In June 2013 we moved to a new town to engage in our second full-time ministry role. We poured our heart and soul into the work we were doing -- and it seemed to be having a meaningful and positive impact on the 400+ people we worked with around the world. In fact, things were going so well that we were in regular conversations with leadership about eventually running the organization. We were thrilled! Surely we were in our sweet spot - the place we'd spend the next 30 years of joyful service.
Then, surprisingly, on December 5th, 2017, we were asked “to look for something different” by the leaders. There was no clear reason - they just didn't feel like we were going the direction they wanted to go, and instead of inviting into the new direction, they felt it'd be better if we left completely. Our world shattered in one fateful afternoon. Three days later, they asked us to stop coming to the office and stop communicating with our people around the world. They told our team that we were "taking a sabbatical" to reflect on "what God might be calling us to". We felt dejected; tossed out like yesterday's trash.
Much of the hope we've found has been the result of finding our footing, even in such a long freefall. Our vision to help people reconnect with what matters most
surfaced during that first critical year of recovery; the "expertise" of recovering from surprising and devastating setbacks was an un-sought-out silver lining. To keep you along with our journey...
It's been one year. One year since we had three days to say goodbye to the life we thought was our forever.
In many ways, a year is a long time. I have worked in full time ministry, a fintech start-up, and now in agriculture – three totally unrelated industries. We have sold our home, said goodbye to friends, moved to a new place (that was altogether unfamiliar and totally familiar at the same time) to do something we’ve never done before but have always participated in, even so distantly in the peripheral.
One year gives lots of time for growth. Eisley and Judah have made new friends, started a new school, found new rhythms and ways to play that are a delight every day. They get to see grandma and grandpa almost everyday, have space to run, and are so much more integrated into the process of being a family
– not just kids who are carted along, but co-journeyers with us.
In one year, so much life happens! We have gone on vacations to the beach and to the mountains; we have gotten completely out of debt then back into debt again in a totally new way; we have left a church we love and are exploring a church plant that we already love; we moved from a “divide and conquer” parenting style to a “always together” parenting style. Together we have found such a depth of bonding: we spend evenings with our kids in tears, lamenting all that was lost, not hiding them from the pain but entering in to their pain as broken people, together at the feet of Jesus. We spend evenings in laughter, learning new games or reading old books, snuggled up on the couch under blankets. Somehow those always become tickle wars!
And yet, and year is such a short time as well. Was it just a year ago? It feels like yesterday. At least it does in my mind’s eye that wanders back to those fateful conversations multiple times each and every day of these past 365 days. To be honest, those wandering thoughts often have a way of forming their own weather, and it’s usually dark and stormy clouds. One year is barely enough time for the soul to catch itself from freefall, even as the mechanical mind continues to keep breath in lungs and food on tables.
Was it just one year ago? We had our legs cut out from under us and a load lifted off our chests.
We have entered into a feast of emotions so different from the lives we lived before – gone are the days when one event was experienced with just one or two emotions. These days, our emotional landscape is a delicious cornucopia of joy, pain, laughter, bitterness, hope, tears, anger, delight, heaviness, confusion, healing, lightness, clarity, peace. All of those things make sense together, like chicken & waffles or oil & vinegar. Somehow, they belong together; the meal is complete because of it.
The theology of our “good good Father” (as we so often love to sing about in orderly rows in soft lighting and plush chairs) has come crashing through, like an alien UFO smashing through the vaulted ceilings of tidy American Christianity, and has welcomed us into a profoundly new experience of God being a good, GOOD Father. We have felt furthest from God and closest to God all at once. We are meeting God in new ways – we are meeting a bigger God: one unshackled from the bottled up on-time services and monthly outreach projects and one so deeply interested in our transformation, our healing, our freedom, our giving up of our selves.
We have discovered a God profoundly interested in our messiness.
Uniquely, and so different that I had ever known, his interest in our mess isn’t merely to clean it up, but to build something beautiful from it. He’s less interested in removing the mess and more interested in sculpting it: God is more a tattooed artist with paint-stained hands in a Brooklyn basement than he is a rigid country club janitor who turns his nose at the sight of dirt.
In one year we have left our Egypt and found ourselves wandering in the desert. Gone are the comforts of walled in religion; now are the days of desperately needing daily manna. To our delight, our God of deliverance and discovery is there in the desert with us, providing his manna each and every day.
The drama of our first anniversary jumble of words belies the truth that we are still very much in grief (all four of us!). I’m confident that, looking back in years to come, we will shake our heads kindly and chuckle: “Ah, the things we couldn’t see!”
