Yes. Yes, I did. I blogged at great length about my experiences in Guadeloupe so you can read all about the things I saw and experienced and learned while I was there. It was an amazing opportunity to live someplace else, someplace completely different from where I usually live. I saw what life is like for a missionary, for a prison chaplain. This is what helped me completely disengage from my usual life as a pastor in Kansas City. Once I stopped being consumed by thoughts about the people in my congregation and how they were doing and whether everything was going ok without me, I could start to remember how to be Laura, not Pastor Laura. This was crucial for the beginning of my sabbatical.
Then I enjoyed a little bit of time at home to try to get my own house in order - literally. Purging my stuff was painful and exhilarating, but it too helped me wake up in the mornings with a different set of tasks for the day, things that I never seemed to get around to doing when I was always in ministry mode (because ministry never ends - there's always more you can do).
Our Alaska trip was much like a vacation except the constant traveling was brutal and exhausting. We saw amazing things that we would never have seen otherwise, but I came back from that 3-week road trip with a couple loads of dirty laundry, over 1,000 photos and a desire to crawl into my bed and never get out again.
In the two weeks that I've been back, I took a quick trip to Des Moines to see my sister and visit the Iowa State Fair with my kids
and then another quick spiritual retreat at Tall Oaks Camp.
Today is my last Sunday off for a very long time. Tuesday, I'll officially be back to work, starting my time by adding all my congregants back into my Facebook feed to see what has been going on in their lives the past three months. I'm meeting with the summer pastor twice this week and the worship leader once and there will be other conversations and emails and a Turkish Festival I'll attend as well. Just as I shed my identity as pastor for three months in order to rest and reflect and tend my own spiritual garden, soon I will take that identity back on.
And I'm ready. I'm rested and refreshed. I found a different rhythm for my life over the summer and it was joyous and relaxing and intriguing and educational. But I have also been disconnected from a church all summer, and that has been disorienting and lonely. I have attended quite a few churches, but none where I felt at home, with people who knew me and cared about me. I have missed that tremendously. Three months is about as long as I can go without having a community where I can learn and share and worship and laugh and cry and sing and hug.
So yes, I think I sabbathed very well. I am so very grateful to my church - Living Water Christian Church - for giving me the time and space to step away so that I can return and continue to serve as their pastor with joy and thanksgiving. My two sabbaticals have both helped me hear God's call again, feel that flame of the Holy Spirit telling me that there is more to do, that God is not finished with Living Water Christian Church (in fact, has barely begun!) and that there is more that I can offer God and the church as the pastor.
Instead of sitting here on my last Sunday off feeling sad that I must return, I am antsy and so looking forward to next Sunday. It will be good to be home again!
