Hello 19 Year Old Me...and Goodbye

This morning, I stopped at my local coffee shop for a bracing cup of coffee and a small bite to eat.  The truth is, I had just had my first mammogram, and I was feeling a little shaky.  I was pretty sure it was all fine and I had nothing to worry about, but life is nothing if not unpredictable.

While I was waiting, I turned to see a group of young, beautiful people.  They had small tattoos tastefully applied to various parts of their strong, healthy bodies, and unnecessarily-large glasses framing their bright, shiny faces.  And under their strong arms were thick, leather-bound Bibles.  It was clear that they were meeting together for Bible study, like dozens of other people who frequent this coffee shop.  In fact, it is so overtly Christian there that I leave my laptop and purse when I use the bathroom or fetch a re-fill because the chances of theft are slightly less likely than snow in Arkansas in June.  If the coffee wasn't so dang good, I would choose a different coffee shop just to get out of the baptized oxygen of that place.

As I watched them gather up, earnestly greeting each other, watching the door for later arrivals, with their intentionality fairly spilling on the floor, I half expected to see my 19 year old self among them. Truly, if a tan and toned, long-haired brunette had come through the door with a giant Study Bible wearing a leather ankle bracelet which I made at Bible camp, that said "Robb Jesus Vanessa" (because Jesus is between us, and others before myself)... I would not have been surprised.

Because I was that girl. But I am not anymore. I have become a completely different person.

It's easy to see all the ways I am different from her.  Some things happened because of the passing of time and the birthing of babies.  Some things happened from the entwining of my life with other people, which softened and slowed me down in the best possible ways.  And some of the most shocking changes happened because I determined years ago to completely devote my life to reflecting the love of God to other people.  When I started down that path more than twenty years ago, I thought the road would take me to a secure place, where I wanted to go.  I never dreamed it would keep me far from family and childhood home. If I had seen then where I would go in my theology and my daily concerns, I wouldn't have gone because I would have been too scared. 

I would have said "No, thanks. That's too hard.  That will cost me too much. I don't feel comfortable with that. My family and friends will never understand why I am doing that."

Thank God for bends in the road that keep the future a bit hidden from us, lest we be completely overwhelmed.  Thank God for time and the way it gently holds us.  Thank God for a sense of humor and the penetrating drip of skepticism that gives us a chance to balance ourselves.

Sometimes, on a bad day, I am jealous of that girl.  Not just her skinny thighs but her discipline. Her strength. Her focus. It would be easy to think, based on what people say or the uncreative negativity in my own imagination, that I was better then than I am now.

It was BBC then, and it's Summit University Now.

But in my wiser moments, I am glad that part of my life is done.  Youth is only beautiful when it has parameters.  It gets really ugly and pathetic when you chase the stuff of youth for too long.  I want to believe that God finds this present time of my life just as beautiful and important now as I felt for those kids in the coffee shop today.  The truth is that it wasn't a lack of commitment to Jesus that brought me to where I am today. It wasn't a demand that things be easier. It wasn't a relaxing of my respect for the Bible that brought me here. It was a determination to keep going.  To be all in.  To follow the principles of Christianity into the farthest conclusions and applications.






My life is changing as I write.  I don't know everything, but I know this much:

1. I'm growing into really enjoying my kids and giving them my attention in ways I never did before, because my time with them all at home is pretty short.  
2. I am phasing out my vintage Etsy shop. It will take a while to close it, but after it was on vacation for a month or so, I realized that I just didn't care as much about it as I once did.  I cut most of the prices way down and things are selling rapidly with few replacements.  And it makes me feel free.
3. I will continue to make mosaics, but not in the same way.  I have turned down upcoming shows.  It's not my season for that.  It's partly because of the kids, but it's also partly because... 
4. I am trying to capture my beliefs in words in an ordination paper that I will defend later this year so that I can be ordained by my church formally as a pastor, minister, spiritual nurturer, guide/cleric (I will have to settle on a word that fits eventually too!)   The larger truth is that I need to craft my life around the call I've felt for most of my life: To love people.  To hear and help them. To give them a safe place to heal from their hurts. To help them know themselves.  To be with them.  To care for their spiritual health. To find expression for what it is to be human and to recognize the spiritual thing about every human thing.  For a long time, I needed money or the chance to express myself, or the space to be creative and I did that through making mosaics. I know there are some new ways of doing that on the horizon for me now; I'm coming back to where I started in the first place. 

Sometimes change happens gradually as you are exposed to a new idea or attempt a new practice.  But sometimes change is a full-on season known as Liminal Space.

 “Participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way. Continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt. - Wikipedia 

It occurs to me as I have thought about my reaction to those young people in the coffee shop that I feel a kinship as much as I feel different from them.  They too are in a liminal space, trying to launch their lives, dreaming of what they will do in the world and who they will become.  I am so tenderhearted to this stage of their lives.  It is ridiculously hard and almost impossible to prepare for.

The only way I know how to say it is this: Those kids are there, inviting God along for their adventure.  And I am here, inviting MYSELF along for the adventure.  I wasn't a better person 20 years ago. I was just a different person. She was great in her time.  I feel nothing but fondness for her.

But really, I am just wildly curious about what comes next.

Ten Years Later

Forgive me the introspective posts, but I read an article on NPR today about how much we change in 10 years and yet we still have a hard time imagining that we will change in the future. Here is a link.

I can't help but think about change in light of the fact that we'll being going to a conference this weekend where we may see the author Brian McLaren, who Robb met back in the summer. During their conversation  Brian inquired about me, which really helped to repaint my old feelings of wanting to punch him in the face at one time not so long ago....but I digress. He said that he meets a lot of guys whose theology and practice have changed. They are reading books, meeting other thinkers and sharing ideas and thereby develop in their beliefs, but their wives are often left out of these conversations. In the worst situations, a woman finds herself caught between her pastor husband who has moved into a new arena of thinking that is scary for her, and a pastor-daddy who hasn't moved at all.  I feel for those women. Because the only way out of that situation is to sit down and do some reading, thinking and owning of your own theology. But it takes time. There is no substitute for time. Not in learning. Not in grief. Not in making changes. Time is transformative.

Ten years ago....I was 28 years old.  (I had to stop and take that in for a moment. Twenty freaking eight. TWENTY 8. Dang.)

The year was 2003 and I was the mother of a 3 and 1 year old. We had just purchased our first house (THAT house).

I was deeply depressed. Whether postpartum or seasonal affective disorder, I don't know, but I have trouble bringing those days to the front of my memory. I had to go find a picture in a scrapbook because there were no digital pictures, no iphones, no blog, no facebook, just an old PC that Dr. Carter gave me as a gift for helping him move out of his office when he retired.  He was still living on earth and we were still emailing on a regular basis. I took pictures of the kids with a film camera and there are very few shots of me, mostly blurry images that I asked Robb to take to prove my existence.

I spent an afternoon looking at those pictures and while my clothes and hair made me cringe (seriously, girl, couldn't you do SOMETHING with that hair?) it was the snapshot of that girl's mind that most surprises me.

I had no friends my own age that I spent time with. I had no friends that were not connected to the church.  I had no unchurched, non-Christian, non-fundamentalist friends, nor friends of any other Protestant denomination.  I had zero interactions with the LGBT community. I had zero interactions with atheists, pagans, hippies, agnostics, Jehovah's Witness, Mormons,  Jews or Muslims.  I voted straight-ticket Republican and struggled to understand how a democrat could also be a Christian. It was inconceivable in my mind.  I had a firm grasp of Christian contemporary music at the time, but no idea what was popular on the secular radio stations.  I played the piano from the hymnal and praise chorus book if I was needed on a Sunday evening service. I primarily read Christian non-fiction books about theology or devotionals by Kay Arthur.  I felt guilty for not being more faithful to the inductive Bible study method. I don't recall seeing movies, but I think we saw one or two a year if it was something we really liked. Drinking alcohol was prohibited by our church constitution and membership agreement.

I spent every single night watching hours of television. I thought play dates were something made up for tv show families and I stayed home with my kids all the time except for church and when we went to get groceries and go shopping as a family. I weaned my son cold-turkey at 8 months because he bit me. I had never heard of attachment theory. I expected my kids to sleep in their own beds from about 6 weeks on (with varying success rates) I rarely went out alone. Sometimes we went to the public library.  I had no goals for the future other than getting Robb into a doctoral program and doing whatever it took to get him into the upper leadership of the church's denominational fellowship.  I could only envision myself as a housewife and couldn't imagine having a job or working outside our home.  My only concern was our home and making it pretty. I did all the regular cooking, cleaning, and laundry and would have been mortified if Robb was to do any of this kind of work since it was my duty. I couldn't imagine life beyond Calvin's baby-hood, but I expected to have two more kids after him. Adoption was something we had talked about in the past, but we were sure it was expensive and we were not thinking much about our future.

I was afraid to drive on highways and went out of my way to stay on back roads due to a near-accident I had while I was pregnant with Mattie. I was afraid of Robb dying. I was afraid of conflict. I was afraid of being alone. I was afraid of criticism. I was afraid of life.

I thought family members would always be there and I took them for granted. My grandparents were both living and so was my brother in law. 

I had no concept of recycling or the environment and sincerely believed that if God made the world that humans couldn't mess it up enough to hurt it much.  The extent of my knowledge of Africa was that they were poor and hungry. I had no idea of the extent of the epidemic of AIDS or of any ways that could be helped.  I knew that Compassion International was an agency that Michael W. Smith helped. I knew nothing about the foster care system in America or of the way it worked.

We ate whatever we could afford from the local grocery store, and I pretty much bought whatever was cheapest. We though eating at McDonalds was a treat and Sunday nights often found us eating a Super-sized meal, in bed, while watching tv.

I knew that Dr. Cater believed that someday people would buy everything from the internet, right down to their shoes, but I wasn't sure I believed him.  If I could have, I would have bought everything from the mall, but as it was, I shopped at Walmart.  I believed that if it came from the mall it was better than handmade. We were in debt up to our eyeballs with no plan to get out.

As I think on these things, I am genuinely astounded by the extent and profundity of the changes.  I changed at the core of my values and beliefs. I am also amazed by how much more alive I am. How I "own" my life now....back then I was living someone else's life by someone else's standards. I was waiting for someone to give me permission to make choices.  Much of what I did do was out of false bravado and trying to blend in.  My lack of understanding myself led ironically to being self-conscious and awkward, not free to serve and love others.  I am also surprised at how the changes were brought about by such small things... like joining the Public Library book club.  Having a conversation with a lady at my garage sale.  Going for a walk and finding an estate auction. One thing that led to another.

I really can't imagine what I will be like ten years from now. Aside from the extra 10 pounds each decade though, I feel really optimistic about the future.  I know that there will be times of pain, but there will also be growth. And hopefully, better haircuts.

Once Upon A Time

The summer before college.

Eighteen years ago, I had long, curly giant 1990's hair and I had never fulfilled my dream of having the lead role in a play.  Growing up in a small Christian school, time and budget rarely allowed for a full-length production, but in my 7th grade year, our ambitious English teacher pulled together a production of Annie, Get Your Gun. I was cast as Jessie, Annie's little snot-nose sister. Annie was played by Amber, a senior, whom I adored...largely because she noticed my existence. During one scene of the performance, I was suppose to lose a set of keys through a hole in my skirt pocket. Instead, they got stuck.  That was a memorable moment for me.

Two years later, we put on A Man Called Peter. I was dying to play the role of Catherine. But my brother...who wanted a bit part as a guy who joins the army...was cast in the lead role as Peter Marshall. And obviously, I couldn't play my brother's wife. I was annoyed. I was in  9th grade.  I was told there would be other plays.  There weren't.  Our ambitious, single English teacher moved away and got married and no other plays were produced from then on.

In 10th grade, Amber was in college now and her parents were going across the wide state of Pennsylvania to see her perform in her college production as the lead in The Little Foxes.  It was one of those delicious, villainous roles that actors love to play.  Her parents offered to take me and some other drama geeks along in their big baby blue Chevy van which only had one bench seat.  The Geeks and I were in the back on the floor.  On the way there, her kid brother threw up. That was a moment too.

As we pulled onto campus, I was surprised to see a real building...a collegiate looking building, with a clock tower chiming the time.  It was pretty much that moment that I knew where I was going to attend college.  It looked like a college. It wasn't too big. It didn't have "pink and blue sidewalks" like some of the colleges kids from our school went on to attend. They put on plays.  That's all I needed to know.  I was sold.  I never even applied anywhere else.

The year was 1996.  I had been on campus for 48 hours. I had no roommate, so my RA offered to go with me to find out about play try-outs. I didn't know anything about the play. I didn't know anything about how much time it would take out of my schedule. But I didn't have a job yet, either, so what difference did it make?

"I came to see what being in the play would involve."  I said to the enormous 6 foot 6 inch man with curly hair who was leading the event.  He smiled warmly...I recognized him as Brian Maxwell, the director that Amber had told me about.  "Come in and you will find out."  Which didn't answer my question at all.

I was handed a script with a snippet of a scene in it. Told the gist of the story.  A Greek tragedy.  I wanted to pronounce it "ante-gone"  but I remembered that Amber had told me the name of the play was pronounced "antig-ony."  She had preformed part of it with a friend for a class or something.  We did some acting exercises. Played drama tag....an improv game.  I read with a taller-than-me boy with dark hair and an appreciative smile.  He seemed strong in the role...confident but not cocky.  We had some chemistry.  It was interesting reading for a part with a boy who really wanted a part in a play.  I read from another scene with another boy.  Very tall and thin, deathly serious about getting the part.  He seemed to be urging me to do well so he would look good in the part.  A day later, there were call-backs.  A day later the cast list was posted.  I had the lead role.  

A mere seventy two hours on campus and I had the lead in the play, a boy to hang out with, and I was elected class treasurer.  I thought I had died and gone to popularity heaven.

On a Bible college campus, time is warped. You live together, eat together, go to chapel together, go to class together, go to church together, do the play together, eat dinner together, and talk on the phone until lights out.  If you are in a relationship, it's like light speed to whatever the next level is because instead of dating once a week, you are together constantly.  And for Freshman, it's the worst.  You recognize it for what it is as a superior Sophomore.  Freshman Insanity.  Your first time away from your home and family.  You latch on to whoever is closest and go head first into a heavy duty relationship.  So it was with the dark haired boy and me.  Cast as my villain, we spend our time learning lines and making eyes at one another.  Breaking the no-kissing rule.  Spending every waking minute together.  On our way to dinner one night, standing in line at the cafeteria, a couple of those superior sophomores were watching us like Statler and Waldorf. 

"Dude. Are they dating or brother and sister?"
"Dude, no clue." 
"They are together constantly."
"Freshman insanity."

And then they laughed like they hadn't paired off with a couple of girls in the first ten minutes of their Freshman year.

I lived and breathed Antigone. It was the topic of my English composition term paper. It was assigned reading for World Civilization, where we were required to discuss it in what could only be described as a fourth credit hour with the terrifying 26 year veteran professor who it was whispered had attended "Edinboro University" for his education.  I found this baffling too.  Edinboro was a small public college just north of my hometown.  I don't know how long it took for me to realize they meant The University of Edinburgh, Scotland.  When it was time to discuss the play, however, I argued with the professor passionately over the sanctity of humanity themes and pressed him hard on his unwillingness to protest at an anti-abortion rally with church denominations he did not approve of.  He smiled. Changed the topic. He could have destroyed me.  But out of a class of over 150 students, I had distinguished myself by interacting with him.  It would not be the first time we would clash and he would smile.

The relationship with the boy, however, burned out like a sparkler.  One minute he was fun and exciting.  The next minute, he was claustrophobic.  All that fast-forward time in the Bible college bubble had sped up the demise of our romance.  It was all over for us...at least for me... just as daily afternoon and evening play practices were ramping up to the nearing performance.   Instead of fueling our chemistry onstage, our onstage interaction was flat and dull.  He was sulky and uninterested in the play anymore.

My cast mate, Sue worked in the kitchen.  She in fact, had the rather news-anchor-like job of counting how many students came to a meal.   Everyone knew her.  She was ideal in the role of the Greek Chorus.  When play practice ended at 4:30, it was time for her to eat her dinner ahead of time, and be ready to count heads at 5 p.m when the cafeteria opened for the rest of the student body.  "Come and eat dinner with me."  she said one night.

Casually.

The summer before we met.

"This is Robb.  Robb, Vanessa. She's in the play with me."  Sue introduced me to the guy who set his tray down next to us.  He said hello.  Left his tray behind and went back up front to fill two short glasses with Coke from the beverage center.  While his back was to us, Sue quickly filled in..."We work in the kitchen together. He's fun.  I wouldn't want to marry him or anything, but he would be fun to go out with. "

Robb's 1996 Doppleganger

He was wearing a black Micheal W. Smith concert t-shirt.  The Go West tour.   Baggy jeans with the cuffs rolled up.  Plain white tennis shoes....Nikes. His hat was backwards. It looked as though his hair was cut crew-cut short, but when the hat came up, a thick flop of hair was revealed under the cap, parted down the middle, looking pretty much like Steven Curtis Chapman. So he liked Christian music, apparently.  He was thin, not much taller than me.  He had a long neck. He looked like....like nobody else I'd ever met. He had a funny smile as though he was constantly amused by whatever he was quietly observing.

Sue was great. Fun. Quirky. Artsy.  If Sue wanted to date Robb, then, gosh darn it...Sue should get to date Robb.  Somebody should date since I was done with boys for my entire foreseeable future. My Freshman insanity was OVER. So the conversation moved quickly, easily in an ironic direction. The topic was "What Kind of Girl is Robb Looking For."  I was very bold.  Much bolder than I would ever be if I was interested in dating him.  But I was just there for Sue. For her benefit.  So he would think, "Gosh, darn it...I should ask Sue out."

I would be in Sue's room later than evening, when the doorbell rang and a boy asked for Sue to come to the door.  It was Robb.  When Sue returned to her room after speaking with him and announced he had stopped by, I felt nothing but satisfaction.  I had handled that little situation pretty well.  Pretty well indeed. 

Wasn't it wonderful that I was finally in a play, so I could help this little romance?

Homecoming

It was a harried and anxious woman who flew out of XNA airport on Thursday morning. No fewer than 18 lists filled sticky notes on my MacBook's desktop. With the show happening this week, going away for a weekend was poor timing, but Robb was class president of his college class and a 15 year reunion just seemed like something he ought to attend.  It had been 10 years since we were on campus, but I suspect all the ways we have changed in the last 6 years really made it seem like longer.  We kept trying to find a word to describe how we were feeling about going back, but nervous wasn't quite right.


Some of my readers knew me then. Some of my readers know what it was like to attend a Bible college. It would take a book to fully describe it. I suggest Kevin Roose's Unlikely Disciple (which left me howling in helpless laughter). Ours were even stricter rules than those wild students at Liberty University. Curfew at 10 on school nights, midnight on the weekend. Lights out for freshman at 11:30.  Freshman couldn't go on single dates. I wore a skirt or dress to class, guys wore dress pants and collared shirts. Upperclassman had to wear a jacket and tie.  We attended chapel every day and church on Sunday morning and evening and prayer meetings on Wednesday night. We were required to be active in some form of ministry service and to share our faith for a certain number of hours.  We were required three one credit classes in sharing our faith, in fact, which is money I would really like to have back, please and thank you.  You had to have your room clean by chapel time (10 am) and your bathroom clean by the end of the day. You could not hold your boyfriend's hand on campus or kiss or any other form of public display of affection.  Guys hair had to be short, above the ears, and thy could not wear facial hair. We couldn't attend movies and smoking or alcohol was a clear no-no. Some offenses resulted in fines. Some of the biggies would have meant expulsion.  Most of the rules I kept faithfully.  Several, I broke egregiously.

What I know now, these 15 years later is that the breaking and the keeping of those rules was equally sacred.    The slow, plodding discipline of cleaning the bathroom and the wild free-falls into God's grace, tasting forbidden fruits gave me a gift that not everyone experienced.  I was not the student who couldn't understand the value of the rules and spent their whole time chafing against them and lost the opportunity to focus on anything other than getting out of there.  And equally important, I was not the student who believed that my standing in heaven was bonded to my spotless record in the Office for Student Development.  Knowing that I was a sinner, having the five dollar fine for kissing my boyfriend on campus (or rather, getting caught) kept me from the worst kind of pride...the insufferably self-righteous students (usually girls) who were shooting for perfection and thought they could hit it. (The guys, on the other hand, thought their standing in heaven was bonded to if they believed the right things about the Bible and it's teachings, thus resulting in the nearly constant rounds of theological ping-pong)  I arrived on campus as a freshman one of those girls.  I left as a married student, a true follower of God, with my sense of humor fully intact.

I suspect that going back was odd because Robb wears an earring and a tattoo. He is outwardly branded with a different kind of Christianity than we were taught there.  We are no longer subscribers to our denominational teaching.  No longer "in the fold."  We went beyond what we were taught.  Planted a church that values much different things than we were taught to value.  In short, we break a lot of the rules.

But things change. Even when they stay the same.  The rules at BBC are no longer the same. The students wear jeans to class. They boys have facial hair. The girls are allowed to be security guards. And most of the students don't come from The Denomination anymore. You think, driving on campus, that you will be going back in time. But you aren't.  Kids are standing around with cell phones, and even if the dorm smells the same, now the lounge has an actual television in it. 

I don't exactly know what I'm trying to say with this post, only maybe, that we thought we might be going back to visit as prodigals, and discovered instead, that we were products of our school.  That we felt at home there with people we loved then and still love now.  That without our time on that beautiful old campus...(which used to be a monastery) we would not be who we are now. It was a precious gift to go back, to remember.  To think again on all the ways that God guided us.  It deepened our faith and our confidence in what we are doing with our lives, and why we get up in the morning.  It was good for our souls.  It was sweet to go home.

New

Sometimes, I just need things to change. And change takes so much time.  So I do what any sane, rational person does....I cut off all my hair to get the change-ball rolling.  I look in the mirror and think, "I cannot seem to do anything about anything, but I can cut off my hair!"  And then next thing I know, bam, wam, POWIE!  I have a new blog set-up, a new banner for my etsy store, and I am thin and organized.  Ok, maybe not the last two, but a girl can dream.

I have been in a funk for a while now with my blog. I haven't really known where it was going anymore.  When I started blogging over six years ago, it was because I needed an outlet to comment on the adventure of starting Vintage.  Now, Vintage is  5 years old and Facebook is the place for pictures of my kids on their first day of school.  But the thought of closing down my blog felt like murdering a friend.  And I still really like blogging....much more than I like tweeting.  So I decided to just tweet about my blog. And blog about the things I still really love...like finding beautiful things in real life and in the cyber world of Etsy, making things, sharing my heart and soul, and occasionally making fun of weird stuff that amuses me. 

Incidentally, the one thing that has been constant in all this time?  The house in Michigan still hasn't sold.  Proof positive that the more things change, the more they stay the same....

The Michigan House

It's hard to believe that it's been five years since we moved away from Michigan leaving behind a house that could not and would not be sold.

The first year, it sat empty, on the market.  Never got so much as an offer. We paid for lawn mowing and leaf raking.

Then, we got renters, who paid some, not all of the mortgage.  Renters who, without our permission, kept five dogs in the house.  With all the stuff that five dogs can do.

At some point, after we bought our house here last October, it just made sense to get rid of the Michigan house one way or another.  So, first the renters were going to buy it.  But they couldn't afford it.  So they moved out in July or August.  It all runs together after a point. 

We tried to deed it back to the bank, but they wouldn't do a deed in lieu of foreclosure unless we tried to sell it.  So we got our realtor back to trying to sell it.  Dirty stinky dog pee and all.  In November, we got an offer that the bank would accept.

The plan was for the realtor to meet Consumers Energy at the house to switch on the power the same day the buyers were going to do a final walk-through/inspection.  For some reason, I thought the power was already on.  I called to have it turned on.  I called to have it in my name.  I got a bill and I paid the bill.  But at the last minute, the offer was withdrawn. They found something they liked better.  So the realtor never met Consumers Energy to turn it on. We were all just so sick about the offer being gone, nobody even thought of it.

We got the letter from the bank that they would re-submit the paperwork for a deed in lieu of foreclosure.  That's a sucky letter to get, let me tell you. Even when you know it has to happen, it's a sucky letter.  So I called the bank and they were sympathetic.  Hoped to hear back from Freddie Mac, a federal agency, who holds the loan.  That was the end of November.   In January, our realtor called to ask what was happening....and we mutually decided to end the listing since we were just waiting for the  approval of the deed in lieu of foreclosure from Freddie Mac.  It should be a done deal.

Last week, I got an email from my realtor.  A realtor representing an investor went into the house and discovered a burst pipe.  We have no idea how long the pipe was broken, but a city reading of the meter tells us that 194,000 gallons of water leaked into the basement.

Because the foreclosure is not complete, it is our mess to clean up.  We are still covered by home-owners insurance, but we have a $1,000 deductible.

I spent most of my snow days last week on the phone with the bank, the realtor, the insurance company, the restoration company, the city, and most frustrating of all, Consumers Energy, who takes no responsibility for the problem.  When asked what I was paying for on the bill, they replied, "Having the service in your name."  They agreed to turn the power on so the restoration company could do their work, but didn't get it done until Friday.  By then, the restoration company had to call a weekend repairman to check the safety of the furnace before they could turn it on and finish drying everything out.

Yesterday at Vintage we talked about the value of lamenting.  That grief and loss enlarge our souls and make us more detached from things that are just things, and much less demanding of God to work on our time schedule and in our way.

I do not lie when I say that I am equally weary of this house and the burdens it has created, and puzzled by God's unwillingness to take it off our shoulders.  I cannot imagine what He is doing or why He is making it so damn difficult.  He could, if He wanted to, have sold the house the day we put it on the market.  He could sell it today.  But He chooses to let it go on like this.  I have wrestled and wrestled and wrestled with God over it for five years now.  When this latest mess happened, I had no more fight in me. We have a good life here in Arkansas.  We have a nice home and healthy kids. We have a vibrant community of faith that means the world to us.  We have good jobs and we are meeting our financial goals slowly with much hard work.  God doesn't owe us anything.  He can do whatever He wants to do.  I do not understand it.  I do not enjoy it. But I know that He knows what He is doing.  He gives and He takes away and I bless His name whatever He chooses to do.

The Big 3-4

So I'm 34 today. Obviously, not an important birthday exactly, but a good time to sit and think a bit about where I came from and where I'm headed.

I was lying in bed around 6 this morning, listening to Robb make everything nice...he even ran out to the store because we were out of coffee. And I was thinking about being a kid...about my parents and my grandparents.

I am the second kid in the family, and the oldest girl. This was the view I saw every day of my life until I went to college. My daddy was part owner of a lawn and garden store and my mom made everything nice for all of us. I grew up playing baseball in the front yard, and hide and seek with our own special additive-play guns. This always deteriorated into a massive argument about whether or not we were "hit" or not by the pretend gunshots. My big brother tortured me with snakes, convinced me to kiss a frog, and hit me in the head with a shovel once..by accident of course. To my sisters, I was not a particularly good big sister as I was always trying to keep them out of my spotlight. I would do anything today to have them in my spotlight, borrow my shoes, whatever they wanted, just to be together.

My favorite things to do as a kid were playing in the creek, fishing in the pond across the road, cleaning and rearranging the furniture in our tree house (are you surprised at all by this?), and riding my bike on the paths in our woods. At different times in our lives, I had calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, cats, dogs, and rabbits, but it was never a farm exactly. My first real cash was money I earned selling baby rabbits for four dollars a piece. I was eight years old. Then I worked for my dad at his store, which I did until I graduated from high school at which point, I thought I really should get a "real job" working as a hostess at a steak house, which I stunk at. I should have stuck with the Feed Store.

My kids find it shocking that I never rode a school bus: My parents sacrificed much to send us to private Christian school which I attended for 13 years. We never had cable tv or even a tv with a remote control while I lived at home. I never had my hair cut until I was 13...which wasn't a religious thing, but rather, my dad just really liked our hair being long. I think it was a 70s thing. We grew most of our own food, mom made most of our clothes, and we went to a restaurant about twice a year. My mom's parents had 7 kids and 24 grandchildren, and for our birthdays, they took each kid out to any restaurant we wanted EXCEPT McDonalds (which my Grandpa declared used Kangaroo Meat) and let us choose a gift that cost five dollars. I realized this morning that they had a birthday to celebrate about 1/2 of the weeks of the year.

When I got to high school, my biggest ambition was being popular and finding somebody who would worship the ground I walked on slightly more than my dad already did. The first boy I ever really loved was a guy named Ray who (I didn't know this at first) had gotten in trouble for making his own alcohol, and had an earring and his nose pierced (and he sometimes wore a chain between them, but I never saw this because he went to public school). His sister and he had inflicted tattoos on one another: his was a cross on his chest and hers was an elaborate design around the word "Rebel." They did it with ink in a hypodermic needle. My dad was not too happy about this relationship. But Ray was smart, sweet and had a heart of gold; we used to go fishing in the pond behind his aunt and uncle's house where he lived because he had a hard time with his parents. It was probably the first and most innocent and honest friendship I had ever had with a boy. Eventually, he moved back home and he broke up with me because quite frankly, I was a brat. He is exactly the kind of person we serve at Vintage. The irony of this is not lost on me.

I went to college to become an English teacher, not so much because I wanted to teach, but because I really liked my English teachers. I figured I could use an English degree for something, someday. In the first two months, I got the lead in the play which led to my meeting Robb and getting my job with Dr. Carter....yada yada yada...here I am...staying at home (just like my mom), rearranging the furniture in my "tree house," making a little money from my own little enterprises, and trying not to be a brat.

Marcie and Drusie just called to wish me a happy birthday, and facebook greetings have been pinging my inbox right and left. Robb got me a Dremel tool for my birthday (he knows me SO WELL!) and we are going out tonight to do something mysterious and FUN.

I'm a lucky, lucky girl. Thanks for listening to me ramble.

I wear an apron

I like to wear an apron. I prefer a full apron to a half apron. I have several: one I stole from my mom....I wear it when I ice cakes. One my mom made for me from her grandmother's huge material stash....I like to wear it when I have to take food somewhere and I'm likely to spill it. Two are vintage that I couldn't part with: I like to wear them when I make old-fashioned food like bread or when I am cleaning the house for company. I am also likely to wear these "out" which drives Robb a little nuts, but I feel very "Country Living" when I do. One was a gift from my mother in law and reads "Eat your vegetables" and I like to wear it when I do food preservation. And one is this really thick denim BBQ one that looks like one Dr. Carter used to wear when he helped his wife make breakfast.... I like to wear it when I use power tools. I especially like to put on an apron when I have a lot to do and I don't feel like doing it. There is just something about "suiting up" for me that helps me get moving. So when I found this post from a couple of clicks away, I could relate.

12 Years and a Plan

As of today around 6 pm, 7 eastern time, I will have been married for 12 years. I don't feel old enough for that, but then again, we were about 10 years old when we got married. We weighed about 40 pounds less between the two of us, we knew everything about theology and literally nothing about churches and life in general. We were virgins to life....all of it. We have become considerable less certain of everything we knew for sure back then and we take considerably more delight in the not-knowing.

I remember standing at the back of the church, all alone before heading down the aisle, whispering, "Please God, help me be a good wife." He has answered that prayer in ways I certainly didn't expect....with no money when we wanted it -but always enough when we needed it- with crying babies in the night and cars breaking down, with long trips and long fights, with church problems and moments when things clicked....Yeah, I'm a much better wife because of it all.

My husband is....amazing. He always had a plan. From our first date. From before that even, he had a plan. It was never just "well, let's hang out and see what happens." So I shouldn't have been worried when I asked Robb on Thursday night around 11 p.m. if he had any plans for us today. I knew on one level that I could make plans too, if he was too busy. But then again, let's just be honest....I stink at plans. Really, I'm lousy at it. I make to-do lists and do everything but what is on the list. So he just smirked at me.

Around 2 in the afternoon yesterday, he told me to stop working and pack a bag. So I did. And this morning I woke up in a king size bed, to a beautiful sunrise, and most importantly, no children asking what is for breakfast. I love it when his plans come together...

Lost in Narration

This little, very unsophisticated blog began a long time ago as my own personal therapy to deal with a cross country move to a new life. It has some real highs and real lows. Lately, it's just been a quick post of pictures of fun things we've been doing or something I made. My soul has not been much engaged in thought. I didn't need to post deep and morose confessions because I didn't have any...I've been flying high over a new found creative outlet, the general ease of my children being old enough to survive if I am not on pointe, and our church reaching a kind of good-natured toddler stage instead of the scrawny infant it first was. Frankly, I've been pretty happy.

Wrecking your second car in a month has a somewhat jolting effect, not only on your musculature system, but also in your soul. I think I would be remiss if I didn't take the time to think this over.

I have not been much inclined to play the "what if" game. I don't normally drive that road. I don't normally have C on that side of the car. I don't always take the time to make sure her seatbelt is on correctly. I seldom drive when Robb is in the car. I've never been in a serious wreck before. I've never rolled a car, set off the airbag or attracted the attention of an ambulance. But for all that, I have the weird sense that it was all pre-ordained. Destined. That I merely played out what was supposed to happen. I cannot explain why I feel that way, but I feel it deeply. And it is strangely comforting.

I recently told H that I have not been myself. For a while now, I have merely existed in the confines of my life, with a lack of awareness for what is happening. I have just been phoning it in as a wife and mother...getting by with the least amount of effort. Lost in play, distraction, and synthetic experiences. But I think I am waking up.

The first thing I see is how bad I really am. The stark truth that I am selfish to the core. And I am needy. Our little stockpiled savings account that had me feeling so smug will be gutted soon. I am vulnerable. My life is a mere blip on the screen and the time I am given each day is the great equalizer of us all. I feel no confidence that I can change any of this. I lack the emotional energy to do anything differently. But I feel hopeful. That somehow, like my mosaic china, broken is better. Imperfect and chipped is easier to use than impervious and perfect.

So broken toe, four prescriptions between Robb and I, scraped neck, bruised and sore, 2nd wrecked car in a month, savings sucked dry... I'm listening God. Can you do something with me?

I'm Back!!!

HI EVERYONE! I'm back online! We had quite a run around, but eventually landed on netzero, a dial up (ugh) which isn't too bad and it only costs about 15 dollars a month as opposed to 50 for cable....but enough about commercials.....I've missed you all so much!

And OH the ADvenTurEs wE HaVe hAd!

From dog food pinging the windsheild in Indianapolis to a Border Collie convention at the hotel...

from exploring the charming and welcoming Hollyhock House to unloading the truck in just 2.5 hours (Thank you A & Jaye T, Don, Donnie and Steve)...

from meeting Charles (an ER doctor) and Phyllis (WHO EVER SAID SOUTHERNERS TALK SLOW?) our gracious hosts, to meeting their 32 animals including Hank the Horse, who is allergic to hay....

from getting Mattie caught up in school to Robb finding a job (Assistant Manager of a Christian Book Store!...starting today!)....

from finding my "subculture" of fellow junkers at the estate sales just north of us EVERY WEEKEND, to attending an auction of an antique store/flea market building being EMPTIED (I actually gave up in exhaustion...and there were only about 100 people there)....

from meeting new friends and support at Fellowship Bible Church to having our first Vintage Fellowship business meeting (We voted to make the Marshalls and the Ryerses the leadership team)....

from fighting with the ants and mice to having bad dreams about the spiders.....


I have missed you all so much! I will be posting pics asap ....and for all of you's that we still owe money...don't break our thumbs yet.... and for all of you that we have your stuff, boxes are going out soon... and don't tell Denise, but they say we can stay until after Christmas so we don't have to move at the holidays.....wow, we just have soo much to talk about!

the 3 am jitters

Well, it's about 3:30 am and I am awake. I got so tired from packing the truck in my sleep that I had to get up and take a break. My arm is pretty sore from bouncing off the ramp (rather ungracefully), and I have a very sore throat. I wish I could say everything I own is on a moving truck, but it didn't all fit. I guess that is a metaphor for something, but hubby would say I just have too much junk.

I don't have words or energy left to express something of my feelings at this moment. Something like shame for working my friends so hard. Something like gratitude (or maybe awe) that they would try so hard. Something like terror of the unknown, complete grief for all I'm losing, hope for a future. I have no reason to expect anything from God, but I can't help hoping that He will somehow come through with exactly what we need at the zero hour. It will be a while before I can write here again, so call this a cliffhanger for now. Perhaps by the time I can write again, something will have "given" and we can all take aim at how good God is to us.

call it cheesy, but I am reminded of that old line from a hymn...

"I don't know about tomorrow, but I know who holds my hand."

Please please please

well, on the advice of Ben the Realtor in Arkansas (who will henceforth be known simply as Ben the Realtor), I tried to light a fire under my agent here. So she called last night at 9:30 p.m. to tell me that the house is being shown today. They were to show it between 9 and 10 am, so pray that something comes of it. There is also an open house on Thursday for other agencies to see the house.

Knowing that someone was going to walk through my house and have an opinion of it sparked some pretty strong emotions for me. I cried for a while and I'm too tired to blog all about it now. It's the first time we've shown the house and it's also the first time the house has been nice looking and "put together" and may I just project a little....HAPPY...for quite a while.

Today we are going to have alittle fun, get Charleigh's ears pierced, get Vin's hair cut and run some other errands.

I am now offline at home and can only blog when I can get access to another computer. I will try to write when I can.

Just today, tomorrow and Thursday to get through til Robb comes for us!

so i just realized

The reason I keep making impossibly long and detailed to do lists is because I don't want to get it all done. When I get the list done, I have to leave and I don't want to go. Feeling some sympathy for Lot's wife.

Another morning as a perfect heathen

Having another fine Sunday morning as a complete heathen...Okay, maybe not complete heathen, since I do plan to attend church later this morning, but it still feels weird not to be there at the crack of dawn wondering who is going to show up, making coffee and cutting fresh flowers (as if anyone ever noticed). Oh well. Last week, we attended with my sister and brother in law, and the kids picked out their old Easter clothes to wear (translated we only go to church once a year), we didn't know any of the songs, and we dropped the offering basket. It was a fresh experience all right, but very disconcerting. I'll file that away to help new people at Vintage Fellowship. It frankly takes a lot of guts to show up at a new place, even when you go with friends and family.

The Song ....

Oh, yeah, and if you are tempted to believe that a song is not such a big deal, U2's "Who's Going to Ride Your Wild Horses" was the song that made me choose Robb. I was in the car with my high school boyfriend (on a break during my Freshman year of college). This song came on and I realized that I was with a guy who didn't feel this way about me and wouldn't know how to if he tried. But Robb "got" me and this song at the same time....

You're dangerous 'cause you're honest
You're dangerous, you don't know what you want
Well you left my heart empty as a vacant lot
For any spirit to haunt

Hey hey sha la la
Hey hey

You're an accident waiting to happen
You're a piece of glass left there on the beach
Well you tell me things I know you're not supposed to
Then you leave me just out of reach

Hey hey sha la la
Hey hey sha la la

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna drown in your blue sea
Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna fall at the foot of thee

Well you stole it 'cause I needed the cash
And you killed it 'cause I wanted revenge
Well you lied to me 'cause I asked you to
Baby, can we still be friends

Hey hey sha la la
Hey hey sha la la

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna drown in your blue sea
Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna fall at the foot of thee

Oh, the deeper I spin
Oh, the hunter will sin for your ivory skin
Took a drive in the dirty rain
To a place where the wind calls your name
Under the trees the river laughing at you and me
Hallelujah, heavens white rose
The doors you open
I just can't close

Don't turn around, don't turn around again
Don't turn around, your gypsy heart
Don't turn around, don't turn around again
Don't turn around, and don't look back
Come on now love, don't you look back

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna drown in your blue sea
Who's gonna taste your salt water kisses
Who's gonna take the place of me

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna tame the heart of thee.

Happiness just left for 2 weeks

Well, hubby just left, and I'm going to go watch mindless tv for a couple of hours and figure out how I'm going to keep busy until he comes back. I don't want to cheer up, so please don't try to make me. I'll be fine tomorrow...or maybe this afternoon after I eat three pounds of peanut m & m's.

So it dawned on me...

Some of you remember the open house when we had everyone from church over after we moved in here. We had just gotten home from a trip and had to get the whole house clean and ready to go on a Saturday night.

The ladies progressive Christmas brunch with my Polish potatoe pancakes (I could seriously go from some of those right now)

The new years eve party when the guys played foosball in the basement and the whole house was just full of friends and the smell of saurkraut and keilbasi.

The night we had the PTR group and we sat by the fire until it was so dark, and we had a marshmallow fight, and Doug thought Mattie was falling into the fire and broke the leg of his chair jumping up so fast....

The whole Ryerse clan for Christmas and we opened presents for so long the kids had to take naps to get through it.

When we got the college kids to come and paint our living room and we called it a party. When I took the lid off the paint to show them the color and Robb didn't know and shook the can....

Mattie's suprise birthday party in the backyard last September

Group (what happens at group stays at group)

It dawned on me we are actually leaving this house. Call it denial, but I hadn't let myself think about it until I took the pictures off the walls. If these walls could speak....

Day One

Well, here I am on our first day without a church, a job, a home. Yesterday was our last day at IBC, and some people didn't even say "goodbye." I guess that means we are just terrible people....or maybe they are terrible people. The house is a disaster, and yet I keep hoping the realtor will call and SOMEBODY will want to check it out. We are going on four weeks on the market and still not a single call. Robb is cleaning out his office today, Mattie is the "busy bee" at school and is wearing the Birthday crown, Vin is watching Bob the Builder and Charleigh is doing her usual Charleigh stuff, taking things out of boxes, putting stray pennies in her mouth, and giving the dog bones that Sidney had tucked away for later enjoyment. It's as gray and dull outside as I feel.

So, why do I torture myself by naming this blog after butterflies and happiness? Well, A.) my name means butterfly, and I guess I'm hoping to figure out who I am without the context of the title "pastor's wife." I don't have to worry about what people think of me anymore. I haven't had that freedom since I was five years old and only my parents and my brother mattered. and 2.) (as Paul Reiser used to say) I am incredibly hopeful. I am sad, but I don't think that being sad negates hopefullness. That's why I am starting this blog. I think that out of the ashes, GOD will bring out beauty. A good story starts with a problem, and I've always wanted to live a good story.