Loss of Community

I have undergone some big changes in my life over the past couple of months that have me in a place that I'm unfamiliar with.  My wife and I moved closer to home after she graduated from med school in part to be closer to family for us and our daughter and also so that she can start making connections for where she will ultimately practice medicine in the future.  The biggest change for me is in regards to my vocation.  For the past four years I have been a co-youth pastor to an amazing youth group and now I am a stay at home dad.  Now I want to make absolutely clear that I love staying at home with my daughter.  I love seeing how she changes almost from day to day.  I love making her laugh and my heart melts almost every time she flashes a big grin when she recognizes me.  I hold the "job" that I'm doing now as an even higher calling than working for the church.  I had a former pastor always use the phrase "family is your first parish" and I believe that with all of my heart.

But in light of the many changes that I have personally undergone, I find myself struggling a bit in different areas of my life.  Let me explain a bit about myself.  I am totally a creature of habit.  I like having patterns and routines and predictability in my life.  I am OK with a little bit of unpredictability but not too much.  Working in the church and having a set office time each day gave me the opportunity to set up patterns and routines, and I did.  These patterns and routines helped me to stay in the word and pray on a regular basis.  They helped me to accomplish the various ministry tasks that I was responsible for each week.  But now that I am not in the office each day and my life is largely defined by an unpredictable baby, I am having to adjust on the fly.  Karis is starting to get into a daily pattern of sleeping, eating and playing which is allowing me to look at how I pattern my own day.  Thankfully I am finally starting to prioritize a few things in my life that have fallen by the wayside in the midst of my new responsibilities.  Please pray that I can stay faithful to them.

The biggest change though has come in the loss of community.  I know and understand the importance of community and have even spoke on the topic a time or two, but you never fully grasp the impact of community until you are no longer immersed in said community.  Over the past 4 years I have been serving next to some of the finest ministers that I have encountered.  People who brought so many different gifts to the table and who shaped and challenged my conception of what a church staff could become.  Around two years ago a major change occurred when our leader left to pastor another community.  Those of us on staff seemed to rise to the occasion during the void in leadership and forge ahead to the vision that we believed God had given our community.  Then a new leader came in with a different vision and slowly I saw many of those that I was close to gone.  I don't want to debate here the reasoning behind the leaving or termination of my friends, we can do that later.  I only want to highlight the fact that my community was drastically changed in a matter of months.  Thankfully the person that I was closest to and worked with was still around.  Our brotherhood continued to grown stronger as we shared our hurts, fears, joys and dreams with each other.  This is what I miss the most.  I currently find myself in a place where I am flying solo most of the time.  My wife works a ton, which we knew would be the case, and my daughter is not speaking just yet.  I am not involved in a church just yet and haven't even decided where we will attend.

But community cannot be forced and it develops in an organic way.  So as I find myself mourning the loss of something very great and meaningful in my life, I look forward to what God has in store for us here in this time and in this place.  I just pray that we will walk with eyes open to what God places in front of us.  To all of those that I have been in community with, I miss you greatly and the time that we shared together and I treasure each and every minute.

Words to build a life on

So I've been listening to the Mike Crawford and His Secret Siblings album in my car again.  I've really been captured by the last song called "Words to Build a Life On."  Here is the a link to their myspace page where you can give it a listen to and below are the lyrics, what do you think?

These are words to build a life on
These are Your words how can they be mine
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words I want them to be mine

Blessed are the poor
Blessed are the weak
Blessed are the ones
Who can barely speak

Blessed in your hurt
Blessed in your pain
Blessed when your teardrops
Are falling down like rain

Blessed when you’re broken
Blessed when you’re blind
Blessed when you’re fragile
When you have lost your mind

Blessed when you’re desperate
Blessed when you’re scared
Blessed when you’re lonely
Blessed when you’ve failed

Blessed when you’re beat up
Blessed when you’re bruised
Blessed when you’re tore down
Blessed when you’re used

These are words to build a life on
These are Your words how can they be mine
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words I want them to be mine

Blessed when you’re heartbroke
Blessed when you’re fired
Blessed when you’re choked up
Blessed when you’re tired

Blessed when the plans
That you so carefully laid
End up in the junkyard
With all the trash you made

Blessed when you feel like
Giving up the ghost
Blessed when your loved ones
Are the ones who hurt you most

Blessed when you lose your
Own identity
Then blessed when you find it
And it has been redeemed

Blessed when you see what
Your friends can never be
Blessed with your eyes closed
Then blessed you see Me

These are words to build a life on
These are Your words how can they be mine
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words I want them to be mine

Blessed when you’re hungry
Blessed when you thirst
Cause that’s when you will eat of
The bread that matters most

Blessed when you’re put down
Because of me you’re dissed
Because of me you’re kicked out
They take you off their list

You know you’re on the mark
You know you’ve got it right
You are to be my salt
You are to be my light

So bring out all the flavor
In the feast of this My world
And light up all the colors
Let the banner be unfurled

Shout it from the rooftops
Let the trumpets ring
Sing your freaking lungs out
Jesus Christ is King!

Jesus is my Savior
Jesus is divine
Jesus is my answer
Jesus is my life

These are words to build a life on
These are Your words how can they be mine
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words I want them to be mine

Give us ears that we may hear them
voice that we may sing them
life that we may live them
hope that we may give them
hearts that we can feel them
eyes that we can see them
thoughts that we may think them
tongues that we may speak Your words

How would your church handle the line, "sing your freakin' lung out that Jesus Christ is King!"

Totally Dependent

So Karis has been home for two nights and I'm so fascinated by her.  What I'm the most fascinated about is the fact that she is totally dependent upon Holly and I.  Her very well being and survival is contingent upon us feeding her, keeping her warm and discerning certain warning signs that might indicate that something is wrong.  Lucky for Karis, Holly and I have so much love for her that we will probably overprotect her until we are confident that she is fully healthy.

You can probably see where I'm going with this, but I'll say it anyways.  I'm appreciating my own dependency upon God a bit more lately.  I can totally see how I mirror Karis in my relationship with God.  How God is always watching over me and trying to lead me in my journey.  I am so helpless on this journey with finding the right path, knowing which way to go, even having provision to make it to completion.  It kind of makes the portion of the sermon on the mount which says not to worry about what you will eat, wear, where you will sleep, for the future, etc. stand out in a new way.  We cannot fully live into this until we are OK with being totally dependent on God.  Able to soak up the love, grace and provision that comes our way from a God who cares more about us that the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.

God grant me the grace to accept my total dependence upon you and the strength and knowlege to take care of this precious baby that you have blessed us with.

A little dose of patience

I truly think that patience is a four letter word to most Christians.  Think about it, how many sermons do you hear on the subject of patience?  Sure the pastor may talk about and use the concept of patience to support a point, but patience is usually never the focal point of a sermon.  Truth is, patience is hard on us humans.  We are inundated with so many commercials that brain wash us into thinking that having patience is the old way of doing things.  We were originally sold on the idea that credit cards were the answer to the problem, or taking out a 2nd and/or 3rd mortgage on the house, but in the end that has gotten most of us nowhere.  In fact, most of us are worse off than when we started.

I speak of all this because Holly and I are enduring a little dose of patience with our daughter Karis.  She is so close to coming home from the NICU, but it seems that every time we get a little excited about what could happen in the next couple of days, those hopes get deflated by one thing or another.  The latest round was centered around the feeding tube.  One of the prerequisites for her coming home is doing 100% of her feeds by bottle or nipple.  For a couple of days we would feed her a little bit by bottle until she fell asleep and then they would put the rest down her feeding tube.  So on Wednesday, Karis' 3 week birthday, Karis pulled out her feeding tube and the nurse said she wouldn't put a new one in unless she proved that she needed one.  The good news is that she showed she didn't need it, but tonight while Holly and I were visiting she had a little relapse.  Now my definition of relapse is that she spit up a portion of her feed.  It wasn't enough to get up in arms over, but enough to become frustrated.  Our hope is that when she starts to do something that she will continue on in this upward trajectory toward "normalcy", whatever that is.  The truth is Karis is a preemie and all of our best intentions, and plans for her to progress need to happen in the right time.  We don't need to bring Karis home and then have to take her back to the hospital a few days or weeks later.

So we need to exercise a little patience.  We have to trust that Karis is in God's hands and that she will progress in the right time and while we are so ready for her to come home, she needs to come home when she is ready.  So please pray for us and our little dose of patience.  I will leave you with Paul's description of the fruit of the Spirit, what we are to model as we become more and more like Christ.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law."  Galatians 5:22-23

What the church should be about

Read this story by Rick Reilly who now writes for ESPN the magazine.  If only the church did stuff like this.

Personal listening device

Has anyone else seen the commercial for the personal listening device that allows you to spy on your neighbors? They market the device to help you hear the TV when you get old so as to not disturb your spouse or those that you live with. You can also hear wild game coming up on you when you are hunting. You can use it in church to amplify what the preacher is saying. But the most disturbing thing is that they show a lady wearing one listening in to her neighbors or someone in a public place hearing others talk about them.
Here are a few questions:

Is it really that important to hear what others are potentially saying about you?

What if you hear a piece of juicy gossip while wearing said device, how would you use that?

Or if someone said something about you, would you confront them on it or just hold a grudge against them?

In case you are interested it comes either as a device that is a little bit smaller than a credit card or as an earpiece that looks much like a bluetooth earpiece.  That way you can fake people out while you are spying on them.

Use the center lane people!

Ok, so I'm in the mood to rant a bit.  I am from the south and we have some different habits when to comes to things like driving.  I have noticed that people up here north of the Mason Dixon line do not utilize the turning lane the same way that people do in the south.  I was taught that when turning left out of say a gas station, that if the traffic that is going the same way you are turning doesn't look like it will open up to you in the next few seconds; then it is appropriate to pull into the center lane and either wait or use it to speed up to the flow of traffic so that you can then merge into said flow.  But in the 3 1/2 years that I've lived in PA I have had many encounters where people in the same situation just pull out and cut you off.  It happened to me twice today on my way home!

I remember after I had been here a few weeks, my colleague Doug and I went to this great place called Wawa and I drove.  As we were leaving this same situation came up and I instinctively took the middle lane.  I wish that I had a video camera on in the car because Doug was fairly scared at the move we were making.  My memory is failing me a bit but I think the exchange went something like this.

Doug: "What are you doing?!?!"

Me: "I'm taking the center lane."

Doug: "Why"

Me: "It's what we're taught to do so that way we don't have to dart in traffic and use our car as a weapon."

Doug: "We never learned that one."

Me: "Well maybe you should."

Luckily I don't think Doug has held this encounter against me.  But I still don't understand the thinking behind not putting this move in your driving repitore.