Leaving

Because I was born into a minister’s family and then I married one, moving has always been a way of life. Mum and Dad were missionaries for 20 years, so as a kid, we didn’t just move parishes or towns. We moved countries, continents; we moved hemispheres.

So I never expected to be part of one church community for almost two decades, but in fact, that is what has happened, and that 19 years and six months has just drawn to a close.

We moved to the congregation in West Brunswick when my husband was appointed as minister there, at the start of 1995. We were in our mid thirties and brought with us Guinness, our beloved bull terrier, and offspring aged eight, seven, four and one. We came from ten years in country Victoria and several of us, including me, weren’t particularly happy to be moving back to the big smoke. Mount Beauty and Portland had been great places to bring up kids.

The next few years were significant for all of us. For me, they included some major milestones: I suffered depression and worked through it, changed my name by deed poll to Boyd-Macrae, decided I wanted to write and set about learning to do so, and became more deeply committed to a life of contemplative prayer.

And of course the kids grew up – primary school, high school, jobs and uni. Friends and partners and parties and all the angst and exhaustion of the teenage years. Through those years, we were surrounded by our church community, who became a major part of the village that grew our kids into decent human beings, and I am forever grateful to them.

We babysat for each other, had coffee, ate together, and listened to each other through the intense ups and downs of those years including, for several core couples in that community, divorce.

I never thought I would have the privilege of seeing a generation of babies and toddlers and primary school kids grow up. When you live with a minister, you interact so intensely with people in times of death, conflict, breakdown, birth, but then you move on to somewhere else entirely and you may not hear of those people for years.

At Brunswick, not only have I seen a generation of kids grow into adults, I have also seen a generation of 18-year-olds who joined our church fresh from the country to go to uni, and who are now well into their thirties with careers, relationships and children of their own. They babysat our kids; now our kids babysit theirs. The cycle will be completed nicely when our older son and his partner are married at Brunswick Uniting next year.

Most of our closest friends are not part of the church, but the church community was the next circle that surrounded our family with loving support. We might not talk to people from church for a while, but if we needed them, they would be there for us, and we for them, day or night.

We’ve been there so long because when he stopped being minister at West Brunswick, Alistair proceeded to work in non-parish jobs for 13 years. We were lucky enough to buy a home in the area, and the kids and I stayed on at the church. When the worshipping community moved from West Brunswick to join up with Brunswick Uniting, we went too.

But now we’ve said goodbye to the place that has been our spiritual home, our faith community for so long. Al is starting at a parish in the CBD this weekend, and I will go with him, to be a part of this next adventure. It’s close enough for us to stay in our house and I can continue my job in the city. Compared to previous moves we’ve made, it’s pretty straightforward.

There’s also an element of relief in moving from a place where you have become very involved. Your name goes off all the rosters automatically, without having to think of an excuse and feeling guilty. Brunswick is such a bustling, busy church, always so much happening, new names to learn, people I really should talk to after church but didn’t have the energy. It was wonderful and also exhausting, and introverted me would regularly come for worship and then sneak out during the benediction so as to avoid having to make conversation with anybody except God. I avoided social functions and the annual church camp for years.

But how I loved those rich decades. I am so lucky, minister’s partner that I am, to have had so long in one good place. For my kids, most of whom don’t spend a lot of time in church anymore, it will always be their church home.

Now for the next chapter in our lives.

Comments

[Sarah Matters]

Clare - good luck with the move even if it is not a house move it will bring changes to your life and routines. I so enjoy reading your blogs although I may not make many comments - keep the good work going.