My Significant Landmarks of the '00s

Thursday marks the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, surprisingly enough. Many key events took place in my life across the past 10 years. Chief among them:

• May 2000: Graduating from Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., and moving back to Florida with my very pregnant wife to begin work as a United Methodist pastor in West Palm Beach
• July 2000: The birth of my first child
• June 2003: Becoming senior pastor of a United Methodist church in Fort Pierce, Fla.
• Dec 2003: Taking a voluntary leave from pastoral ministry to move into the business world as a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley
• Spring 2004: Launching my first web site and beginning a pro-bono "speaking tour" that opened the doors for my ongoing work as a leadership consultant, coach and trainer
• June 2005: The birth of my second child
• July 2005: The passing of my father, Frank, at the age of 80
• November 2005: Landing my first full-time internal leadership consulting gig with the health care organization Health First Inc. of Brevard County, Fla.
• 2006: Becoming a certified strengths performance coach; writing and finishing a spiritual memoir of my youth; starting a blog
• November 2007: Speaking at a leadership conference in San Francisco; moving to Nashville to begin my internal leadership consulting work with T-Mobile USA
• May 2008: Becoming ordained as a deacon in full connection with The United Methodist Church
• September 2008: Discovering Facebook and all the old friends--and new ones--that came with it
• October 2009: Becoming an endorsed life coach with The United Methodist Church
• November 2009: Finishing the first draft of a novel, my first completed fiction manuscript since the many I wrote as a young teen

As I look ahead to the next decade, I can only speculate on what might happen. I have hopes: to establish an even richer love partnership with my spouse; to see my children remain healthy and grow wise and do well in school; to get my novel published and write several more; to continue to earn an income that pays our bills and then some, doing work that I love which leverages my strengths, and to see my wife finish graduate school and embrace work that she loves as well. There's many other aspirations...to build and maintain strong friendships, to keep myself healthy and fit, to travel more across the U.S. and into other countries, etc., etc.

None of this is guaranteed. I have no idea of the triumphs and tragedies that await me tomorrow, let alone across the unfolding of a decade. There's much I haven't been able to control these past 10 years, and so many things that will similarly be out of my control in the 2010s.

But this I can do: consciously surrender each moment to God, and be fully present and engaged with whatever and whomever is set before me. By being fully immersed in my larger identity as an eternal being, I pray, I won't get too excited or too depressed when temporal, fleeting things make a turn for better or for worse.