Hmmmm

The title of Everything I Was makes me think.  The book did, too.  I really liked it.   I'm just stuck on the title right now as I reflect on the book.  I am approaching the ten year mark since I left one career for another.  It was a tough and painful decision but it was my own.  I can't imagine what it would be like to not have been the one making the decision, as is the experience with many in this tough economy.  Who knows, it could very well happen to me as well, but it hasn't happened yet.  (WOW!  Wasn't that a great song!)
I left my position as a full-time pastor at a lovely church in the North Hills of Pittsburgh to focus on full-time librarianship.  Leaving the pastorate very hard for me, but I had burned out at the ripe age of thirty.  When I think back on the person I was at at thirty, at the person I was when I was a full-time pastor, I realize that I am a very different person now.  Pieces of me are left behind, new pieces (and a lot of pounds) have been added.  Do I wish I would have stayed in the church?  I don't know.  I miss it terribly but I do love my job now.  I think that I did what was best though.  I truly think that I was burned out and I couldn't have continued to have been an effective pastor.  So it was better to have left, than to have stayed and not done a good, solid job.  Most importantly, I think that I followed God's will.  I think that He was telling me it was time for a change.
What happens when your life changes through no decision of your own though, as is the case for the young girl, Irene in this new book for Corinne Demas?  She is fifteen, and her world has changed.  Living in Manhattan, attending a private school one day, then learning that her parents have been living beyond their means are forced to move now that her father has lost his job, Irene finds herself having to adjust to many changes.  Irene and her mother and father move in with her father's father, a farmer.  This is good, solid coming of age story and I really enjoyed the read.