friday frustration...

Wendell Berry did not live in Emden or else he would not have written about country life with the passion that he has. I remember when we moved here, we would take walks in the evening and talk about how living here was going to be a great “stop” on our journey, how we knew we would only be here for a year or so. We would talk about how we could never live somewhere like this for a long time, how we would just wait out a job opportunity somewhere else.

That, my friends, was 3 ½ years ago and we are still here, in this small rural town of 500. I have been awakened to this town since I have been on maternity leave – being that I would normally leave for work at 7am and return at 5pm, I don’t experience much of the goings on here. I have had people who I meet at the post office ask me who I am. I had one woman who I ran into for two straight days, and whose name I can only imagine is Marla since her license plate said so, ignore my hellos. Then the other evening, while out for a family walk, she passes us on her bike and the husband says hi and she returns the sentiment. He is a small fixture in this town while I am an alien – although we are and forever will be foreigners together, never truly being accepted because we don’t have at least two generations of family buried here.

It all kind of came to a head on Sunday, there was a poor, poor turn out for church and we are hosting a dinner for about 75 men on Monday. I have only had two other people offer to help, one being an 85 year old who can only do things that allow her to sit down (she will be my official cake cutter). This, and numerous other things, have stirred much conversation about why people seem to be so apathetic here. And it is not just our church, all of the churches in the surrounding areas have difficulty and a couple are looking at ways to shut their doors gracefully. The only church that sustains is the Lutheran church. It just seems that people have no passion for the church, big c, and I am not sure that it isn’t systemic of living somewhere like this all your life. How can you talk about the church universal when there are people who I know that live here that have never left the state, that have never lived anywhere but here, that have married their high school sweethearts and moved to the family farm? I am not being degrading, nor do I feel like I am a better person, but I think that there is such a lack of experiencing life and the bigger world in a place like this. I know that many of these people are content and happy and I would be ignorant to say that I think that they would all like to do or be somewhere else. But it is just frustrating – these are frustrating days on the prairie. I think that we may not be the right people to minister here.

The husband has been in class all week, his first official doctoral class. I know that being where we are affords him the opportunity to do this program and also to teach and right now, that is the most important part. He told me last night that since we have been here, he has been a part of 10 different search processes for either church or college jobs. I guess we do sound desperate to get out – and I know that eventually He will hear our cry and move us on. For now, learning contentment is hard, trying to spark and evoke passion is even harder. But, we have each other to lean on and know that this is all part of a much grander plan than our own.