Sabbatical Journey's End

Today is my last day of sabbatical. On Monday, I return to the life of the peasantry; it's back to work for me. Four months have never gone by so fast.

My overwhelming feeling today is one of gratitude. How many 30-somethings in mid-career are given four months to go and reflect, restore, renew, and regroup?

I'm tremendously grateful for supportive supervisors and staff colleagues. I'm incredibly indebted to those who have continued to support me financially during my sabbatical in uncertain economic times--as long as my supporters have kept their jobs, they have kept supporting me.

I took a couple hours this morning to reflect on what the Lord had done in me the past four months. What I needed was more like a couple of days. But I did come upon something that encouraged me.

This past fall was one of the most frustrating starts to the school year that I've ever had. Things just didn't click.

But what made me realize that I needed sabbatical was not that things went wrong, it was how I responded to it. I was angry. I was over-wrapped-up in all the bumps and dips that we hit in August and September.

When I stopped long enough to listen to the noises in my soul, I realized that I was tripping warning flags. I needed to pull back and re-center. I could have played through, but it was clear that to continue to do so would have only further put me in jeopardy of doing something galactically stupid.

Christian leaders end up in newspapers because they don't pay attention to the warning signs along the way.

So as I entered into sabbatical-land, I wrote up these four goals for my time away--and of course, I didn't look at them again until this morning. But here they are:

Goal #1: To come back to campus in mid-March a healthy and holy human being.

Goal #2: That my wife & kids would be blessed by this season of rest.

Goal #3: To have a battery of fresh understandings and insights and celebrations as a result of intentionally reflecting on the past twelve and a half years in ministry.

Goal #4: To seek the Lord about what it means to do campus work healthily--some in terms of expectations and margins, but especially as it relates to keeping my identity separate and distinct from the ups and downs of ministry.

There some things on this list that I could do. And there are some things on this list that only the Lord could do. And as I sit here four months after putting these things on paper, I am delighted to say that he has moved in all four of these areas.

I'm certainly not done. Just last night I repeated a stupid sin pattern that the Lord has been working with me on during sabbatical, and I was humbled and reminded how much further I need to go.

But today is a day of celebration. God has provided for me in ways that I could not have imagined four months ago. He is my God, my good Father, my Lord; I am his son, his servant, his disciple, his follower. I have never been more glad in those things than I am today.

And so on Monday, it's time to go back to work.