home again, home again

We are home…and finally acclimated back to normal life again. This past week was, for the most part, an exhausting trip. It was exhausting physically and mentally and most of all emotionally. We felt like outcasts for most of the trip, finding solace in each others company. My heart broke for my husband over and over again and within 24 hours of arrival we were counting down the time to our home flight.

I did however get to feel the sand between my toes and have the ocean water lap at my legs, I fell in love this past week – I fell in love with the ocean. It was so calming and soothing, washing away so many cares and worries with each roar into the shore. I was amazed at how I would walk early in the morning and then we would walk again after high tide and find a completely different beach waiting for us. The water transformed the beaches each minute into something new, it is never the same. One morning I went out in the misty rain and as I was standing and watching out over the waves, water rushed onto the beach and brought a large conch shell right to me. It was amazing…we got to eat freshly steamed crabs, on the deck, in the cool night air with the butter and juices running down our faces and arms…we met my brother-in-law’s family who were exceptionally nice and hospitable…we discovered some amazing historical towns south of Raleigh with amazing churches and homes from the late 1700’s…we played and swam in the ocean…we ate Ben and Jerry’s ice cream from a B&J store…we saw sea otters at the aquarium and I named them Emmett and Emma Otter…we learned how far we could push ourselves into exhaustion by cleaning up the entire wedding and we learned that 50 people can indeed devour 15 large bottles of champagne in just under two hours…

I am glad to be home but I am so glad that I got to experience the ocean – writers have written about it for years and I never understood the draw but since standing on her shores, I understand the pull and fascination. It is a living and breathing being, so strong and unpredictable, yet so beautiful and calming. That was, in itself, the best part of the trip!

monday's rambling...

It’s a rainy and gloomy morning on the prairie. Hard rains fell overnight and all morning, it was the perfect morning to shut off the alarm, pull the covers over the shoulders and burrow into the warm man beside me who shares a bed with me. Rather, the cat, who thinks she is a child, sat outside the door and cried her little heart out, at ear piercing levels, for about 10 minutes before the alarm went off. I laid in bed listening to her and the dull roar of my husband’s snoring and in between the two was able to hear the rain hitting the leaves on the giant tree that shades the front of our house. It’s a new week, all over again.

It is a short week this week. We travel to Emerald Isle on Wednesday morning for my sister-in-laws wedding. I have such mixed emotions about going, namely because I feel like being protective of my husband. His family does nothing but beat him up and then tear him down, leaving him mentally and emotionally exhausted and often times, doubting his words, actions and intentions. He is the most Godly, compassionate, and loving man I have ever met and he has such care for these people who fail to see it, over and over again. I pray for smooth travels and smooth sailing through the emotions of the week.

We celebrated Mother’s Day yesterday and I love my mom so much. She and dad came for dinner and the boys golfed (but of course!) and we just hung out. It is so good to have family that you can be so comfortable with that just hanging out and talking can be so calming, relaxing and refreshing. I love my parents so much and am so, so thankful that they love not just me but my husband as much as they do!

I did experience some sadness this weekend and had a small meltdown on Saturday morning because this weekend was the third anniversary of the death of my very, very good friend Candace…but more so, I was so sad for her mom because the anniversary of her death fell on Mother’s Day and that had to have been so hard for her, her family is so often on my heart and I pray that they will continue to rest in Abba’s embrace.

A meandering post, a little bit all over the place…but, so are my thoughts this morning.

last night i dreamt...

I dreamt about Doug and Molly last night and they, their children and their ministering/work has been heavy on my heart this morning. Pray for them today, pray for their children, ask God’s mercy, strength and love to be with them today and everyone where they call home.

i have to love who?

"Which is most important of all the commandments?" Jesus said, "The first in importance is, "Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: "Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these." (Mark 12, The Message)

There it is, the two single greatest commandments from our Rabbi, that all of the rest ebb and flow from. The first one is easy – at least for me to say. I love Him, I love Him with all my heart. It is that second one that is so hard, trying and sometimes, ridden with angst. In the Message translation, it is eight words long, eight small words, with so much packed into each of them it would take a freight train to carry all that these words mean and command to us.

How is it that people who claim the first half of this commandment can so easily skip over the second half. How can they say that they love God with all their heart and then just glide over the part about other people?

Why does being a family have to be so hard. Why do we hurt the ones we love the most? Why we do think we are afforded the opportunity to say whatever we want and to hurt people to their core?

My sister-in-law is getting married next week and wanted to have a beach wedding. The beach of choice is about 8 hours away from the immediate family members (about 17 for us) and now, my mother-in-law’s side of the family has made the decision that they are not going to attend the wedding. It came down to, in the simplest of terms, economics. They simply can not afford to make the trip and in addition, Granny is not in the best of health conditions and the trip wouldn’t really help that. My mother-in-law have taken this to be personal slight to her and my sister-in-law, she sees this as a slap to their faces, they believe that this is being done intentionally, that the family is doing this to hurt them. They are not recognizing that traveling to this wedding is a huge burden to a lot of people, and costly (considering the cost of gas). Rather, she has made outlandish accusations that are very hateful and has told her brother and his family that she never wants to speak to any of them again.

With nowhere else to turn to, the brother (the husband’s uncle) calls my husband to ask him to please try to talk to his mother and explain the situation. He also wanted to make sure that we didn’t think that what she was saying was true, to be sure that we didn’t believe the hurtful accusations – which are nothing new to us – and we never believe anyhow.

Why does being a family have to be so hard? Why is it easier to love the stranger on the street corner some days than love your own flesh and blood?

our church plant...

I don’t know where this week went, one minute it was Monday morning and here I sit on Friday afternoon.

I got call from a very sad boy today, he was called to be told that the preaching minister’s position that we had been hoping for isn’t for him. They are looking for someone with more experience in a multi-staff church. It’s that damn dilemma of not having enough experience but not being able to find a job that will give you the experience because you don’t have enough experience. It is a continuous cycle and as an HR professional all I can say is, when it is right it will be right and there is someone out there who will take a chance on you. You just have to find that place.

But, we have to rest easy in the grace of knowing that this was not the right place at the right time. I know he doesn’t want to hear that now. But, my feeling lately has been that I have to continually make a conscious decision to realize that this is where we are and we are here for a reason.

The husband always wants to go and start a church plant somewhere, to start fresh and find and grow a group of people who want to “do church” for the right reasons (Acts 2). To cultivate a group of people who not only want to do church but be the church. As we sat at small group Bible study last night, I realized that we are there and we have, for all intent purposes, started a church plant.

The church we came to three years ago was a country club. People came on Sunday mornings because it was the right thing to do, the expected thing to do, because they played the piano and that was a position of prestige. They came because their mothers and fathers had always come and they had been sitting in the same pew since they were born. There were a few who came to church to be with a community and to worship a loving and mysterious God. Those folks were few and far between. In the last three years, we have lost about 1/3 of the congregation and the people who are left are people who don’t come to church because of what they can get out of it, they come to give of themselves in worship, through fellowship. The country clubs folks have moved on, they now graze in the pastures of the neighboring country clubs, looking for ways to exert their need for power and control. What remains is a core group of people dedicated to loving each other and Jesus. I think that we have started a church plant – or rather, we have just given a rebirth to the church.

I find peace in knowing that we are where we are, that we will be used for our gifts and abilities and that we don’t have to find another church. There is still a roof over our heads, the financial support was never waned even though so many people have left, people love us, we love them and we will be the church (inside the building and out) for as long as our community needs us to be.

conversations, missions and splints

It has been a few days and I have so many thoughts whirling around in my head and in my heart. I am unsure of where to start with them all, this may be sporadic and scattered but I want to write some down.

We spent Friday evening and Saturday with Corbin and Susan and enjoyed their company very much so. I always hate having guests on Fridays (not because of them but totally because of me) because I feel like I am completely sluggish in my thought and with my words – my brain is somewhat “toast” by Fridays, after a long week of work. I enjoyed the probing questions and thoughts from them and their earnest want to listen and glean from what we had to say. I felt more attuned on Saturday and refreshed, ready to dialogue some more but found myself wanting to listen more than speak. They both encouraged me, with their never ending quest and journey to find truth – in whatever package or revelation that may look like. I am callused and frustrated with people who think things or believe things just because that’s what they were taught or that’s the way their family has always done it. It is genuinely refreshing to meet people who want to experience life on their own terms, to find their own footing and to make their own decisions based on their own findings. My earnest hope is that I didn’t upset any balance and that they both left feeling like it was a mutually stimulating and beneficial discussion…I really love nothing more than to sit around the table, with a cup of coffee, and just listen and learn from other people.

In addition, the two of them have challenged me. When I think about my faith I sometimes don’t have very good answers, but when something is very experiential and un-rational, I am not sure that there are always good answers. I feel like I need to be able to better define why I believe in God, why I know that He is the center to my life, moving my spirit and my heart, driving me to grow more in love with Him every day. I feel as though I don’t have very thought out reasons as to why I know this. The husband agreed with that and, his notion, is that perhaps that is part of the mystery, that we can not have concrete reasons and that followers should not feel sorry or bad if they don’t have them. I know that I love Jesus and that He loves me, I know that God has His hand in our lives, too many wonderful, mysterious and awesome things have happened for me to ever doubt it…that’s all the answer I have today.

Moving to Sunday, we had missions Sunday and the husband preached on being missional people…I am pretty sure that went over most folks heads. At the end of the service we gave everyone cans of pop to take and drink (or pour out, what have you) and then to rinse out the can and use it to collect spare change for missions. The original idea was to collect money for the Pokot tribe we support and the idea was going to be “Pop for Pokot” but, the money is now going to be put a missions trip to Doug and Molly’s and alas, we have no catchy phrase for that. But, people actually declined the cans of pop, saying that they wouldn’t drink it and it would go to waste. What!!! They totally missed the point that the cans were to be used to collect money for missions. My heart was very troubled for those people, that it was so easy to dismiss giving money for missions since they could decline a can of pop. Frustrated. There’s nothing more to say than that. Frustrated.

Yesterday I think I got to see capitalism at its best. I have been diagnosed with TMJ and need a mouth splint to wear at night. I had to go see an orthodontist about one. First off, just to say, about 90% of the services an orthodontist provides are not covered by insurances. The majority of dental insurances will never cover the cost of braces. So, here is this shiny, high-tech, snazzy office all built on money straight from people’s pockets. So, they talk to me, look at my mouth, confirm that my mouth is not balanced and my right jaw overcompensates for the left side, and confirm that I need a splint. To get a splint I have to come back and have another appointment where they will take impressions, they will create the splint, I will have another consultation to talk about the splint and then every 6 weeks I have to come back for another consultation. All told, including the $220 bill for yesterday’s office visit, this whole thing would cost $3,000 and that’s before the additional visits every 6 weeks. Oh yes, $3,000. Dental insurance won’t cover it and health insurance took three months to get the ok for this initial visit, the chances of them paying for the whole thing are virtually nil. So, I am off to find other alternatives. No thanks to the orthodontists who want to charge $3,000 for a piece of plastic only big enough to fit over my bottom teeth. It was unreal. I am unsure of how people manage without health/dental insurance.

So, those are the thoughts of the morning. I have caught a small cold which puts a damper on the day, but the sun is shining and the sky is blue and there isn’t anything more that I could ask for…