Hired to Be Fired

As is the case each year about this time (and mentioned in this space yearly as well), I have used an awful lot of time in recent weeks getting things prepared for the Fantasy Baseball league I administer. Really, though, once they begin tossing a ball down in Florida (and Arizona), everything in my world becomes kind of baseball-inflected. The fantasy season draws near; soon I'll be able to watch actual games; and even spring itself seems surely just about to round third base and head for home.

Maybe that explains why I'm identifying with baseball managers these days. It's early yet, but if some team gets off to a poor start, we may see our first managerial firing before too long. And if the victim is a particularly philosophical sort, we may even hear a popular line from the mythical Manager's Creed: "Managers are hired to be fired." That is, no manager lasts forever (well, Connie Mack ran the Athletics for 50 years -- spending most of the last several years napping on the bench -- but then, he also owned a chunk of the team); he knows on the day he's hired that the exit interview is already in sight.

Or maybe it's our more recent visit to the Mark Twain House & Museum that has me feeling like Tom Sawyer. As I recall -- it's been awhile, and I'm too lazy to research it -- Tom let the folks in his town think he was dead, and was gleeful at the prospect of attending his own funeral.

I suppose that all of that sets rather more of a foreboding tone than I really intended, so I should probably pause here to assure the reader that no one was fired and nobody's dead.

We have, however, been contemplating endings and transitions around here lately, because as was officially announced last Sunday, we will be moving this summer. We know that no pastor -- at least in our system -- stays forever in one place. It's not exactly "hired to be fired", but still the expectation is set from day one: someday you'll be moving on.

I told my wife that the announcement was a little like attending your own funeral, in that people are somewhat expected to say nice things about you... but I don't think she really wanted to contemplate her own funeral. I, on the other hand, would be burningly curious to know what's being said about me! As it turned out, several people were quite kind and gracious in ways that let us know that they weren't just "saying the right thing".

While the move is not unexpected, it bears some resemblance to the old joke about mixed emotions... we're moving with open hearts and open eyes, but at the same time it's wrenching to leave this place that has so much good about it. Had the call not come, we would've been happy to stay here in this place and minister among these people; in fact, I in particular have been pretty vocal about the concept that I wouldn't mind being "forgotten" and left here for the rest of my life.

Of course, that is only partly because I love it here and clearly some portion due to my general change-averseness (about which I have been equally vocal). And besides, the church here kind of brought it on themselves: they have become such a vibrantly healthy (emotionally as well as spiritually) bunch that it really made it possible for us to leave. If they'd been troubled, it would've been a lot tougher sell.

We're still in the process of selling to the kids, who've really never experienced this kind of move. Our daughter was 9 months when we came, and while the boy was 3 1/2, he doesn't remember it too well. I think he does remember viscerally how it pained him to lose his first home -- I know I do.

So we get the girl excited about the basketball court in the new church and the possibility of biking to school, and we tell the son that we'll be less than a mile from the mall AND ToysRUs. There will be a park nearby and some good friends living not far away. And I've stopped saying in Sunday night prayers, "Thank you God that we went to church and saw all our friends,".... because I don't want to remind them that (relatively) soon, we'll be going to church and seeing strangers. New friends, yes, but not that first week for sure.

We believe in our hearts that this new place is where God wants us to be at this time, although there's clearly a corner of my heart, at least, that has retreated behind a locked door. Can a "corner of your heart" put its fingers in its ears and go, "La la la I can't hear you!"? I guess I should have said above that we're going with mostly open hearts and eyes.

I have one little theological theory that I fall back on a lot, although no one else seems to much get why it's important to me. But I find it of great comfort: since God is beyond time and space, the concept of "today" is meaningless to Him. I am tied, at least physically, to today, no matter how tempting it may be to try to live in the past or obsess over the uncertainty of the future. God, however, is already there in that future. In God's world, it's "today" and "1983" and "this July"... so I don't have to be afraid even when uncertainty looms (although it seems that quite often I am anyway). I know there's already someone there who knows me and who's going to make all the pieces fit together somehow.