So... What if you don't get in?

...Is a question that no one has yet asked me.

I've had lots of "I have no doubt you'll be absolutely fine"s, which is lovely, but that creates rather a lot of expectation, so my mind has turned to this question - what if I don't get it?

After the panel, on the train back home, I decided two things. 1) I was absolutely 100% myself at the panel, 2) The assessors presented themselves as wise, prayerful people who asked insightful questions and would no doubt be excellent decision makers. Hence, logical conclusion 3) the decision I get will be the right one.

I stand by that, but the last few days of anxious waiting have shown me that if I get a 'not recommended' I will be very, very disappointed. Throughout this process I have had a strong feeling of God's call, which has been backed up by the encouraging things people have said (both after I had begun 'officially' exploring ordained ministry, and even before I had actually started thinking about it for myself.) So I'll be sad. Sad that I will not be able to do the things that I believe ordained ministry will enable, and sad that I have managed to get my sense of call so monumentally wrong.

But this won't mean I'm not called.... to something. Primarily we are called to be human beings and then, I believe, to recognise ourselves as children of God. So a new time of discernment begins - clearly I'm called to lay ministry of some kind, but in what form? And then there's the whole question of career. I'll almost certainly stay in my current job for the next year or so, but what then? I hope I'll come to see this new era as an exciting one, whatever the decision is.

But for the next few days it's waiting. More distracting myself with books and TV and the Internet, and oh there's the St Michael's lecture tomorrow, Soup Evening on Thursday, 'St David's has Talent' on Saturday, Junior Church Sunday morning and visiting Emily and Tabitha with Emma on Sunday afternoon. It seems an age, but it will come, and I aim to make the most of the things I'm doing over the next few days before the decision, whatever it is, changes everything...