On the Day 2 of 2015, I begin the year, blog-wise, by playing the RevGalBlogPals Friday Five.

This simple question was posed by 3dogmom:

What sort of year would you like this to be for you?  Choose five!

1. Year of the Mantra: Thanks to a nifty quiz on Facebook, I got the mantra “I am open.” Yes, I am.

2. Year of the Apartment: The Pennsylvania house I “owned” — read: owed on and decided to move from to go back to Louisiana — was foreclosed upon and auctioned in November. I am free! So this will be . . .

3. Year of Simplifying and Downsizing: Most of my things from that 3 bedroom house have lived in a storage unit for a couple of years. During that time, I had an address and a bed at Mom’s house in Baton Rouge. I have also been living in New Orleans in a modest apartment in order to serve a congregation there.  Now, as I move into my own new and future apartment in Baton Rouge, I have the opportunity to create a new life in the place where I grew up, which is new and strange because of . . .

4. Year of Taking Off the Clergy Robe: I will complete an intense and wonderful interim ministry with an amazing congregation at the end of this month.  For the rest of 2015, I am taking a break from professional church leadership.*  I feel incredibly blessed by all the places and people and challenges and joys in these past 21+ years of second-career pastoral ministry.  The next thing just isn’t there. Everywhere I look for the next ministry inspiration or direction, I see gently closed doors. They do not seem to be doors slammed shut and locked forever. For this year, I anticipate going back to my first career of hospital lab work as a medical technologist. I loved that work, too. I hope it will mean . . .

5. Year of God-Only-Knows outside the Pulpit:  Who is Sharon, child of God, outside the pulpit?God only knows. And I’d like to hear — and taste, smell, see, touch! — lots more of what God only knows.

I am open. Let it be.