Renewed Vision
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Jon will be taking over as Area Director as I step into my new role |
One evening after putting my kids to bed
and tidying the house I finally got a chance to sit. As I did, my vision
suddenly turned into an array of bright shapes and colors, as if I was viewing
the world through a kaleidoscope. I was able to make my way to bed and fall
asleep. The next day everything seemed fine.
Losing vision is a scary thing. I have an elderly neighbor I visit often
who faces blindness more and more each day. It affects independence, safety and
perception. While this incident only lasted a short time for me, his experience
was echoing through my mind and I knew I should get things sorted out.
I checked in with my eye doctor. She told
me, after an examination, that I’d experienced an ocular migraine. She informed
me that unless I took steps to reduce my stress I’d likely have more frequent
and severe reactions. My family doctor confirmed this and showed high concern
for my health in this season. Stress is a normal part of life and while I work
hard at caring for my physical and mental health, it appeared that my normal
coping mechanisms were not up to the task.
On the work front, I was dealing with the
sudden loss of one of my closest youth which was emotionally shaking. As well,
our community had experienced the death of a young man, Carson Crimeni. Our team was connected with both the victim
and the perpetrators of this incident.
Our loss of some significant funding led to several staff turning in
their resignations and, as a result, we had to scale back our projects,
programs and partnerships. Even the
funding for my own position is still down by $1700 per month. As the team
leader this took a large toll on me.
On the personal front, we were facing some
significant parenting challenges on top of the normal management of a busy
household. I was also helping my mom
make arrangements to move off the property she’d lived on for 53 years. This was all while still working through
recovery on my knee surgery.
I reached out for help and did some serious
soul searching. I found myself unable to
see beyond my immediate circumstances which sparked an insight. Losing my
eyesight for a couple of hours led me to conclude that I needed to renew the
vision for the whole of my life. I
stumbled upon this quote by Richard Rohr;
“In the second half of the spiritual life,
you are not making choices as much as you are being guided, taught, and
led—which leads to “choiceless choices.” These are the things you cannot not do
because of what you have become, things you do not need to do because they are
just not yours to do, and things you absolutely must do because they are your
destiny and your deepest desire. Your driving motives are no longer money,
success, or the approval of others. You have found your sacred dance.”
What began was an opportunity to drop the
things in my life that were draining and reinvest myself into areas of greatest
passion. Talking this over with my boss
led to the passing on of management and responsibilities for the day to day
operations of the area and I received a promotion to the Community Engagement
Coordinator. In this new role, I will be
working to assist directors and staff throughout Southern BC on spiritual
mentoring, strategic goals and initiating partnership with churches and
community agencies in their areas. I am
also working part time with Youth Unlimited Canada to bring leadership to
conversations on LGBTQ in our organization.
My experience working with youth and young adults that self identify on
that spectrum, combined with my background in Biblical Studies, gives me some
unique viewpoints in this area. This
involves travel around the Vancouver region, throughout Canada and even an
invitation to speak in Europe this fall.
As I’m navigating this new adventure I am
thankful to all of you who have invested in me through the years. Your impact is expanding beyond Langley and
has a global impact as I work with youth workers from around the world to bring
Jesus into the messy situations that happen in life. I continue to work on my
physical and mental heath and I am excited to have some renewed vision for the
future.
- Danny Ferguson
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