What if...?

I'm a different person than I was six months ago.

I don't know of any other half-year in my life that has changed my outlook, my passions, my spiritual center more than this one has. A chance comment in March turned into a lunch, a plan, study, and a weekly commitment. Along the way, there have been joys and challenges, frustrations and discoveries. And I'm not sure where this journey will lead.

I knew writing would re-open some history, which it has. I still agonize over words and ideas, and become obsessive. I stress myself out over things said and unsaid.

Writing for worship takes hours of study time, reflection and feedback from my mentor. It's like an intense Bible study, a creative writing exercise and a technical writing project blended together. The funny thing is, it seems to have this unusual way of changing me, far more than I've impacted it.

Every week, some new insight fills me with wonder. It would have made sense to be filled with revelations in the first weeks, but the inspiration seems to grow stronger, week to week. The past two epiphanies have left me awed.

Along the way, I've joined a handbell ensemble, started to practice the keyboard again, and remembered that I have a gift for taking photos. I've committed to learning the multimedia system for worship and have been nominated for church council.

And I've lost my alienation with celebrating the anniversary of the Christmas event, year in and year out. I've gained a new perspective on heaven and hell, the second coming and the desire to change my corner of this world in the meantime. I've gained a connection between my daily life and my spiritual life that never existed, a blurring of the lines that makes me wonder where one part of my life ends and another one begins.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had God succeeded in that little tug at my heart at 16, when several people around me nudged me toward ministry: pastoral ministry or another call. And I turned my back, went to school and wrote professionally for 15 years. Had I gone another direction, would I have always longed for the writing opportunity I missed? Is this God's way of redirecting, refocusing, repurposing me, some 35 years later?

I will never know. God is patient and finds ways to use us for good, wherever we are, at the moment in life when we turn around and look. God's love has no limit.