36, Day 4

I’m getting an early start on day 4 (it is currently 2:00 am). It wasn’t so many years ago I stayed up until 2:00 am for entirely different reasons, but at thirty-six you stay up this late researching scholarships for your junior in high school, sign him up for ACT tests and finish his high school/college dual enrollment paperwork. I have been to college and I believe that the applications and paperwork for all of this is far more complicated than the actual classes themselves. Like so many things in life, perception is reality, so it all depends on how you look at things to determine if something is a positive or a negative. I could look at it this way: I have stayed up way too late and will now get up too late in the morning and be behind all day. Or I could look at it like I’ve gotten a very early start on today, providing me with the time and opportunity to take a nap before finishing out the day. I think I will go with door number two.

Last night I worked on my final bulletin for Fairview and I decided to include in it an open letter to my Fairview family. I tried to be very candid and open about how I came to be the preacher at Fairview and how and why it came to be that I am leaving. It was interesting to me to reflect back on the events and circumstances that have brought us to where we are. On June 1st I went to Valdosta for the first time in my life and on January 1st I will begin working with a church there. Life is filled with day after day of the same thing over and over again and then one day everything changes completely. Life is a panoply of the regular interrupted by rapid, drastic change, followed by a chorus of repetition. Rinse, repeat.