Walking with a Friend

Confessions of an Unemployed Minister - Part Eight: Walking with a Friend

One of the most important parts of journeying through employment transitions is having good friends who accompany you on the way. I am blessed with several very good friends. Long before I started on this road of change, I began a regular time of (almost) weekly walking, talking, sharing and praying with an old friend. We meet and hike the chip trail around a local golf course. We try to give each other about a half of the trail loop each, to confess deeply, ask questions, counsel and absolve each other. There’s nothing that we cannot share. There’s lament and laughter, empathy and encouragement. It’s a sacred peer mentoring discipline that has helped me before, during, and (I hope) after this sifting and shifting experience.

It’s important to have mentors, to intentionally seek out great people of faith and wisdom whom one can look to for guidance and inspiration. I have many of these. Some have been dead for decades or centuries, but I can still read their books and glean from them regularly. Others are only a phone call or email away. It’s also important to mentor others; to offer whatever wisdom and faith one might have to those a little further behind on the way of life and faith. I have had the privilege of enjoying that role in many people’s lives. But there is another kind of mentoring that we need. That is to commit to intentionally walk with friends through the stages of life and faith together.

When we were teenagers, I made a written covenant with another friend. We put to paper a commitment to pray for each other daily, to encourage each other in faith, to practically support one another in any way we could, to never make a life decision without consulting the other, and to never speak disparagingly of the other. That 36-year covenant still stands and this is another way I regularly receive strength and courage to walk through this process of change and growth. Peer friend mentors are a vital gift for the journey.

Reading with a Friend

Confessions of an Unemployed Minister - Part Seven: Reading with a Friend

Another gift that came to me right at the beginning of my employment transition was the renewal of an old friendship. On the very last day of my thirty-year long ministry job, as I was on one of my ten thousand step journeys, listening to a podcast, my phone rang. I was surprised to see the caller ID was the name of this old friend whom I had not spoken to in years. He asked, “Are you OK?” I told him I was in an odd place of stunned grief and transition. He told me he had suddenly been thinking of me and felt prompted to call and see how I was.

I shared my transition story with him. He then shared some parts of his own recent story. He was also facing experiences of sorrow and hurt. He said he had just purchased a book by Timothy Keller called, “Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering”. He suggested I get a copy and that we read it together.

When I got my copy, we began meeting over Skype and discussing one chapter at a time about every three weeks or so. We connect through our computers for about an hour late at night. Sometimes we talk about the book. Sometimes we stray into topics that irrupt spontaneously. We laugh. We cry. We share our lives; our family stories, our mid-life hopes and losses; our pain and suffering.

These conversations are a wonderful cathartic part of my passage from where I was to where I am going. I am grateful for the layers of grace I see; old friends who are understanding and accepting in times of vulnerability, good books by wise teachers that lead one into greater understanding and faith, magical technology that connects one with people who were far away but are now made closer. The partnership of sojourners is a vital part of the success of any passage.