Discerning between...what?

I have to admit I was tickled to hear that when my letter was read to the board, it was greeted by a moment of 'stunned silence'.

When I was a full-time drama teacher, 'stunned silence' meant one of two things: the work being received was either amazingly good or apallingly bad. Either one forced me into a 'heightened now', a place where I pulled together all of my knowledge and skills to articulate my perceptions and guide my learners to the next step. My understanding of my church board's stunned silence is that I am the third candidate in the last 6 years to make this request.

No one with whom I have shared this decision has been really surprised, once they've had a bit of time to process it. My church friends have been delighted...the only determinedly secular friend who I've told expressed concern about how my husband would feel 'when you're better at it than he is'.

I've heard that newly apprehended prisoners who are guilty sleep like babies in their cell, while the innocent lie awake. I guess I am 'guilty', because I have been so at peace with this decision.

Actually, when I stop to think about it, I have a tendency to giggle.

I am in no real hurry, knowing that the process is lengthy, but since I spent so much time struggling with the decision to enter discernment, it would be nice for it to begin relatively soon--like January, or February. But when I received the phone call from the minister from a nearby town who sits on our board, she explained that the United Church is in the middle of redesigning or redesignating the ministries.

I can't very well enter discernment when we don't know what options exist to discern between.

In the meantime, I hold these things in my heart, I ponder, and every now and then, as I work with our data on literacy, I have a little giggle.