Candyland--the one childhood board game I consistently and blatantly cheated at when playing with our son Will. The game requires no skill other than matching colors and pictures to move the game pieces. Draw a card, find the right spot on the board, and move your piece. Reshuffle the cards when they run out—which they always do. What I hate most about Candyland is that when the cards are shuffled it is almost certain that as players approach King Kandy’s Candy Castle for the win, the Gingerbread Plum Trees card will turn up sending them back to the beginning of the trail to start over. So, I consistently and blatantly cheated by stacking the cards to make sure Will didn’t get sent back and the game would blessedly end before I went insane. Life in 2019 felt like an endless game of Candyland. Many of you with chronic illnesses already know what this feels like, but for me it was a new experience. Dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and feeling off-balance kept turning up in my daily life. They’d go away for a while, sometimes for weeks, but just when I’d think I’d made it to the Candy Castle. Boom. Right back to the Gingerbread Plum Tree Forest. I tried adjusting my diet, exercise routine, and medications, keeping careful records of symptoms and changes I’d made. For the first time since I was pregnant, I saw my doctor multiple times over the year, and searched the internet for possible causes. Was it just that six-week virus going around? Keto flu? Vertigo? Stress? Hormones during menopause? Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome? MS? I’d make changes, some subtle—some drastic, then cross them out because the symptoms kept coming back. Unlike playing Candyland, I couldn’t cheat, stacking the cards in my favor. I just kept turning over cards and dealing with what came up. Instead, I cheated by learning to leave the class I was teaching, throw up, and come back to finish. I said “no” to social invitations that required long times staying upright or turning my head from side to side. I cheated by taking frequent naps and by holding on to the pews as I walked up the aisle after preaching on Sundays. I kept playing the game. When my sense of taste for sweets disappeared last fall, it didn’t faze me too much since I’d been weaning myself off sugar for the better part of a year. Still, playing Candyland when I didn’t even like candy anymore, felt even more discouraging. As the end of the semester, Advent, and Christmas approached, I felt blessed to have made it through the year--and hopeful to find answers in 2020. The words of 2 Corinthians 4:7-9 filled my soul as I reflected on all those who had encouraged and prayed for me during the year. If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; Some of you are thinking, “wait, didn’t you become a pastor back in July?” I accepted a job to fill in as the part-time pastor of a small church in July, yes. Despite what the people there called me, I didn’t “identify” as a pastor. There wasn’t a “real” pastor available, so the conference asked me to step in while I contemplated taking the UMC’s license to preach course to become a local pastor. No, I didn’t complete the license to preach course last Monday. I haven’t even started the course yet. I am not an official pastor in the eyes of the UMC. Last Monday, I did my first funeral. I’m not saying that that’s how everyone becomes a pastor, but it’s how I did. Jeff and our friend Ruben Chupp have said that doing a funeral is not easy but it’s a privilege to be trusted with that responsibility. Jeff says he’s learned an important lesson from each person whose funeral he’s done. Ruben says it’s a chance to share God with people who are hurting and might not know Him. Funerals were something I never saw myself doing—or being able to do. I’ve long been an empathy crier and I couldn't imagine getting through a service without sobbing in front of everyone. I felt relieved when a few of the older people in our church had relatives or former pastor friends who they asked to do their funerals in the past few months. Then I checked the phone on my lunch break while teaching last week and had a voicemail from someone at church. A woman in the church’s son had died unexpectedly—not only had he died but he’d apparently taken his own life. Then I got a call from the funeral home—yes, his mother wanted me to do the funeral—and yes, she wanted to be up front about the manner of death. I threw up after the second call from the funeral director on Tuesday night. I nearly threw up after meeting with the family the next day to hear about the young man's life--even though it was a conversation filled with powerfully positive stories and a lot of laughter. I threw up all night on Friday. Yet the message for the funeral came to me almost immediately after that. If I had been chosen to do it, I determined to do it well for the family. One day this week our online group devotional suggested praying on your knees if you want to hear from God. I commented that it had been a long time since I prayed like that. Jeff didn’t post a comment to the group, but he reminded me that I’d spent most of Friday night on my knees—and he was sure I’d been doing some praying. By Monday morning I felt calm. I felt the prayers of countless friends from near and far. We ran into our friend Kim at Bethel on Tuesday—for the first time this semester—and she asked, “What was going on yesterday? I just felt called to pray for you.” I told her I’d the privilege of doing a funeral. An awesome family trusted me in a difficult situation. I learned lessons of treasuring truly valuable things like generosity, nature, friends, and family. I spoke to rows of young men in flannel shirts who’d been the young man’s friends. And I became a pastor. I haven't written many blog posts lately. It's not just because I've been busy--and uninspired. I often use writing to work out my stuff. Since Jeff became a pastor--and then I accepted a part-time job as a pastor--I've been more cautious about putting my "stuff" out there. It seems as if it's not just my stuff anymore--it's stuff that might affect people at our churches. Apologies if this does in any negative way.
I'll never have kids. I'll never stay home full time with the kids. I'll never move back to Wakarusa. I made all these statements well before I learned that, at least when I say it, God seems to take the word "never" as a challenge. By the time Jeff finished his PhD and was looking for a job in 1999, I had learned not to make vows such as "I could never live in Alabama." I don't think I ever said "I will never be a pastor" out loud, but I'm sure I thought it. I probably even said words that implied "never." After at least three years of resisting the call to take the United Methodist Church's License to Preach course that Jeff did, I decided to start the process this summer. Jeff, my preaching mentor (Mike Settles), and others in the north district of our conference have been encouraging me take the step for a couple of years now. I felt it was a pretty BOLD step for me to take because I wasn't exactly sure what I would do with the license. After all I didn't plan to be a pastor at a church. I trusted that I'd learn a lot in the courses, meet interesting & inspiring people, and allow God to guide me to what I'd eventually do during the process. Now, a month after I shared this decision with our conference superintendent, I find myself unexpectedly a pastor a Tyner UMC. I also find myself remarkably calm about it. I've learned to trust God's plans more than my own--to surrender to God rather than resign myself to circumstances. The verse above is more powerful for me when I read it in context; it seems a little too simplistic and glib by itself. Before verse 11 God says "after 70 years of exile in Babylon are up I will fulfill my promise to you." We don't always know what God's plans are; often we have to take the first step without knowing exactly where we'll land--and we don't know how long we'll wait before we understand the plan. After verse 11, God says: "When you call me and come and pray to me, I will listen to you. When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me" (vv. 12-13 CEB). For me, as I call on God and search for Him--not necessarily the plans He has for me, but Him--the plans become more clear. In middle school when I discovered could escape choir three days a week if I signed up for band, it was a no-brainer. Choosing percussion—also a no-brainer. Even today I have only a rudimentary understanding of the notes on the scale, but rhythm I get. That doesn’t mean I always had the right beat in band—and if three or four of us played at the same time, especially in sixth grade, we rarely played in synch. As our band director often pointed out (with a red face and sharp flicks of his baton), we could lead the whole band astray if we couldn’t keep time. We’re coming up on a year of Jeff being a full-time pastor. One of the best pieces of advice given by our conference superintendent before Jeff started: have a routine to your week to make sure you have down time. Yeah, we didn’t take that piece of advice; we meant to take it, but the summer seemed shorter than usual. Then fall got a little crazy when we taught at Bethel. Then came Advent. We never got around to establishing a sabbath. Sundays are out; Saturdays too. Sure, we take parts of days off, but when we finally got away for a couple of days in March, we realized the two of us hadn’t taken an entire day off together since Christmas. Our life looked seriously unbalanced. Morning walks weren't so peaceful and energizing. Work talk, which could even turn into a heated discussion, happened a little too often. A YouVersion devotional we’ve both done recently (Choosing the Meaningful Over the Urgent) didn’t necessarily have new information, but it was a great reminder: “…sometimes we don’t know just how much the pace and load of life are stripping away the very essence of who we are—causing us to be irritable and demanding, stealing our creativity and joy, and making life more about doing than being.” My rhythm has been off for most of the year—or more accurately, I’ve had no rhythm for most of the year! Jeff’s message last week, A Time for Everything? ended by asking us if we’ve found a rhythm for the season of life in which we’re living. Our goal for Jeff’s second year as a pastor: find a rhythm that helps us rediscover our creativity and joy—a new rhythm for this season in life that leads to being and not just doing. I often get nostalgic for our time in Champaign, IL in the 1990s. Usually I say it’s where the boys were born. Where we bought and renovated our first home together. Where we went back to church and recommitted to faith. Where I had my last full-time job in teaching English as a Second Language. Or it might be the purple skirt. Waiting for a video to encode yesterday, I flipped through our 1993 album and found a photo of me from an Intensive English Institute event. I’m wearing a vivid purple skirt with an equally vivid floral shirt. Granted I was much younger then, but until this year it had been a long time since I bought anything so clearly impractical. I had many reasons for that. Guilt about not having a real (paying) job. Not going many places I needed to look nice when I stayed home full-time. Money being tight. Two boys constantly wearing out or growing out of clothes. Being a good steward. Moving often enough to see the craziness of hauling around too much stuff. My closet gradually filled with black and white clothes. My white sofa wore a slipcover—practical for teenaged boys lounging on it. My walls, painted neutral tan and cream in every house because they matched the furniture we had. Part-time jobs that practically fit around the kids’ and Jeff’s schedules. Nothing wrong with any of those things—and no huge regrets about them either. But… I know I am not the same woman who wore the purple skirt—and yet she is still a part of me, a part I'm gradually rediscovering. I see her in the furniture I bought last fall just because I liked the style. The lime-green rug in my office. The red shirt with flowers. The highlights in my hair for the first time ever. None of them are practical—and none were easy decisions! In fact, this week I kept the shoes I bought—the fun shoes—the shoes I worried might be a little too young for me—in the box, pretty sure I’d return them. They just aren’t practical. After I saw the photo of the purple skirt, I threw the box away and put on the shoes. My focus for 2019 is to help revitalize the church Jeff is serving. However, I also plan to be more intentional about revitalizing myself. In 2017 I went to a poetry workshop given by Shari Wagner, at the time Indiana’s poet laureate. The workshop promised to focus on nature and help us write a poem to take home. Poetry is way outside my comfort zone, but it sounded creative and challenging. We started with basic writing guidelines and a heavy dose of encouragement from Wagner. She’d placed objects on a table off to the side, and invited each person to choose one, study it, note how it spoke to us, then write a poem. As I finished taking notes, others jumped up to peruse the objects on the table. Head down, I heard a yelp followed by several shudders of agreement as someone said, “I hate snakes.” Waiting until the others had chosen objects, I walked over and picked up what had caused the fuss: fragments of a snakeskin. Fragile, smooth, transparent. Scales like windows, weaving, ladder rungs, railroad ties. Growth, movement, a vague memory of what had been living and breathing inside. Immersed in the exploration process, I did not even start a poem. Intrigued by the question, “Why did I choose the snakeskin?” my pen created a web of thoughts not yet ready to be corralled into a poem. Listening politely as others read their poems, my thoughts still circled around the question. Driving home, I eventually pulled over to write down not an answer, but another question—the first line of a poem: Why do I so often reach for what makes others recoil? The stanzas that followed over the next couple of weeks felt forced and clunky but they helped me work through that question a bit. The “finished” poem ended with: So I lift instead the wispy snakeskin sensing a kindred spirit. A few days ago as I wrestled with what lies ahead for me in 2019 and beyond in my devotional journal, the first line of the poem came back to me. I unearthed the poem and my workshop notes from a case of old writing hoping for an answer or at least a direction. Instead I simply found fragments of thoughts. But that’s okay—I enjoy the process as much as the final product. The journey as much as the destination. Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God.
1 Peter 1:17-21 The Message Have you ever tried to give a cat medicine from a dropper? Before she passed away last spring, our cat Delilah was sick all the time. We dreaded hearing the vet say, “just give her one dose every night for two weeks.” Jeff would wrap Delilah in a towel as she writhed and clawed while I forced the dropper between her fangs as she twisted her head and gagged. Occasionally we got some of the liquid down her throat rather than all over the towel, the floor, and us. All that drama and fighting for something that was intended to make her feel better. I’ve been wrestling with overcoming some sins that keep tripping me up and holding me in place. The image of Delilah came to me last week when I read, “There will be moments, big and small, when you will willingly rebel… [when] you don’t give a rip about what is wrong [but do it anyway] (New Year, New Mercies on Youversion). When I share an uncomfortable revelation I’ve had about myself, our friend Ruben Chupp often invites me to “sit with it” for a while—so I did—all week. I writhed. I struggled. I gagged (at least figuratively). I am too often like Delilah when God tries to mold me. So when God gave me more medicine this week in a new devotional, “Facing God: Turn Your Heart Over to Him,” I tried not to writhe and gag. I don’t like being called “girl,” especially at 6 a.m. when I haven’t finished my first cup of coffee, but I kept reading: Oh, girl, confess your heart to Me, pour out your heart to Me. … Keep turning over your heart for Me. I want to show you what is underneath the choices you make away from Me. When you choose to keep ignoring Me, reading my words but following your own path, you are blind to my steps in front of you, deaf to my words whispered in you, closed off from possibility of new directions, new hope, new places where I want to take you. Hear this: You are not stuck. You can be moved. You can change. I began 2019 saying I want new directions, new hope, and new challenges in bold discipleship. But do I want to really look at what’s underneath the choices I’ve been making away from God? Do I really want to be moved? I’ll be sitting with that awhile this week. For the last two months of 2018, I repeatedly said and thought, "In January I’m going to hit the ground running and do all the things I didn’t have time to do while teaching so much this fall.” Every time I had to say “no” to something or saw stacks of paper piling up in my home office, I’d promise myself some version of the sentence above. I took the semester off from teaching and planned to jump on our word for the year: FOCUS. Focus on what? On Trinity, on finding my way around Plymouth, on really learning names at church, on starting small groups, on updating the websites, on posting on Facebook more frequently, on writing more blog posts, on finding an exercise class, on more faithfully eating on plan, on getting the house in better shape, on inviting people over once the house was in better shape, on planning the message series at least through Lent, on figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. That’s a partial list of what I planned to focus on in the first month of 2019! There is nothing like being sick to remind you you’re not in control. It was just a virus. The symptoms rarely were bad enough to put me down for a while day—just enough to keep me from focusing on anything for more than an hour—for a good three weeks. For the better part of January. I don’t have a farm with barns. I’m not planning to retire, despite what my 18-year-old students might think about my age and dated attitude toward cellphones. I certainly didn’t plan to sit back and take it easy this January. But the parable of the rich fool keeps coming to mind. [Jesus told his disciples] this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’ Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?’ That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.” Luke 12:17-24 The Message When Jeff preached on the parable several months ago, he called our attention to how many times “I,” “me,” “my,” and “self” appear in the rich fool’s thoughts. Despite my claim to want to serve the church, perhaps I was filling my barns with a little too much self. The Arabic interjection “inshallah” has been coming to mind lately. As I continue to struggle (a lot) with control issues, I find myself saying or thinking “God-willing” after declaring that I plan to get something done. And I’m working on filling my barns with more God and less self. Back when Jeff and I chose the word “run” for 2018 I had no clue what challenges God would give us—or how often the chorus of the Jackson Browne song “Running on Empty” would pop into my head especially near the end of the year! I can’t believe it’s been almost six months since my last blog post.
At the end of 2017 we sensed we were biding our time in part-time ministry, feeling as if we weren’t fully using our gifts to build God’s kingdom. Our youngest son would graduate from college in May 2018, and we wanted some new challenges in life. We wanted to stop walking and RUN! The Youversion study we’re doing to end 2018, “One Word That Will Change Your Life,” says the practice of choosing a word for the year will stretch people “spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally and financially.” All I can say to that is “amen”—and I wish I’d read that before choosing “run”! Jeff changed jobs. We sold our house in Wakarusa, IN and moved into a parsonage in Plymouth, IN. We changed churches—a couple of times. I preached twice a month at a small church waiting for a pastor to be assigned. We left our support groups behind. We were appointed to lead a church much larger and more active than we anticipated. We taught too many classes at Bethel College this fall. If it’s true that “God delights in life change” he must be delighted in us this year. Overall 2018 has brought so many blessings—really nothing bad happened to us. We’ve been running into the sun, but too often I’ve felt as if I were running blind. We’ve lived out the truth that even good stress is stress. I confess to being glad I’m leaving “run” behind when 2018 ends—and looking forward to slowing down enough to get back to writing more regularly. |
AuthorCathy's writing often springs from devotional or other reading, small group studies she's leading and message series she's curating at our church Archives
February 2024
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