One Year

It was the second Sunday of December, 2015. There was a congregational meeting after church. I knew it would be difficult. The boys and I left before it started and went on to the place we would be having a fellowship lunch after the meeting. When everyone finally arrived, the mood was palpably somber. There was no way for me to get my husband alone and find a way to find out what had happened at the meeting, so I had to wait until later that afternoon to find out why all the conversations had been so stilted and awkward and heavy.

The meeting had originally been intended to vote on whether our church plant would join a certain denomination. But because of what had happened earlier that year when our pastor unexpectedly resigned, attendance had plummeted, and what everyone had discovered at the meeting was that the church didn't have enough money to meet the requirements to join the denomination. And so the meeting had a very different outcome than what we had anticipated. The congregation instead voted to hold a vote to dissolve the church plant.

Our family had already made the decision to leave the church at the end of January. Our thought behind the timing was that it wouldn't be right after Christmas, our boys would be back in school, and it would give us time to transition our family into a new church and hopefully give Christian some time to look for a new job. This decision meant that our timeline was reduced by a month, that his job would be over at the end of December, and we would need to find a new church as soon as possible.

It was an Advent season that gave us a bit of a taste of what it seems like the Bible intends for times of waiting to really feel like. Certain moments of joy and anticipation surrounding Christmas, but mostly overshadowed with sorrow and grief. Months of mourning the loss of our pastor and friend was culminating in the loss of our church and the experience of watching the church family we loved struggle to figure out what to do next.

It was the first Sunday in January when we visited Riverside Community Church for the first time. We did not have a long-term plan. This was a church where we knew the gospel was being preached, where we had a few relationships with people there, where we could be relatively anonymous and not have to share our story right away, and where our boys could find friends and be ministered to. We weren't interested in visiting a bunch of churches--we just didn't have the emotional energy. And so after that first Sunday, we never left. We cast our lot in with those people and at the time, said in our hearts with confidence, "This is where we will be until God calls us somewhere else." We had no idea how long that would be. Christian had already started interviewing at various churches around the country for a new pastoral position.

And so we waited. We did not know what we were waiting for or how long we would be waiting. As we got plugged into a small group and experienced the weekly preaching of the Word and corporate worship with other believers, I could feel some parts of me begin to be put back together. As we tried to get to know some of the other families there, even as we knew we might not be there much longer, I sensed God revealing to me through those people his grace and love and mercy and kindness. As I formed some deeper relationships and felt safe enough to share certain parts of what had happened at our previous church, I could almost physically feel my heart begin to heal. The pain was not gone, but it wasn't as fresh as it had been.

When Christian was offered and accepted a job as a pastor at the church in May, it seemed too good to be true. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But the summer passed and he began his position, and the elders decided that while they saw Christian as qualified to be an elder at the church, they wanted to give the congregation time to get to know him and affirm him themselves.

And so Christian got to work, and we waited. For me it wasn't that I had some grand vision of Christian having a high-profile role as an elder at the church. But I had seen my husband fulfill the role of an elder for the past two years, and at our previous church, they kept holding ordination out like a carrot dangling from a stick. And once our pastor left, that all dissolved as well. Christian being called as an elder at Riverside would just be confirmation that yes, God had called him to this work of serving and shepherding God's people.

We waited four-and-a-half months, and then last night, at the last congregational meeting of the year, Riverside's members voted to affirm Christian as an elder. It was anticlimactic in the sense that Christian has been pastoring for the entire fall season. Nothing about the vote really changed anything in terms of his job description. But it was a signpost, a marker, an Ebenezer, if you will—that God has not abandoned us. Even as we tried to trace his plan last fall and failed every time, he was working and preparing Christian and our family for what would come. I could never have fathomed sitting in a room last night with 100 people who we have come to know and love, and think of the kindness and care they have shown us, and then have them affirm that they wanted Christian to be one of their shepherds. To know that we are in a safe place. Not a perfect place by any means, but a place where God is working in the hearts of his people. We have friendship and love and community. Our children are known and cared for.

I will build my house,

Whether storm or drought,

On the rock that does not move.

I will set my hope

In your love, O Lord,

And your faithfulness will prove...

You are steadfast, steadfast;

By the word, you spoke;

All the starry host

Are called out by name each night.

In your watchful care

I will rest secure

As you lead us with your light.

You are steadfast, steadfast.

--Sandra McCracken

He Will Hold Me Fast

In the fall of last year, going to church felt like dying every Sunday. The empty chairs. The marathon effort to occupy my children during the service after our children's ministry dissolved. The weekly conversations about the past and about the uncertain future. My husband was in the middle of a severe struggle with depression, and I had only recently emerged from a very dark place myself.

When I fear my faith will fail,

Christ will hold me fast.

When the tempter would prevail,

He will hold me fast.

I could never keep my hold

Through life’s fearful path,

For my love is often cold;

He must hold me fast.

When we would sing this song in church, it was not a confident song of triumph. It was a trembling prayer, a hope that the words were true, that even as I felt I was losing hold and that my faith was failing, the story was not over.

Those He saves are His delight;

Christ will hold me fast.

Precious in His holy sight,

He will hold me fast.

He’ll not let my soul be lost;

His promises shall last.

Bought by Him at such a cost,

He will hold me fast.

There were more times than I could count where I felt like I was not being saved. At the worst of it, I felt like I had been completely deserted by the Lord. What had been the point of the 18 months we spent at this little church plant? Why would he take us there only to have it all end so traumatically and terribly? What kind of bow could someone put on the top of this thing that I could never possibly call a gift? I had no concept of how I could ever find joy in that trial.

For my life He bled and died;

Christ will hold me fast.

Justice has been satisfied;

He will hold me fast.

Raised with Him to endless life,

He will hold me fast;

Till our faith is turned to sight

When he comes at last.

This morning when we got out of the car to go into our new church at which the Lord has placed us, our 6-year-old said, "I miss Grace Fellowship. I liked it there. I was sad when... when it stopped." Even he didn't really have words to describe how it had all ended.

"It makes me sad, too, buddy," I said. "It still makes me sad to think about it. But I'm also thankful that the Lord didn't leave us alone, that he brought us to this new church, where there are people who love him and where we have a family."

"Yeah, and we didn't know Grayson there, remember, Stephen?" piped up our younger son, referring to one of their good friends.

And so we went inside and said hello to these new friends, this new family, these precious people who have done so much to help ease the pain of what we lost.

One of the last songs we sang was this one. I still can't sing it without crying, and I'm not sure I ever will be able to.

He will hold me fast;

He will hold me fast.

For my Savior loves me so;

He will hold me fast.

It's not a song that I can sing casually. I feel the cost of the words now—the knowledge that Christ holding us fast doesn't mean that the things we experience will hurt less than they do for people who don't know Jesus. I trembled still as I sang it, but out of gratitude to our gracious Savior. He has held us fast. It has been messy and traumatic and there are wounds inside me that are still a long way from being fully healed. He has kept hold of us as we have walked a very fearful and painful path, and in his great mercy he has given us a place to rest at our new church. Through a local congregation of his people he is providing for us financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It has been a safe place to mourn and grieve and begin to heal. He has and is holding us fast.

Changing Plans

There is something critical about remembering, about looking back, about facing the past with eyes wide open and then turning back to now, to see the whole journey and then the place where you are.

Though I've removed most of the old posts from this blog, the ones that I've kept are the ones that remind me of the path the Lord has had us on over the past 14 months. I think that my life will forever feel divided between the time before the summer of 2015 and the time after. The grief and pain of the circumstances have lessened, but our family and our life and our journey changed so drastically after that point that it will never not be a part of our story.

I see the ER visit last August, references to not sleeping, the anguish I felt during Advent last year, the uncertainty of the spring as Christian looked for a job, the thought that maybe we were ready to have another child.

There are many things I could mention now that are difficult, but all of those things have changed so much in what really has been such a short time. Mental health and clarity. Restful nights of sleep. Happy and joyful celebrations with our family. Christian's new job, doing what I think he was made to do. And this slowly building excitement about the new baby that will be joining our family in the spring, a long awaited addition that I wasn't sure would ever come, almost six years after our last baby.

This isn't the story I had written for our family when Christian and I were getting married. I knew it would involve ministry and probably close ties to our local church. I thought it might involve traveling overseas. I wanted it to include children, lots of them, and me joyfully delighting in giving them a classical education at home, because in my mind, that was what good parents did (and, I should say, many good parents do!).

And here I sit, in the second September in a row that I have felt almost completely incapacitated, although for entirely different reasons, and I wonder, Lord, will I ever learn not to rely on myself?

Last year I was crippled by anxiety, depression, lack of sleep, and pure grief. This year it has been the trial of early pregnancy, which hit me like an eighteen-wheeler and left me breathless. I went from 60 to 0 in a day's time, or at least that's how it felt. All of my plans for the fall suddenly vaporized as I realized instead of what I thought I needed to do, I needed to focus my attention on things close to home and taking care of myself so that I could take care of my family.

This is life right now, and I'm learning to be content.

Safe

Freshly bathed, with clean pajamas and new socks, he curled up in my lap as we listened to his papa and my husband read about Moses' journey up Mount Sinai. "Is he going to get the Ten Commandments?" he interrupted. "Good thinking, Cohen," my husband said.

He smiled at his papa, swallowed up in that affirmation, and as I wrapped my arms around him, I felt an overwhelming sense of the Lord's pleasure, the Lord's provision, the Lord's kindness to our family. That these two beautiful boys would be ours, that we would be a family, and that he has sustained us over the past seven years, but most especially this last year.

It has been one week shy of a year since our pastor, my husband's boss, our friend suddenly and unexpectedly stopped being our pastor, my husband's boss, and our friend. These things were not our choice, but his, and it was more painful and traumatic than I've been able to put into words, even in a year of thinking and writing and processing.

It was a summer much like this one, with two active and energetic boys who wanted to swim and read and go to the $1 movies every week. We were doing Vacation Bible School and having playdates and spending time as a family, and then, on a Wednesday, everything stopped. More accurately, the world around us didn't stop, but the world from my perspective did. Suddenly everything was up in the air. Would my husband still have a job? Would the church survive this? Would we survive this?

And then the insomnia. Sleeplessness and zombification that nothing would fix.

"Those... months were like being dragged drunk through some malign carnival where the people on the rides were really screaming, the people lost in the mirror maze were really lost, and the denizens of Freak Alley looked at you with false smiles on their lips and terror in their eyes. Ralph began to see these things by the middle of May, and as June set in, he began to understand that the pitchmen along the medical midway had only quack remedies to sell, and the cheery quickstep of the calliope could no longer quite hide the fact that the tune spilling out oft the loudspeakers was 'The Funeral March.' It was a carnival, all right; the carnival of lost souls." - Stephen King, Insomnia

Even now, every night when I go to bed there is just a pinprick of a thought, Will I be able to sleep tonight? I have been able to sleep fine for the past several months, even without the aid of any kind of medicine, but the fear is always there. I can rationally tell myself that circumstances are different, that I am under the care of our family physician, that everything is alright now. But those thoughts are hard to focus on at 11 p.m. at night when fatigue starts to hit but my eyes stay open.

We are on the verge of moving into a new place in life, a new job for Christian, a new year of school for the boys, and I am feeling paralyzed. What will it be like? Will anxiety sneak its way in as we open the door to change? Can I be myself in a new place, when we suffered such trauma in the past as a result of others' opinions and disapproval?

I don't have a good conclusion to this chapter of our lives. I don't think that all the pages have even been turned. But how thankful I am for the small, whispering voice that says, The story is written, and I know how it will end, and when all is said and done, you will be safe.

Summer Begins

I'll be honest: I was dreading this summer. For the past nine months, I have taken solace in alone time, in doing things I've needed to do around our home, but doing it in silence. I've had time to work from home part time, and I've had time to read my Bible and pray throughout the day. I knew that on June 1, while some of those things would continue, my days were not going to look the same.

I resisted the urge to make a detailed schedule for every day. I have a basic routine, and I'm planning the day out ahead of time as much as I can in terms of getting work done and keeping the house semi-clean, but I have been praying that the Lord would help me be spontaneous. I made a list of priorities for this summer: continue spiritual disciplines, be present for Christian and the boys, care for our home, allow the boys plenty of time for physical activity, and seek to spend time with friends. Past that, I wanted everything else to be flexible.

Thursday morning a friend reached out to ask if anyone could help her with her boys. I had planned a trip to the library and rest time for the boys, but we quickly changed plans and welcomed her boys to the pool with us, where we played and ate lunch.

This morning I had planned to give the boys a hair cut and then run some errands, but a friend from church texted to see if we wanted to have a playdate. We finished the haircuts and headed to the park, and just did the other errands later in the day.

Friday we had 6 moms and 13 kids over to swim and eat a picnic lunch. I am an introvert, and large groups are not necessarily my forte, but the kids played and the moms talked and we finished the time with a box of popsicles.

What has been remarkable about these things has been the lack of anxiety I have felt. I was so anxious about being anxious this summer, but as I've been willing to lay down things that aren't urgent, and as I've opened us up to fellowship and flexibility, I have not found anxiety waiting for me there. I've found peace and refreshment.

It's still vital that I get up before the boys to drink my coffee and read my Bible. If I don't take care of my introverted and spiritual needs, I'm wasted by the end of the day.

I've also realized that because of the events of last summer that led to me being non-functional from the middle of July until school started, and which led to me counting down the days until school started because I felt that if it didn't come soon, I might suffocate... I have associated my boys with anxiety. Those days were so awful, and I was so not myself, but those were my last memories of being with my boys all day. It's not severe enough to be categorized as post-traumatic stress, but part of me wonders if there's some truth to that. I have a hard time remembering last summer before everything fell apart, although my husband tells me that I had the same dread about last summer, and yet, mid-June, I told him that things were good. I don't remember that. All I remember is the bad.

This summer I'm seeing the good. I'm just enjoying these two boys, seeing them as the blessings they've always been.

We are talking about deep things, and they are sharing with me the things they love. During the school year, Cohen especially talked little about what went on at school. But now that school is past, he's being much more descriptive about his friends and what he liked about school. 

I hope we can continue to live in these rhythms. To be spontaneous (which has always been a hard thing for me), to spend time with family and friends, to not be rushed.

Most of all, I'm thankful that I am loved by a God who knows better than me what I need. Where I thought I couldn't live without quiet, without alone time, he is showing me how to be refreshed by two of the people I love most.