This is of course still a personal blog, a place to think to scribe what is occurring in ones thoughts a place to reflect. Though it may be fun to point to some of what has occurred in this year in a more global context and perhaps to suggest at a spiritual one, it is very much a personal reflection of my own year and an attempt to make sense of what God has done through it all.

As I sit in my newly created lounge within my bedroom, yes I am very grateful to have a 3rd story bedroom that has room to create a lounge area. I delighted a couple weeks ago in finding in a local charity shop a wicker framed comfy sofa that you might find in a light and airy conservatory, and I picked up a really heavy and quite hefty coffee table with draws and shelf underneath from Gumtree – to use as a writing desk.

I am in awe really of the fact that personally and professionally I feel like this year has taken me to a new realm and taken me to where I neeeded to be. Yes it has had it’s challenges and set backs but ultimately as I look back at this year on this cold cold night of Friday December 16th in the year 2022. 2 weeks from the New Year, and on a Family night where we watched ‘A Christmas Carol’ I can clearly see that I am in a very different place to where I started the year. And I am thankful!

At the beginning of this year, I faced inner turmoil about the ethical dilemma I felt in remaining in a post that I so desired to be in, yet knew I had major conflicts with the senior leadership of the organisation. It is so hard when you have worked and lived in a community that has so much right for 11 years, deciding to leave because it is actually not right is very difficult. Though that is the major narrative of this year of 2022 for me and of course my family.

The whole year and over whelming through the summer was spent trying to bring understanding and reconciliation in a relationship with the mentioned senior leadership of the Church that I worked for. It is hard to think now of the beautiful family holiday we had in June in a friends camper in Cornwall, when our now 20 month old seemed SO much younger, and think that it was only 6 months ago! A lot of feeling and action has taken place since those long and sunny summer days.

At the end of September this year it became apparent that we were only hitting a brick wall with the strained relationship and that two different visions of the future where in place. Vision is a wonderful thing and the Bible rightly says that without it people can not move forward. I and many others had to get off the bus at the very sad altercation of these two visions.

Although it was a hugely significant thing to do I have no regrets in leaving and standing with others for what we know is right. Being true to yourself and to your God is the most important thing, and you really can’t keep going along with values and aims that do not align with your own. Although it may be momentarily painful and very difficult we have to take the hard choices.

In jumping , God has caught me, he has given me a job with a company that is doing very good work caring for others, He has kept me in a job that is supporting people and is advocating for young people and family, it very much aligns with my life verse of Malachi 4:6. As a Family Relationship Manager for a company that provide mental health care to teenagers who have been through some horrendous trauma. It is a job I didn’t even have to apply for as I was head hunted at just the right time. I am so grateful to the Lord for his faithfulness and desire of course to give it my very all. It is also a company that takes pride in rewarding it’s ‘family’. And of course after the start of this very tough year for so many of us – that is too what I and my family very much needed. To find a job that is rewarding and stretching, that fits with my values and is a blessing financially is such a blessing!!

To top it off I have seen such open doors in this new opportunity, someone this week even asked if I can baptise them! I am learning that there are just as many actually probably far more opportunities to make disciples outside the church than in. I am so excited.

In leaving a Church -you are of course leaving a family as well, and this is difficult, there are so many people that I am so sad not to see. There are so many young people that kept us in that place longer than we may have planned to – out of a heart to serve them. However the reality is that God had been preparing a place for us, especially through the wonderful relationships my wife had been fostering this year. Stepping in to a new Church and a new family of friends has been a blessing. We must also realise that we have family wherever another Christ follower is.

The wonderful group of men that has found me in this new fellowship was highlighted at a men’s gathering at a local house this week, it was such a relaxed, hospitable time that I felt very comfortable and grateful to have found such good men, this was also demonstrated to us all, in the church family weekend away that we had which really was so different to what we have experienced before.

I am just so grateful. Yes there are a few things that I still would of liked to of happened this year, not all my goals got ticked off, and am waiting on some, a number of things we’ve had to grin and bear and pull through. But God has been SO faithful it has been a beautiful year, at times a painful year, but in the end God always restores our ashes with beauty and turns all things for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purposes.