Surprised? Not good.

I'm begining to wonder about myself. Most of you are probably wondering what took me so long. But I've been questioning some of my behaviors lately becuase I'm afriad they might have changed in a bad way.

The first thing I need to akcnowledge is that my context has changed dramatically. I continue to live on a Christian campus, but I live alone in an appartment, unable to attend chapel, not connected too closely with anyone on campus, and feeling no particularly strong affiliation with any church. I realize that this is a cause to one problem, and also a problem in and of itself. I have determined to remedy parts of this.

But that's not the main point of this post. The main point is that the other day I told a friend from class that I was considering being a pastor, and she was really surprised. No one has EVER been surprised before when I said that. Through most of undergrad everyone assumd I was a Chrsitian Ed. Major (which was not true) and even though I was studying psychology people constantly asked me if I was looking around for churches yet.

And now it surprises people. But I don't blame Beth for her incredulity. I haven't demonstrated that side of myself in quite some time. I haven't stretched my ministry muscles* since I joined this graduate program. I haven't had much practice in being vulnerable and broken before others. I haven't really had much meaningful interaction with others at all actually. I do not believe that the discipline of student development is beating it out of me (Tim Herrman? never) but some combination of vairiables has caused me to put my academic foot forward and my spiritual foot in the back. I do not like this. I wanted to do Student Development as a ministry, but it's sometimes it feels hard to convince myself that that's what I'm doing.


*note, I said stretched, not flexed