reinvention

I am who I am, who I am
Well, who am I?
Requesting some enlightenment...
Could I have been anyone other than me?
-song "Dancing Nancies" Dave Matthews Band

Moving to a city far away, where you know no one, and more importantly, where no one knows you, provokes the fantasy that you have a chance to start over. You can be whoever you want. Someone totally different, if that strikes your fancy... the person that after years of some reflection, some regrets, and a whole lotta "I wish I would have done this differently" now has a chance to reinvent oneself and right the wrongs.

Don't get me wrong, I like me. I liked me before too. But it was kind of exciting a few months back when we first moved away from years of rootedness, to think that I don't really know anyone here, and they certainly don't know me, so I can be a little more extroverted this time around. And, I can be sweeter, less rough around the edges. I can come across more upbeat and syrupy... less sarcastic and cynical. I will, however, keep my sense of humor and my passion and love for... well the things I'm passion about and love.

New people, new culture, new climate, new everything. I was wide-eyed and thrilled to enter the next chapter for our family. I think I ran on adrenalin for several weeks. It was happy adrenalin as I, we, vigorously pursued the beautiful place where God brought us, the excessively friendly culture of this city, the new things to do, and the new home to build. It was easy to be upbeat, positive, extroverted, engaging.

Then after a handful of months, it started to drive me crazy that the people drove 5-10 miles under the speed limit as a general rule. The independent spirit here and strong ideas on what is right and wrong imposed on others... nevermind that sometimes its not black and white, people! Well, you see where I'm going here... the honeymoon wore off and my real self came bubbling to the surface. You see, there was the first time here that, just to prove a point, I wanted to rear end the person who pulled out in front of me as they continued going 20-miles per hour though I was going 40. I mean, that would be the natural consequence, right? And then there was the time when someone responded full of judgment, "Oh really? That place has ridiculously high prices..." when I told them where I grocery shopped. I wanted to say, "I shop at XYZ because I prefer my produce un-rotted."

I'm all for reinventing and bettering oneself. Throughout our lives, I believe that God shapes and molds our hearts, making them more righteous and holy. I really believe that. But it is also true that it really didn't take all that long for me to realize that I am who I am and moving to a new city didn't change anything except my longitude.

saturday morning

il dolce far niente

On this 30-something degree, sunny Montana evening, I'm sitting in front of my fireplace with a picture window to my right. I can see piles of melting snow out the window and just beyond that a very old farmhouse that remained as the new neighborhood development grew up around it. I hear cartoons in the background and my almost 2-year old daughter begging for chocolate. I don't know where she gets that from. My husband and I are planning on watching a movie on this Friday night after the kids are in bed. This is the first weekend in 4 or 5 weeks that we have the whole weekend to ourselves. Nothing scheduled. We can do whatever we want. And I think we won't do much. I think we are going to observe the sweetness of doing nothing.

back soon!

My lovely husband just got me a new computer for my birthday so I plan to be up and running soon again! Looking forward to continuing our story...

from there to here

When I reflect on my life as a married woman, I realize my husband and I have lived quite the life of provision from the Lord. In fact, I clearly see that the only way we were able to survive mentally, physically and financially throughout the last eight years, starting careers, changing careers, going to seminary, having kids, buying a house just to name a few, was solely upon the provision of the God we worship. Without Him giving us our every need, we wouldn't be where we are today.

It is an understatement to say our lives look very different now than what they did in the beginning. So where did we start? I was married to a man who wasn't sure if it was his lot in life to have kids, he felt an interest in theology but DID NOT want to pastor. Neither of us wanted to leave our beloved city, St. Louis, we were both moving forward in our careers, me as a caseworker and he as a financial guy. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment near family and the city, we were growing our community as a married couple, making friends and becoming active together in our church.

Where are we now? I'm a homemaker, raising my kids, doing what I can to serve in our church alongside my husband who is now a pastor of spiritual formation at a fast-growing country church in a small mountain city in Montana. We've gone from city slickers to small town folk, from a billion stores with infinite choices promising to fulfill any want or whim at your fingertips to a handful of local ones, from nice Midwesterners to bend-over-backwards, "whatever you need I can help" Westerners.

Though we got here to our surprise, it wasn't without our God shaping and molding our hearts, igniting our passions and fleshing out our gifts, leading us and teaching us, pruning and preparing us for the great adventure that lay ahead.

Though the path of Lord leading the church to us started in February of this year, our path of being led to them started much earlier...

trying to get back

Well, we made it. We've been living in the mountains for over a month. How I've longed many times to get back to blogging, but we are trying to figure out how to make my therapeutic personal time via blogging work. You see, we have the computer upstairs and I haven't figured out a way to blog during dear daughter's nap time without waking her. That's when I usually blogged before and it worked beautifully - the computer was far from her room before. We're trying to make something work. Hopefully I'll be back in full force soon. Just wanted to pop in and let you know what's going on. I have these grandiose ideas of writing out the whole story of how we ended up here... over the course of several weeks, of course. I hope those ideas become reality before I forget the whole story! Oh... and if you have any interest in commenting, I invite anyone who desires to do so. You just click on the "comments" section and you can leave one anonymously or you can click on "name/url" and put your name on it. I'm way out here in the mountains alone with the grizzlies and my husband and kids - words from other humans are highly encouraged! :-)

planning to return soon....

update

This is the road to the church where my husband will serve as director of ministry. You can't see the church from this picture, but it is right underneath the horseshoe break in the very cloudy morning...
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I am still here! I feel so cliche to say "we've been so busy," but its just the truth. We are trying to get our home sale-ready, we have been trying to iron out specific dates of moving, which include a long distance truck ride and plane tickets. We were looking for a home to move into, what moving company to go with, how to get the boxes we need to move, how to do the little projects around here to leave the place in good shape for the next person, my husband is graduating seminary this week, we are trying to spend time with friends and family as much as possible before we leave, we are grieving and celebrating simultaneously, AND on top of all that, we are just trying to figure out how to live normally in a very un-normal circumstance. I am not complaining at all, but its a lot of stuff, wouldn't you agree?!

So, my dear readers, I will be around as much as possible to write here, because I have missed those times of outlet and I look forward to their regular return. But for now, I will be more sporadic. Just know that I will pop in as I can, it may not be as regular as before, but know I will excitedly and more regularly return about mid June to early July. Please keep checking in - your time spent reading my jabber means more to me than you know! And, I can't wait to unfold and share the story of how God has done a mighty act in our family, launching us into the wonderful adventure of His calling upon our lives.

"For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." - Romans 11:29