31 December 07 - 20:56
Marking the Passage of 2007
Well, we opened presents in three different houses, ate turkey and chicken and seafood casserole and roast beef until we were fit to burst -- somehow I'm the same weight at the end of my trip as I was on Christmas morning, I'm good with that! 
-- saw family and friends, both sledded and drove through some picture perfect snowfalls, and in general had a great Maritime Christmas.
Now I'm back home, the living room is a litter of presents and boxes from opening and assembling other presents, it's New Year's Eve, and I find myself taking stock of the year just past.
This has been a year of changes for our family. I made the tough decision to leave a nearly ten year ministry that had its ups and downs, but it was my first church, and it will always be special in my heart. Then I made a second tough decision to dive headfirst into another ministry when I think I had been dreaming of six months off to collect my thoughts and do other things that had nothing to do with church. But my brother mentioned to me over Christmas that I wasn't happy when I wasn't working, and I was startled to realize that he was right. Doing ministry gives me a sense of purpose, and that's worth more to me than anything. God has clearly called me to this place and time, I knew it when I arrived. I came a little battle-scarred, the church came a little weary, and I think God has put the two of us together in a healing ministry.
This has also been a year when we returned to the Maritimes after twenty years away. There really was no tech industry here twenty years ago, and my husband's whole career has been in the field of scientific software. We lived in Kingston, Calgary, Waterloo, and back to the Kingston area, and we had put down some roots. But there were also regrets about living away. A number of years ago, my husband took up genealogy, and the longer he stayed away, the more he wished he was at home to prowl graveyards and interview family members. All four of our parents are healthy and active, and we pray that will continue for a long time, but our growing sense of time passing made us want to enjoy quality time with our families while our children were still young.
So we made the big move. All the signs were right: A job offer at Dalhousie after a period of joblessness for him, the end of a ministry for me and a new one to begin, the kids not yet in junior high, the restlessness of spirit we were all experiencing. The kids have just about forgiven us for taking them away from their old friends. I also miss the people we left behind. But it was the church talent show this past fall that convinced me that we'd done the right thing. We got up, the girls, my husband and I, and sang some traditional Celtic songs -- Allister MacGillivray is a traditional Celt, isn't he? -- and it was lovely to sing as a family. Watching my husband sing and play, I was struck by how in some deep way, he was home. He hadn't sung like that for an audience in a lot of years, but back in Nova Scotia, it seemed right somehow, right in a way things hadn't been right for a while.
Often, we cling to the things we know even when God is calling us on to something new. It's a real leap of faith to listen to the Spirit when it's telling you to just jump in and do it, and it gets harder and harder the older I get and the more I perceive I have to lose (not to mention move -- we'd acquired three kids worth of furniture while we were in our last house!). But the need to keep moving, like Abraham searching for a land he could call his own, is always there, and this year we decided to follow the call. I'm glad we did.
Blessings, Heather.
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