But...but...what about ME?

As I've mentioned before, we didn't want kids for most of our marriage. We hung out by ourselves, were involved in lots of different stuff, and we've been slowly figuring out what we want to be when we grow up. Kids weren't part of the picture until they suddenly were. And it did feel sudden. Like, "Wait a minute here! I thought I was going down this road over here." A left turn.

I'm in seminary. I used to say that I wanted to be a pastor, even though I didn't know what kind. (Now I'm not sure I'll ever be a pastor in a church, but my call remains.) My call was nebulous, but I had a vague direction. As I felt my way through school and plugged myself into various ministry positions at church, I started feeling my way towards a more concrete direction, and that direction was high school students/college students/young adults.  Those are the people I want to hang out with, teach, and help. It came as somewhat of a surprise, but looking back, it really shouldn't have done. (I'm British now, yo.)

Then the parenting itch/call/bomb happened.

And it all stopped. The official college/young adult ministry had petered out on its own, but it was still very sad. Then I was overwhelmed by all the foster care stuff that started, and high school ministry was the only thing I could take off my plate. I was crushed. 

It didn't make any sense to me that once I finally started getting clarity, God gave me a big ol' nope. The good news is that, for a year now, I've been back involved with high school students, and it's better than ever. I feel like God gave it back to me and then some.

But..but..I've still tried to stay connected to graduates. I still want to walk with them and be part of their lives and "minister" to them. And I am still friends with many and get to hang out with a few, if not often enough. 

I have kids now. That is what my life is about, for the most part. I can't have people over like I'd like and can't go out with people as much as I used to. And I know that this is something I want and that parenting is the clearest calling I've ever had. I know this, but that doesn't always make it easy to let go of old ways you had of defining yourself. Of old dreams.

I understand that all/most parents feel this way about one thing or another or a whole host of things. I know that I don't have to let go of all my dreams and plans. I'm still plugging away at school and planning things and dreading things that have nothing to do with my kids. But it hurts my heart a little bit every time some of my friends talk about the young adult group they've started. "Wait! I'm supposed to be doing that!" "Can I help you?" I wonder if I read my calling all wrong (the old one) and I'm actually not good at it and wasn't meant to do it. 

I have 8 year old twins. They just moved in a week and a half ago. Seth & I will be quite busy for a long time. They are my focus, at least for a while. They need us desperately. I worry that as I spend time focusing on them, I will get older and older and this dream I barely had time to water will die or its time will pass me by. 

Parents: can you tell me about new dreams you got for yourself after you had kids or old dreams that you got to still work on or go back to? Especially those of you who may have been surprised by your kids for one reason or another. 

Vague is how I roll. Feel free to not read this entry.

Apparently, being up past my bedtime makes me a bit maudlin.  Perhaps I should finish the wine in the fridge to truly make it a banner evening.

Big changes are afoot, but what is difficult is that the catalyst for the afoot-ing isn't definite.  But we still need to invest in it quite seriously.  One day, I decide that life can go on, at least semi-normally, for the time being, then the next I get information leading me to believe that all must be turned upside-down ASAP.  And I feel like God is sending mixed messages.  Like he's thrown open a bunch of doors at once, and I'm supposed to go through all of them.  Or I've gotten a fair way down a certain path that I believe he's directing, and then there's this fork.  It's an important fork.  Maybe I need to go that way.  But leave all the other stuff? 

Maybe they'll meet up again.  Maybe I don't have to give up anything. 

I don't want to let go.  But I can only handle so many pressures.  I'm not real good at it.  Were I to let go of one commitment, it would both break my heart and not make a lot of sense to me.  But I don't see what else I can change. 

2011 is going to be the most different year ever. 

A different brand of book funk than the usual

I realize I've been a bit of a reading spaz lately, but it's not the usual book funk where nothing appeals to me.  I actually have a lot of books I want to read and I'm working on them, but none of them are completely engrossing me. 

I think the real issue is that a few of them are spiritual/theological/ministry-related, and I don't want to just read them quickly.  I want to digest, think, integrate.  So I'll read a chapter or so, then I have to put it down for a while, because I don't want to just pile a lot of other thoughts on top of those ones. 

I do wish I had some fiction I was really dying to read, though.  I have some things that are meh, but nothing that really excites me.  I do think I'll give That Hideous Strength a go, though, even though Perelandra was a bit heavy-handed, and I think that THS is even more in that vein. 

I think I'm in a bit of a medieval mood, so I have World Without End on hold for me at the library, which is the sequel to Pillars of the Earth, which was right up my alley.  We'll see how that goes.

I am much older today than I was last Sunday.

Sorry for the short, melodramatic post earlier, friends.  I was going to post a real post, but I was just feeling overwhelmed & had a headache, and I just wanted to tell/ask someone to pray for me. 

So today, I finished up Perelandra and started on College Ministry 101.  Both hurt my head a little bit.  

Perelandra, the 2nd in Lewis's space trilogy, is not as engrossing a story as Out of the Silent Planet is, but, at least for me, had many more spiritual ideas to think about.  As in OOTSP, Lewis's descriptions can be a bit heavy-handed and long-winded, so much so that I ended up skipping most of the last 12 pages or so.  The book is very short, and I think that it would have been better served to not put the ending at the front of it.  It isn't really all that dramatic, and then, at the end, it just is kind of over. 

One of the things I'm trying to embrace is the Lady's view of going with the flow of what God brings to you, and not holding on to the idea of the Good you wanted or had, but enjoying the Good he's brought to you.  I'm going to try to look at most things I have and most situations I'm in as Good things that I can be thankful for and embrace, not longing for the past or a concept I had of what I thought I wanted. 

The college ministry book stresses me out.  It has lots of amazing concepts, but I feel like I'm just learning all the things we (as a church) have done wrong and that it all needs to change.  *sigh*  At least I'm not alone at all in this task.  I'm just afraid that we're going to have to do a major gear change or dismantle the scaffolding we've put up.  But maybe not.  We'll see.  I'm just trying to assimilate all of these ideas and figure out how to filter them down in a way that can be passed on to my teammates. 

Other than that, I'm still on an emotional roller coaster, which I'll tell you more about tomorrow, perhaps.  In the meantime, I'm excited about being home from the relatives and being out of school.   Tomorrow I plan on a run and CLEANING!  It will be quite, quite, very, mucho exciting.

Song lyrics!

I'm really tired, so this shall be a bullet-pointed post to sum up today.

• Training for youth group volunteers this morning, which was at the home of a family from church which was LOVELY.  They have a great yard, vines of their own & their yard backs up to a bigger vineyard, with a mountain behind.  Awesome.
• I'm going to have two other adult leaders for my small group this year, and our two student leaders are going to be a lot of fun.  All of the student leaders are really excited about leading and I think they're going to be really strong this year.
• My ears are really, really itchy.
• We had tacos for lunch at the training, and they were fabulous, I tell you. 
• I've started writing my final C.S. Lewis paper, and I'm going to finish it tomorrow, I say!  I'm going to go to bed early tonight, skip church tomorrow, and work on it all day. 
• Our college event was really good.  We had 7 college students show up for dinner, which was good, so about 14 of us total had pizza and talked, then we went to the church to play Rock Band.  Some more people joined us there, and it was lots of fun, of course.  The beauty was that it was an early night-- we started with dinner at 4 and the last of us taking down the xbox & putting the church back in order left church around 10pm.  We're all feeling old & tired tonight.
• I love playing Rock Band with the church friends, because everyone gets into it, especially a lot of the guys.  They're jumping up and down, screaming and singing, and acting like lunatics.  It makes me smile a lot.  
• I have the paper due Monday and my sexuality project due Friday.  Then I am freeeeeeeeeee!  Until the 30th of September, at least,  I'm going to see some family, read a ton, and clean a ton.  I'll have to restrain myself from blatantly throwing away half of our possessions, since I'm so sick of the mess.  I do hope to at least put a good amount of stuff in storage.  It will be grand.

Goodnight!  Oh, and my ears are still really itchy. 

Oh, that's why I'm so busy

Whenever I feel overrun by life and have to explain to someone why I didn't return their call or something similar, I feel like a bit of a baby.  I think, "C'mon, what do you really do all week that you're that busy?" 

Well, I'm in ministry.  I just realized that this week.  I'm not paid, and I have friends on my team helping me, but I'm the main voice for the college students right now, so I'm sort of a college pastor.  I've known (lightly) for a while that I was a pastor because a)we all are, kinda and b)I'm actually involved in ministry.  But as I fret about events, about meeting with and connecting with students both high school and college, as I search the web looking for articles to read and things to study and resources for drawing college students to church, I realize that I'm already doing it.

For the past couple years, I've thought of myself as an unemployed, part-time student who volunteers with a couple things at church, so I always try to justify my sense of pressure or overwhelmed-ness.  But I'm in my career already.  It's on.  Even though I'm still in school.  Even though I don't get paid.  I'm one of the teachers for young adults, I'm taking on some teaching (really more like facilitating/leading) roles for high school, I love all of these teenagers and twenty-somethings to bits and pieces, and there is a weight on my heart for them.  I'm in. 

So, yeah.  I'm busy.  Part of me can't wait for school to be over (only 1.5 more years!) so I can concentrate on ministry & possibly be paid to worry & read books and articles and listen to podcasts and fret and plan & meet, etc.  Another part of me knows, though, that it (ministry) will grow to fill whatever time I can give it.  It will suck my brain power and my heart and my time, and having more time will just mean more work and more heartache. 

I'm tempted to have a cheesy closing line like, "But it will all be worth it," or something like that for closure, but I'm more blank right now.  It is what it is.  It is worth it, as long as I keep it in perspective, because this is where I'm called.  God is making a way for me and I walk in it with faith and a nervous stomach.  I know that there will be exciting times and worn down times.  I know that I have no idea what God has in store. 

As I move into this new space, I'll need to realign some things.  Shift my baggage around a bit to get comfortable for the journey.  Learn to look at myself and my life in a new way.  Me & God can do this. 

Midterm

I did my midterm today, and I was pleased by the questions I got.  We were given three cases and were supposed to tell how we would react or counsel the people involved.  Here were mine:

#1 was about a woman who recently read books about egalitarianism and accuses her husband of male oppression while he tells her she should be cooking and taking care of the kids like the Bible says. 
In a nutshell, I said I'd get them to both calm down and explain their positions rationally, and what they thought the other person was saying.  Without ever making it seem like the husband is being corrected, talked down to, or chided, I would guide them through the Bible to see what it has to say on their issue.  I think I'd start with Proverbs 31 and the picture of domestic life drawn there: woman works, makes her own money, has her own reputation and freedom, and her reputation and happiness bless her husband and his reputation. 
Then I'd look at the creation account and make sure they see that there is no hierarchy involved other than God over Adam and Eve and their dominion over creation.  From there, household codes in Colossians and Ephesians, if necessary, and a talk on mutual submission.  Get them on the same team.  I wrote for about 20 minutes on it, so I'm just recapping here.

#2 was perfect for me, because I was supposed to be talking with a young couple who live together and want to become members of the church.  They claim that they're already married in God's eyes.  It's perfect because this was me & Seth, but we were planning on getting married all along and never would have expected a church to let us become members. 
In this case, I was both good cop and bad cop, in that I identify with their situation and I understand where they're coming from, but they also can't pretend to not expect that what they're doing is frowned upon.  I'm sure that my professors expected me to use all the doom and gloom statistics about cohabitation that we learned, but being that they weren't/aren't true for me and Seth, they don't hold a lot of sway in my mind.  But I did say that I'd bring them up and point out that not everyone can be "the lucky ones." 

#3 was also good because it dealt with pastoral sexual harassment.  The situation was that I had been in an internship for 10 months with a pastor bugging me, and what would I do now that I'm almost done?  The first thing I said was that I'm surprised that I put up with it for 10 months!  I basically said I would tell him to knock that s@*% out, and I'd go to the elder board and then the denomination, if I had to.  I expressed the importance of protecting people, their souls, the church, etc etc. 

Hopefully, they'll like my answers and I'll get good feedback on my decisions.  As the time when I will actually be having more of these conversations draws nearer, I crave guidance. 

Didn't blog yesterday, but slept AT NIGHT

thank you, nyquil. 
I didn't remember about blogging yesterday until I was safely tucked into bed at 11pm, and I decided to stay there, rather than get up & turn the computer back on to blog.  Sorry, blogging goal.

I had a good day yesterday, and I mostly read for school.  I continued to work on Authentic Human Sexuality, which continued to be really interesting and good.  It is really one of the best, most realistic Christian books on sex I've read.  Of course, it's written by a family therapist and a sociologist (my professors for this class), so you would hope it would be honest and realistic.  The section I read was still a basic introduction/overview, so I'll be interested to see how specific issues are dealt with moving forward.

I also started on Beyond Sex Roles, which is a nice complement to the class on women in ministry that I took.  At first, I didn't think it would have anything really new to add to what I learned there, but it's nice because it appears that he's starting from the creation accounts and may analyze every relevant passage in the Bible about men & women.  So far, I just read about Genesis, and I was both reminded of things I learned in my class and shown a new way of seeing some things.  It's pretty exciting.

I wasn't sure that this class was going to be what I wanted it to be, but it's going to great.  I think it's going to be very good for real-life issues in ministry, and just in life.  As I've gotten to know a little about some of my classmates (through our message board), I see that we all have vastly different ministry experience, but we all have similar questions on issues in sexuality that we're bringing to the discussion and we know that the church needs to address these issues more clearly and, well, at all.