I knew I hadn’t blogged in a long time, but I hadn’t realised it had been more than a year. It’s time to write a little about 2018, and in writing about it, put it to bed. It’s been quite a year.

2018 brought some highs and lows; the highest high was the culmination in May of a discernent process I had been in for almost three years, and the lowest low was losing my mother in September.

Grief is a strange country. I need to blog about it more in a separate post, but for now I can only say that it has hit me harder than I thought it would. I can get on with the general stuff of life, and then something triggers a memory or overloads my emotions, and I am weepy for a day, or two, or a week. Some days life seems almost normal, and others I can’t imagine it being normal ever again. I am in a work in progress.

Looking forward to 2019, I know there are going to be more big changes. The first, and maybe the biggest, is that I am leaving Japan at the end of March. After more than half my life there it is time to return to the UK. It feels right, it’s time to move, but it is still going to be a Big Thing.

Three years ago, in the summer of 2015, I discerned a call to ordained ministry, and then began the long and demanding journey to test that call. Again, it’s something I want to blog about more, but those posts will all be over on my other blog, Our Light In Darkness.

So, at the end of March I will be leaving Japan and returning to the UK. I’ll have a few months to settle back into life here and then in September I’ll be starting on a new, completely different journey; 2 years at theological college to train for ordained ministry in the Church of England.

2018, you have been quite a year. I am reminded of 2011, when my father died, and in Japan we lived through the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. This year has been even more demanding, and as I stagger across the finish line I feel grateful that I have actually made it. I know that 2019 will be another demanding year, but I am ready for new challenges, and new starts.

Off you go, 2018. That’s quite enough from you.