My favourite Bible verse, if I had to pick one of the hundreds I love, is Galatians 6:9, which has saved my life many times. Paul, the apostle, says to the Galatians and to us (in my own words):
“Do not grow weary, despondent, or lose all hope,
in your doing good deeds and relating well,
because you WILL reap a harvest of blessing
at the proper time—at God’s appointed time—
if you do not give up completely,
and ultimately keep getting up and keep going.”
There was a time, a season in my life, 18-19 years ago, when that was plastered on my fridge, and it stood between me and the dire consequences of the despair my life had become—with little other than my three daughters, my parents, and my family, and my fledgling faith keeping me from doing the drastic deed.
But there has been a different season
over the last seven years where I have faced
a completely different ice age of the soul.
The depths of that winter started when winter actually started—June 2016, the hardest month of the hardest year of my life. I won’t go into why it was so interminably hard, apart from the fact that I was losing a career calling that was only a few years old, yet I didn’t know it at the time. I was to face seven years of rejection, unable to get back into that craft in any serious role, and yet through it all was a silver lining of God’s indelible hope in the two or three doors He did open—for so many were slammed shut.
During the second half of 2016 I began a rebuild of my life, working initially as a maintenance person at a school I eventually became chaplain at, I was also offered two days per week casual work delivering meals for my ex-wife’s catering business. Interesting how when I was at rock bottom it was my ex-wife who proved again the friend she is when there were others I would have called friends who weren’t. Such is life, as they say.
Right throughout the past seven years I’ve nudged burn out so many times because of how hard I was sowing. Sowing in faith not knowing what God’s next move for me was, I was reticent to miss it. Yet, the school chaplaincy and the peacemaking work I subsequently engaged in were experiences of great mutual blessing—significant portions of redemption no less. And yet, to coin the phrase of the U2 song, “I still hadn’t found what I was looking for.”
The church I began preaching at in 2017 to complete my Master of Divinity studies invited us to join and soon invited me to become one of the Elders. In 2019, I was invited to become Associate Pastor. For someone who received the call of God in September 2004, I was just so delighted to be invited back into formal ministry again. God literally saved my life out of the brokenness of 12-months earlier (September 2003), lifting me out of my dark night of the soul that lasted six months, giving me the very purpose that I had received—the love of men and women who showed me the care of God. My purpose from that moment onward was to care for and help people—to become a shepherd, a leader in God’s church.
Seven years to the week, having ‘regressed’ back to health and safety (an honourable career but just not me like it was 20-25 years ago), after having been exposed to regressing into other job roles I’d had in previous iterations of my life (maintenance, courier driver), I have been given an acting role that proves to me that God has delivered me out of the seven year season. In recapitulating into all the careers I’d once had, God has shown me I was on my path back to the calling of my heart: pastoral ministry.
Seven years it has been toil and despair
yet tinged with amazing things that have happened.
Opportunities to serve as a Secretary on a Board, serve the homeless through organised street and church ministry, serve as a leader on a national leadership team for a charity, counsel a few dozen couples and many individuals, conduct a couple of dozen funerals, and spend time invested in my son’s school. All opportunities I would not have had otherwise.
Ultimately during 2020, I serendipitously joined the State’s fire and emergency services, and have since had Incident Management Team roles at massive bushfires, been a culture strategy workshop facilitator, worked closely with subject matter experts on height safety and rope rescue, and been a lead investigator on high profile safety accidents.
Seven years, and this week I started in an acting role I never dreamt of filling, a role that reflects my calling, a role that others believe I’m capable of doing, a role I’m determined to succeed in, especially because it is a role full of opportunities to serve. I feel immensely supported, and I want to be an immense support. Whether it lasts a short time or not is immaterial. God has spoken.
Seven years. It has felt like an eternity throughout, and yet because the days are long, but the years are short, now it feels like it was all worth it. Not that there is an option to bow out when we’re called, but so often I’ve hit the wall and needed to go gently with myself to recover. So many dozens of times I’ve despaired, you’d only need to ask my wife who has endured so much.
Over 2,550 days, seventy percent of my son’s life thus far, I have felt in various stages of being in the wilderness of the in-between, liminal space land, of not knowing whether it would all work out.
Many times I continued onward without hope, and Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” truly resonated as an anthem verse, especially every seventh day on average in the past two years. And yet, also in the past two years I’ve experienced peace that transcended my understanding more than ever on those other six days.
Life is an adventure, and we learn nothing
in the comfort of not being challenged.
It is normal to despise the process of feeling crushed,
but looking back, afterward, redemption is the sweetest.
I hope in your reading this reflection you’re encouraged to keep going if you find yourself in the in-between.
IMAGE: one of my Incident Management Team roles, introducing COVID-19 safety measures during a bushfire community meeting in regional Western Australia at the height of the pandemic.
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