A warm embrace.

It is hard to believe that I have been out of seminary for about 7 months now. Some days I sit back and check out the website of the school and read articles my classmates and I read back in school - dreaming for those long nights studying, those prayers before exams, those chapel services hearing friends and professors share the gospel. 

If you would have told me that I would even long for papers and books and assignments during my final set of finals I feel certain I would have laughed at you but it is true. I am there. Some days I wake up with an urgency to be back in the classroom. 

Many of those days are the same days that I feel that my ministry is not being helpful enough or that I am not good enough for this calling and that maybe, just maybe, if I go back to school- I will become good enough or helpful enough for some ministry, somewhere.

This sentiment is one that I have been struggling with lately. When talking about this with the senior minister (good person) at my church I heard him say, "None of us are good enough, God's grace is good enough." 

When I think deep about what I am longing for most in school it is that community that challenged and supported me through thick and thin (I know I have this at my new church, it is just a different kind). This past week I found myself having a few of those little holy nudges, those reminders that God was hearing and looking out for me (despite my desire to actually verbalize these feelings with even God, my creator). I opened my phone to a message from a beloved div school friend telling me she was praying for me and I received a 'how are you and how is the job' email from a friend and professor. These things reminded me that even when I feel this community I am so striving for is  so far away that they are holding me still- in a warm embrace, praying with and for me and supporting me as I continue to learn and grow.

Learning and growing is hard. Leaving the community that so nurtured me shook me to my core- yet I am standing (and so are they). I find myself calling on pieces of my classmates knowledge as I plan, calling on their stories as I live into the gospel, feeling their distant-embrace as they hold me and my new ministry in prayer from afar. And I hope they feel the same embrace from me. 

Prayer with my beloved classmates and seminary friends and mentors during chapel.