My Fun Week Off

As I've written about before, one of the best parts of going through the seminary experience are the people you meet while studying. These are the people who continue to follow you through your life-- encouraging you from out of town phone calls, reminding you why you love the church, and being a sounding board for ideas when ministry crisis hit. The sad part of leaving seminary is that you don't get to see them often. Facebook becomes your dear friend.

For this reason, last week was very special. For part of the week, I spent time with my dear seminary friends at the beach in South Carolina. Six amazing women who are doing wonderful things for the church around the country. We are an ecumenical crew: one other Baptist, two Presbyterians, two Methodist and an Episcopalian. We are all under the age of 30. Five of us are associate pastors, one of us is a teacher, and another just finished up a hospital chaplaincy and is looking for a job in a church.

All of us began as single women when we met during the first semester. Now four of us are married. Many of us lived together at some point during seminary. Seen below is my Baptist sister, Abby who lived with three of us from the group throughout the three years she lived the apartment affectionately known as "8C." Oh if the walls could tell the stories . .

While we all tried to be on vacation and not think about work, many of our conversations kept coming back to our jobs and what it means to be a woman in ministry. We had unofficial sessions on planning funerals, church administrative crisis, attire at church, finances as a pastor, and of course theological topics of all kinds. No matter where we've landed on the theological spectrum post graduation, we share the bond of being trained in the ways of Duke Divinity School and its love of orthodoxy.

I think when we do this beach gathering next year, we'll just call it "continuing education on the beach" so we won't take vacation time to come. Instead, we'll attend a conference designed by us. We just couldn't help ourselves . . . talking about what we do with people who actually understand was just that important. (Also, applying sunscreen is important too. Lots of it. I seemed to have a problem with applying it evenly and came home with some funky tan lines!)


But the week of vacation, was not just about my seminary friends. I had a good time reconnecting with my adopted family from my college years and beyond: the Goodwins. We hit the beach too and enjoyed the great view from their rented beach house. Below you'll catch the picture I posed them for right in front of the beautiful house where I hung out with them at the end of the week. But, best of all was coming home on Saturday to see my husband again. I really did miss him!! I wished his work schedule would have allowed him to join me down south too. However, we did enjoy attending Kevin's church together on Sunday morning and spending some time with our church friends in DC at a festival. It is of course sad that my vacation is now over. I love vacation!!! Why can't we be like the Europeans and take a holiday all summer?