Summertime, Summertime

I have been MIA from around here, simply because I have been busy and nothing I’ve done seemed to demand a posting. Summer has finally come to the Red River Valley of the North, though it is sputtering along in fits and spurts. We have had a few absolutely gorgeous sunny days, one near 100-degree day and a bunch of wet, cool, cloudy days.

Since I last posted, Atta has bought a pool and it has been delivered. Now M and Atta are trying to put it together. Which we have been saying around here is pretty much a Swede leading a Swede. The spot for it has now been cleared of sod, filled with sand, bordered with 2x4s and screeded nice and level. I got roped into the screeding activity yesterday afternoon and can barely move today. The pool itself is still in numerous boxes in the Morton shed. They have gotten as far as locating the instruction DVD, watching it and proclaiming that “the worst part is done with.” We may have a place to swim by September!

The call committee stuff at HLC never exploded–thank the Lord–and the pastor they offered the position to has accepted. Turns out it is a friend of mine from seminary who I think will do great there. He’ll start August 1st, so my last Sunday will be July 31st. I got a little teary-eyed during communion yesterday at the thought that I only have two more Communion Sundays left there. I will miss the people there a lot.

M’s call at GLC is going really well. I have gotten glowing reports of how much they like him there from odd places. It is close enough to my home territory that I’m willing to bet that 90% of the members of Grace are either related to or know very well someone that I am either related to or know very well. Such is small town life.

Itty has been a pill the last few days. I don’t want to complain, since I know she is an oddly well-behaved child for the most part and we really haven’t had much of any kind of problem with her, but the last couple days have tried my patience right to the very edge.

Yesterday she came with me to church. I was just going to take her by myself and have her sit with a family during worship that she has sat with before. There are a ton of people who would be more than happy to have her sit with them during worship. For some reason, my mom freaked out a bit at that (though Itty and I have done that before with no problem) and hurried to get ready so she could go with us to church. Okay, fine. That eliminates asking if Itty can sit with someone else. Except, Itty would have been much better behaved if she had been sitting with someone else. Amma and Itty sat in the front pew with me, which is where they usually sit when the whole fam-damily comes to worship. During the readings, the first part of the service where I actually sit down in the pew, the wheels fell off the whole operation. Itty insisted on sitting with me and then talked in her usual volume over the reader. During the children’s sermon, I held the children’s book that I was reading up with one hand and had a hold of the back of Itty’s dress with the other hand to keep her from doing a whole song-and-dance routine for the whole congregation and then from climbing on the altar. She hooted and hollered off and on through my sermon, then I told Amma to just take her out. As we sat in silent prayer we could hear her screaming in my office “I WANT TO SIT WITH MY MAMA!” So wonderfully conducive to contemplative prayer!

And that was the good part of the day with her. We had to go to town to get some things after church and between my fit-throwing toddler, my passive-aggressive mother, and the warning light that came on my car (it was just a slightly low tire, that was easily filled at the Cenex) I was almost in tears before we got home. Then, after a very short nap on the couch while Itty sang in her bed, I had to help with the aforementioned pool prep project. Then, less than an hour before we needed to leave, M reminded me that we were going to a concert at his church.

We had used all the hot water that afternoon when we hooked up a sprinkler for Itty and ran it without thinking about the fact that using the hot water spigot along with the cold for all afternoon would make for cold showers later. I hate cold showers with a passion.

Then on the way to the concert I broke another of my interchangeable knitting needle tips. Then at the concert there were two deaf old biddies in the pew in front of us that talked–loudly–through the whole first half of the concert, pissing and moaning about everything. If I had been in a better mood I might have likened them to Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show. As it was, I was ready to clobber them with a hymnal.

I’m not sure what’s the matter with me, other than I have a two-year-old. I have made the observation that the last time I felt like this–like it is all I can do to keep from completely losing it and ripping someone’s head off (usually M’s, but more often complete strangers too)–was during that mission trip from hell three years ago, when, unbeknownst to me, I was already preggo with Itty. Of the three people I have voiced that to I have two “I bet you’re knocked up”s and one “you’re not pregnant, you’re just tired and stressed out.” If I’m still feeling like the Hulk in a few days, I’ll probably buy a stick to pee on. I’m also feeling bloated, exhausted and weepy for no apparent reason. But I have also convinced myself erroneously at other points in my history that I was in the family way. There’s a term for that isn’t there?,

Oh yeah, “hysterical pregnancy.” I’m laughing my head off.

Drama Llamas and Other Observations

I’ll start with an update and revisions from the last post.

I survived Holy Week. Good Friday service went amazingly well. Everybody hit their cues, the readers did great, the acolyte put the candles out at the right time and walked the Christ candle out and in very well (he is in JrROTC and has had lots of color guard experience and it showed), the “earthquake” sound effects (a section of tin roofing, shaken expertly by a man from the congregation) brought tears to my eyes and goosebumps to my arms even though I knew they were coming, the “tomb” closing (a 7th grader slamming the furnace room door “like she was super-mad at her parents”) made everyone jump appropriately and the setting sun helped the gradual dimming of the sanctuary to an overall grand effect.

Easter Sunday was, I dare say, the most fun I have had leading a worship service. The service was 2 hours earlier than normal–not really “sunrise” but as close to it as I really wanted to get. We baptized three brothers, a 6 year-old and 5 year-old twins, who are the squirreliest little stinkers on the planet. But they aren’t really mean, or even naughty, they are just such balls of energy that you can’t help but giggle along with them. The hitch of the whole service was the fact that the twins, Z and W, a) are identical, b) were dressed the same, and c) can’t stand still to save their lives. They kept moving around on me and I gave up trying to remember which one was which. I just flat out asked them, much to the amusement of the congregation and their parents, thank goodness. Their mom apologized after the service for dressing them the same that morning. They made it one of the most memorable Easter Services I have ever been a part of, right up there with the Easter Service where M’s nephew, J, puked all down my back in the middle of the gospel reading at his folk’s church in Des Moines.

Most pastors/worship leaders get a bit of a reprieve the week after Holy Week. Me, not so much. The Sunday after Easter was Confirmation Sunday. Which also went off very well. The kids hit their marks expertly, we had great music thanks to M who played guitar at the kid’s request, the bell choir who played the prelude and during communion and one of the 5th grader girls with a voice like you wouldn’t believe who sang during offering and it was a really fun, special service for the confirmands.

Now on to the drama that has unfolded in the past few days.

The chair of the call committee at HLC is pissing pretty much everyone off. When I originally heard she was the chair, I cringed a little, knowing that this had the potential to get ugly. It is heading toward ugly–may already be there, but I have kept an appropriate distance from the whole process and am rather out of the loop. I am beginning to get snippets of disquiet and downright ire, which to me says the situation is actually worse than I am hearing, since I seem to be the last one to know pretty much everything around there.

The big red flags and warning bells that are going off in my head about this center around the fact that there has been zero, completely zero, conflict of any sort in the last 6 months of my time there. They are a very easy-going, whatever-works-for-you kind of congregation. The fact that people are starting to yip tells me that things are getting out of control.

Here’s what I know. JS is the chair of the call committee. She is a perfectly nice person; I have never had a problem with her, other than her son had terrible attendance in confirmation class (but so did most of the rest of the class so that’s nothing big). But, by her own admission, she is a bit OCD (not diagnosed I don’t think) and, by observation and the words of several other members of the congregation, she is very controlling. It’s her way or the highway.

Add to JS’s personality, the fact that the call committee is made up of 13 members (about twice as many as there should ideally be on a call committee), the fact that communication is not HLC’s strong point, the fact that they haven’t ever, especially not in recent memory, had to go through a traditional call process, having hired the last two interims they had to come on permanently, and the fact that the assistant to the bishop who is supposed to be working with them on all of this has been very hard to get a hold of lately (there has to be something wrong–illness, family troubles, something–there but that’s not real relevant) lead me to think that we might just be heading into a perfect storm situation here. I’m really hoping that things don’t get too ugly.

The congregation will be voting to extend a call to a pastor on May 22nd. I am praying that this pastor accepts the call, because if he doesn’t, that might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. They have already had one candidate back out because, I think, of the conduct of the call committee chair, who is terribly hard to get a hold of, leaves email messages when she should be making phone calls and leaves voicemail messages that she doesn’t follow up on when she really needs to be. I have heard from more than one of the call committee members who say they will never, under any circumstances be part of another call committee after the experience this time.

Due to the basic munging up of the call process so it is taking longer than they thought to get to the vote, the council has asked if I would stay on longer. I have agreed, hoping that I can provide a little stability and that God will give me the wisdom to lead them through whatever the next step is, be it transitioning to a new pastor or starting the call process all over again. I’m probably looking at being there until the beginning of August, if the pastor accepts the call. I’ve negotiated with the council president to be able to work from home 2 days a week this summer, so I don’ t have to make the 100-mile round-trip 5 days a week.

I’m waiting to hear from the assistant to the bishop for the NWMN synod about how I should approach the churches up north that want to interview me for an interim. I agreed to preach there on June 12th, which I will still honor (HLC will have to get pulpit supply that day) but I won’t be available until later up there if they (and I) still want to do that. I’m waffling on that one pretty hard, simply because it is so far north. But that will be a bridge to cross later, after some prayer and looking at my options.

Yesterday, of course, was Mother’s Day. M had his first Sunday at GLC and I was leading worship at HLC, so Itty went to church with Amma and Atta. In her role as comic relief, Itty asked (I’m assuming quite loudly, as she has her father’s volume control) why she couldn’t “drink the shed too.” It took Amma a moment to figure that one out, but Itty wanted the wine at communion, “the blood of Christ shed for you.” I’m assuming she heard it as “the blood of Christ-shed for you” with the shed being a noun, since that’s the only way she knows that word. Amma told her she couldn’t have it until she was confirmed, which satisfied Itty, but actually made me a little upset. I understand what my mom was saying–she is of the mindset that you can take communion after you are confirmed, because that is what she grew up with. My own first communion experience was a non-event during my 8th grade year of confirmation class, when the three of us in the class pestered the pastor until he let us commune, without any fanfare or any special class or anything like that. I am of the belief that we should commune any baptized person, of any age. And if someone who isn’t baptized slips in there too, no biggie. It’s God’s work, not ours. M is on the same page with me. So I think we are going to figure out a Sunday when the three of us will be all together at one service and bring her for her first communion. Little kids “get” it way better than adults do anyway. I’m just wondering how my mom will handle that and, if it happens to be at HLC, how they will handle it. M doesn’t think GLC will have any issue with it; they are talking about changing their practices to commune all ages anyway.

And here we get to the real family drama. Evidently, my mom’s youngest sister, D, had it out with Grandma Nita on the phone yesterday. Amma, Atta, Itty, Auntie and Auntie’s boyfriend, C, went in to Nita’s house and brought pizza for lunch for Mother’s Day yesterday. All was “normal,” which is to say Nita’s house was a disaster and Nita was not acting too terribly strange. Auntie and C found a moldy muffin on the floor. Nita gave them bottled water with an expiration date of 2009 (not that water really expires, but I guess the bottles break down or something, and it is an indication of how long she’s had the water). Their visit with her was nothing exciting really.

Then today Amma got an email from D, relaying the 70 minute argument she had with Nita over the phone yesterday, evidently sometime after they were all there for lunch. D lives south of Minneapolis, rarely comes up here to visit and has a bit of a strained relationship with Amma and their other sister, K. I haven’t read the actual email yet, as it was sent to Amma’s school email, but she’s going to bring it home. I guess the gist of it is that all of Nita’s children are a huge disappointment to her (because they don’t wait on her hand and foot–her attitude is that this is the reason that she had kids in the first place), if we are all so worried about her that we want her to move in to assisted living then why don’t we check on her more often, she “only” hoards clothes (which actually might be a step forward, since she has never admitted to any kind of hoarding behavior before), and she is at the point in her life where she has just plain old quit doing housework.

I don’t even know where to go with all that. Maybe this will be the catalyst that actually gets the ball rolling on getting her out of that house and into an assisted living center and getting her some mental health help, which she obviously needs. I feel bad for my mom, caught in the between-generation, having to care for Nita and having us here too. We try not to be a bother, but it has to be stressful having three extra people to worry about all the time. And my mom doesn’t deal with conflict well either (could that be where I get it? Either from her or from my dad, who doesn’t do conflict either!) and I know this is eating at her. She just seems exhausted when the topic of Nita comes up, or when she has to spend any time around Nita.

To end on a fun note, Atta is talking about buying a pool for the backyard. An above-ground jobbie big enough to swim laps in. There was some fanciful talk last night of building a pole shed with changing rooms and insulation and heat so we could use it in the winter too, but that’s a far-off dream, I think. Just having a place to swim for the summer would be awesome. The nearest public pool is 20 miles from here and Atta wouldn’t go there even if it was closer. He’s too self-conscious. And he needs to be getting some exercise, both for his weight and his arthritis.

Now I need to fold some clothes and hit the hay.

PS–Just as I was about to post this, the cat jumped up onto the couch and actually farted so I heard it. Lovely.

My Apologies and a Holy Week Update

So when I last left you, faithful readers (all two of you ) we had made the decision for M to take the call at GLC, when they offered it. Well, I am happy to announce that they voted last Sunday after church and offered the call to M. The funny part of the vote was that they broadcast worship over the local cable channel, which goes all over the area, up around here and everything because it is the same cable company. Normally they turn the broadcast off right after worship so any meetings or anything aren’t on tv. But last Sunday, their service ran faster than usual and they forgot to shut the cameras off. So the whole meeting, all 12 minutes of it, and the unanimous verbal vote to extend the call to M, was sent out for the whole area to see. Good thing it ended well! My dad’s cousin happened to be watching the service and called my dad pretty much before M even got the call from the call committee! So M starts at the beginning of May.

As for my call department, it looks like I will be done at HLC as scheduled at the end of May. I’m a little sad about that; I love the congregation, but I know that we all need to move on. I think the call committee is going to recommend a congregational vote in the next few weeks. The NWMN synod has given my name and paperwork to a congregation north of Thief River Falls, MN for a short-term interim. It will be a long way from home (an hour and a half drive) but it would be part-time and I’m going to negotiate that I could come up on Saturday nights and stay until Tuesday afternoons. That will work at least for the summer and I may have a permanent call by then. We’ll have to reevaluate when my mom has to go back to school in the fall and our free child care isn’t available! It will be hard to be away from M and Itty for those days every week, but it will be really good to get my foot in the door in NWMN again and with interim experience. I kind of like the part of interim that is, by definition, short-term. I don’t have time to get bored and I don’t get the feeling that I am stuck in a job, like I have felt with pretty much every other job or call I have ever had. Maybe interim ministry is where God is calling me. It’s a thought.

The dead rodent smell is still there, though better. My dad cut an access panel in to the wall by the tub and, holy cow! You could see where moles had been burrowing in through the sand around the pipes and there was at least one dead carcass of either a mouse or a mole, we couldn’t actually tell. Yuck! Atta cleaned it all out under the tub with the shop vac as best he could and then Quick-creted the opening around the pipes so the little buggers can’t get back in again. Then he put some activated charcoal packets in there and put a board up over the hole. Problem is, this didn’t completely take care of the stink. We are thinking there must still be a dead something in the heat run. The smell is more bearable and is pretty much covered up by an odor-eliminator air freshener thingy we got. Atta’s still debating our next best move in the Great Rodent War of 2011.

I have a confession to make now. I confess that I made fun of M the last 5 years when he would, without fail, get terribly sick during Holy Week. Every. Single. Year. He could come down, usually, with the worst sinus infection in history and would have to drag himself through Holy Week services and then would collapse after Easter Sunday services and we pretty much wouldn’t see him until the Tuesday after.

I confess this, after three days of being sicker than I have been in a very long time. During Holy Week. On Sunday evening, I started to get a sore throat. By Monday morning, it was a raging sore throat. The only thing that got me through Monday was sipping hot chocolate and using Chloraseptic throat spray. Tuesday I dragged myself to work and to text study in Fargo, simply because I knew I needed to get some cold medicine and I could do that in Fargo. I felt passable until about 2pm, when my head began to hurt. Like someone filled my sinuses with that expanding insulation foam. I really did think my face was going to explode. M was working the night shift and I am so glad my parents were here and willing to take the lead with Itty that night. Itty insisted on me giving her a bath, so my mom actually bathed her and I laid on the bathroom floor where Itty could see me. Wednesday wasn’t much better, but I stayed home and did some work from here, instead of dragging myself to the office.

Yesterday I felt terrible in the morning, but I managed to get myself to the office by noon. I got everything ready for Maundy Thursday service, but I’m not exactly sure how. The service went fairly well. I don’t remember much of it, other than I was very dizzy while I was serving communion, probably from having to move while being half bent over and not really looking where I was going. We got the 5th graders communed for the first time with both the bread and wine, the council members and I washed the other members’ hands and we got the altar stripped. M said the service went well. I’m hoping that tonight’s Tenebrae service goes well also. There are a few more “moving parts” to this service, so we are going to practice a half hour before the service.

The water report stands as such: the water here is receding; the water around HLC is not. The smaller river that runs near HLC is rising again, due to a dam release upstream. Atta is cleaning out the sheds and putting everything back where it belongs. I think the bridge north of us is open again. The one just to the south of us isn’t yet, but that one is lower. We won’t be in the fields for at least 2 weeks still, it is so wet.

Decision Made, FWIW

We have made as much of a decision as we can at this point. M is going to accept the offer (that hasn’t officially been made yet) from GLC in Ada. That’s the part-time, youth pastor position that is closer to where we are living now, for anyone who is keeping track. We had pretty much made up our minds, but the bishop from EaND called M today to, in essence and much more politely, say poop or get off the pot. They want to give the congregation up north the names of a first-call, fresh-meat couple if we aren’t going to take the calls. And really, we were probably being just over-cautious in not just telling that parish that we are more interested in GLC.

We are at peace with our decision. GLC seems like a really great congregation and they were very excited to show us around last week. I know that God often calls us out of our comfort zones in ministry, but I will admit that I’m really excited for M to get a call in a place that is pretty familiar to me. Plenty of people can knock this part of the country and make fun of those of us who live here, but in my opinion, this is the best place in the world. The people here are great–not perfect, but still great–and there really is no place else that I want to be. The weather has, at the very least, the potential to be exciting in any season. I can’t imagine living in a place that is sunny and 80 degrees every day of the year. I think the threat of crazy weather at the drop of a hat keeps people humble, teaches them to respect nature, and teaches them how to plan ahead. The economy in this region is solid and people are generally hardworking. We may have one of the highest rates of under-employed people in the country, which could stand improving, but it also goes to show that money and high-prestige jobs aren’t the end-all, be-all in life either. There are lots of highly educated people around here who have chosen to stay around here, or to move back, or to move here in the first place, not to chase high-paying and high-power jobs, but to have a good, solid life in a great community.

So there, I’ll get off my North Dakota/Northern Minnesota soap box now. What can I say? I’m proud of where I grew up and I hope that Itty can grow up in the same kind of community.

That being said, that damn river is rising toward its annual crazy-making level again. Several bridges in the F-M area are closed. They are predicting a crest on Monday. But that can change 12 times before then, depending on the weather and all that jazz. It might just be the first of many crests too, as we found out 2 years ago. I might have posted before that it takes a week for the crest to reach the Farm–I was mistaken, it only takes 3-4 days, so if the prediction is right, we’ll get the crest on Thursday or Friday of next week.

The yard and the driveway at the Farm now look like a used farm implement dealer. Atta has moved a good chunk of the machinery out of the farmyard and up to the house, or along the road, or to high-and-dry neighbors’ farmyards. All with no help from his good-for-nothing, drunk of a hired man. Who has yet to show up for work this week. But that’s a-whole-nother series of posts.

To add insult to injury, on top of dealing with rising water, we are also battling some kind of dead and decaying rodent or small animal in the heat runs of the apartment here at the Farm. The ground floor of the house sits on a floating slab, with the heat runs underneath (I think, or maybe in it, but I’m thinking underneath) in a bed of sand. My mom is convinced that the contractor didn’t put down the rodent repelling mesh they are supposed to in construction of this sort. All winter we have been hearing scritching and scratching from the area underneath the bathtub (they also didn’t put an access panel to get at the tub plumbing, which may be a good thing in this case!) and a few times in the past we have had a dead rodent smell from the vents. The last few times the smell wasn’t all that bad and we had the runs cleaned out and the smell went away. This time the smell is overbearing.

I came home from work on Sunday night and I nearly fell over when I walked in to the apartment. M, who has about zero sense of smell, was pretty oblivious. We couldn’t pinpoint the exact location of the smell, other than the bathroom and under the kitchen sink. Atta shut the furnace off, we blocked up all the heat runs with old towels and put space heaters in for heat and the smell is much, much better. The Rat Man (the exterminator that is also a neighbor and who is extremely weird) thinks that it is probably moles, not mice. We figure they got in through rusted spots in the heat runs. Atta has decided that, after the flooding is done and maybe before spring’s work starts, he’ll get the heating guys to come in and put heat runs in the ceiling and then we’ll fill the under-floor runs with quick-crete to end the problem once and for all. I hate rodents.

And now I must go to bed. I have some other thoughts tonight about GMOs and the EPA, but those will have to wait for some time when I’m not so tired. I don’t have the mental or emotional fortitude tonight to go into it.

Epic Lenten Service

Not to toot my own horn, but our Lenten service tonight rocked! I was a bit apprehensive, given the amount of “different” stuff I have had the congregation do in the last month, but they really jumped in again, surprising me.

A week ago Monday, I laid a simple, square, 7-circuit labyrinth out on the fellowship hall floor with masking tape. It was supposed to be for worship last Wednesday, but due to nasty weather and roads, we had to cancel the service. So I just left it on the floor, used it for confirmation class this Sunday, let the kids play with it during fellowship hour and planned to use it for services tonight.

To start the evening, we had supper of tacos and ice cream. Not your usual Lenten supper fare, but it was really good. I heard lots of comments about how surprising it was that this many people showed up for Lenten service. Evidently, the historical average around there is between 15 and 20. The week before last we had close to 60. This week we had just over 40.

After supper, I asked a few of the youth who were hanging around to move chairs so they lined the outside of the labyrinth. A little before 7, I lit the candles on the little altar I set up the first week of Lent and the larger candle in the sand (a kitchen roaster, lined with a purple tablecloth full of sand, sitting on a small table) at the center of the labyrinth. We started with announcements, then sang “Bless the Lord,” a Taize chant. M played guitar.

Then I read the passage in Luke about the men on the road to Emmaus and spoke a little about walking and the history and purpose of labyrinths. I gave instructions and sat down.

After a few minutes, no one was making a move to start walking, so I started it off. People followed pretty quickly after that. As we walked, it got darker outside as the sunset was finishing. All of the candles in the center ended up getting lit (I snitched about 60 of the Christmas Eve candlelight service candles and took the paper wax-catcher disks off of them.) and the glow from the center was really pretty.

I wish I had had my camera with me when I sat down after I walked. There were about 7 people total left still in the labyrinth. Two of the men from the council were the last two in the center, one on either side of the candles. They were both intently staring at the glow and then behind them were 5 people walking in a pretty even line down the path. It was just a beautiful picture!

We ended the service with a prayer and a blessing and then, spontaneously, M started to lead us in the Taize chant again. It was perfect!

After the service, everyone I talked to was so excited by the experience. I was really worried that it might not be a good worship for this congregation, but they just continue to surprise me. Big tough, blue-collar kind of guys, who I thought would just sit back and not really participate, were telling me after the service how awesome it was! One of the upper-elementary-school aged girls was talking about how she ended up crying when get got to the middle. Most of the time she is pretty flippant and dismissive, but this exercise really touched her deeply. Several people, completely independent from one another, told me they would love to make a labyrinth in the prayer garden behind the church. I really hope they pursue that; it would be an amazing prayer tool for them.

These are the parts of ministry that I need to remember when I am slogging through trying to write a sermon or plan a confirmation lesson. Too bad I can’t bottle the atmosphere and feelings from nights like this to take a sip from once in a while when I’m really wondering what in the world God is trying to get me to do.

Now I need to start working on next week’s Lenten service. I’m fighting the feeling that I need to top the week before each week. It will get unmanageable very quickly if I give in to that feeling. I’m trying to keep it simple.

But first I suppose I should probably get everything done for this Sunday.

Blah-Blah-Blah

I throw myself on the mercy of my (I’m thinking just two) readers and apologize for my neglect of this blog. I have no excuse. It has been over a month and a half since I last wrote and my only reason is that I just haven’t felt like it. I haven’t felt like doing much of anything in the last 6 weeks really. The only reason our apartment got cleaned (all of it but our bedroom) in the last 6 weeks is because we had Itty’s 2nd birthday party here two weeks ago. (More on that later.)

So in a feeble attempt to make amends, I’ll recap the events since the last post…or what I can remember of them.

The first full week of February found me in sunny (but not amazingly warm) Carefree, Arizona at Spirit in the Desert retreat center, with SrB for the Lutheran Services in America leadership training conference. It was a great week with an overload of information and a few fun trips to a little yarn shop in Carefree. It was great to spent time with SrB, since I only get to see her a couple times a year. Thank goodness for email, cell phones and Skype so we still keep in touch!

After I got back from Arizona, there was a bunch of snowy winter going on up here and it’s all a cold white blur, really. In that time M and I have been twisted in some pretty crap-tastic knots over our next move career-wise. We have had one interview for a 5-point, dual-call parish about an hour and a half drive north and west of the Farm. And now M has an offer for a half-time youth pastor position all but in the bag about 40 miles south east of the Farm working with the pastor he worked with in PR two years ago. We are both a bit paralyzed by a) fear that we’re going to make a bad move again, b) indecision because both places seem really good, and c) what I can only describe as (at least in my mind) maybe-if-I-just-ignore-it-the-decision-will-make-itself syndrome (I’ve suffered from this much of my life!). M had a first interview for the part-time position on Thursday and we are going next Thursday for the second-interview-cum-tour-of-town-cum-bring-your-family-so-we-can-size-them-up-too, which they scheduled even before he went for the first interview. That’s how in-the-bag this one is. I giggled a little when M said they were going to give us a tour of town–this is a town that I have spent a decent amount of time in throughout my life between summer rec softball tournaments, trips to the pool or the movie theater in town and taking the cars to the shop. The one time we were visiting the congregation last year, just to see our friend/the pastor, we ran into at least 25 people who know my parents by first name and one woman who was my aunt’s best friend in elementary school. I think my elementary/high school gym teacher is a member there too. Suffice it to say, these people are my people. But then I remembered that M didn’t grow up around here and the tour was really actually for him. It’ll just be a refresher for me.

Tomorrow afternoon we are driving to the 5-point parish for a second interview, this one with all 5 councils and their families. Yeah, probably upwards of 100 people. Gotta love small towns! They have agreed to talk about making it into one full-time call (for M) and one half-time call (for me). I guess that’s what they had been thinking to do at first anyway but they didn’t think they’d get a clergy couple to take it if it was just time-and-a-half verses two full-time calls.

That’s really all I can say about our professional dilemmas. We have options, good options, but nothing jumps out at THE one we should go with. So we sit and wait. I hate to wait.

Two weeks ago tomorrow, my baby turned 2! She is getting so big. Her birthday weekend was hit hard by a really nasty spring snowstorm that brought 65 mph winds on Friday night. M’s folks were going to drive up from Iowa but decided not to risk it. They might have made it here, but it wouldn’t have been pretty. The head mucky-muck of my religious community was going to come up on Friday for an overnight visit too, but she decided against it, since she needed to be at SrB’s consecration that Sunday and the pre-dinner on Saturday. I know she needs to come visit sometime, but that weekend was not a good one anyway, so I wasn’t real disappointed.

But back to the party on Sunday. After church on Sunday, we hightailed it home and Itty had a decent nap before the party. We had 14 people (mostly family) over besides the 5 of us. Itty’s pile of presents was HUGE! She opened presents in fits and spurts all day long. She played hard with her 5 year-old triplet cousins. She spent the day in black and white striped leggings (think Wicked Witch of the West’s feet curling up under the house at the beginning of the Wizard of Oz) underneath a pink leotard/tutu combo she got from my sister. She opened it near the beginning and insisted on putting it on RIGHT NOW! At one point during the day she put on a 15-minute song and dance routine in front of everyone. It was amazing. There was twirling and butt-shaking and kicking and jumping and snippets of Itsy Bitsy Spider. She laid in to her chocolate-iced cupcake like a zombie into fresh brains. We found chocolate frosting in her ears at bathtime that night. By the time everyone left around 6, she was shot. She crawled up into my lap in the rocking chair and spent a very long time snuggling and twirling her hair around her finger. It was the best birthday ever!

Last weekend, M’s folks were able to come up for the weekend. That way they had Itty all to themselves so it worked out well. We had a pretty low-key weekend, just hanging out and playing with Itty.

Personally, I have been in a major funk. It’s the kind of low that isn’t rock-bottom, but it is low enough that I don’t really want to do anything. I can function, but it is a struggle daily. I have fallen completely off the Weight Watcher’s bandwagon. All I want to do when we are home is sit on the couch and knit and watch tv. At work I have had to hyper-focus on what I need to do in order to scrape it together for worship. It doesn’t help that it is Lent now and that means about a third more work each week since there is another worship to plan for every week. I was pretty happy this week that we had a terrible storm on Tuesday night that closed roads way into Wednesday and the council president and I decided to cancel the service this week. I have been planning “worships” that are more Bible study and prayer so that I don’t have to think of an entire extra sermon. I just don’ t like to write sermons. I even feel like I copped out for tomorrow, and I’m making the congregation talk to each other and discuss the gospel text during the sermon. I just didn’t have anything left to try to put together this week.

I have been so crabby lately that I wonder how anyone can stand me. Like right at the moment, I’m about this close to ripping M a new one because he’s playing his damn video game and I have been asking him for an hour if he wants to watch a movie and every time he says, “Sure, just give me a few minutes to blah-blah-blah.” I’m tempted to find some way to break just a little thing in the xbox that won’t be real noticeable so that he can’t play anymore. It takes supreme energy on my part to daily keep from lashing out at all the adults in this house. I’m not sure if that is a cause of my blah-ness or if it is a symptom. Amazingly, Itty doesn’t push extra buttons, anymore than she always does. It’s just M and my parents.

I kind of feel like things are spiraling a little on the side closer to out-of-control, but I haven’t seemed to be able to muster the energy needed to address it. I’m sure some of it has to do with the weather. But I don’t think it is just cabin/spring fever. Maybe I need to see about upping my meds again for a while. I’m pretty sure it’s a good thing that I’m not really a drinker, or I’d probably be drinking too much. Instead I’m eating too much.

Decisions, Decisions

Before I finish start writing my sermon (yes, I know it is 10-to-10 on Saturday night. I have it all outlined, I just need to fill in the rest of the words), I need to clear my head a bit. I’m kind of mad at God right now.

Not super-super, I’m-not-talking-to-you mad, but a bit peeved. And maybe I’m PMSing too, which doesn’t generally lend itself to much emotional control either. Here’s the deal.

M and I interviewed for a dual-call (two full-time positions) at a multi-point parish last month. It seems like a great place, they have a nice parsonage, they seem to really be trying not to fall into the traps that can wreck new multi-point parishes, it isn’t terribly far from family, and they are interested in continuing with the interview process.

That said, M has also gotten an offer for a half-time call as youth pastor working with the only other pastor he would be willing to work with at this point, after his experiences in the past. Taking this call would allow us to stay where we are at the Farm until our house in W sells, he could still pick up shifts with the ambulance crew he has been working on (which isn’t a ton of money, but it is more than he’d make working on most of the other ambulance crews in the area), and there’s the possibility/probability that the half-time associate call there would become the full-time senior when the senior retires in a few years.

We thought we might have a good ministry idea going if we could talk to HLC, where I’m serving now, about splitting the full-time call there into two half-time calls, one for each of us and then M would work the other half-time at the youth pastor position at the other church. We haven’t approached the call committee at HLC yet, but we did run the idea past the asst. to the bishop. This kind of set up we thought would be a win-win for us and for HLC: I could be part-time at home with Itty, M would have the equivalent of a full-time call, HLC would have the equivalent of a full-time pastor with one Word and Sacrament staff and one Word and Service staff. They seem to like me, I like them, they seem to like M, he likes them.

Well, the asst. to the bishop threw some cold water on that idea today. Which I guess, I might have expected. They don’t generally want the interim to take a permanent call someplace, but when I took the call, he specifically said that it still might be an option there. And I can’t get a hold of M to talk about it tonight, since he’s ice fishing with my dad and some other relatives up at Lake of the Woods this weekend.

Thing is, for what it’s worth, I’d kind of already gotten to liking this idea a lot. I probably shouldn’t have done that, but I did. The multi-point parish was nice and everything, but the more I think about it, the more I don’t want to work full-time. I want to be with Itty more than I have gotten to be the last few months. I miss her. And if we think we might, sometime in the not-too-distant future, want another child, then I really, really don’t want to be working full-time.

M said he did some number crunching and he thinks we will be fine money-wise even if he is just half-time at the one church and then picks up more ambulance shifts, even if I’m not working full-time after the interim is over for a while, as long as we can stay at the Farm (which we can) until we sell the house. So maybe that’s what we do.

I almost feel sick to my stomach at the thought of turning the multi-point parish down though. The offer seem is a good one and it would put us on more firm financial grounds. It is the best thing we’ve been offered so far.

But the thought of working full-time basically as a pastor and having to put Itty in day-care with what will essentially be strangers (because we will be completely new to the area) nearly sends me into palpitations. I don’t get to see her nearly enough now but at least she’s with either her daddy or her grandparents when I’m away. I know that thousands of people have their kids in daycare every day and all is fine, but I just don’t want that for Itty 5 days a week.

Would it be stupid to pass up the two full-time salaries, especially in the economy that we have right now? If we did take the two full-time calls, could I handle that work full-time permanently? I left the MDiv program in seminary after the realization that I do not like to preach, I do not like to plan worship every week, I do not like to lead worship every week. And I’m feeling the drain of having to do that now, after just 4 months of doing that for just one congregation. The multi-point would be for 5 congregations every week (or, since there’s two of us, I suppose 2.5 congregations ). I would still have to write a sermon every week, since we both would have to preach each Sunday.

The more I think about it, the more sure I am that I don’t think we should take the multi-point calls. I’m scared to say no to them, just as I’m scared to say yes too.

How appropriate (ironic, maybe) that my sermon this week is about worry.

 

Interview with a Call Committee

Not as exciting as Interview in a Vampire, but such is life.

I don’t even know where to start. Or if I even have anything to say.

I have felt just crazy all day. That crawly, frantic, berserk feeling that makes me wish I would just pass out and wake up later–much later. I hate this feeling.

Since the last post, M and I have had an interview for a call. It is a dual call, two full-time positions as senior and associate at a 5-point parish in northeastern North Dakota. We went there to interview January 26th. It is about an hour and a half drive from the Farm.

The 5 congregations are in 4 different small towns, situated in roughly a square with 12 miles or so to a side. There is a parsonage right next to one of the churches in the largest town. A very, very nice, 4-bedroom, 3-and-a-half bath parsonage with a 2-car attached garage. Half a block from the city park with a swimming pool. The parish is brand-new,wth two interim pastors serving until they call their first permanent ministry team. They want to maintain each separate congregation’s identity and mission, but want to pool resources. They have a committee (can’t remember the official name) that is set up specifically to deal with any conflicts that will inevitably arise when joining 5 different congregations. In my head I call it the Switzerland Committee. You know, neutral.

There are lots of positives there. The only negatives I can think of are that it will be 5 worship services between the two of us every Sunday, one in each church, which is going to make for exhausting Sunday mornings, not to mention the issue of child care on a Sunday morning. There are two confirmation classes on Wednesdays, one after school and one in the evening. We would have to find day care for Itty (which I know is inevitable, but it makes this mommy sad to think about). And one of the churches is not Lutheran, which isn’t so much a negative, but it is outside of my realm of forethought and is taking a bit to get my mind around.

But they haven’t even offered it to us, so maybe I’m agonizing over this for no real reason. M has also had a tentative offer of a part-time position in a town about 40 miles from the Farm. It would be for a youth pastor position and would in actuality be a segue into the senior pastor position when the current senior retires. This is the senior with whom M worked when we were living in northern MN around the time that Itty was born. M loves to work with this guy, so that is a huge positive. The kicker for me is that is it part-time. But that would give him the flexibility to continue to work on the ambulance crew too and possible continue his education in that field. But taking that position permanently hinges on the church I’m at now offering me a permanent position. Which they may do, but they aren’t moving real fast on that either. I’m not sure the call committee has even met yet.

So there’s the musings of my head at the moment. I leave for a conference in Arizona on Monday. I’m excited to get out of this walk-in freezer, but I still have to do all the things that I do normally on top of the conference stuff. But I’ll get to do them sitting next to the pool. Outside. In a bathing suit. Not in a snowsuit like I’d have to sitting next to an outdoor pool here at the moment.

Fast Forward

If whoever it is that has their finger on the fast-forward button doesn’t knock it off soon, I’m going to, well, I don’t know what because if life keeps moving at this fast-forward pace I won’t have time to retaliate.

Christmas was, what, three weeks ago?  And I feel like I haven’t even had time to blink since.  And the stupid part is, there really isn’t anything big going on, as far as I can tell.  I’m pretty sure that someone just set Life to fast-forward and then forgot about it.

I seriously feel like I’m losing my grip on things.  Which I suppose could be good, could be bad.  I know that I need to get more organized and I need to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with M about the state of our living space and the mountain of laundry that is growing in our bedroom.  The mountain never seems to get any smaller–it just migrates from the clean pile to the dirty pile and back again.  For the love of Pete and all his brothers, how freaking hard is it to fold a load of laundry after you wash and dry it?!  And then put the folded clothes away, not just pile them on the floor?!  I know I’m not the neatest or the cleanest, but I’m having trouble with the arrangement we currently have, um, arranged.

Itty appears to have grown a foot in the last three weeks and now has the vocabulary of a 6th grader with a speech impediment.  She now can say most of the table grace and most of her bedtime prayer without much prompting.  She made us stop eating halfway through supper tonight and pray again.  And she wouldn’t start praying until she could see that M’s hands were folded.  She got mildly confused at church on Sunday when my mom introduced her to the granddaughter of a neighbor couple whose name happens to be Lucy, the same as my folks’ black lab.  She looked at my mom and said, “Lucy? A girl?”  I’m so glad her mind stopped there and she didn’t offer Lucy (the girl) a dog biscuit.  She carries her 8 Zhu Zhu pets around in a Subway kids’ meal bag.  She loves Roy Rogers, saying, “Mo’e Woy, Atta?” to my dad when the movies are over.  She named the toy horse she got for Christmas Trigger.  She makes me laugh every day and I will miss her terribly when I have to go to North Carolina tomorrow for a 3 day meeting and then when I have to go to Arizona in February for a 4 day conference.  I’m gonna blink and she’ll be 18 and that totally sucks.

I love my job, but I hope M gets a full-time, cushy (if there is such a thing in parish ministry), well-paying, good, healthy call so I can look for something part-time when this interim is done.  I miss being at home with my baby. I really do like this parish call, but I don’t know if I want to do this permanently.

But now I need to go to bed, so I can get up and decide if the bag I packed for my “purse” will really fit underneath the seat in front of me on the plane tomorrow, or if I have to suck it up and take my smaller bag and therefore, less knitting.  Do you think 6 projects (a pair of fingerless gloves, 2 pairs of grown-up socks, 1 pair of toddler socks, a stocking cap and a size 4 Wallaby) are enough for a 3 day meeting?

2011

We started 2011 in pretty mellow fashion, at M’s parents’ house in Des Moines.  They had a couple of family friends and M’s uncle and aunt over for games and food and catching up.  It was a nice quiet evening.  We had beautiful weather in Des Moines, but my folks and sister had a terrible blizzard hit the day before New Year’s Eve and last right into New Year’s Day.

It is now January 2nd and M, Itty and I are dealing with the aftermath of the blizzard.  We had planned on driving from Des Moines to the Farm today.  We got going a couple hours late (as usual) and things went swimmingly until we got north of Minneapolis on I-94.  It took us nearly 2 hours to drive less than 60 miles and now we are hanging out in a hotel room, hoping that the driving will be better tomorrow in the day-light.  People are stupidstupidstupid when it comes to driving on icy roads and we weren’t about to risk Itty’s life just to get home tonight.  She is peacefully sleeping in the hotel crib right now.

So now I am going to take a few minutes and try to clean up my computer, deleting things and organizing things.  Then I think I will attempt to be peacefully sleeping too.  M so graciously gave me the cold he came down with last week, so that might be easier said than done.  Though I am a new convert to this lovely apparatus.  It has made this cold much more bearable and I dare say, shorter than my usual upper respiratory snot-sessions.  As you use it, it feels a bit like getting a schnoz-full of water when your cousin dunks you in the lake, but the resulting relief as gobs of green goo (just what you wanted to read about I know) get washed out of your nose totally makes up for it.

On that note, I bid you a Happy New Year!  God’s blessings to you and yours.