Relief and Reproach

Interview day makes me feels like a dad waiting outside of the delivery room while his wife is in labor. After conducting a devotion on Mark 5:1-20---with special emphasis on vs. 19 and 20--I turn the candidates over to our interview teams for the day. I sorta pace around, do emails, make sure we keep on schedule and read preliminary reports. Hopefully by Thursday they will have made it through to appointment and will be in the hands of member care and I will begin focusing my team on the March prospects. But tomorrow morning beginning at 8 I will facilitate conference calls with team leaders as we try to formalize our decisions.

I have enjoyed this week immensely. A&O is the culmination of lots of hard work---a kind of harvest time, as well as a time of intense activity. Not since September '07 have I worked an A&O week without Nancy's illness hanging over us. I have found myself glad to be at this work without that burden---and then I catch myself. In one sense, I am not glad at all. I reproach myself for this odd sense of relief. And then I remember that such ambivalence is another part of this journey---each step brings a new and strange emotion across my path.