This post comes with a health warning... it's brutally honest so don't read it if you are the least bit fragile.  This is not a 'nice minister' post, it's a 'this is how it is for me today' post...

You might want to listen to this song as you read:

This song was one of those on my Pink Ribbon Walk playlist, chosen for me by a very proud Scot and 'bc buddy'.  It was a long time since I'd heard it, but in the past three months it has been a kind of 'touch stone' for my own experience... "all I wanted was an ordinary life"... but it wasn't to be.  Some of it my choice, some of it force of circumstance, some of it so much better than I could have dreamed of, some of it worse than my nightmares... but it has been, and continues to be 'a life less ordinary' (to pinch a film title)

I don't have any regrets about my life so far - it is what it is, and it is part of something bigger and more beautiful than I can comprehend. But...

"I don't know where I'll be in ten years time" - I don't even know if I will be, let alone where I'll be.  In my darkest moments, when the fear of recurrence or metastases invades my consciousness I do wonder 'will I be here in years to come'... am I over-reacting to symptoms that could just be part of ageing or am I stupidly dismissing as trival signs of something signfiicant?

"All I wanted was an ordinary life" - just a bright kid from a council house, all I wanted was to get an education, get a good job, have a house, car and a cat... was that too much to ask?  I achieved them all, and then surrendered them, one by one, to follow what I believed, and still believe, to be God's call on my life. 

"What makes you different from anyone here?" Nothing... and everything... Over the past few months I've become more and more aware of not fitting anywhere anymore (I told you this was a brutally honest post).  Not belonging in England.  Not belonging in Scotland.  Not even sure what British means any more...   Baptist minister John Rackley once described the minister as 'the intentional outsider', the one who deliberately maintains a degree of provisionality in their relationships... I get that, but it isn't me, isn't how I operate.  Yet, despite my best efforts, despite loving both the congregations entrsuted to me until it hurts, I know I am never entirely 'of' them, there is always the unspoken fact that one day I will go and they will carry on without me.

"Do you miss your life back home?"  Where's home? What, even, is 'home?  I grew up with 'home' as the various houses where my parents and siblings lived together; as an adult I've joked that it was 'wherever I parked my car'; more recently I have quipped 'wherever Holly (cat) is'... Following God's call on my life has left me somewhat rootless, with no clear sense of 'home'... I have an eschatalogical understanding of course, but increasingly, wherever I reside there's a sense of being a 'reisdent alien'.  Do I miss my life back home?  I guess I miss knowing what, never mind where, 'home' was.

"I don't care about the cameras, I don't care about the lights..."  I never wanted to be "the first ordained woman minister in sole pastoral charge of a Baptist church in Scotland" I just wanted, given that was my calling, to get on and do it the best I can.  I never wanted to be a name in Baptist history books, or a role model for other women ministers.  I never wanted to be anything other than ordinary... but it wasn't my choice, and I try as best I can to live up to the expectations.

"At night when you go to bed, do these thoughts run through your head..."  These, and so many, many more.  The over-reflection on anything and everything.  The self-flagellation over the things I said that turned out to be unhelpful or hurtful.  The fear of fouling up, of messing up the way for other women called into ministry in Baptist churches.  The fear of letting God down.  The disappointments with myself, with others, with systems... So many, many thoughts...

So, in case anyone who loves me has managed to get this far, the few things I am still sure of are:

• God has called me to be the person I am, where I am, doing what I am
• There is absolutely no sense that I want to move away from this place or this role (indeed I saw a job advertisement yesterday that once I would have leaped at and it held zero attraction)
• I love Glasgow; I love Scotland; I love England... and that's not always an easy or comfortable blend
• I love my church, there is nowhere else I could imagine being at this point in time, or in any future I can conceive

Way back when as I explored a call to ordained minsitry, I read a little book called something like 'no matter what the cost' about Christian discipleship - and I thought 'I can sign up for that'.  Perhaps as well I couldn't know the future.

I don't know where, or even if, I'll be in ten years time -

I don't care about the 'firstness' or the 'Baptist history'

All I wanted was an ordinary life...

At night when I go to bed

These thoughts (and more) run through my head

I don't know about the future,

And I cannot change the past

But somewhere in it all God  has a plan...

And it seems this is no ordinary life...

To live is Christ, to die is gain -

But in between,

The urgent need of the gospel outweighs any desire of mine for ordinariness

That's so hard

So hard

So incredibly hard

But, it is my call

No matter what the cost...

And I will follow Christ

Lord, in your mercy, hear my prayer.