Posted by husband October 7 2009 | Tags:
sickness | |
Poor VIT. She spent last night preparing some really very creative prayers for this evening’s weekly big college communion service. So I’m somewhat surprised to get an email from her just before the service begins. She’s at home with the bi-annual (every other year) migraine, the older VKIT is having a rough time having had the first of two sets of braces fitted yesterday and I’m on the Eurostar doing 180 miles an hour in a direction away from home.
The challenge is how we and she can integrate into the college, with its mixture of single people (or partners away from their spouses and grown up children), and married people who have VWITs who are very much there for their VITs, despite in some cases the very real demands of small children. I’m feeling very “not there” for her.
On the bright side, the college tutor wants to meet us, and we can even muster 4 out of the 5 humans in the house to do so. The other one will be in Iceland.
And I missed the coffee morning. I was discussing challenging clients with my colleagues in London, and now I’m writing this from Belgium…
Posted by husband October 5 2009 | Tags:
calling,
family,
who are we? | |
Ever since I’ve known the Vicar in Training (VIT for short) she’s wanted to be a priest – no, more than that – she’s felt this inexplicable “call” to priesthood. It won’t go away. If she’d been applying for any other job she’d have told the Church of England to get stuffed long, long ago. But God is more persisent than that. So finally, 25 years after we met, and 22 after we married, she’s an Ordinand. This means she’s training to be a priest, and that means that the rest of us; husband, three kids, a dog and a cat are the Vicar’s Family in Training – or VFIT for short. (Actually that’s the registration of one of Richard Branson’s planes – but aviation can wait till later.) It’s going to take some adjustment, practically and emotionally.
The kind people at the training college – let’s call it Coverdale Hall – have arranged a thing for spouses (I guess there aren’t too many unmarried partners…) and in some cases their multiple and quite often small children. But as a forty-something male with a job which requires being away a lot I am not sure that a coffee morning with small kids (been there, done that, love that my children are growing up) or a morning Bible Study is going to do it for me. But that’s not to diss the idea completely. This, the welcome dinner, the fact that families can eat in college any time and for no extra charge, and the evening the college laid on explicitly for spouses, all adds up to the most pastorally sensitive things any church body formally involved in this process has done to this VHIT (work it out) for some time. So, initial reaction is BIG TICK TO COVERDALE HALL.
Tomorrow begins a new test: I’m away for nearly 48 hours for work. Can the VIT and the VKITs (I’m sure you can work that one out too) cope? I’m quite sure they can, but the logistics and the emotions are different to when VIT was simply at work.
And I’m genuinely grateful for the invitation to the coffee morning. Honest.
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