And So It Begins!

Anita is over her anxiety!  The house is clean and ready for the guest who will be using it as their home away from home—and preaching at Providence and feeding  Mike the Cat!  We are appreciative of them and hope they don’t look under that place that I was supposed to clean!

 

But as soon as we got to the airport, Anita relaxed.

I just got more anxious!

It all comes from an incident involving a passport that didn’t make it with me to Prague, a large man with an AK-47 strapped over his shoulder saying, “You Go Back!”  It only takes one time and you clasp your passport all the time.  (Pause while I check….yep, it is here!)

The truth is however, my anxiety has been growing over the past few days.  It started when I realized I had to be intentional about what I was going to wear, and what I was going to take on the trip.  I found myself wanting cantaloupe, because who knows if they have them in Bali.  And will I ever get a tomato sandwich this summer? 

It is not that I am not thrilled about this trip!  I am!  I can’t wait to discover places I have never been.  It is just that the routine of my life is so…. comfortable.  I know what coffee cup to use on what day, what is going to happen, what I am going to do. 

But this sabbatical?  Well, it has disrupted my life, my routine.  I don’t know what day it is, or what to do, or soon, where I am.

Which was the point wasn’t it?  TO get outside the waters that bind me, that set the limits of my life, that form the natural borders of my world. 

To pontificate just a bit, I do wonder how often that is the way we live at church.  We have our borders of right and wrong, proper and inappropriate, how we do things, and to get outside that border is just too anxiety producing to even consider, let alone doing! 

But what if we did? 

So now it begins!  I am heading into a new world (actually a very old world—going to see the Great Wall on Sunday!) and really don’t know what to expect!  It will be an adventure!

And yes, I am a bit anxious.  But I do have my passport!  Just checked again!