It’s always unsettling moving house, changing jobs, children leaving school…. I began to realise that I was feeling more than just unsettled though, I was beginning to feel as though I was being erased.

As I packed my study into a series of cardboard boxes, my theology books, the props I had used for school assemblies, the materials I used for marriage preparation… it felt as though I was packing a part of myself away too. Each box was marked ‘shed’ rather than study, because in the new house it would be my working from home, bread winning, husband who would take the study space, not me. Perhaps I could turn the small garden shed into a study, a prayer shed, but every time I mentioned this to some one I was told to be sensible, that the shed was needed for the lawn mower, the bikes, anything except me.

Requests for me to marry parishioners or baptise their babies had to be declined; news of beloved parishioners moving on to meet their maker was tinged with deeper sadness as I knew I wouldn’t be the one to conduct their final journey into the church I had served for over a decade.

Seeing my name removed from the church notice board: just a shadow remaining where the letters had spelled out not just my name by my position in the community. I was quite literally, not just metaphorically, being erased.

Then I read John Roedel’s poem about Fading Away, and it touched a nerve.

Every day I feel like I’m disappearing in front of the world. I’m fading away. Eventually I’ll become invisible to everyone…

John Roedel, Hey God, Hey John

Of course I’m not invisible, I am still a mum, a wife, a daughter, a beloved child of God, but all those identities are more about who I belong to. Belonging is important, and I remember at my interview all those years ago answering a question with a statement about wanting to belong; I didn’t want to just be another vicar passing through. I don’t belong to that community anymore. I am not sure who I am any more.

Reflecting upon John’s poetry I began to realise that I wasn’t being erased, I was shedding dragon scales (think Edmund in the Voyage of the Dawntreader). All these things which had been such a huge part of ministry for the last 20 years, were no longer needed. I was being transformed ready for the next adventure, the next step into who I truly am as a minister of God. The Rev title remains with its priestly status, but the trappings of village vicar are not to travel with me, and that’s ok. I am not being erased, I am being transformed, as John concludes his beautiful poem, I am not vanishing, I am becoming.

God: A work of creation that I love beyond all measure. My shining light in the world. My hands on Earth. My pottery. My art. My poem. My song. That is who you are and it will all soon be unmistakable to you.

John Roedel http://www.facebook.com/johnbigjohn