Looking into the Abyss

"when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."*

So the other month I got a letter congratulating me on being accepted to train as an Ordained Local Minister.  This letter details the process of things yet to come.  There's loads to do, but the timescale is measured in  years.  Right now, things feel very empty.  When I really start training, things will start to fill my time, but now there's nothing for me to do except reflect on where I see myself.

And that's the problem.  I'm not sure where I see myself, or what I see myself doing.  Having expected to be knocked back at conference, I hadn't really planned for this.  As one friend put it, I had prepared for the wedding but not the marriage.

Throughout tertiary education, I have studied things because I wanted to do the subject, not because I really had any firm plans regarding the subject matter.  It's worked so far, so why change a good thing?  And the same goes for placements.  How do I pick a placement?  Should I pick at random from the local list of supervisors knowing I will learn something new from any one on the list? 

When talking about a meeting I've got coming up to discuss all this, I said to someone else that one thing I should try to learn to be is a Christian.  They said that would be a bad time to joke about things like that.  Well all along the way, people that I thought were "Good Christians" have fallen by the wayside, and still I'm here.  So perhaps I need to work out why exactly God wants me here.

So I don't know where I'm going, but i sure know where I've been**.  I'm on the edge of the abyss.  I could have a carefull, planned and measured descent, but based on past performance, I think it's time to throw myself over the edge and hope for the best.

*Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche  1886

**Whitesnake 1982