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.
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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.
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