I am who I am

It has been a very long time since I last blogged, and we are now in the strange world of Coronavirus. I have been a minister now for over 10 years and in Jan 2020 started my sabbatical, so only returned to my role on April 1st, the day of the fools!  Yesterday I had my birthday in shutdown after a weekend getting hard copies of Easter resources to church folk not on the internet.  The calm after a flurry of activity.

I have spend most of my sabbatical in quiet and alone, so already acclimatised to how I am now living, in a way my life has not changed as much as it has for many. Unlike friends and others in the job who I meet online I am not feeling loss or angst about not leading worship week by week and especially this Holy Week into Easter.  I do not feel personal anxiety about the virus - I am physically healthy and keeping to the distance rules, although family members are more vulnerable I trust that they are also being kept as safe as is possible.  I also have insight about microbiology and biochemistry from my degree days. 

But I wonder also if the medication that supports my mental health - to balance the highs and lows of bipolar - also has a numbing factor.  I recognise the pain of others and their anxiety but it does not create the emotional link that triggers a direct reaction in me.  Does this give me resilience? Not constantly drained by the care of others. Or simply make me unemphatic?  Does this make me a more useful minister or a worse minister? Or just simply make me the person and the minister that I am?

I go with the latter, I am who I am - I am called as who I am.

Whatever you are feeling and however you are coping is a valid response, we are who we are, and there are no rules of how we should feel, even if there are sensible rules about our movements.