About the Blog (Round 2)

Reading through my first "About the Blog" post feels so strange. It’s almost as if this writer is someone else, so young, so hopeful...naively anticipating the adventures ahead, charging forward, or perhaps skipping, with reckless abandon. I want to tell her she’s about to face the darkest, most difficult moments of her life, but to keep on looking for that green grass. And that she’s strong, stronger than she knows.

When I first began this blogging endeavor my husband, John, and I had recently acquired a sixteen-year-old, his sister, Logan. This was not exactly what I had in mind for my first attempt at parenting, but you do what need to do for family. In fact, we were prepared to make this a semi-permanent situation, planning to move to a new home with space to house his mother as well. What actually happened was a little different. Logan lived with us for two months, difficult for all of us, but also some very good times. Then I got pregnant. And it's what happened next that took our happy little adventure of life into something like the scary tunnel in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But we'll get to that.

When I wrote that first blog post in January of 2011 I was only a few months into my first pastorate. Nexus Community had been born and we were full of life and hope, about to plant ourselves in a poverty-stricken, crime-ridden apartment complex on Forest Lane. I am pleased to report that I am still the pastor of this church (thanks be to God!) and we are still engaged in this mission.

I have learned that being a pastor is a difficult job, planting a church is even harder, and leading a group of middle to upper class white folks to be the church in a context like this one is just plain crazy (as well as awesome, tiring, frustrating, and beautiful). I’ve also learned that when you are completely drained of emotional energy and clueless as to why you’re in the position you’re in, the same Spirit who led you there comforts and sustains you, and continues to breathe life into your weary soul as well as into your weary church. 

Nexus Community is still alive. Jesus Christ must be. This is not the only evidence I have, but it is evidence enough. And there is more to come.

The final major element of my life when I started this blog was that John and I were in the process of trying to get pregnant. This part didn't make the initial entry for obvious reasons, but it wasn't long before this blog became a space for me to express my feelings of grief and loss, and to search for hope and joy in the midst of it all.

I had an ectopic pregnancy in March, then a molar pregnancy in July.
Same song, second verse, a little bit louder and a little bit worse.

Actually, it was a lot worse. The spring and early summer had been about recovering and moving forward, but as the summer days grew longer and we were hit with this second round of loss and pain, darkness settled in over my heart and I became one among those who are simply surviving.

And that is when the writing stopped. Not just the writing, but all creativity. Every ounce of creative energy I had left was used for the church, and they can tell you it wasn’t much.

I also didn’t sing. Not in the car, not in the shower. It wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I noticed I had stopped, and only because I had started again. It was like when you open up boxes after moving to a new home and find yourself delighted at their contents, remembering the precious and beautiful things you had hidden away. What a wonderful feeling to have joy flowing through my veins again, rising up out of my soul, dancing through my vocal chords, onto my tongue and lips, and out into the world.

But before there was singing, there was what seemed to be an ever-deepening sadness.

Just a month after the second failed pregnancy, weeks after the surgery to remove it, I received an early morning phone call reporting that my husband’s other sister, Nikki, had passed away. She was older than Logan, but much too young for her life to have come to an end, younger than their brother, Brandon, who had lost his life less than a year before.  I was asked to share the news with John, who I knew was still in the process of grieving the loss of his brother, struggling to keep it together enough to be strong for me through the loss of these two pregnancies, and now this.

The John and Jen who lived from September of 2011 to March of 2012 seem like different people entirely than the people I know us to be today. They were so broken. The tragedies of their lives had risen up like a wall between them, each of them pounding on it desperately, trying to get through to reach the other, resentfully unsuccessful. We both knew the other was there, that our love was true and persistent, but it was as if we were inmates separated by the bars of our own personal prison cells of sorrow.

I can’t pinpoint the day of our release, but am thrilled to tell you that we are imprisoned no more.

It was really more of a long and treacherous journey, from the darkness of those sorrowful days to the joy we’re living in now. And there were many turning points along the way, but the biggest and most significant was our decision to become foster parents.

The story of this journey is the story I now plan to tell, along with the new stories of what is about to begin…this July. I’d better start writing!

One Face

I knew, walking away from her apartment, that I would not be able to sleep tonight. Silly me, I still tried.  But I'm back up now as all I can see when I close my eyes is her face.

Tonight a small group from Nexus started a community surveying project at Trinity Palms, the apartment complex we began meeting in a couple of weeks ago.  We're going door to door, asking a few simple questions about what people see as the biggest in need in their community, what individual/family needs they have, and what programs they would like to see offered. 

Hers was the first apartment we visited.  My husband, John, and I went to the door, knocked, and she cracked it open suspiciously, wondering, I'm sure, what these strange white people were doing on her doorstep.  As we introduced ourselves and began to talk with her the door opened more and we could see her pretty face. She didn't have the look that many do in these neighborhoods, hard and worn out. Instead she looked young and fresh.  But in the few short minutes we were at her door, she gave us a glimpse of her life that her face did not reveal.  She had recently gotten a DWI, lost her job, and because of this her three elementary aged daughters were staying in another state with her mother. 

Who makes this kind of confession to a stranger? It was given in response to the simple question of how many children lived in the home (there was a pink bike outside the door). I think of all the people in the world who try so hard to hide their mistakes, trying to keep the darkness of their lives under the radar of even their family and friends, walking around with hard faces and heavy hearts. Yet here she was.

I can't help but think of the lectionary text from Ephesians 5 for this week, "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light."

By the end of our conversation we discovered that she had not yet found a church home since moving to Trinity Palms (transportation being an issue) and had seen our flyer the week before and meant to come but didn't make it. She had told her grandmother on the phone (who was asking if she'd found a church yet) that sure enough when she can't get to church, the church had come to her...and now the church was at her doorstep.  Now, I'm not the type of pastor that just goes around asking strangers if I can pray for them, but as we were about to leave I felt that urgency not to just say we would pray for her, but to actually pray with her. And after a simple prayer for her and for her girls, her eyes were full of tears.

Something about her just fills my heart with compassion and a desire to do something, to help.  I want to be her friend. She's struggling to find work, relying on public transportation and public internet access that is not close by or easily accessible and limits her time to an hour. I have ideas, lots of them, not just to help her, but also the people living in the other apartments we visited, others without work, many concerned about safety for their children. Somehow this is exciting to me, but I should be feeling overwhelmed (I'm sure that will set in eventually).  This was only the first night.  Collectively, our group spoke to 12 families out of 390 inhabited apartments in this complex.

I have to remember that success will not be in fully meeting the needs of every family in the complex (as much as we hope God will use us to help many). But if every person in our church who knocks on these doors ends up with one face they can't forget, one person they deeply desire to help, to love, to disciple, to befriend, then this project will be a great success.

Light will shine in the darkness at Trinity Palms.