End of another year at Ridley...

Hard to believe that I've now completed 2 of my 3 years at Ridley - it's flying by! It has been a strange last couple of weeks watching many of my friends who were either already here when I started, or started at the same time as me but were only here for 2 years, packing up their things and moving on. When college starts again in late September out of the 70 ish full time students at that point only 8 of us will be there from when I started in Sept '05.

This last year at Ridley in many ways has been quite tough going as I've battled to complete the BTh degree - I certainly don't ever remember working as hard or intensely as I have done this year generally but particularly over the last couple of months. But at the same time it has been very rewarding, and I believe I've really grown and developed through it. God's been at work in me, and often I've not realised it at the time but when I get into reflective mode like this and look back it's often fairly obvious. My understanding of my own character and nature, who I am as a person, has really developed; my understanding of what I believe and confidence in that has grown. God's still got a lot to do with and in me - but at the same time it is good now and again to be able to look back and recognise what has already happened and how God has been working. It's in this whole area of recognising who I am and what I believe God is doing in and through me, and learning to be confident both in my faith and in the fact that God really is calling and using me, that I've got most reason to be thankful for my time here at Ridley so far (as well as for the many amazing people I have met).

Moving into a 3rd year with just a remnant of the people I started with is going to be interesting, but I've met many more great people this last year who will still be around and I look forward to meeting another group of people in September. It'll be good going into this next year feeling more settled than we have done so far - Lisa finally finding fulltime work that she really enjoys has helped with that. It's going to be a very different year workload wise - with no weekly supervision essays to prepare / write as I have no exams to prepare for (JOY!), meaning that I should have time to spend longer on and go more in depth into the things that I study and write about. But despite feeling more settled here we are also going to be getting excited about and preparing to move on elsewhere. These next couple of months will be interesting as we seek to come to an agreement with the Liverpool diocese and the appropriate vicars / parishes about where my curacy will be and what it will entail - prayer would be appreciated!

But before I have to think too much about my next year at Ridley or the curacy process I've got a nice long summer to enjoy!! These next few weeks are going to involve lots of sleeping, watching DVD's, some bike riding, and reading (stuff purely for enjoyment!) - though I guess there will no doubt be some housework and gardening to fit into all that. By the time Lisa's term finishes in 4 weeks or so I'll probably be bored and more than ready for our trips to New Wine and Ireland, but at the moment the thought of these coming 4 clear weeks is absolute bliss!