Music July 9, 2009

I wish I was a more talented musician.  For whatever reason, instrumental music has never come easily to me.  I can semi-fake it on the piano, and that’s about it.  I never got past playing a few basic chords on the guitar, all of which I’ve forgotten in the last twelve years.  I love to sing, but sometimes it would be nice to also play an instrument, especially when it comes to leading music at church.  I’ve started to sing with the praise team at our new church, something I really missed doing.  But I wish I had more ability to lead them forward.  Unfortunately, I struggle with putting together set lists, finding flow between tunes, and matching up more than the words in the songs to the theme of the day.  I find myself wishing that I could just sit down at the piano and play and sing to teach a new song, or write lyrics or music.  But I’m not gifted in those areas.  It’s difficult for me to admit that I have limitations.  I find playing music to be enjoyable when I get the notes right, and frustrating when I don’t.  I get flustered easily when I play in front of people.  I can sight read music when singing along with someone else, picking up a tune quickly, which I guess is a good thing, but that makes me more of a follower than a leader.  I find so much joy when I sing, so I know I need to be content with the gifts God has given to me.  But oh, to be able to play and sing at the same time!

Please God, help me to be grateful for what I have instead of longing for what I don’t, be it material possessions or spiritual gifts.  Use me as your vessel in the way you want, not the way I want to be used.

The gift of unemployment July 8, 2009

I’ve noticed in my life that when I’m not working, God is usually working on things for me to do.  When we moved to our last church, I didn’t have a job for about six months.  In that time, I had lots of things come up that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I was working.  It’s been feeling that way since we moved here.

For the first time in my life I feel like I’ve got some semblance of a routine going at home – cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc.  We’ll see how well I keep up with it.  But I also was just thinking about this fall and how quickly my time will fill up.  I’m already scheduled to teach Bible study on Sunday mornings, leading first a class on the 12 disciples and then doing one on the Reformation.  Both are areas in which I have little prior knowledge, which means I have some work to do before I can teach them.  Our Christ Care group will also start this fall, something Travis and I are co-leading, but it also means prep work.

And those are the ones I need to prep for teaching/leading.  Besides that, I will also be doing homework and studying for two classes I will be attending:  the Tuesday morning women’s Bible study at church, and on Tuesday evenings, I think I’m going to sign up for Crossways, a two-year walk through the entire Bible.  Whew!  That’s a lot, but I’m excited.  I probably haven’t had that much time devoted to delving into the Scriptures and theology since I was in college.  And that was probably my favorite part of being in school!

If I was working, I doubt I would have time for all of that and keeping up with the house.  But then again, keeping up with the house has never been a forte of mine.  I’d always wait for a day when I “had time” but that day would rarely if ever come.  Usually I’d just work under deadlines:  cleaning because guests were coming, doing dishes because we ran out of spoons, catching up on paperwork because of tax time.  Hopefully I’ll do better imposing my own deadlines and keeping them.  Wish me luck, because I’ve always struggled with personal discipline!

Two dogs July 7, 2009

We’ve been toying with the idea of getting a second dog for almost as long as we’ve had the first one.  Frodo is now six, and in all of those years we’ve never gotten around to getting the other dog.  Part of it is that he’s so sickness-prone that every time we talked seriously about it, he would have a major vet bill, which threw the possibility out the window.

So this week, we have two dogs.  While we were out of town, this family from church who also has a miniature Schnauzer watched Frodo for us.  Now, they are on vacation, so we have their dog, Mitsy (or Mitzy? I’m not sure).  She’s super sweet, but boy, is this experience showing us just how spoiled rotten our dog is.  He is used to being the only game in town, and he is not adjusting well to the competition.  If one of us pets her, he has to jump in or cry.  When she barks at unfamiliar noises, he does too (even though they aren’t unfamiliar to him).  And when they run up the stairs together, he is faster and stops at the landing to snarl at her.  Thankfully it’s only been some snarls between them, no all-out fighting.  Oh, and taking two dogs for a walk has been a challenge.  I don’t know how those professional dog walkers do it, taking multiple canines on leashes together!  I can barely handle the pulling of two dogs, let along the tangled leashes and picking up poop while keeping them from stepping in it!

I have a feeling by the end of this week we’ll have decided once and for all that we’re a one-dog household, at least as long as Frodo is with us.  Maybe he’ll surprise us and learn some things from having another dog, but so far they either compete for attention or totally ignore each other.  Currently, they are both sleeping, probably because neither one slept very well last night.  At least, I’m guessing about the not sleeping, but she was in an unfamiliar house and the two dogs slept in their crates in the same room, which Frodo isn’t exactly used to.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Ministry “widow” July 6, 2009

Last fall Travis and I traveled to St. Louis to his seminary alma mater for a series of meetings.  Well, it was meetings for him, but they invited us both and paid, so who was I to turn down a free trip?  The first night was a banquet for a large group of people, including my husband’s committee, to kick off a fundraising campaign.  During the night, several speakers went up front, and at one point, the seminary president’s wife got up to introduce him.  She talked about how she and our church body president’s wife would commiserate about being “widows” to the ministry.  Their husbands, being particularly charismatic (in the personality sense, not theologically) men, would enter a crowd of people and just get drawn into chatting, talking, and schmoozing, leaving their wives in the dust.  Boy, do I know what that is like!

Not that I mind.  I would rather be a forgotten wallflower at major events than have to navigate through at my husband’s side, chatting with hoards of total strangers and otherwise feeling anxious and overwhelmed.  He is in his element at events like the one that took place at our church on Friday night.  You see, the town where our church is located is also the home to a fireworks manufacturing company, and the town holds their mega fireworks display on the 3rd of July to pre-empt other towns.  Our church’s beautiful property (14 acres, some wooded, with a huge front lawn) is rather close to the area they shoot from, making it an ideal viewing spot.  Apparently every year a couple hundred people gather to watch.  So this year, we decided to make it into a planned event, with popcorn and lemonade (all free of charge) and advertised it in the newspaper.

Conservatively, there were 700 people who came.  We figure that because we counted 340 cars in the parking lot and grass, and even figuring only two people per car… Many cars had families, so it may have been more than that.  But it was quite the crowd.

I was content to hide behind the refreshments table and help out.  Truth be told, I’ve been getting more anxious about dealing with people the older I get.  It’s not something I’m proud of, but coming to a new church has helped me to be more aware of it.  At our last church, I would just talk to the people I was comfortable with and ignore most of the rest.  Not a good way of interacting, I’ll grant you, but it was easy enough to do.  Now I’m forced into situations constantly where I’m talking to new people.  Once I start, it’s not so scary, but the prospect is terrifying to me.

Anyway, back to Friday night.  As I dove into making popcorn, Travis dove into the crowd.  He carried snacks to the firemen stationed in our lot, struck up conversations with individuals and families, chatted with the pastor emeritus from our church, and buzzed around like a happy bee.  It’s a gift of his, probably the reason his teachers in school told him he’d be a politician when he grew up.  I realized during the fireworks that I was into the ministry widow mode when he sat down for about a minute next to me and then excused himself to finish a conversation with someone in his eye line.  That’s the way it goes when you are married to the pastor.  And I don’t mind – it gives me a lot of time to think, pray, and spend some time recharging my batteries that have been depleted by the crowds around me.

Is your father a pastor? July 3, 2009

This question is one of the most common ones my husband is asked when people start to get to know him.  If the subject of family comes up, it’s one of the first to be asked.

The irony behind it is that his family doesn’t even go to church anymore, let alone work at one!  We sometimes smile or laugh or make a joke about it, but the truth is, I know it bothers Travis.  I know he wishes that his parents (who are divorced, his mother is remarried and he counts his step-dad among his parents), sister, and her children went to church.  We hear from them every time we talk about church, all of the excuses there are for them to not go.

In some ways it’s a good education for us.  We don’t get to know a lot of unchurched people, being that most of our time is spent at church.  We learn from them what it means to be a person who used to go to church but no longer does.  Most of the reasons we hear boil down to people:  Christians being hypocrits, the woman from that committee offended me, the pastor said things that bothered me, I don’t like the way they act, they aren’t being real Christians.

His mother is content with watching Charles Stanley on Sunday mornings.  Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but she is missing out on the community of believers and the support that such a Christian family can give.  Part of the problem is the value in his family that you hold onto blood relatives and can let everyone else go.  Part of it is the sinful nature of thinking we can do it all (believe me, I’m definitely not immune to that one!).  And a large part of it involves a host of things that I am not aware of and probably never will be.  That’s ok, because it’s not my job to know what they are thinking and feeling.

Every person is unique.  While we all struggle with sin, temptation, and the desire to make our own rules (all of this is rebellion from God), the way we approach that is unique to each individual.  Satan tailors the temptations to each person.  I know that he intentionally put a handful of “hypocritical” Christians into my mother-in-law’s path, knowing that she would be angry enough at them to leave the church.  I know he works with my clumsiness, knowing that I will probably let out a four-letter word when I stub my toe.  But I also know that God is involved alone the way.  He is working on my mother-in-law’s heart to lead her back to the fold.  He works on me to convict me of my sinfulness and show me the changes I need to make, whether it’s watching my tongue (swearing and speaking in anger without thinking), spending time in His Word on a daily basis, or getting my butt out of the chair and doing something useful.  Laziness is my biggest weakness in life, but His grace is sufficient for me.

Oh, to be free from these struggles.  Not until heaven.

Home again July 2, 2009

What is it about traveling that makes you need a vacation?  I feel more tired today than I did before we left.  Some of that is because I don’t sleep well in other beds/houses/hotel rooms.  The temperature, sounds, feel of the mattress, all of that is different from at home.  Of course I’m adding to that the frustration of having a broken washing machine.  It worked fine before we left, and now it won’t start for some reason.  Thankfully we have an extended warranty, but because July 3rd is a holiday (I guess, with July 4th on the weekend, people still need one), it won’t be fixed until Monday.  And that’s if it’s a simple fix.  Ugh.  So I have one load of clothes that I washed but I’m not 100% sure are clean because who knows if they got washed or just rinsed (it’s a front loading machine, I’m not sure if the detergent dispensed or not, they smell clean but who knows?).  And I have two more loads that I need to wash ASAP.  I hate it when these things happen.  It’s irritating.  I wish in hindsight that I hadn’t gotten this washing machine, it’s given me nothing but headaches and anxiety since day one:  learning to use a front loader, making sure you baby it, worrying about leaks, getting off-balance, and since the move it hasn’t quite fit in the laundry closet which makes me worry that they won’t actually fix it but will say it’s because of where we keep it.  If they don’t fix it, I’m never buying another extended warranty again.

Other than that, and feeling exhausted, I’m doing ok.  Still feeling a bit unsettled after being gone 2/3 of June, and not quite feeling like Ohio is home yet.  Not that I know what “home” should feel like, but I think because we only lived in our last house for a little over a year, I can’t quite believe that this place is going to be long-term.  I really hope we will stay put for a while, I’m so tired of moving.

VBS June 16, 2009

I thjink I must qualify for the crazy pastor’s wife of the year award.  I’m in the midst of my second week of Vacation Bible School in a month’s time.  In fact, I had only one week off in between.

Why would I do that?  I went to visit family in the midwest and ended up helping my sister with her class.  19 preschool and kindergarten students in that classroom, in the middle of small-town South Dakota!  So now, I’m co-teacher in my own class of 31 (not flavors, kids!) 1st and 2nd graders.  So far we haven’t had all 31 on either of the days, but there are still three to go.

I do have to say that our music is much less annoying.  I didn’t really like the songs they did in SD, a little too stick-in-the-head for my taste.  We’re doing Crocodile Dock, which has impressed me immensely.  There is a reason why many churches return to Group again and again for VBS curriculum, they are just plain good at it!  The music surprised me – Audio Adrenaline?  That “You’re Powerful” stomping rock song?  Not your typical VBS tunes, but it’s a fantastic change.  Even the jaded kids get into it, which is impressive.

Anyway, because of all of that, my “putting words into sentence doing” (direct quote from an episode of Gilmore Girls) skills are greatly depleted, so just figure on not hearing much from me until I get back from vacation.  We’re coming home July 1, and I hope to have plenty of inlaw insights to share at that time.  Trust me, there is much fodder for this blog when your pastor husband’s family doesn’t go to church.

Freedom to travel June 7, 2009

I had some people comment to ask where I’ve been lately.  I tend to forget about the online world when I’m traveling, plus for a week or so before I left I just plain didn’t get around to blogging.  I hit some writer’s block from time to time, and I struggle with discipline as a whole in my life.  So that’s a big part of why I’ve been silent.

Anyway, I realized that the fact that I’m traveling right now is one of those perks of being a non-working pastor’s wife.  My mother does it frequently, driving up to South Dakota to my sister’s house to see the grandkids.  I don’t travel as much, but I am right now to visit family in the midwest.  Last week I accompanied my mom on one of her regular trips north, and now we’re back at her (and my dad’s) house in Nebraska.  Tomorrow we drive to Lincoln where my grandparents live to celebrate mom’s mother’s 80th birthday (technically isn’t until Thursday, but I fly out on Tuesday to go home).

Because I don’t have outside-the-home responsibilities, I could just pick up and come here.  Frequent flier miles help, too.  It’s something I did when we first arrived at our last church.  I know for some pastor’s wives the sacrifices in career can be frustrating, but for me, my career comes second so I don’t worry about having some time off in between jobs when we move to a new place.

Five years ago, when we first moved to Springville (where we used to live), I wasn’t working.  It was definitely God-ordained, because that summer I traveled plenty.  First to a youth gathering, then to a funeral of a high school teacher (I was friends with her daughter), then to my husband’s grandma’s house in Florida twice (she was dying, so once to visit and once for the funeral).  Then I ended up staying with a college-aged daughter of a member for a short while in her dorm room (long, private story).  This was one of those ministry opportunities that I believe only come up when you are in the right place at the right time.  If I had been working, I couldn’t have helped her.

I wonder what God has in store for me in the future.  I’m fully aware that my life is one of occilating being service and preparation, something I’ve experienced multiple times.  Right now I don’t see anything on the horizon, just some possibilities and a lot of freedom that I am truly enjoying.  I’m so thankful for this opportunity right now. 

I’ll be writing off and on during the month of June, just so you are aware.  Next week is VBS at our church, and then after that we’re traveling together to visit my husband’s family, where we’ll have even less computer access than I have this week.  But I’m still thinking about this pastor’s wife life, and I wish all of you well.

Other workers May 19, 2009

Here’s the funny thing.  I’ve been trained as a Director of Christian Education (DCE).  In fact, I have all of the ok’s from the church to be commissioned, but I just have never been called by a church, so I haven’t officially been commissioned (it’s one of those bureaucratic types of things, I know it’s for good order and all of that, but I digress).  I’ve taken classes and been in countless discussions about the need for better communication between pastors and other church workers.  I’m fully aware of how different the education is for both sides on team ministry, and even varies between the schools that instruct the workers.  So why is it that in this blog I, by and large, ignore the other workers’ spouses?

I don’t have any immediate answers to that question, but I’m trying to work on this.  I think part of it is that until recently, my husband was pretty much “it.”  Nobody else at the church, no other called workers, just a couple of part time people, one of whom was me.  And now we’re at a larger church with a called DCE and a couple of retired pastors and I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not the only one experiencing these kinds of things.

I have a few dear friends who are married to DCE’s, in fact.  One of them reads this blog.  Another has been doing the “church worker wife” thing since her husband’s internship when we all went to college together.  I guess part of the reason that I don’t write about other workers or their spouses (I’m also fully aware that being married to a worker sometimes means that the wife works for the church and the husband is on the perimeter) is because I don’t know what it’s like for them.  I would imagine that on top of the difficulties of working with members, there is also the difficulty of working with a pastor who may or may not see things from the same perspective.  I’ve been there, being the youth worker under a pastor that I didn’t always see eye to eye with.  But I don’t know what it would be like to be the spouse of someone who experiences that.  Maybe I should ask my husband what it was like for him during that time.

Of course, the other piece to this is that men and women come at situations differently.  When there’s a problem, women like to talk it out.  Men like to fix it and move on.  We’re just different in that way.  So I think for the time being, I’ll stick to the wife perspective and let someone else write about their own experiences.

Hiding May 18, 2009

I think that there is a fundamental problem with blogging.  It’s very easy to only see your own world view and get continuous reinforcement of said view by people commenting, reading, etc.  Yet I am becoming increasingly aware that my perspective is extremely limited.  I received one of those “fill in the blank” things via email a while back, and the first one was “Four places I go often.”  I could only think of two, church and the library.  I spend most of my time at home, some of my time at church, and the rest divided among stores, library, and people’s homes, but that remainder is very small.  Most of my perspective is influenced heavily by the same teachings I have always grown up with, those of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  And while I don’t necessarily disagree with those teachings, I do struggle with the fact that I’m not getting out there and meeting new people along the way.

High school was easier.  I was immersed in a culture wholly unlike my own.  Even in college I had the opportunity to be stretched by others.  I missed out on opportunities to witness, though, because I was often too weak to speak up about what I believed.  I like to think that I’d be different now, but the truth is I find it easiest to speak up when I’m in “church mode.”  After all, if I’m talking about God’s truth at church or with church members, even if they disagree with me, it’s much less intimidating.  I’ve got stuff to back up what I’m saying that we ultimately agree upon.  But to talk to people who begin by saying that the Bible is fictional is much more difficult.  I’ve never been very good at that.  Maybe it’s why I’ve cloistered myself in the world of the church.  I married a pastor and trained to be a church worker, and if I don’t want to, I never have to remove myself from the “church comfort zone.”  I avoid interacting with strangers as much as possible, whether it’s the person in line behind me at the store or the sales clerk offering to set up a fitting room or the construction workers we see daily in our still-developing townhome complex.

I’m not going to stop blogging any time soon, but I am going to start following some other blogs, maybe seek out some viewpoints that are different than my own.  If any of you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them.  This is an area I know God is challenging me in, to get back into the world.  While we are told by Him to not be “of the world,” we still need to be “in the world.”  I’ve been avoiding that for a long time now.  Please pray for me in this, it’s scary to go out into the world.