Today is my last day of Sabbatical, and I’m spending some time yesterday and today preparing for my re-entry back to the church. (Technically my Sabbatical ended on April 30, but this first week of May has been Study Leave as I took a course on Rural Ministry last week.)
I spent 11 days in the UK at the end of my time off – a combination of visiting friends, doing the tourist thing, and taking the aforementioned Rural Ministry course. It was good to re-connect with friends that I haven’t seen in 5, 7, or 20 years, and in my conversations with them I had opportunities to reflect back on my Sabbatical – how it has felt to be off, and how I am going to carry the things that I have learned forward with me. Because if I don’t carry these lessons with me, it will be a long 5 years before I have the opportunity to do another reset!
So… what do I need to do differently?
· I need to make sure that I maintain my better sleep habits. In March of 2020, I let myself slip into some atrocious sleep habits – because I didn’t need to get up in the morning, there was no point in going to bed early, but when I did need to start getting up in the morning again, I kept staying up far too late. It took a couple of months to get there, but I feel well-rested for the first time since 2020. I’ve put a couple of practical things in place that will hopefully help this – setting up a “time to get ready for bed” alarm on my phone, figuring out the things that stop me from going to bed early (eg procrastinating on washing the dishes) and doing something to change them, and changing my morning routine to motivate myself to get out of bed on schedule.
· I need to make sure that I take time to mourn myself after every funeral. Bottling up my grief without a chance to release it leads to emotional fatigue. And I have recognized that this is important not just when it is the funeral for someone whom I cared deeply for, but also for funerals when I didn’t know the person but I end up carrying the grief of their loved ones. My post-funeral self-care is going to look different.
· I also need to be more intentional about nurturing my spirit (again, another bad habit that developed in March 2020). In the past 10 days, I’ve heard two different sermons that felt like they were preached right at me, reminding me of the importance of this! And when I get bogged down in the things that do the opposite of this (budgets, buildings…) I need to remind myself of the heart of my calling.
· Finally, I’ve had some conversations about ministry that have helped me to remember that the ministry is the ministry of the whole church and not just the minister. Maybe I need to remember my own sermon from right before my sabbatical, that the church will keep on churching, regardless of the presence of the minister. Because it truly is God’s church.
These are the heart of my reflections over the past couple of weeks. And tomorrow I jump back in to ministry with both feet (and it is looking like a busy re-entry, with both a funeral and a wedding, as well as Sunday services, scheduled for my first 8 days back!) so I will have a good chance to keep practicing these things right away.
A stained glass window I encountered in England
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