Advent Journey Day 20

Today was a busy day filled with the full spectrum of my responsibilities as pastor, pastor's wife, host, and friend!  I spent the morning and early afternoon checking programs for the coming week and writing my sermon for Sunday, the 4th of Advent. My focus is on "The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come" in keeping with our contrast of Dickens and Isaiah.  I've loved it.  It's been incredibly rich on a number of levels.  Once I finally finished a draft and put together my slides for the service, I was ready to do something different. So I called a close friend in the US to see how her Christmas was shaping up.  Then we walked our dog.  After we got home, I decided that I needed to bake more cookies in order to get ready for our Open House on Christmas day.  So I mixed up some dough and made some sugar cookies followed by some more chocolate chip cookies.  Time was racing away so after a nice Skype chat with my dad, I started to make tacos for dinner because we had invited a good friend over for food and a movie.  I must say, I was pleased with the guacamole even though I kind of threw it together!  Finally we sat down and watched the Muppet Christmas Carol, especially fun because our aforementioned preaching a series.  The Muppet take was great way to encounter the story.
As this day is now coming to an end, I'm thinking about how many different hats I wear in my life. I love them all, but sometimes I do wonder what it would be like to just be a pastor and not also a pastor's wife or to just be a wife and not be a pastor as well.  And while at times it would be nice to just have to bake the cookies or write the sermon, instead of doing both, I think at the end of the day, I would miss the other tasks quite a bit.  I'm lucky to have a great partner in Doug who also functions as a pastor's husband and a pastor...sometimes it's complicated but more often than not it's wonderful.  I'm thankful for the complimentary gifts we've been given that allow us to live into these roles in fun, joyful and satisfying ways.
I hope that whatever your vocation or calling is at this present time, you see God's grace laced throughout it and you are able to enjoy the various tasks that are yours in any given day.