© Tash McGill

Paradigm Shifting
Sometimes you have these moments in life when you realise the sands are shifting beneath you, and you have limited time to choose your response. I sense this process is beginning in me. And this time I’m wiser and softer than I was before. Hindsight offers the choice to engage in the process and be shifted along as I need to be, or to simply dig in. But the choice is not really mine.

As I’m writing this, I’m also viewing pictures from Luke and Katie’s wedding and admiring the love that they have grown for one another. It’s beautiful to see how they have grown together and to believe in something precious for a moment.

I see now, how in all of my career movement and development, right alongside it, has been this deep drive and need to build a home life. I’m reminded of that John Mayer song actually. The deep longing for a place and community of belonging, that owns me and loves me and keeps me and desires me. A community of people who are friends not parishoners, family not colleagues. A place to celebrate and be celebrated in. And so here in what could be the twilight of my time at Windsor Park, I am seeing signs of this little haven coming into being. Not altogether as I would imagined it, but slowly in small and quiet places. I love my house and my connect points, special friends that are growing deeply into my heart. I love seeing progress and development with some of the things I have been doing here finally taking fruit. And there are of course other things not going as well, that I want to see through and fix. Or at least learn from.

So .. with some dreams having been put to bed by recent developments; I’m looking around and asking God what next, and where to. It seems that age and gender and experience will ultimately prevent for the foreseeable future my ongoing growth or development into the ministry role I feel so called to.

Edited on Advice

I am looking at the reality of accepting a minimal token payment job here next year, with increased ministry workload, albeit some of the very dreams and ideas I had wanted to run with in my internship period; but having to combine that with a role with Eastercamp that I’ve been told won’t be developed beyond what it already is. That would still leave me financially crippled for another year and also in the very kind of volunteer position that my would-be employer has disregarded as ‘countable experience’.

Or I look to be employed somewhere else, and put down my responsibilities with Eastercamp, the passion and call there. I could go full time or partime and continue to study and pursue some things. The optio of staying in Auckland in a position like that is at least one that would allow the songwriting to continue and not remove me entirely from the homelife I have built.

Or, I take my mother’s advice and move overseas. Looking at a position maybe in NSW where I have some contacts and opportunities are available. There are positive things about this. The whole ‘prophet without honor in his own land’ would be easily removed for a season, an opportunity to explore and develop and build. If leadership is not empowering, then it’s either managing you for it’s own benefit or.. it’s disenpowering you altogether.

So there are some smart decisions, and extremely painful ones in my future.

Pray for me, that God’s will be done, and not my own unless the two correlate. Pray for my fears to be held in check.

Song Of The Moment : Home Life
John Mayer

I think I’m gonna stay home
Have myself a home life
Sitting in the slow-mo
And listening to the daylight
I am not a nomad
I am not a rocket man
I was born a house cat
By the slight of my mother’s hand

I think I’m gonna stay home

I want to live in the center of a circle
I want to live on the side of a square
I used to be in my M-Z now
You’ll never find me cause my name isn’t there

Home life
Been holding out for a home life
My whole life

I want to see the end game
I want to learn her last name
Finish on a Friday
And sit in traffic on the highway
See, I refuse to believe
That my life’s gonna be
Just some string of incompletes
Never to lead me to anything remotely close to home life

Been holding out for a home life
My whole life

I can tell you this much
I will marry just once
And if it doesn’t work out
Give her half of my stuff
It’s fine with me
We said eternity
And I will go to my grave
With the life that I gave
Not just some melody line
On a radio wave
It dissipates
And soon evaporates
But home life doesn’t change

I want to live in the center of a circle
I want to live on the side of a square
I’d love to walk to where we can both talk but
I’ve got to leave you cause my ride is here

Home life
You keep the home life
You take the home life
I’ll come back for the home life
I promise