Every year, come late May, I get this… twitch.

It’s an undeniable, deep-seated urge to purge.

Suddenly, my closets look like they’re staging an intervention, the basement is giving me side-eye, and I’m eyeing that dusty box of “sentimental” (read: questionable) belongings with the cold calculation of a seasoned decluttering ninja. For years, I just figured I was one of those ambitious spring cleaners.

Turns out, it’s a Pavlovian response.

You see, I grew up and spent a significant chunk of my early ministry in The Salvation Army.

And May, my friends, meant MOVES.

Capital M. Capital O. Capital V. E. S.

In that particular corner of the spiritual vineyard, ministers are like navy-blue-polyester-clad chess pieces on a denominational board. You go where you’re told, for however long they deign to tell you (which, spoiler alert, they don’t tell you when they tell you to move).

Choice?

Agency over your own ministry path?

Bless your heart, that wasn’t on the menu.

So, this current ministry journey I’ve been on with the wonderful folks at UUCV? It’s been a wild departure. A delightful, sometimes bewildering, and profoundly chosen departure.

And as my contract wraps up this Saturday night, it’s hitting me today, with the gentle thud of a realization I didn’t see coming: this is the first time in almost 30 years of ministry that I’m at a natural ending that I chose.

I took on this role, heart and soul, and I’m finishing it well, on my own terms.

Frankly, it’s kind of blowing my mind.

I’ve been sitting with that all day.

For the first time in my entire ministerial life, I feel genuinely, bone-deep proud of what I’ve accomplished. Not because I’m suddenly a theological superstar (spoiler: totally not), but because I walked into this work with my whole heart, of my own volition.

I got to preach from the bedrock of my own hard-won theology and authentic experience, using my whole voice.

The one that’s sometimes a bit loud, swears a little too much sometimes (in my head, mostly, during services), and always, always tries to connect the grand, sweeping ideals of our faith – the “spirit” – to the messy, glorious, sometimes achy “bone” of our lived realities. (More on that Sunday the 8th)

UUCV has been learning to write a better story together, and for a precious little while, I’ve gotten to help hold the pen.

And if my feelings weren’t already doing enough of a conga line, my sister Tracy is coming to hear me preach my last sermon here on June 8th. She was a professor at the seminary when I was just a wide-eyed seminary student, wrestling with Greek verbs and existential angst.

She hasn’t heard me preach in an official capacity since I left the Army.

Now, she’s about to embark on her own new adventure, taking up the pulpit of a church in Newfoundland. So, her presence feels like an extra-special, full-circle kind of grace. Two paths, once fully parallel, then largely not, now converging for a moment of shared transition before diverging again into new landscapes of ministry.

It’s… a lot.

In the best way.

Now, here’s the really great part of this “end of an era” May Twitch: I’m neither moving house nor actually leaving the congregation when my contract officially concludes. I’ll be sticking around, just in a different pew, so to speak…which, for someone conditioned to associate “end of service” with “load up the U-Haul,” is a wonderfully disorienting and rather lovely new chapter in itself.

So, if you see me looking a bit dazed this week, or perhaps attempting to blink back a few tears, you’ll know why.

It’s just the May Twitch, recalibrating for a new, chosen, and deeply felt season.

And honestly?

It feels pretty darn good to be writing this story, spirit, bone, and all.