At the church I serve at there is a policy in place that a Pastor on staff for 7 years must take an 8 week sabbatical. Today my sabbatical ended. I wanted to share a few experiences and funny stories from my time away now that its over.
I started my sabbatical on May 15, by taking my wife, Kristi, to San Francisco for 5 days. It was a great trip to get away. We stayed at a boutique hotel across the street from Fisherman's Warf. We did all the tourist type stuff you hear about in San Fran. We went to Alcatraz (in the rain no less), we rode bikes over the Golden Gate Bridge. We rode cable cars, we ate at local restaurants, we found an Irish pub and tried their "world famous" Irish coffee. It was an awesome way to begin a season of rest and renewal.
After all these years of marriage and ministry it was incredible to spend time with my wife and realize we both still enjoy each other's company. If you said I could go to a new city and explore it for a few days, I wouldn't pick anyone else on this planet to accompany me. I'm pretty sure, she'd still pick me as well. I will never forget my first trip to San Francisco and the incredible woman who made the trip wonderful and adventurous.
The trip itself really didn't feel like anything other than a cool vacation. What was really bizarre was coming home from a trip like that and not going back to work. I didn't even check my work email....weird. I began to think about work a couple of times that first week home and realized that the church was pretty successful before I showed up and would probably continue on after I leave, it could manage without my incredible gift and contribution for a few weeks.
I never found myself longing to be back at the office. Don't get me wrong I love my job, and I really love the people I'm surrounded by each and every day at CCV. They are a great church I worship with each and every day. I had a few plans for work related projects during my sabbatical. Pretty quickly I realized that if someone wants to do work projects they shouldn't take a sabbatical when their wife is off work and their 3 kids are out of school. So I found myself putting the work projects on the back burner.
One funny story from our San Francisco trip: Our first night in town we wanted something local to eat, but everything was packed. We finally found ourselves at the Boudin Sourdough Bread Factory. They have a sweet restaurant upstairs- so we get our table buzzer from the hostess and begin our wait for a table to open up. A fine-looking gentleman and his male companion (if you know what I mean) come walking up the stairs holding hands {Quick aside- it didn't bother me at all that these two "friends" chose to interlock their fingers while pursuing dinner that night, I was prepared for the "sights" of San Francisco and promised myself I wouldn't stare too long if anything weird starting happening} …back to the story- I see these walk up and I look away to practice my promise of not staring...when I realize one of the guys is staring at me. I look over and my friend is looking right at me. At that moment I do what any other guy would do if a guy were looking at him (outside of San Francisco) I give him the "hey what's up dude?" head nod.
Well lets just say in San Francisco the "hey what's up dude" head nod, is a secret code for, "why don't you look me over like a piece of meat 3 or 4 times.
I have to be honest I didn't really expect to be checked out in such an obvious manner. I'm used to people checking me out being a bit more subtle. Kristi thought is was the funniest thing she had ever seen. Especially the way my face turned red, and I had no idea what to do. She said I looked like a big cuddly teddy-bear, to that little bitty skinny fella.
More sabbatical learning and experiences to follow.
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