Hey, Merry Christmas, Everybody.  

I hope you are all as far along in your Christmas preparations as you would like to be.  I think we are.  In fact, this year might be the most Christmas prepared that I have ever been in my adult life.  That's a strange feeling.  

But it's been an unsettling year, so why should Christmas be any different?  

At the beginning of this year, we were living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Annika was in fifth grade, playing basketball, playing in band and singing in choir, going to GEMS with some of her classmates, and being her quirky artistic self.  Seth was beginning his last semester at Calvin Theological Seminary, and getting ready to be a pastor.  I was teaching part time at Lake Michigan Academy and getting ready to be a pastor's wife.  

There were a few notable things at the beginning of the year.  

• The biggest ice storm in 30 year hit Grand Rapids that February, closing school for a week and a half. 
•  Annika turned 11.
•  Seth graduated from seminary.  

Then came summer.  We commenced fixing up the house, packing up the stuff, and getting ready to move.  

• A cousin from California offered to buy our house.  He is now attending seminary. 
• I taught a short summer school course.
• Seth completed a CPE (clinical pastoral experience -- sort of like an intern for chaplains) at Pine Rest Mental Health Center. 
• We sorted all of our belongings and began disposing of the superfluous ones (why do we have so much stuff?)
• Annika spent lots of time trying to get cat Volpix to walk on a leash in anticipation of moving.  That didn't happen.  

Once Seth was done with his internship in mid-August, we loaded up a moving van with the help of our church friends, and then we camped our way west across the country.  The cat made a break for it at the first rest stop and didn't come back.  She was discovered a month later and brought to a local vet until a neighbor could claim her.  

  We stopped for a week at the Wisconsin Dells, which I had never seen, and we spent a week in Iowa with Seth's grandfather and my sister.  We spent an afternoon in Chandler, Minnesota, meeting the town that we now call home.  We stopped in with my Uncle Jack and Aunt Ev in western Montana.  And we did a lot of driving.  This was our second cross-country trip in two years.  I'll be honest: Northern Michigan is lovely, but it doesn't compare to the Olympic coast.  South Dakota and Wyoming are beautiful, but they are long. Mountains are always a welcome sight, but they make for long days of driving.  And that's just a lot of driving.  

We spent about a month going back and forth between my parents' house in Washington and Seth's family in Oregon.  We moved a lot of boxes in and out of storage. (Why do we have so much stuff?) And in that time   

• We accepted a call from Chandler Reformed Church.
• We traveled to Canada for the first time to visit my sister and brother-in-law and their kids.
• We gave the tent trailer back to my in-laws, and I don't miss it a bit.  

October found us moving cross country yet again.  We loaded up all the belongings once more and set out in some of the worst October weather we've ever seen.  It was a tense week.  I don't want to do that again.  But we got here, moved in, settled all the paperwork, and now, just before Christmas

• Seth is an ordained, installed minister of the Word and Sacrement.
• Annika is in sixth grade, playing basketball, playing in the band and singing in the choir, and being her quirky, artistic self. 
• I am doing a little substitute teaching, but mostly I am focusing on getting to know the community and being a pastor's wife.  Also, you will notice, I blog a lot more.  

That's our year in a nutshell.  

Some thoughts on Will-Finding pt. 1

 “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” ~Ephesians 3:20-21

It occurs to me that after encouraging people to test themselves by seeking God’s will, I should really say something about finding God’s will.  This is a little tricky.  Most of what I have to say on the subject has been said before.  God is reliable.  If you ask, He will answer.  If you are looking and listening, God will tell you.  Even if you are being incredibly obtuse about seeing His signs, if you are honestly looking, He will make sure you find them. 

I will post more on seeking God’s will next time, but for now, let me throw out this question:  have you sought God's will and waited for God's will and then passed on God's will because it didn't seem possible? If you have, you would not be alone.   

Let me give you an example:  

When Seth first got his call to ministry, we began earnestly seeking God’s will in several ways:

1. We had asked godly friends who had been through seminary if Seth should continue to work full time and study full time as well. 
2. We had fasted and prayed and asked others to pray for us while we tried to figure out what kind of ministry Seth should go into. (He’ll tell you himself that he did not want to be a preacher in a church. More on that later.) 
3. We spent time listening and reading Scripture and recalling Scripture. 
4. And we interpreted the signs God gave us in circumstances. 

The leading that we received was clear: full time seminary and full time work were not conducive to a healthy family or faith life, especially not when one works in the electronic industry, which can suddenly demand  60 to 80 hours a week without warning.  So based on what we understood, we decided that Seth would quit his job as soon as I found full time teaching work. Obedient, right? Yes.  Sacrificial too? I thought so. And God led us to that point, right?  Yes.  That’s what we asked for.     

Note the words “based on what we understood.”  A lot of times in our efforts to follow God, we are well meaning, but we are not understanding because our scope is not big enough.  Human beings, like it or not, are limited by time and space and limited experiences.  Seth and I had been raised to believe that God does supply, but we had not experienced the many ways He could supply.  We anticipated that He would provide work for me.  I had been maintaining my teaching certificate.  I had been developing a reputation as an excellent substitute.  Naturally the next thing that should happen is that I should get a full time teaching job so that Seth could devote himself to pursuing God’s calling.      

Long story short: I did not get a full time teaching job.  And Seth got fired.  

    To sum up, at this point we were willing, we were listening, and we were anticipating, and we were confused.  We plunged ourselves more deeply into the job market. Was this our fault?  Not really.  Our life experience up to this point had taught us that God provides work, and thus he provides everything else we need. Moving forward with no job felt insane. However, God had lessons that he wanted to teach us.  Specifically, He wanted to teach us that everything we need comes from Him, and we do not need to depend on human institutions.  We needed to be weaned off the idea that security meant a full time job and health insurance.   And because we were willing, listening, and anticipating, we were ready for those lessons to begin.  For the next two years, we worked as substitute teachers and never failed to pay a bill.  Those two years were plenty anxious, especially at first, but God came through one day at a time.

Do not worry about what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear. The nations run after such things, but your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 

How many of us, being faced with the will of God, reject it (at least at first) because it doesn’t match with what we believe about other things.  You’re not going to perceive God’s will if you aren’t willing to let go of a lot of preconceptions, such as your notions of security.  When the Apostle Paul says, “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,” he means that literally.  We have no idea what God can do with the circumstances that He lays in front of us.  When we say and mean, “Thy will be done,” we are opening a whole new horizon in front of ourselves.  Look at Jacob; look at Mary; look at Jeremiah; look at Paul.  Could any of them have anticipated what “Thy will be done” would do to their lives?  

I think more often than not that this is the part where faithful Christians stumble.  We urgently seek God’s will, but when it’s revealed, we can’t cope with it.  So often, God’s will isn’t just for our obedience; it’s also for our expansion to move further into our destiny as Sons and Daughters of God.  In our case, God’s will was not only to pursue ordination; it was also to learn to rest completely on God for the provision of our daily needs.  

Now, it would be nice to say that these two years really pounded this lesson home, and we never doubted God’s provision again.  (because that’s just like human nature.  <Snort>)  When I said obtuse earlier, I was speaking strictly from a been there/done that perspective.   I can’t count the number of times that Seth and I said to each other, “I just want an itinerary. I just want to know the next couple of steps or the way over this obstacle” or that we reacted with fear and frustration until God made His answer very plain.    If you read the Bible, you know that this is one of those primary points where humanity really struggles,  and we really struggled too.  

• Seth got offered another job, and we fretted over whether he should accept it. After we decided to decline (see above), the company informed us that they had cut the position anyway.
•  
• Our unemployment insurance kept getting hung up and delayed, until finally Seth decided to just focus on school and let God provide as He would. Then the insurance, the G.I. benefits, and the possibility of Seth working as a substitute teacher as well fell into place in the space of a week. 
• 
  
• I was overlooked for full time jobs. Well, it turned out we were moving. 
• 
  
• We watched the Grand Rapids housing market from a distance fruitlessly for six months. The weekend that we got to Grand Rapids, the perfect house went on the market, two blocks away from an excellent church, ten minutes from the seminary, five minutes from my work. Because houses sell for a lot more in Oregon, we could pay cash. 
• 
  
• Seth missed out on a necessary internship our first summer there, so he was available to take a pastoral internship which turned his calling toward preaching and parish ministry and paid a much-needed stipend.

None of these were what we were anticipating, and it was only slowly that we learned to stop reacting in frustration and to see these “disappointments” as redirections and expansion and the shaping of God’s will.  By the time we were actually seeking Seth’s first full time position, worry had gotten a lot weaker and trust had gotten a lot stronger. We were more open to the possibilities of wherever God might take us. We still had moments of panic and frustration, sometimes on a daily basis, but there was a certainty underneath them that hadn't been there before.

    Now, I’d like you to notice two things here:

1. These all took time. All of our fretting took place in the waiting. Two weeks to hear back from a job interview. A semester before we could begin to relocate. Three years before we could seek a call. I think a lot of our disappointment in hearing God’s will comes from our expectation that something miraculous (and convenient) is going to be revealed immediately, and we can hop right into doing. God develops us in stages, and only He knows what kind of development we need. Walking forward step by tiny step and adjusting to the new view at each step takes time.   
2. If you are serious about doing God’s will, then you never really get a respite from the attitude of looking and listening. There is no point where it just falls into place, and He reveals the whole plan in front of you, and you can relax and take it from there. There were times when Paul didn’t even know which port to sail for next. We get the plan piece by piece, but He always gives us enough to let us know that we are still in His hands.

Are You Ready? Probably more than you know.

But the passing life that we have here in our fleshliness does not know what our self is, except through our Faith.  And when we know and see truly and clearly what our self is, then shall we truly and clearly see and know our Lord God in fullness of joy.  And therefore, it is inevitable that the nearer we are to our bliss, the more we shall yearn -- and that both by nature and by grace.

~Revelations, Julian of Norwich, 46

We are installed!  Or rather, Seth is installed.  Praise the Lord.  The "Becoming a real pastor" process is finished.  He has studied, he has been examined, he has been ordained, and he is installed.  Now we can just settle back and grow into the role that God has given us.  One hundred and fifty people with all their worries and concerns, outreach to the community, expounding the Word of God faithfully and dynamically, administering the sacraments, church discipline, being model citizens of the kingdom below and the kingdom above.  You know, no pressure.

A lot of people have been asking me, "Are you ready to be a pastor's wife?".  And my standard response has been, "What does that even mean?". The days of a pastor's wife as a social institution, as a one-woman behind-the-scenes tirelessly working holiness machine are gone.  The jufrau is no longer a job title. I know pastor's wives who are teachers, nurses, social workers, crisis mediators, and pastors in their own right, and they all told me not to get pressured into any one role.  

However, Seth and I always dreamed of doing ministry together, and this is a great place to get involved.  Worship planning, special music, prayer and language ministries, and community involvement are all on my radar, in addition to the basketball schedules, volunteering for hot lunch, decorating for Christmas, and getting those gosh darn Christmas cards out that come with regular life.  Seth asks me to edit his sermons, and I am deep in the midst of three different books on prayer and devotion (in little pieces).  Does that sound like a pastor’s wife?    I feel a certain amount of anxiety because I have high hopes, and where hopes are high, failures are steep.  Am I ready to be a pastor’s wife?  Am I being what I ought to be? 

These are all unsettling questions because I feel like I don’t really know myself.  The older I get, the more flexibility I see in the parts of what I would ordinarily call “me.”  When I was a teenager, I could draw the outlines of “me” pretty starkly.  Life experiences have  stretched my personality so that the outlines have gotten diluted and fuzzy. I’m not as shy as I used to be. I’m also not as black and white.   I can see possibilities that I could never have entertained twenty years ago, and I am wise enough to know that possibilities are not necessarily givens. And I feel like the changes are still happening. How do I know when I'm ready?

As I’ve been pondering the question of readiness, I came across the above passage from the Lady Julian.  She wrote it when she was pondering something that puzzled her.  God had plainly shown her that He judged her in Heaven with grace and no condemnation.  And yet, here on Earth, Holy Church told her to judge herself sinful and reckon her failures.  She wasn’t sure how to reconcile the two until it occurred to her that we don’t really know ourselves in this life except by our Faith. In fact, we won’t really know who we are until we die.  

I can see that.  We know ourselves in a sort of retrospect.  We know who we have been.  I know how I developed as a Navy wife and a seminarian’s wife, but I don’t know what I’m going to become as a pastor’s wife, and I don’t know how the three of them will reveal themselves later in life.  I have been the mother of a small child, but I don’t know myself as the mother of a teenager yet.  We can’t know ourselves from the present forward because we are fluid and responsive beings.  Life shapes us, and until we get to the end, we don’t know what shape we’ll be.  The skills we've learned and will learn, the life lessons we've gone through and will go through, the gains and the losses, the triumphs and failures, physical and spiritual all get woven through the end product until we are finally ourselves. And if Julian is right, God doesn't judge us for being incomplete.

 Here is an idea echoed through all of Christian history.  The Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory”(3:3-4). So our future selves are a mystery.  We only know a bit of what Christ is going to be like when He returns, so how can we anticipate ourselves?  We are sown perishable;  we are raised imperishable.  What does that look like? Well, it looks like dying to self and putting away all the sins and weaknesses that we've been comfortable with thus far.  

I had to wrestle with this concept for a while.  And I had to ask myself, Why is the concept of not being complete yet so frustrating? 

Well, I have a life to arrange. I feel like I can’t competently make those plans if I don’t know who I am.  One of the questions Seth asked me as we moved into this phase of life is where I wanted to go from here.  “What is your ordination, and how do you want to pursue it?” were his words.   And I didn’t have an answer.  I couldn’t get a picture of myself down the road in order to choose my next steps.  And that made me afraid of developing incorrectly and damaging what I was supposed to be.    

But how do I get to know myself? As I get older, I see that the best way to know myself is to test myself.  Or to put it another way, the best way to know myself is to look to God and say, "Okay, Lord, what next?" Because in spite of the fact that I am a responsible adult, my life is not mine to arrange. As much as I cling to the anxiety and satisfaction that comes with control, life doesn't work that way. The running joke at our house is that we don't plan anything more than six months in advance because God will change our plans. There was a point not that long ago that Seth was in the tech industry, and we were buying a house to retire in. That was five years, three moves, and a Master of Divinity (Seth's) ago.  

When we go out on a limb, God gets a chance to show us  His grace for our weaknesses and to develop our strengths.  At the same time, we learn how to lean on Him, look for His leading, and follow Him more consistently.  And then he reaches into this bank that He's developed over our lifetimes and pulls out gifts and abilities and experiences that we can use to meet the challenge that He has drawn us into right now. And the process repeats itself and builds on itself until someday we stand before God. And on that day, He judges us. We see what we have done and what He has done with it. We see God as He is, and then He shows us ourselves as we were meant to be. And then we know ourselves completely.  

The fear of failing and the fear of going in the wrong direction pale considerably when they are washed in the development of God’s grace and the constant presence of God’s Spirit (and the Spirit is present, always).  But that kind of confidence takes time and repetition and a desire to know God.  I wouldn't have been able to understand this twenty years ago, and I am only beginning to grasp it now. And now is when I need to understand this. Because I have this question to answer: Am I ready to be a pastor's wife? Well, evidently, God thinks so because we are here. So yes, I am.

Pictures, because people worry about me

Hello, Friends and Family, especially those at a distance.  

We have just gotten back to Minnesota.  Two weekends ago was our last foreseeable journey to the West Coast, at least for now.  Seth is successfully ordained.  He will be installed this Sunday.  This week is Thanksgiving (and I am cooking a whole turkey by myself for the first time). Advent is coming around the corner.  And snow is falling as we speak.  The all-knowing weather people anticipate 6 to 12 inches.   

It's going to be a fun week.  

Now, lest my west coast friends and family worry, none of our neighbors seem to be worried about our coming snowstorm, all though there are allowances being made for scheduled events.  "Weather permitting" has now entered the general vocabulary, and it sounds like it will stay there until spring.  We just went to Costco this past Saturday, so our cupboards are full.  As long as the pipes don't freeze, we should be fine.  

This is the living room, complete with new couch.  

Can you think of a more cozy way to watch snow falling?  

Seriously, I love watching falling snow.  Even in February, when the snow on the ground looks like chunks of funky oreos, and everyone just wants to see grass, I love to watch snow fall.  I just don't like it to stick at that point.  And when watching it from inside a cozy house with a big bay window, how can I go wrong?   The church is across the street, and we don't have to fly anywhere, or be delayed in an airport for 5 extra hours or drive all the way across the state of Minnesota until July at least.  So we're good.  No worries.  

The most popular question I got when we were back west was, "I bet you're going to be glad when this is done, aren't you?"  The answer to that is yes.  There are good reasons for all the processes of ordination.  The church needs to know that her ministers take their callings seriously and are prepared to execute that calling.  All well and good.  Still, we are glad the process is over:  4 years of classes, two internships, three episodes of moving house. two fouled up flights, and a lot of prayer later, we are glad to have a place to put down some roots.  My mom told me, "You look tired, Jenn.  It's time for you to start building your home." 

The second most popular question was, "You have a house, right?" to which I assured everybody that yes, we have a house and promised to post pictures.  It's a parsonage.  The church remodeled it after their last pastor left, and so we walked in to 

a big open floor plan, 

new cabinets

and vinyl that looks remarkably like wood. 

 As you can see, we already have our wall hangings up and books stowed.  In fact, for the first time in several years, we have unpacked all of our books and actually made room for them.  It helps that Seth has an office now to hold all his books from seminary.  That cleared up a bookshelf and a half all in itself.

In addition to an office, we have also gained the following:

 1. a spare room, which we have never had before.  In previous houses, our guests have had to use a) a futon in the Livingroom, b) a futon in the basement/piano desk room, c) a mattress in the tv room (because the futon finally broke), and d) an actual bed in the basement.  Now if you come to visit we can put you on an actual bed in an actual room with a closet, a window, and a door, and it's right across from the bathroom.   I don't think we've ever had all of those things in one place at once before.

 2.  more than one bathroom. In the seven dwellings that Seth and I have had since we got married, we have twice had more than one toilet available to us and our guests. Now we have three to offer, 

one in the main living quarters

 

one by the back door, as is tradition in country houses,

and one downstairs near the two extra bedrooms.  

 This has been an adjustment for our family.  We have had to get used to the fact that we have another option if someone else has gotten to the main bathroom ahead of us.

3.  a lovely deck which is just aching  for a grill and patio set.  We have the grill.  Seth bought it yesterday and brought it home in a blizzard.  The patio set will wait.

 4. and an attached garage.  But I'm not going to post pictures of that.  It's a garage.

The basement is not completely set up yet.  It is still ridden with cardboard and half-assembled furniture.  There's nothing on the walls.  So not pictures of that either.  All in good time.  

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.  Stay warm and dry and remember how much you have been blessed in the past year.  

Yearning . . . a healthy Christian thing?

I was reading the Lady Julian this week, where she discusses prayer in Ch. 41-43, and she says,

Prayer is a right understanding of that fullness of joy that is to come, along with true yearning and certain trust. In prayer, the lacking of our bliss (that we are naturally appointed to) naturally makes us to yearn; true understanding and love (with sweet remembrance of our Savior) graciously make us trust.

And thus by nature do we yearn, and by grace do we trust. And in these two actions, our Lord watches us constantly, for it is our duty, and HIs good ness an assign no less to us.

Let me break that down for you. The "fullness of joy that is to come" is being enfolded into God's joy, "to be one-ed to and like our Lord in everything" (42). We had this joy in the very beginning when the first people walked and talked with God. That's what she means by "naturally appointed to." This is what we were created for, but we don't have it anymore. We are "lacking" something, and we want it back. We really want it back. That's what she means by yearning.

The definition of yearning, according to Bing, is to "have an intense feeling of longing for something, typically something that one has lost or been separated from." Yearning is a craving, an unfulfilled passion, a deep tingling desire that can actually take your breath away.

And I wondered, do I yearn for God? Do I ache to be one with him.

I know what yearning is. I feel that mildly every spring when I walk past the garden section of the home improvement stores because there are all kinds of plants that I would love to buy but that I'm not really prepared to grow.

But more seriously, as a Navy wife, I lived with yearning every time Seth went out to sea. At 4 pm, every day he was gone, I would start listening for an engine in the drive way, and I would jump if a neighbor closed a car door, even though I knew that Seth wasn't coming home that night. I would stay awake until 2 in the morning because our empty bed reminded me that he was gone. That's yearning.

Yearning is a physical feeling. It catches you in the chest and the throat, and, if you be married, in other parts of the body too. Yearning is anguish, like being stretched, like having the skin of your soul lifted off of your heart and pulled in the direction of the thing you long for. "Leaning and harkening" is the phrase that John Donne used in "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning." Yeah, lots of leaning and harkening and listening and hoping and waiting. Those are not fond memories. Poetic, perhaps, but not pleasant.

But do I yearn for God? Julian says it is natural to us to yearn to be closer to God. Moreover, she says it is our duty.

This is the God-shaped hole but on a higher level. This isn't just a hole in one's soul. Julian isn't describing a need to be filled but a need to be joined.

I like to think that I hunger and thirst for righteousness, but I don't often sit and yearn for God. At least, I don't pine for him the way I used to pine for my husband. When I'm trying to get sin out of my life, I'm not usually working with the thought that it separates me from God. More present in my mind is the idea that sin hurts me or hurts my neighbor (And, hey, whoever does not love human beings, whom we can see, can't say that he or she loves God, whom we cannot see.) and makes God unhappy.

We are accustomed to seeing God as a Father, as a King, as a Shepherd. How often do we think of Him as a Lover/Husband? We know that God is always with us. How often do we think about how much closer we will be? The psalmist longed to see God's face. I can tell you, there were days when I longed to see Seth's face.

 I think I need to indulge more in longing for my Heavenly Husband.

Peace in Confusion

Grant Us Thy Peace

O Lord, my God,

grant us Thy peace; 

already, indeed, 

Thou hath made us rich

in all things!

Give us that peace of being at rest, 

that Sabbath peace, 

the peace which knows no end. 

Amen. 

St. Augustine

Peace.  The illusive quest of 21st Century life.  I have had several reminders this past week that I am not particularly at peace.  I am impatient, discontented, and edgy.  A bit lonely too.  Only by the grace of God have I not devolved completely into a Mrs. Bennet.

  People keep asking us how we are settling in. The physical answer is that the whole main floor of our house is ready for action.  The beds are assembled.  The fruit baskets are hung.  The dining room table has been delivered. The keyboard and dulcimer have their own little corner of the the livingroom underneath Seth's great big world map.  Judi's painting is hung over the kitchen table.  Physically, we are settling well.   

See?  All unpacked.  

But the word settle implies a resting.  Silt settles into the calm, slower moving part of the river.  Dust settles when the wind dies.  I am not settled yet.  There is a cognitive dissonance about moving here that I hadn't reckoned on, and I didn't really notice it until all the physical things were taken care of.  It makes settling hard.  

Cognitive dissonance is one of the first terms I learned as a young education student around the turn of the century (It was 1999.  I can say that.).  We all build patterns of behavior, expectations in our minds, and then when we encounter something new, we have to demolish part of our pattern and work the new habit or expectation in.   There are "should be's" in our brains, and when those should bes no longer fit the world in front of us, we feel uncomfortable.  We feel helpless.  We feel unprepared.  That's cognitive dissonance.  Look up Piaget.  

Like most first born perfectionists, I like to imagine that I have the information I need to live a productive, efficient, effective life.  Cognitive dissonance is my least favorite state of mind.  Living in a new community that by necessity does things much differently than any community I've lived in before, leaves me integrating a lot of new information into my current patterns (called schema by Piaget).  My current needs, like finding an orthodontist for my daughter, are running into my preconceived ideas, like there ought to be one within thirty minute's drive.  The same could be said for the kind of grocery prices that I'm used to.  An hour away at least.  When will the snow fly? Today, apparently. Cognitive dissonance!  Cognitive dissonance!

The locals recognize and sympathize with these difficulties.  They are full of advice, invitations, and the occasional offer to drive.  They also water all their perennials well before the first frost of November and schedule eating fresh vegetables because, you know, good, cheap produce is an hour away.  They know the game, and they appreciate that the game takes some time to get used to.  So I have no pressure;  I'm just uncomfortable.  

In the middle of all this emotional static, I came across a passage in The Complete Julian that really struck me:

To me was shown no more cruel hell than sin, for a natural soul hates no hell except sin, and all is good except sin, and nothing is evil except sin.  (Revelation 40, emphasis mine)

"Nothing is evil except sin."  Until I read that, I would have classified my discomfort as evil.  We have a habit, I think, of categorizing uncomfortable things as bad.  Speaking solely for myself, I know that I have an inner three-year-old who pitches a fit in the back of my mind when life doesn't feel quite stable.  "Aaaah, something is wrong. This isn't fair. This world is evil and out to get me.  I shouldn't have to go through this. This should be easier."   But if sin is the only thing that is evil, then my growing pains are not evil.

The corollary, "all is good except sin," is more shocking when you think about it.  I mean, it certainly applies to me.  Cognitive dissonance means that I am growing and learning. The roots and branches of my conscious mind (and unconscious mind, I'm sure) are expanding and broadening.  This is a good thing, and when I have a moment of perspective, I can see it that way.  That's one of the reasons I write: moments of perspective.

However, a lot of pains we can't call good without divine perspective.   A friend of mine is starting her second round of chemo for her third round of aggressive breast cancer.  Members of our congregation just lost  the family farmhouse to a fire.  One can't call those things good.  Up the ante and look at all the pains in the world that are caused by sin, by evil -- abuse, extortion, war, environmental destruction, murder -- and one's head whirls.   Julian knew plenty about pain and uncertainty living in the 1300s with plague and uprising and oppression, yet she could call everything good, except sin.  How did she do that?

Well, she had a divine perspective.  She understood that God wants nothing more than to have us close to Him.  Therefore, anything that pushes us closer to God is a good thing, and anything that pulls us away is evil.  And I also get the feeling that she expected a certain amount of pain in her life. She had already built that schema in her brain, so discomfort didn't cause her any cognitive dissonance.

It is the Wind, . . . but Nothing's Broken.

Anyone who has lived in more than one house in his or her lifetime knows that every house has its quirks.  In our last house, the bedroom door would not open unless we heaved upward on the handle at just the right angle.  We could shake all the furniture in our Forest Grove house by jumping up and down in one particular spot in the floor.  Every place I have ever lived has had something that was just part of the structure that just needed to be gotten used to.  Adapt and overcome, right?  Well, last night, we had our first major windstorm of the season, and we discovered something about this house that puts all the other houses to shame.

I should reiterate that we have been lent a very nice house.   The living and dining rooms were completely redone in an open floor plan before we got here, and there's a big bay window that lets in lots of natural light.  (I intend to post pictures for my out-of-town friends and family as soon as we get our kitchen table.) However, I think the pleasantness of our current dwelling lulled us into a false sense of security.  Everything looked so new that we weren't really expecting this. 

Our house farts.

Seriously, when the wind hits the back wall at the right angle, it makes the sliding glass door vibrate against the rubber seal, which makes a noise a lot like a little boy blowing on the palm of his hand to simulate flatulency.  Here's a short clip.  You can see from the trees how windy it is outside.

At first, Seth and I couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from.  We knew neither of us was making it, and it would happen at the strangest times.  Nobody was flushing anything.  We weren't even moving.  Hearing it was a little creepy.  Then I noticed that whenever I heard the noise in the dining room, the wind would howl outside the kitchen window.  Then Seth put two and two together and found the source of the noise. We were highly amused.

Minnesota is a windy state (Our house is surrounded by wind turbines.), and I understand it only gets windier as winter comes on.  So we are going to be visited by our ghost a lot.  He loves to interrupt conversations and put his two cents in, and he has phenomenal comic timing.  We've always had pets that liked to "talk;" now I guess we have a house that will fill that function.



Speaking of bodily functions, my favorite place to read deep theology is in the bathroom.  I find that deep thoughts are best processed one or two paragraphs at a time, which is perfect for bathroom reading.  You can always find something serious on the tank of my toilet. My current source of meditation is The Complete Julian of Norwich (pronounced JU-li-inn of Nor-itch); translated and edited by Fr. John-Julian, OJN; published by Paraclete Press, Brewster, Massachusetts.

Julian was a medieval minor noble woman (probably about the same social rank as Elizabeth Bennet for my former English students).  After two marriages and five children, Julian experienced a nearly fatal illness that left her convalescent for a while.  As she was recovering, she experienced 14 "showings" from God, which left her plenty to ponder for the rest of her life.  When her second husband died and her children were all provided for, Julian entered the life of  an anchorite.  That means that she set up for herself a little room on the back of the local church, and let them lock the door and throw away the key.  Her income as a noble woman provided her with food and clothing, and there would be a little window through which she could speak to passers by, pray for them, and possibly offer them advice from her prayers and meditations.

Here is a bit from Julian that I found comforting after last weekend's ordeal:

One time our good Lord said: "All manner of thing shall be well"; and another time He said: "Thou shalt see for thyself that all manner of thing shall be well"; and from these two sentences the soul recognized several implications:

One was this: that He wishes us to be aware that not only does He take heed to noble and great things, but also to little and small things, to lowly and simple things, both to one and to the other and so means He in that He says, "All manner of thing shall be well"; for He wills that we be aware that the least little thing shall not be forgotten.

Another understanding is this: that, from our point of view, there are many deeds evilly done and such great harm given that it seems to us that it would be impossible that ever it should come to a good end; and we look upon this, xorrowing and mourning because of it, so that we cannot take our ease in the joyful beholding of God as we would like to do, and the cause is this: that the use of our reason is now so blind, so lowly, and so [limited] that we cannot know the exalted wondrous Wisdom, the Power, and the Goodness of the blessed Trinity.  And this is what He means when He says, "Thou shalt see for thyself that all manner of thing shall be well,: as if He said, "Pay attention to this now, faithfully and trustingly; and at the last end, though shalt see it in fullness of joy."   (Meditation 32, p. 161)  

I needed that last Friday.  At certain points during that night, I was ready to consign the airline to the deepest parts of unmentionable places for putting my husband in such a fix (see previous installation).  I saw only forces of evil and incompetence trying to keep my husband from his God-appointed calling.

However, Seth got safely to Oregon.  He passed his examination.  He gave a resounding testimony to God's faithfulness.  And I learned that I can pray through the night when properly motivated.  My understanding (reason) last Friday was "so blind, so lowly, and so [limited]"* that I couldn't see beyond the next morning, and, a week later, I feel pretty foolish about that.  However, Julian also had words to say to my incompetence.

God shall do this, and I shall do nothing but sin, and yet my sin shall not prevent His doing  it.

So we got through after all.

What a To Do

This post might be a bit of a downer.  I'm trying to stay awake so that I can talk to my husband at regular intervals and make sure he's staying awake.  Covering half the country in a night is not easy.  I've only done it once, back when I was a foolish, impractical college student.  And I wasn't alone in the car.

So where are we in the moving process?  Our stuff arrived on Wednesday, and I think we've got about half of it unpacked.  So we've been rinsing off the dishes and stacking the books and, perhaps most importantly, figuring out where everything should go.

I've noticed this every time we move house, but sometimes our house and our lives heretofore aren't compatible at first.  For instance, Seth's espresso machine doesn't fit in any of our cupboards.  On the other hand, I have no idea what I'm going to do with all the shelves in the main bathroom.  We don't have that many towels, and we don't buy that much toilet paper.  In our last house we had cupboards that were so high, I literally needed a step ladder to put things in and out of them, so we got a step ladder.  When life drops a house in your lap, you adjust.  I think with each house, our ideas of how to live have expanded.  Life just sort of oozes into the new space and makes it its own. And right now, the ooze is taking the form of boxes piled everywhere and living half functionally with the stuff that we have unpacked to date.  I would love to find my clothes hangers and the bolts for Annika's bedframe.

In the middle of all this chaos (and I don't like chaos.  My idea of feng shui is being able to walk through a dark room without stubbing my toes.), Seth had to fly back to Oregon for another part of his ordination process.  Ordination in the Christian Reformed Church has four parts: a degree from a recognized seminary, a group of CRC churches (Called a classis) willing to support and mentor you, a sermon preached before representatives of the classis in a church setting, and an intense question-and-answer session by the classis, just to make sure you know your stuff.  After all of this, the church and its elders gather around you, lay hands on you, and commend you to God's work.   Seth has joked that it was easier to get a top secret military clearance to run a nuclear reactor than it is to get ordained in the CRC church.  At this point, I'm inclined to agree with him because we are on part 4: the intense, all day question-and-answer session in front of classical deputies and synodical delegates, halfway across the country, tomorrow, and at this semi-final stage in his ordination, . . . well, let me break it down for you.

Seth is being supported by a classis that is made up of churches in Washington and Oregon, churches where we both grew up.  These people have been with us since our childhoods.  But they are now halfway across the country from us, and video conference apparently doesn't work in this situation.  Since Seth can't fully do his job until he is ordained,  this step in his process should all happen as soon as possible.  Delegates from other churches and  from our overarching body (called a synod) are flying in to be present for his examination on Saturday and then flying back to their own churches to do their duties for Sunday.  Therefore, there is no rescheduling of this appointment.  Everyone who needs to be there, needs to be there.

We got to our new home last Friday, and this Friday (today), Seth had been planning to fly back to Oregon to be examined.  Flying across two time zones and leaving your wife and daughter to unpack your belongings a week after you get into your new house is not ideal, but we've done it before.  When he got out of the Navy, we literally moved into our apartment a weekend before he had to fly to Taiwan for a month of training for his new job, and I had to drive back to our old house and load up the rest of our belongings myself.  When we moved into our Michigan house, I had to start work the same day that we took possession of our house and so was there for none of the unpacking. Old hat; totally been there, done that.

However this time isn't going as smoothly as those other times.  For starters, his flight this morning was canceled, and then the flight they put him on was delayed and delayed until he would have missed any connecting flight that left today.  The earliest connecting flight they could get him on would have left Minneapolis at 11 am CST tomorrow, about 9:00 am PST, the same time that all the delegates would be assembling in Oregon for the express purpose of getting him ordained.  The airport could find him a flight in Bozeman, Montana, that would get to Portland at 9:30 am PST.  However, they couldn't find him a flight to Bozeman.  So my courageous husband is driving a rental car from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Bozeman, Montana, tonight because the show must go on.

I'm going to be frank.  I don't like this.  I like it less than the first day of a deployment.  At least when he left on his submarine, I knew he was surrounded by people as capable as he is.  Now  he's out there alone.   I know as many people are praying for Seth now as prayed for us as we drove across the country a week ago.  I also know that the weather is much better this week than it was last week.  I know God wants us to be doing His work here, and I know my husband is a very capable driver.  And when all of this is over, and he's safely back in Minnesota, I know this weekend will seem like a moment, a tiny blip on the radar screen of life. It's not chemo, which a good friend of mine is undergoing right now.  It's not divorce.  My daughter isn't sick.  Nobody's dying.  I still really don't like this.  

And nobody said I had to.  I cried this afternoon when Seth told me what he was going to do.  If you know me, you know that tears don't often run down my face.  I sniffled a bit when we left our families back on the West Coast.  I sniffled a bit when we left our friends in Michigan.  I never managed to cry when Seth was deployed, even though it probably would have been good for me.  But I sobbed today (albeit silently) when I called one of our good friends in Portland to update them on Seth's plans, and she prayed for me.

- - -

And that's where I left it.  Seth made it safely to Portland and stood his examination.  I went to bed around 11:30 because I couldn't do Seth any more good.  I think I slept a little before Seth texted me that he had arrived, but not much.  I can see God's fingerprints all over this, but I am far too tired to try to make sense out of it right now.

Time for a break

This is what Sabbath looks like.  

Actually, that's what my living room looks like, but I am taking no steps to fix it.  Because Sabbath means that not only am I free to take a break from work, but my house is also free to be in disarray.  We assembled our couch yesterday.  We did not get the boxes out of the living room.  That's okay.  The job of collapsing those boxes is a simple one.  It would probably take about thirty minutes, but I'm not going to do it today.  Today, I honestly feel like I have earned a break.  The only job that's going to get done is laundry because most of our clothes smell like car exhaust.

It is Sunday, and we are in Chandler, Minnesota. We got here Friday evening  after a week of grueling wind and snow pushing us along the I-90..  My mom's cousin commented on my facebook post, "Stay safe.  You really did pick the worst week to go." We made it from Sunnyside, Washington, to out here in four days and managed to work in pre-algebra, novel studies, and a little bit of economics ("Hey, Annika, what do you think  the state of Montana exports?"  "Trees and cows?"  "Yep, pretty much. Minerals too most likely.").  The weather was nasty.  A lot of trucks were in the ditch.  ("Annika, that is what we call a jack-knifed trailer.")  But we are here now, and that is something to be grateful for.

Gratitude is a funny thing.  We often don't use it when it is most appropriate.  Let me list all the things I specifically have to be grateful for right now.  

• Seth has a job, and it only took him two months out of graduate school to get it.  Some graduates wait two years for a job these days.  
• The job comes with a house that is the biggest house I have lived in since I graduated from college.  
• Seth, Annika, and I were literally prayed across the country this week. It was dangerous out there, and we are safe. 
• The furniture that we ordered got here at the earliest possible moment, a week after we ordered it, and was waiting for us in the garage.  
• We found winter coats for Seth and Annika at the mall on our way to dinner. 
•  Wonderful people from our congregation opened their home to us so we didn't have to sleep on air mattresses the first couple of nights.  
• Those same wonderful people also stocked our fridge and made us fudge brownies.
• And we have new phones.  (Our old mobile company doesn't have coverage out here.) 

 Did I wake up feeling grateful this morning?  No, to be perfectly honest, I did not.  

• See, I didn't sleep well, and I woke up a little under the weather.  
• And the truck that was supposed to deliver our belongings (furniture, beds, pots and pans) broke down before they could bring us our boxes.  
• There was more work to do on Monday, and I wasn't sure how it was gong to get done.

That's about it.  Gratitude -- kaphooey!  Over night, the sense of wonder and comfort vanished, and I felt like I shouldn't have to go through this.  I was tired, doggone it, and I wanted to be done.  And that's what Sabbath is for.  "On the seventh day, God rested."  God doesn't get tired, and He's never under the weather.  But He rested on the seventh day.  As I am learning, rest is good.  It's not just good for me.  It's good.  And I have the feeling that I will be much more able to handle tomorrow and all its boxes tomorrow when I'm supposed to. 

Notifications from Limbo: Funny how much difference a continent makes.

Here we are, sitting pretty in my parents' basement.  Boo is doing long division, something of a bane to her "skip the details" soul.  I am finishing what I began a couple of weeks ago: moving blog#1.

The following was originally written on August 15th.  Published without pictures at the moment because I can't find them.

One week in to our cross country road trip, and we took a break in Iowa to catch our breath, get the laundry done, and visit some with family.  I have a hard time believing that we are already and yet only a week out of Grand Rapids.  I'm tired, but I think that's because we spent this afternoon out on the water.

  When we cross the country (this is the fourth time for Seth and me), we always reserve our campsites ahead of time so we have a schedule. We put in four hours of driving Thursday night, minus losing the cat at Cadillac, to get to St. Ignace, and two hours the next morning to get to Munising. The first leg of our trip took us right along the coast of Lake Michigan, with a couple of views of Lake Superior and Lake Huron going over the Mackinac Bridge.  I can now say that the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is as beautiful as I have always heard that it is.  Somehow, it wasn't quite what I was expecting, but it was still gorgeous.  Flat, green, lots of low lying ground with ponds and streams:  I can totally see why Dutch immigrants would settle there.  We had nothing but blue skies and breezes while we were in the U.P.

 Sometimes the breezes were a little too strong.  We didn't get to see the Pictured Rocks because of a small craft advisory.  We were disappointed because we couldn't wait for the wind to die down.  We had to be on the road again the next day.  Still, we managed to have a good time with the time we had.  They have some good ice cream in Munising, and wood fired pizza is always a treat.

Then we took off for a long drive: 7 hours (including lunch breaks) to the Wisconsin Dells.  And here vacation really began.  We had three nights reserved at the Dells (the KOA won't make shorter reservations), and anyone who has been to the Dells lately can tell you that there is no way anyone can take in all that there is to see in two days.  Luckily for us, we are not the world's biggest tourists.  Annika hates waterslides, crowds, and big risks like rope courses.  That shortened the list of activities considerably.  We went on a DUKW ride, because you have to do a DUKW ride at the Dells.  That's like the original attraction there.  Annika and Seth got to see two-headed crocodiles and really big pythons at the reptile gardens.  And we did a submarine themed escape room.  That, plus hunting all over southcentral Wisconsin for a replacement cookstove, was enough activity for us, though we wouldn't mind coming back and exploring the more natural features of the Dells.  That is some seriously gorgeous territory out there.

The only real downside to the Dells was that it rained all three days that we were there.  Every evening, around 5 pm, just as we wanted to get the campfire started, it would start to rain.  So we ate under the canopy and went to bed early.  Not that we minded.  Being a tourist is tiring.

After the Dells, we put in another long day of driving, and got Spirit Lake, IA, where Seth's grandpa was waiting for us.  Many people don't know that Iowa has its own tiny "great lakes," five conjoined lakes that have some of the clearest water in the country.  We took our little inflatable boat out West Okoboji and had a picnic in the middle of the lake.  I thought we were going to get doused by some threatening clouds, but they moved southeast.  We also went out on a pontoon boat with Seth's uncle and grandfather, and Annika got a chance to drive.