Flying off the wall

I have one more week of my CPE program. I could shout for joy about being done but there is also this somber sadness that brews below the surface. In the painful, difficult, hard to bear at times moments of the summer I have ironically been moved. For something that was so hard to deal with and made me question everything about my identity and emotions; I found glimpses of my pastoral identity. I went threw a proverbial car wash of pastoral identity to emerge very bruised, soagy, but newly clean.

Now, I cannot report that the summer spontaneously led me to develop an entire thesis on my P.I. But as someone who loves water imagery so much: this summer gave me a few pieces of land to stand on. I have been swimming and swimming out to sea following this calling. You could say I have been swimming out to the horizen trying to catch some glimpse at the end of the world. In the process, God has placed a few bits of land to stand on and rest. I rest in who she created me to be.

I didn't find anything new. What I found was the authority to claim the image of God within me. As a 5 in the ennegram, trying to move towards an 8, you can say that I am claiming my authority. I am jumping from being a fly on the wall to a participant in the great show of life. I have moved from the audience to the stage.

The hardest thing for me to claim was the biggest thing: my calling. The story of Moses' calling has always been an inspiration for me. I have sided with his deep grownings of "God, I can't do thaaaat. I'm [fill in some deficiency]. Send someone else God..." I have recieved great strength from Moses attitude towards the burning bush but I never thought to ponder God's response.

I have always loved meditating on God's great "I am". I never thought to think that God gives us this statement in our creation. The image of God in us lies in the beginning of the sentence "I am [fill in the blank]". I always feared that claiming "I am" anything would result in me usurping God's role and power. In claiming an "I am", I would be declaring my perfection next to God. But that's not the point. The point is in the noun, the adjective that follows the "I am". God is the only "I am." But we, as clay formed by the creator, are given unique callings.

I have been afraid to declare that calling. I have been afraid to claim God's "I am" for me. In these last moments of CPE, through all the difficulties, joys and sorrows it hit me. With the authority of God my maker, I suddenly could say "I am a minister". And not just any minister but in my journey these last few months I have realized that I am called as the "singing minister".

To claim my "I am" means that I can no longer delicately remain a fly on the wall. Instead, I must burst forth with the seal of God's calling on me and use this great "I am" for God's glory. I must be proactive, active, and reactive...not just an observer. I must take off my shoes and enter into this great "I am". Like Moses, I can still cry out in fear and weakness. But like Moses, I lean on the Yhwh of my life. I dig deep into the image of God within me and find hope that God sees more of himself in me that I can see in my identity.

So I am flying off the wall and declaring to the world that "I am a minister, a singing minister for God".

What are you?