1989 (by Amy)

1989

Before I share about the present and the future, I want to focus on the past.  I apologize for a long post.  I frown upon bloggers who write pages and pages in one post.  However, I am trying to cram forty years in a couple paragraphs—not a simple task.

Once upon time I was an Indiana kid.  Hoosier is the correct term.  I had a slight southern drawl in my speech.  I was used to hot sticky summer months and cold snow covered winters. I had never seen mountains until we drove through Utah on a road trip to California in 1988. I was used to miles of cornfields.  I lived in Lafayette, Indiana about 100 miles southeast of Chicago, Illinois. 

My dad pastored one of the oldest congregations in our denomination and at the time it had over 400 members.  He was the only pastor on staff and lead both a morning and evening service every Sunday.  In the seven and a half years he served as senior pastor, he lead about 50 funerals.  He had numerous committee and consistory meetings and was out many nights of the week. 

People have asked me over the years if my dad was gone too much and if I had to share him with the church.  I don’t ever recall feeling that way.  When he was home, he divided his time between me and my siblings.  From trips to the park, swimming at the YMCA, playing board games, reading books, or watching movies—he invested in relationships with his family.  He chaperoned field trips, attended soccer games, and went on the sixth grade camping trip.  This was “my normal” as a PK.  As I have met other grown up PKs, I realize not everyone had a dad like mine. 

Our church in Lafayette was my dad’s third church and my second. We moved from Wappingers Falls, NY to Lafayette eight days before my fifth birthday.  After seven and a half years, my dad felt like God was calling him elsewhere.  It was the first time I heard people talk about “God calling them.” My dad considered our whole family’s opinion when we looked for a new church.  He always said staying in Lafayette was an option as well.  In the end, he took a new pastorate position at a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was a tender twelve year old in the perils of adolescence when we packed up all our belongings and headed one state over to Michigan.

Saying good-bye to friends in Lafayette and the city itself was not a single act.  It became something I had to do throughout my life.  As my family began a new chapter, I did not know how to grieve the old one.  I did not realize how much I missed everything—my previous school, church, neighborhood, friends, neighbors.  It was devastating to go back and visit and see how life continued to go on without me. 

From the surface, it looked I was adjusting normally to our new home and church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  I embraced the change and made friends quickly. I signed up for school activities and went to church groups.  My dad was pastoring a church that was growing numerically. I told myself to give it time and this would feel like home.

About two years later in 1991 when I was a freshmen at a Christian high school, our denomination went through a state of tumult.  I was the pastors’ kid, but too young to delve into the church politics and denominational issues.  A painful transition began in our churches that caused many congregations to exit permanently.  Women in the office of elder, deacon and pastor, and worship styles became hot button issues that many could not agree on.  The church my dad pastored struggled with the pains of change and some constructed walls.  My dad became caught in the middle of many conflicts. 

I began to struggle personally during this time.  From the outside, I looked like a healthy teenager. I was pretty good about strapping on a happy face and going to church. My parents shielded us from the church divisions and their own struggles, but my siblings and I breathed the emotional climate and felt the aftershocks of stress. There were many times I wondered if there might be something wrong with me.  Sometimes my thoughts got dark.  The poetry I wrote reflected someone emotionally troubled.

Even though years had gone by and Michigan was “home,” a part of me longed for Lafayette.  The simplicity.  The familiarity.  The small town feel.  There were days I felt totally lost and had no idea where I belonged. 

Looking back it was the beginnings of my struggles with anxiety and depression that would only get worse before it got better. 

In July of 1992, I experienced an amazing encounter with the Lord at a youth convention. God revealed his providential love to me through several speakers, new friends, and several youth leaders.  Even though my parents taught me the truths of the Bible and the love of Jesus Christ, it now became my own.  I felt like God was all I had and that had to be enough.  God was bigger than all the troubles my family and I were facing.

There were many people who wanted nothing to do with our denomination and others that left the Christian faith permanently. It was not an easy time to be a teenager in the CRC.  If these people were labeled as the CRC flight, I would be categorized as one who stuck around to fight. I had this desire to help create a church experience that was unlike what I experienced in the 1990’s. Part of me longed for the community we had in Lafayette though I knew I could not recreate my childhood.  It was the beginning of a call to the ministry that would grow and divert to new experiences with time.

I went to college and majored in youth ministry.  I worked as a youth director for four years in a church thirty miles west of Grand Rapids while my husband completed his undergraduate degree and his first two years of seminary.  Then I became a pastor’s intern wife in an urban church near Chicago where God humbled my heart.  I had to admit I did not have all the answers and I am not an expert in youth ministry or church leadership.  If anything it was a character boot camp experience and one I am grateful for.

 Then I became a pastor’s wife in 2006 and God humbled my heart even more.  We moved to Oregon, a place we knew next to nothing about until we visited.  Even though it was on the complete other side of the country from my Indiana and Michigan roots, I longed to start over in a place that was culturally different from my upbringing.  Part of me felt like we were playing Russian Roulette.  What if we had to leave after five years or even less? What if this place never felt like home?

Now eleven years into being a pastor’s wife, it is not uncommon for me to run through my little neighborhood and look at the looming evergreen trees.  Or I will walk to the store on a clear day and see the majestic mountains dressed in white.  I will say, “Thank you, God.  Thank you I am here.”  Because although the last eleven years have had their struggles, I feel like I have “a Lafayette” again.  I am thankful we have managed to see our church go through many different seasons. 

I have learned that people need to be encouraged and cared for not pushed.  That being a pastor’s wife can have more joys than drawbacks.  Playing the victim card is only going to make a pastor’s wife miserable and create division.  If a pastor’s wife allows herself to be teachable and humble (and yes that means sometimes apologizing), she can bear fruit in the ministry.  A missionary wife once said to me, “It’s your calling too.” From Lafayette to Oregon with Michigan in between, I am grateful for this amazing quest.