Direction

When I began seminary I had this excited "hey let's do this" exhuberance that I still carry a bit of. However, now as I head into my fall semester next week I can't help but reflect. The thing about a five year program is that it is always multi-faceted. It is fun. It is work. It is a lot of things. Much the same, how I feel about myself in the program changes. In the beginning I did not have a clear vision of what I am being called to, but I felt resolute about the call itself. Now as I head for year two, my reckless abandon is being shaped into something different. I feel excited, but not giddy. I have prayed for clarity and vision over the summer and have received again just a feeling of "this is right- keep going", with even less of an understanding of where it is that I'm going. For now, one foot in front of the other will do. I will enjoy the path that God has placed me upon and pray that He will see me through it to the finish.

Ever Shifting Life

Now that I am happily home with my second of 10 M.Div distance learning 2 week long "Intensives" under my belt, it seems a good time to process my "ever shifting life" as I understand it. I always leave for intensives with a few feelings. First, I cry as the stress of exams has mounted and leaving my whole life for two weeks is a less than thrilling thought because I love my life! I always arrive in Holland, MI at Western Theological Seminary and am "half present" for about the first three days. As one professor often quips "I gird my loins" for what I think I know is to come (as I expect "weeping and gnashing of teeth"... A very Matthean quip to add to your bank). I go to the opening dinner and start to become more fully available to my peers. I then go to the opening "spiritual formation retreat" totally not ready. It's a funny thing about "retreats"... if you are not ready to retreat, then it is no treat at all. In the case of this year, the two weeks prior to the intensive were "killer", so I was still cramming in all sorts of coursework. Also, I find that I like guided meditations and conversations and don't ever do very well with "go be still" (just ask my mother).

Then the intensive begins. Classes begin. Learning becomes official and academic. I have found the first three days to be the best time to get the most important knowledge in. I am "all on" and want nothing more than to learn. Each day we have mid-morning worship which has a way of warming me to my surroundings. I find that I slowly wind each day until I am so very keenly aware of my peers, the place that I am, and my Lord and Savior, that all I can do is cry at the insurmountable wonder of it all. This generally goes on for about 4 days mid intensive. I revel and enjoy. Then I get to a place where I am "stir crazy" and can't seem to cram in anymore knowledge. My notes get more and more sporadic and I feel as if I just need a day to reflect on all that I've learned so I can "file" it in the proper place in my brain. I start to check out from my own "all on" intensity, but I still LOVE spending time with my peers. I learn from them, I enjoy their company, and I hear the good news of what is happening in their ministry contexts and home lives (I also find dissent, but that is a conversation for another time). They become part of my world in such a way that I wish I could take most of them back to Pella with me to continue the journey in a more present way together.

Also simultaneously happening as the academic, social, and spiritual bits occur are peer group times, a written paper due regarding present spiritual place, psychological tests become due, formation is pushed from "mold" to "must". I enter ready to be formed...a "tabula rasa" and leave feeling as if under a microscope that I would like to gently push away for a while. Then a curious thing seems to happen each time. I become so happily engaged in my surroundings that I actually feel as if I have a double life. I have friends, supporters, wise peers (and not so wise), learning, & teachers, all that my husband are not a part of. By the time the last day comes I am so sad to leave it all because it has become a sort of "home", guilty that it is "my" place and not "our" place, and so happy to be going to my actual home and to my life that I adore to prevent it from turning onward without me any longer.

Yet, in all of that I find the most tiring part of the journey to be that we all seem to think that we both know and can explain God. I get to a place where God is SO MUCH BIGGER than our feeble attemps at understanding and I feel exausted just listening and watching others as they either share what they think they can know about God in a way that is foolish and arrogant, and those that guard themselves so closely that you wonder what dagger scares them so. I wish we could get to a place where we could share more deeply, honestly, and passionately without being rooted in camps like "left" and "right" and forcing corners in round places. I hope on one of my next 8 trips I will not only see God in others, but will hear other talk about Him more often and in a way that lets Him know that we long to know more and not that we think we already know it all.

Thus you have it. What it is like to journey from your life for two weeks twice a year to grow and learn in a "distance learning" M.Div pastoral training program. You also now have a more concrete understanding of why I love my dogs and long for their whistful, easy, bubbly, constant, affection.

MIA- This is Work!

Dear Blogger.com... I have missed you so. Sadly for you, you come after all of my friends. I forget what they look like now, so you too are neglected.

Yikes is all I can say. This week has been HUGE. (HUGE, HUGE, HUGE). For starters I am taking three courses this semester that I really enjoy at present (a bit of a turn from last semester). I am taking my second semester of Hebrew, an Old Testament course, and a Spiritual Formation course. They are challenging (which I both love and despise at the same time) and awesome, but each decided to kick it into mega-hyper-drive this week. In Hebrew we went from basic grammar lessons to here parse out the first nine verses of Jonah, I had an "extra paper" do in formation (and have not even cracked my book for the intensives that start next week), and I really have to know every detail of every line of the penteteuch if I plan to eek out in OT (btw, we had an exam this week in that class). Don't forget my dear friends, that I also have a full time job and sadly not the kind where I can check out at 5pm. I have had evening engagements all week long on top of the 8-5. It's funny, I am in a study group at my church and we just talked about how God calls us to "life with margins". At that point one month ago I thought "boy, I should probably find some more margin space in my life". Now that is such a far cry from my reality that it must be a joke. Before I can try to find margins in my life I need to try to condense it down to just one page first!

Sometimes it's hard to know if I should laugh or cry. For now I think I'll blend the two. I won't stay long... it's back to painstakingly parsing out Hebrew verbs for me. All that to say, I miss the blogosphere...and my margins.

What is being Stolen?

It is ash Wednesday and my head is all over the place. I have been pondering and pondering my place in the church and in particular in the RCA. I visited a group of churches yesterday that do not hire ordained women (love the conscience clause). I think of the scene from the movie Elf where the kind little friend says to Buddy "you bring the elf choir down a whole octave"... in this case I brought it up a whole octave. I'm not really sure how I feel about that except to say that it pushes me right off of my confidence rock. I finished my presentation and returned to my hotel room a whir of emotion (I mean, it went well and everyone was super nice, it just left me with an odd feeling). What is my place in all of this? I sat down on my bed and looked over at the the coat rack that I had neglected to hang my coat on but had haphazardly left my scarf dangling from. It was a beautiful "God moment". It hung there with the pattern perfectly at front almost aligned end to end just like a pastors stole. So I cried. I then hopped online to discover that an old friend gave his testimony at his church and was baptized last weekend (I'm a small church girl, but gotta love big churches and technology sometimes). He said to me in a FB note "even when things were way out of whack the one thought I always had (even to the point it was pissin me off!! :D) was how you maintain to be so positive and speak your beliefs....I get it now. :D". I watched his testimony. I read his note. And I just sobbed and sobbed. It's a funny world we live in and God's power is, well, astounding. Just when I am about a half a shake away from saying "this is nuts, I am every bit the person I used to be, I'm just a girl and why would I even want to fight that fight, I'm tired (It's finals week), and even though I don't doubt my call, I do doubt myself" there God is. He calls one home that I really know well and have been rooting for and he draws my eyes to my old scarf on a dingy coat rack in a dim hotel room in snowy, nowhere Wisconsin.

ps, I am discipline challenged and this my my lent
(words of encouragement welcomed):

http://40days.bloodwatermission.com/members/kfishery/

The Ultimate Where would I be if Question?

Where would you be and what would you be like were it not for your faith and the grace of God?



Yesterday I read my Relevant media daily devotional email. Typically I cruze through it with my finger hovering over the delete button. The piece itself was not super interesting or insightful, but the question extracted really made me think... "Where would you be and what would you be like were it not for your faith and the grace of God". My gut reaction to this is "eek, I don't even want to know".

This week I have been drafting and rewriting my five minute or less of course presentation to a group known for it's conservativism. I have presented there before and am always sidelined by questions that instantly put me on the defense about who I am and what I represent. I'm not this or that enough, my organization is not this or that enough, etc. I have been working hard to learn and use a language that is unapologetic in it's decription of God and faith lived in an intentional and fully encorporated way, yet not in an overt, mandatory, nor procelytizing way.

I have been encouraged by my colleagues to put more of myself and my own story into my presentation and I have been really struggling with this. My story is not neat and pretty with a pink bow. It's messy. My life in particular before my walk of faith was a daily walk of shame. It feels entirely cliche to say "I didn't know the Lord and now I do" or "I needed to know grace" when the truth is I was abused, my life was a mess, and then I abused myself because it was all I knew and now I live into my relationship with Christ, but on some level that doesn't make my life less messy, just different (stay with me on that one, I don't mean I live an "unclean" lifestyle).

So the question on some level begs me to respond in this mega-transformation sort of way. And how on earth does one convey tranformation without first describing the starting point? (Be honest, some people just cannot refrain from judging the starting point). Any schmuck can say "I am a changed person" and that really doesn't tell you a whole lot about them. However the flip side of that is that "whoa was me, and now I'm amazing" testimonies can be tiresome too.

Where would I be and what would I be like?

I would still be a child of God, I just wouldn't know it yet. I would still be a caring individual who can sometimes be a pest, but I wouldn't know that God loves the whole of that me. I believe that I still would have overcome poor parenting, I would have kicked drugs (I never really liked them anyway), I would have eventually learned how to be a better friend and a person who trusts others. I came into this world with a strong fight response (albeit God given). I never aimed to let the world keep me down. If I did not know God's grace I would sadly just be a lot more tired from the fight because I would not know that I can be at peace and rest and that He is my number one uplifter. I wouldn't really be very different, but my soul and my countenance would be. I am thankful that I can enjoy the journey!

Oh the Perfection of me

I spent the better part of an afternoon on Tuesday, February 8th trying to make the PERFECT birthday day for my husband. I love throwing parties, giving gifts, and making things special. It is my chief love language (and it gets me into trouble quite frankly... budgets are such a bore when there is just one more thing that would make something go from kinda cool to WOW) ;). I collected the perfect little candles that spelled out Jason's name all the way back in September of last year, hung onto them, and actually remembered that I had purchased them, and could find them come the 8th (no small feat). I got two batches of yellow cake mix and two containers of chocolate frosting (I'd prefer from scratch, and would love that for him, but it is not what he prefers... I've learned to go with it). He really wanted cupcakes, so I got special birthday cupcake papers. I whipped up a dozen or so yellow cupcakes and made a small round cake. I also had all of his favorite things ready to go (a gift card to bass pro, some special bbq stuff from Uncle Buck's, runts, sweet tarts, and cosmic brownies... what can I say he is a connoisseur of sugar... that is why he's so sweet). I even got a special container in the shape of a cupcake so that he could take them to work! Anyway, now that I know what things he really likes (golly did I insist on a homemade cake the first time) I was ready to go.

I made my cupcakes, and they were well... sort of funny. I then went to flip the cake out of its springform pan and onto the pedestal (I still have to dress it up somehow) and it flopped. I FORGOT TO PUT THE WATER IN THE CAKE MIX. That explains why the mix looked more like taffy than cake mix! Then I took the stupid expensive candles out of the box and I broke the "J". :(

I have no super insightful statement to make about God or myself here. The bottom line is that I am so happy to have such a good husband to make crappy cupcakes for :)

The Misadventures of the Imperviable Bubble Girl

I am not a people pleaser, I am a New Yorker.  That is what I would tell you.  However, if you really wanted to rattle my cage you totally could.  Because after all, I am a Christian and it is not a good, kind, nice, caring, loving thing to do to treat you poorly.  Where do we draw these lines?  How do we care for people who hurt us (and are much more cognisant of that then we give them credit for) and really truly care for them (not "kill them with kindness")?  How do we preserve ourselves in the process?  How do you handle the situation when you know that with all the reason in the world the other person won't "get it"?

I have an acquaintance in my life that likes to "get under my skin".  This person is a very good and fast manipulator.  Just when I think I am being super tough, boom, there they are affecting my well being.  This person is not only a child of God, but a person who works in ministry that is well liked by many... so what is a girl to do?

I learned a new trick!  I am the imperviable bubble girl!  Today I conducted myself in a respectful manner.  I participated when needed, I didn't respond when not needed.  I didn't take on the roll of keeping a slowwww meeting rolling, I let it hang there in oblivion.  I didn't take on any extra-lame task that this person was trying to get me to pick up.  I didn't apologize.  They made a crack about my haircut and I didn't laugh ackwardly to make them feel better.  I am better than a rock... I don't need a fortress...I am a bubble.  When I was ready to float away I did.

I guess I have operated under the mantra of "their emergency is not mine" all this time.  Quite frankly that just isn't good enough.  Prior to my bubble days I would still jump even if I was avoiding the trampoline.  Now I don't have to be confident... because I am imperviable.  My heart belongs to God, not you.

February Christmas

Today was supposed to be the blizzard of all blizzards in Pella, Iowa. 

It wasn't. 

I still had the best day ever!  I woke up on my terms.  I watched meaningless, bottom-of-the-barrel TV and loved it.  I took the time to sit and eat an entire bowl of cereal in my own house.  I spend some quiet time with God (albeit that was short... but I'm a go-go-go kinda girl... it's ok, He knows my name).  I braced myself to go down into my scarry basement alone to get the tubs for the Christmas stuff that has been on my dining room table for three weeks.  Lenny and I went down together while Gnocchi sat at the top of the stairs and whimpered.  I put all of my ornaments and decorations away and put the living room back together again.  I then wrote the paper for my class that was due last Saturday.

I am not sure which of the random activities above to ruminate on right now.  There's the super lame day to be declared a snow day... but oh how thankful I am for it!  There's my lame attempt at bible time.  I could write about just how much I like cereal too.  I even could tell of my complete lameness that I put my Christmas decorations away on February 2nd.  I mean heck, why not wait until Easter and then just swap everything out?  I could even write about my dogs.  My sweet, sweet dogs who followed me around all day and refused to poop outside because it is so cold and snowy, yet were pumped to jump in the snow drifts and race around the back yard.  I think I will write about the experience of writing my paper (c'mon... keep reading, it will be fun, I promise).

I seem like a "type B" personality.  However this is not true.  I am really a "type A".  I am easy going about the things that I don't really care about, but watch out if it is something that I do.  I am an obsessive, perfectionist and am even competitive about it.  My assignment started out with vague directions to write a profile about a group (no specification about which criteria we are using to define group), to use some theories that are out there or not, and to make it of nondescript length.  The problem is that I am also strong-willed to the point that I can't even trick myself into doing something when there is a problem.  A better person than me would have called the teacher for clarification.  I however chose to put it off until I could muster the will to do it.  Anybody else would just be happy to be able to make it whatever they want it to be.  I on the other hand spent three extra days (after the due date) stressing about it.  If you would like to psychoanalyze, feel free.

Yet, I still call today a great day!  God is good.  He loves people who stress about silliness too.  He even loves those of us who put away our Christmas decorations in February.

Funeral's, Answering Machine's, Rival Fans, & Directories

My job is to call churches all the time.  One thing I have learned with certainty is that nothing is standard!  I called five different churches this morning around 10:00am (a fairly standard time of business).   Today I am calling to thank them for their work by offering  them a dinner and a copy of the book of a speaker from a widely known Christian organization. 

-  Response #1:  I am a fan of your rival school, so I can't come.
-  Response #2:  Unspecified voicemail (i.e. automated "Hello, leave a message")
-  Response #3:  Hushed tone, pickup on fourth ring, "I'm sorry we are in a funeral right now, you are going  to have to call back"
-  Response #4:  A tone that says "oh it's you again"... yes, we got your email, no we are not coming... after ackward silence...a polite "I'm sorry"
-  Response #5:  Long emergency info voicmail followed by a staff directory prompt

My favorite is Response #3 in case you are wondering.

Winter Jam: A Christian's Perspective

I went to Winter Jam last weekend and had a blast with some women that I truly enjoy spending time with at one of Christian music's biggest events in the Des Moines area.  I wish I could sit back and say that I still love to listen to Christian music because I don't have to worry about what it aims to teach my family and my soul.  However that was a far cry from the truth.  Here's my take:

Chris August kicked things off and his song Starry Night is fantastic.  He is definately an up-and-comer.  I could listen to his voice for hours and his style is all his own.

Sidewalk Prophets are great too.  They sang their big hit The Words I Would Say along with a few other songs and their lead vocalist David Frey has some serious pipes.  On more of a side note, I love that Christian music is ok with a heavy set singer.

KJ-52 can get a room full of soccer moms waving their arms gangsta rap style... no need to say more.  He is a ton of fun.

Francesca Battisteli was a performer that I was really looking forward to seeing because I love her stuff on the radio.  Sadly, that is the only place she is talented... on the radio.  It apparently takes a lot of editing to make her sound good and her performance was totally "blah".

Red scared the crap out of me.  I absolutely do not understand the genre of death metal in the name of Jesus.  Their backdrop had red spandex stretched over the shapes of faces that lead me to believe they were the faces coming out of the gates of hell and the Christian eyeliner wearing band was going to save me from them.  They had a pretty neat fire show.  I'll give 'em that.  I am also still processing the couple in front of me in their 40's totally freaking out to the band Red.  I'm with the soccer mom who sat next to me that said "I can't understand them at all" and left.

Next up was Newsong.  I have been a quasi-fan of Newsong for a while now, but I'll be darned if I am not totally dissappointed and am now cosidering deleting their albums from my I-tunes library.  The song Arise my Love is sort of like today's Christian answer to the Gaither's, yet I like it... I have no shame.  The real turn off come's in the form of their new song One True God, sung after a description of their recent trip to India and the horror of what they witnessed in the expression of "other religions" there.  These guy's are apparently real cultural genius's.

David Crowder played a short version of their standard concert set.  They havn't changed it since the last concert of theirs I went to in '04.  However, Crowder is still awesome and stands alone as an authentic Christian band.  They are so much fun and I'll pay money to watch them twang out to "I'll Fly Away" again and again!

Kutless all this time I thought was Skillet (show's how credible I really am).  I have discovered that Kutless sounds totally like secular pop on the market and their frontman has a handsome baby face and rocks a fedora and skinny jeans regardless of how big his butt is just like the rest of 'em.  However, they are totally pleasant.

Last up was Newsboys.  They are awesome now with Michael Tait of DC Talk as their hero.  Their show was high energy and reminded me totally of the Black Eyed Peas (oddly enough a friend critiqued him as a Michael Jackson wannabe).  The coolest thing of all was their complete ecumenism and the drummer spinning around and still playing.  Very cool.

A room full of 11,000 Christians rocking out should leave me feeling recharged, energized, blessed... yet I can't shake the sour taste in my mouth.  I can totally appreciate that Christian music has always been a one-off of pop culture and that different bands appeal to different styles.  The burn comes in the form of their Giglio wannabe speaker Tony Nolan.  He shares his hard knocks testimony and then encourages his book sales (of course with the caveat that he only takes a meager salary for his family).  I am also totally amazed that we good Christians are willing to pay $10 bucks a pop for this propaganda.  It doesn't matter that we don't like Red and we do like Newsboys... we'll still pay to sit through it because we are ministering to our neighbor and the non-Christian's in the room (who are you kidding... there are very few if any non-Christians in the room).  Not only that, but we are then willing to put our cash in the offering bucket that get's passed to keep the concert going because we appreciate the low ticket cost.  Did you know that a free -will offering vs. a standard charge always earns more... can you imagine what funds are brought in in a room filled with 11,000 people... and just how much of that money do think actually makes it to the bands, the road crew, or the Holt International orphans?

Which brings me to the most appalling thing of all... Newsong lead singer Russ Lee pushing support for Holt adoption services was a complete turn-off.  Not only did Lee push support (an ok thing in it's basic form... brand awareness and encouragement of) he went so far as to state (after ONLY 250 people purchased pictures of kids at the cost of a cup of coffee a day... i.e. like 600 bucks...i.e. like $150,000) "you are not a Christian if you are not supporting orphan's".  I would really like to see them stand at the back of the room with pictures of widows and say the same thing.  Better yet, "Love your neighbor as yourself"... I'd like to see them pin down exactly who my neighbor is and then accuse me of not being a good Christian for not loving them properly.

Christian music is great at times.  I like being able to flick on the radio and have a moment to worship while I rush from A to Z.  I love to worship my Lord and savior.  I don't like to be told what makes for a "good Christian" in your narrow worldview and I won't be shamed into giving you my money.  I am thankful that I don't go to a church that pushes this kind of garbage.

Well, We Still have the Machete...

The power of love...
as evidenced by a Haitian brown taratula named Zarry

Zarry (long "A", like star) had a long and wonderful like in the mountains of Haiti near Pignon.  He crawled around and ate crickets and such.  He particularly liked to hang out in, on, and around human showers.  He made his way into a container bound for Iowa where he lived happily with his human & canine family until he drew his last breath on January 25th, 2011 at 4:43pm CST.

His legacy of love as I see it:

-  He drew a group of missionaries together (and in hard moments pointed out their failings).

-  He was a daily reminder of my Christian family at United Christians international.  It makes laugh to picture Kerri trying to teach me the Creole word for spider: "Zar-en-yen... oh nevermind, just call him Zarry" :)

-  He made airport security laugh (something I've never seen anything accomplish in my whole life).

-  He was a really neat gift for a loving husband who waited two weeks for me to get home last August.

-  I've been able to witness my husband's care and reverence for another living creature and that's been  pretty darn cool.  From a shotgun trip to Des Moines to get Zarry all the bells and whistles a fancy terrarium can provide, to weekly trips to Oskaloosa to get live crickets.  My husband is the most wonderful man on earth.  Even before we disposed of the body he said "well, a plastic bag isn't what he deserves, but it's all we have" I fell in love with him all over again.  Now he just keeps saying "poor Zarry".  I love him!

Bondye Beni Ou (God bless you)!

Style Once was Everything

There once was a girl who was very into fashion, fitness, and beauty.  She never took this to the level of crazy that many women do, but it still took some precedence in her life.  She enjoyed her youth, her figure, and her taste in all things "refined".  Then she entered the real world.  The world where room and board are not covered.  The world where extra hours at work trump time at the gym.  Her youth went by the wayside.  It was a slow ascent.  It was the sort of climb where you don't even know you are climbing.  Rather, day-by-day, life marched on.  One thing led to another.  The fog slowly lifted and there she stood on new ground.  It was the winter of 2011 and she needed a new suit for work.  She realized she was nearly 30.  She lived in a small town (no place to find a suit in a jiff).  She had life committments (no funds for worsted wool).  She had let herself go (her size 6-8 wardrobe wouldn't fit around her ankle).  Then suddenly, like a Mack truck from hell she found herself in Marshalltown, IA (the epitome of the most drab place on earth) at a JC Penny (the epitome of the least fashionable place on earth) purchasing not only off-the-rack, but CLEARANCE women's suiting made of polyester (oh the horror) in not a size 6, 8, or even 10... but a size 16.

Life as we know it was over.  The girl died.

This "Intensive" Life

Time to hunker down now!  I am in seminary!  This surreal experience is now real.  I have been on campus for "intensives" for one of two weeks.  All of the classmates I have been interacting with online for six weeks now have real faces, emotions, stories, & thoughts.  Moreover, I have a student ID with my name and picture on it.  If that doesn't make it all real, then I don't know what does.

Here is what has genuinely surprised me so far:

-  I like my classmates, & I think they like me.
-  You have to know quite a bit about English to learn Biblical Hebrew (what the heck is third person/masculine/plural anyway?  and, can you tell me what the definite article is?)
-  I thought the hardest thing about being away from home, would be being away from home.  Class is actually quite challenging and in fact sitting in class all day is a lot of work... I find myself saying "my brain hurts" & "I'm really exhausted" to my husband on the phone a lot.  Also, after having learned for eight hours, I feel my need for solitude and nothingness louder than ever before and can't figure out how my classmates are going home to study some more.
-  There are lots of people here who don't agree with me on things I thought were rather standard.
-  We at the Reformed Theological Seminary are not all Reformed.
-  I have found lots more needed affirmation than I anticipated and feel very supported (my peer group rocks).
-  I sincerely like this and am hopeful for my future :)