I have it.
I'm a geezer and, by my age, back problems are fairly common.
Shortly after I began working at the Front End of the store, nearly four years ago, I twisted my back and messed things up, had an Xray, got a note from my doctor excusing me from a week of work, returned to work with my back still feeling tender but survived.
Last week, off the job, I did too many twisty things and, suddenly felt a, uh, twinge, and knew things were out of line.
They still are, though I've kept up my work schedule...so far...in pain.
I have more responsibility now than I did then and others on the management team would be effected if I'd call off from work, so I'm trying to struggle through. But, it's not easy and I don't want to create more serious, permanent physical problems for myself.
I realize that I often don't have good judgment when dealing with things like pain and injury. And, I don't take advice well. So, this is a real emotional as well as physical struggle.
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At times like this, I think about how I got to the place I am at.
For many years, I lived a financially and physically comfortable life as a congregational pastor.
But, the time came, as I immersed myself in the Word, that I reached the point that I didn't believe in the life I was living.
I concluded that there is no place for a congregational pastor in the Kingdom whose coming Jesus preached. It also had no place in the so-called church that developed as a result of the ministry of the Apostles in Christianity's first generation.
For a few years, I tried to live in my prophetic calling while I still worked under the title "Pastor." But, that didn't work for the congregation or for me.
If there is no place for a congregational pastor in the Kingdom of God, there is certainly no place for a congregational pastor living as a prophet in the Kingdom of God.
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So, I now work at a job I can believe in. I am in the world. As a pastor, I was so involved with parish priest duties that I was rarely in the world.
I dumped the title of pastor and see myself as an ambassador, not of the church, but of the Kingdom and as a herald of the King.
Degenerative Disk Disease would be no issue if I was still a pastor/parish priest but it is now. We'd have a lot more money to live on if I was still a parish priest but, I sleep better at night, even in physical pain, than I did as a pastor.
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And...
....as I've said a few times before, I am practicing what many on my denominational mountaintop preach.
One of the dysfunctions of my Conference is that it talks what it talks yet it expelled what's left of the ministry here where we practice that talk.
And, rumors continue to circulate that the Conference recalled my credentials in 2016. (I have difficulty believing that because I was never charged with any "crime" against the Conference and there is no one more openly and aggressively supportive of church doctrine and Mission and Vision than I am.
And, of course, I've never been advised that my credentials have been recalled.
So, I struggle with a bad back and live as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God and as a herald of the King, living the life advocated by church, uh, leaders...
...as a voice crying in the wilderness.
Go figure!
Who could make this up?
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