I must be mad

But I'm fond of this blog and would like something to keep me blogging through Advent, if I can...so inspired by my dear friends Songbird and MaryBeth, I'm going to attempt the seemingly impossible and write every day - launched by Reverb

We'll be furnished with a daily prompt - and I'll try my best to respond to it

Day 1 was Wednesday, when the prompt ran thus

Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)

 So much happens in the course of a year, and this one has been no exception...but I think my word may just be "realisation".

2010 has been the year in which my youngest child left home for university, and in which my first-born completed her MA and joined the world's workers....

The year in which I turned 50, becoming suddenly eligible for all those "special offers" for older people that I feel so unready to embrace...

But with not one child left at school, and the responsibility for not one but two curates there came a moment in the course of the year when I realised that actually, this was as "grown up" as it gets.

And with that realisation came a delicious freedom. I'm in no way a finished product, of course - I'd not expect to be this side of eternity ...and I hope and pray and plan to go on learning and growing, but the anxiety around my identity has slipped away without my even noticing its passing.

Here is a good place, and now is a good time.

And with the wonderful surprise party that those newly adult children arranged for me came the wonderful realisation of just how much love has been heaped upon me in those five decades.

For 2011 I'd like to rearrange my letters just a little, but stick to the same root...REALISM about what I can do, as one finite human being, with infinite hopes but limited capacity, about what I might hope to accomplish in ministry here, about what God really dreams of for these communities.

I suspect that the route there may be an interesting journey - but it's surely one worth taking.