I found Hope, both the literal place and the energy that propels us and gives us purpose when we feel adrift and unmoored on Easter Sunday 2010.
Over the next year and a half, I would join a church for the first time in my adult life, fill out a pledge card, attend multiple services on Sundays, and other events during the week.
I would eventually answer a call from God to begin a journey to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church and after a year going through the church's discernment process, I would find myself a postulant for Holy Orders.
I applied to seminary and began taking my first class, a night class, while I taught middle school Language Arts during the day.
And then my world fell apart.
Physical symptoms that had plagued me on and off for years finally coalesced. Joint pain, fatigue, fevers, chronic bouts of inflammation and vertigo would force me on disability.
Labeled Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, an autoimmune disorder that has symptoms of both Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis among others, this disease would force me to leave a job I loved, and postpone a calling that burned in my heart to serve God.
Where I once was finding a way to church almost every day, now I was struggling to make one service on Sunday.
Each day became a lesson on how to avoid cabin fever and how to find purpose again under such heavy and imposing limits that diseases place on us.
Inspired by Mark Hirsch, who took one picture every day of a single tree, I've decided to attempt something similar. Every day, I will endeavor to make a trip to Hope, my church, a place that saved and gave me purpose more than three years ago, and take a picture of the property. I won't limit myself to one tree, but will instead rely on God for direction.
And perhaps by doing something so small, I can once again find purpose.
Over the next year and a half, I would join a church for the first time in my adult life, fill out a pledge card, attend multiple services on Sundays, and other events during the week.
I would eventually answer a call from God to begin a journey to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church and after a year going through the church's discernment process, I would find myself a postulant for Holy Orders.
I applied to seminary and began taking my first class, a night class, while I taught middle school Language Arts during the day.
And then my world fell apart.
Physical symptoms that had plagued me on and off for years finally coalesced. Joint pain, fatigue, fevers, chronic bouts of inflammation and vertigo would force me on disability.
Labeled Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, an autoimmune disorder that has symptoms of both Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis among others, this disease would force me to leave a job I loved, and postpone a calling that burned in my heart to serve God.
Where I once was finding a way to church almost every day, now I was struggling to make one service on Sunday.
Each day became a lesson on how to avoid cabin fever and how to find purpose again under such heavy and imposing limits that diseases place on us.
Inspired by Mark Hirsch, who took one picture every day of a single tree, I've decided to attempt something similar. Every day, I will endeavor to make a trip to Hope, my church, a place that saved and gave me purpose more than three years ago, and take a picture of the property. I won't limit myself to one tree, but will instead rely on God for direction.
And perhaps by doing something so small, I can once again find purpose.
Good to have a reason to get out!
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