The Last of the Lasts (or New Beginnings)

This may seem a funny title for a first blog post but this week represents the "last of the lasts". For the moment, at least.

My youngest son and I have both spent the last few weeks saying our goodbyes and packing up one phase of our lives, ready to embark on the next. For him, it's been about finishing at primary school, ready to start secondary school in September.

For me, it's about dismantling a singing and teaching career I have worked really hard to set up and get going and have found massively rewarding, as well as challenging, ready to start training for ordination in the Church of England. Saying goodbye to schools and pupils at the end of term, ready to become a learner again myself.

Perhaps I should introduce myself.  I'm Abby and I've been a singer and singing teacher for 7 years. Before that, I had a "proper job" managing communications in a government agency, where I thought I'd stay for a long time, but God seemed to have other ideas. That's a long story put into 2 sentences and I think it's quite likely that some of the history will come up here over time but that's probably the need-to-know stuff in a nutshell.

I am married to an amazingly supportive man, M, who doesn't have the same faith as me but who has walked this path with me all the same.

We have two sons, who, for the purposes of social media, I call GiraffeBoy (14) and SmallBoy (11).  You get a feel for the size difference, if nothing else. When I walk around with SmallBoy, I look like his mum.  When I walk around with GiraffeBoy, he looks like my security.  I can live with that. 

We're a pretty normal family, doing normal stuff, tackling the usual challenges. The boys like football and music and silly TV programmes.  M and I do the classic juggling of parental stuff and trying to fit in things we like doing.  And it all works, most of the time.

But this week, we start the walk into unknown territory.  We have never had to juggle student life with parenthood before. Never undertaken something quite as life-changing as training for ordination whilst trying to keep the family and household ticking along on an even keel.  So I wanted to log how this all happens.  What I feel God might be saying through things. How everything that is so new draws on what has already been.

And I wanted the chance to share this with people in a way that a 140-character tweet or quick Facebook post can't quite achieve. So here I am, celebrating the lasts this week - giving thanks for all that has gone before - and looking forward to the firsts that will soon be here with trepidation but also with a sense that I am where God has put me and means me to be and that I'm just going to have trust that the roots I have put down in Him will be good ones.