Long Obediences, Same Direction

As I drove home from work yesterday, I thought about how much change I've set into motion this year.  Of course, some of that change, the work related change, was first set into motion by others.  But I am amazed at what I've managed to accomplish.

Those of you who have never applied to seminary while also applying for candidacy may not have an understanding of how huge an undertaking it is.  Applying to seminary required 4 letters of recommendation, for example.  Yesterday I took another psychological profile, the MMPI2, and it's the 3rd or 4th one required, along with pages and pages of paragraph/essay answers to questions in yet another type of psychological testing.  I've also written an essay for the seminary application and a much longer essay for the candidacy committee

In the past, the sheer volume of these tasks overwhelmed me, even before I got to all the logistics of actually attending.  This year, I've made my way through them methodically.  I am lucky in that I like doing this kind of exploratory writing and test taking.

The Wesley application dashboard shows my application is complete and under review. I’m like a high school senior. I want to keep going to the mailbox to see if there’s a letter from the school.  I wonder if schools still send letters.

At one point in the past week, I printed the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 class schedules, and spent a few minutes feeling giddy at all the possibilities, all the wonderful classes.  From what I can tell, all the classes in the Fall will still be online, and in the spring, it looks like a mix.  I wonder how many students will be living on campus in the spring.  I plan to do online classes in the fall from down here, and be residential in the spring, if my job has ended by then, as I expect that it will.

How strange to be able to type those words without panic, words about job endings and applications that are likely to set me on a very different direction--and yet, I've been headed in that direction for a long, long time.