take me on for another year, and therefore didn't budget for it, so were taken aback a bit when I asked to stay! They very graciously said whilst they couldn't 'employ' me officially, they could give me a small amount each month. I deliberated on this for a while, but through other curcumstances (again that I don't particularly feel the need to mention on here) I decided that this wasn't the best option.

The College/Baptist Union have offered me the option of taking a 'break' from studying/formation/training for up to two years for personal circumstances, as they call it, with no negative reflection on me. I've decided to take this option, and so the frantic search for a job begins...

To further complicate matters, my wife (who is an american citizen) is applying for the final part of her visa, her Indefinite Leave to Remain, which we're putting in the application for on June 10th. It's a bit stressful, but as she's been living here and we've been married for nearly two years now, I'm hoping there's not gonna be a problem. We've already saved up the (gulp!) £840 the government want for it, and it's just a case of producing the right documents to prove we still live together and are still married to each other.

So, the future's a bit uncertain at the moment, but I'm getting used to that lately. If I think back to before I was married, the time since then has been filled with lot's of uncertainty, whether it was marrying the love of my life who was from another country and all the extra complications and stresses that puts on a relationship, or taking redundancy from (the then) Wesley owen whom I'd worked for about 12 years, or whether it was moving flat to New Brighton to start with a church I'd never been to and area I'd never lived in; plenty of things have kept us both on our toes, and I'm sure we'll face these challenges together.

So, I'm in my last month of employment with a church and it feels a bit wierd. Unfortunately the job market is not brilliant at the moment, and doubly unfortunately, the bookshop market is even worse in terms of vacancies. Ah well...

Now that I've thoroughly depressed you if you're reading this, I'm leaving. I'm a bit of a git that way....

Reality & Perception

I don't what it is about me, whether it's because I'm an ex-fundamentalist, ex-conservative, or ex-whatever; more and more lately I've been finding that reality affects my perception. Things I've long believed I've been questioning because reality doesn't seem to quite match up with them, and so I question, and explore and investigate.

I've always held that 'beliefs' matter, but lately I've been discovering that 'trust' matters more. For me it's been a journey of moving from knowledge 'about' things to trust 'in' things. More of a case of conviction trumping certainty...

To be continued... (after food)