Sabbaticals and Prayer. I can do prayer, how do I get on this sabbatical train?!

Hello friends! Two posts in as many days?! Lucky for you, yesterday I was mopey and alone which means I write. Today is Sunday, my usual writing day, so again, I write. You get to read them both if you so choose.

On some Sundays, I like to elucidate on the morning's sermon. Today's service was really good, but what I mostly got out of it is that I want to take a month long sabbatical. The pastors at my church get to take sabbaticals! What the heck?! How do I get in on this? I do ministry. I minister to my family every single day. I'm the crisis person for a few people in my life. I think I want a sabbatical. Let's see if I can make this sound good and not selfish.

I feel led by the Lord to take some time away from the pressures of my work to evaluate my life trajectory and come back refreshed, renewed, and ready to take on my God-given responsibilities with a clear head and heart. 

What this means in mom terms is I'd like to not have to cook, clean, educate, or referee anyone for a month. As you can see, I can make anything sound spiritual. It's both a gift and a curse. In all seriousness, I respect my church leadership a great deal for making time for our leaders to rest. Vocational ministry is grueling, thankless work most of the time, and there is no clocking out. They are on call at all times, pouring themselves into needy people. It's exhausting, so I applaud them. And now I'm adding a lovely picture so that the ridiculous "Cherish Every Moment" image doesn't show up when I share this post.

I wish my dad could have had the luxury of taking time to recharge, but too many churches use their pastor as their beck and call feel good person. They want someone there for every single life event.  Pastors are not priests, people. You don't need the pastor's presence for your prayers to go above the ceiling. Read some Hebrews and learn some new covenant theology before calling your pastor to come to the hospital to pray over your broken arm. That sounds mean.  I don't intend it be mean. Just...you know...I think pastors deserve to get some rest too without being judged for it. 

Anyway. The other thing that I was probably supposed to get out of the service today is on prayer and growth. Last year our church focused on personal Scripture study. I wish they would have done more follow up with it throughout the year because I got lost pretty early on with where I was supposed to be. They gave out beautiful cards for a book of the Bible broken down into daily passages. I think our church goal was for everyone to study the same thing at the same time, but I got behind. Then I saw cards for other Bible book studies, but I wasn't sure where I was supposed to be. Then my box checking quirk kicked into gear, and I was thoroughly confused on what boxes to check. Finally, I stopped checking all the Bible study boxes and did my own thing. Oh well. I kind of tried. Sorry, church leaders. I don't think you read this anyway, so it will be alright. 

But back to prayer. This year we're supposed to be focusing on prayer. I used to feel intimidated to pray in front of people, and praying in general seemed like this serious thing that required getting the words exactly right. Or else I had to pepper "Father God" in between each phrase. Or if I were super spiritual, then I wouldn't merely call Jesus by his name. I'd pray "Abba" or "Papa" or something more familiar than a simple Jesus.

Eventually I realized how stupid that is. Praying is talking to Jesus. If it's something I do regularly, then it's easy. I just slip into the ever continuous conversation aloud instead of in my head. My words don't have to be eloquent, because the God of the Universe knows my heart and what I'm trying to say. Still, there's a discipline in prayer as well that I can let slide. It's like the difference between commenting on a Facebook post and scheduling a phone call with a friend. I can keep up with my friends well enough on Facebook to a certain point. I mean, we can share some coded memes like no one's business. However, it's on those phone calls that I have to schedule days in advance that we cover all the things. All the big problems. All the details that build up. All the real stuff that can't go on a Facebook post in front of 300 of my closest friends and family.  The memes are good and important too. Don't stop the memes and gifs, friends! But the actual conversations need to happen so that the memes and short posts have some depth to them. Yes, there can be depth in a gif or a hashtag. #dontbeWendy 

Finally, since my only real New Year's goal for this year was to be more intentional in my writing, I'm going to start a series. How's that for serious? I'll write a post on prayer once a month. It's barely a series, but still. It will be a 12 part series on prayer. This is me branching out and being intentional.