Away From the Fishbowl

Six months ago our pocket of the the country was blanketed in smoke from ravaged wildfires.  We were milking our pool membership to the very last day we could swim outside.  The children were sporting new backpacks beginning new adventures in second, fourth, and seventh grade.  And our sabbatical was over.  Rob was trying to get re-established in his work and ministry again. First day of school! I was carrying my phone around as if it were a pager waiting to hear about a placement for the job I was offered last spring.  Until this fall, I had not worked outside the home since the year Rob and I lived in northwest Indiana back in 2005.  This was before we had children.  It took several years including a brief stint of taking veterinary education classes before I figured out what career I wanted.  As much as I love dogs and cats, God made it evident over a period of several years that I was to take a job in early childhood education.  I ...

12 years ago I was sitting around our apartment in Calvin seminary housing dividing my time between reading newspaper articles about the Hurricane Katrina aftermath and talking to friends on AOL Instant Messenger.  I was 9+ months pregnant and barely sleeping more than a few hours a night.  My job officially ended Labor Day weekend and my husband began his last rigorous year of seminary.  He also was in the process of looking for a part time job allowing us some sort of income that final year.  Because I was pregnant with our first, I did not have any other kids to care for.  So I found myself in this constant state of "waiting."  I woke in the morning thinking, "Maybe I will go into labor today."  Then the sun would set and I would try to fall asleep to the eleven 'o clock news...only to wake up and enter into another day trapped in a holding pattern. This was the baby God blessed us with in mid September.  She turned twelve years old two w...

The moment that marks the end of a journey -- at least for me -- is the moment that the plane's wheels touch down on the runway. Prior to that, you are still in the air, still traveling, still "away." As soon as the wheels touch down and the plane rolls out, you are back in your home city and everything after that -- deplaning, claiming your luggage, driving from the airport home -- feels like a postscript. If you think about it, that few seconds when an airplane touches the ground is a dramatic moment. Hundreds of tons of aluminum, and people, and luggage which has travelled at hundreds of miles per hour in a sort of weightlessness, sometimes around the entire globe, is suddenly reunited with the laws of gravity. The jolt that yo u feel is the wheels of the airplane suddenly gripping the runway, accelerating to match the speed of the plane of the plane (over 150 MPH), and then just as quickly, decelerating from over to almost zero in a little more than a mile. ...

Yesterday, I shared a bit about what I learned about rest. I suggested that rest is mandatory, and that rest happens properly upon appropriate completion of work. It sounds simple enough -- but why do most of us -- myself included -- find this so difficult to implement? Rest is Incredibly Difficult:  I thought my first day of my Sabbatical would be light-hearted, easy-going, and carefree. It wasn't. I found myself somewhat anxious and uneasy. It didn't quite feel right not to be working. I suspect that is the case for many of us. It feels, well, wrong to take a day off, maybe even lazy or immoral to stop our work, and choose to play instead. Probe that a bit in your mind -- especially if you struggle to rest. What I found is a lurking temptation that I have to build my identity on what I do. So often, we convince ourselves that doing = being.  I want to justify myself by being successful, by accomplishing a lot, or by making sure that my children accomplish a lot.  Past...

The kids started school this week, and the thermometer is dipping (some rain even fell yesterday). Yesterday, Amy and I walked through Minto Brown Park, here in south Salem, we had to tread over a carpet of yellow leaves. Fall is here in spirit, if not yet fully in reality. And our Sabbatical is winding down. I have two more days before beginning work again on Monday. Truth be told, I'm eager to get back into the groove. One can only rest for so long before the desire to work again grows. Sunday will be my last day out of the pulpit for awhile. We'll worship with our Sunnyslope church family, we'll enjoy lunch with some friends, and we may make one last appearance at the local pool where we've enjoyed a summer membership. I'll make nachos for dinner, and we'll raise a glass to the end of three wonderful months of rest. On Monday morning, I'll wake up early, and probably head for the gym. Breakfast will be rushed in that sort of way of getting three kids ou...

One of my goals this summer was to complete an Olympic Distance triathlon.  Which I will not be competing in anytime soon. However, if you do not meet a goal, it does not mean you have to throw it out and start over. It gives you a good reason to try again someday. It was not one of these "get gung ho about training for something and then lose motivation only to be found not exercising and eating junk."  I have been in that situation many times over the years...I was there last summer after my sprint triathlon.  It is hard to bounce back from that.  But that isn't me right now. I spent twenty nine nights this summer sleeping in other places.  Compiled together, a whole month of my summer was not spent in my hometown.  Training elsewhere is not always easy.  When traveling with the family, it requires getting up earlier, using hotel treadmills, running in unfamiliar places, taking time away from the family, and feeling burdened by a strict trainin...

I read twenty five books in 2017 as of today--twelve this summer.  Rob has me beat as he read seventeen.  However I am finding he can breeze through a non-fiction in a couple days whereas it might take me a week and a half...or longer. I pushed myself to read more fiction than nonfiction.  I naturally gravitate towards nonfiction.  I started a Book Club last December.  This has helped me read books I might normally bypass. My older two have competed in the Oregon Battle of the Books competitions in March.  Last year they both made it to the quarter finals with their team members.  I told them I would try to read as many of the OBOB books as I can...so far I am only at three. But I do have seven more months. When it comes to non-fiction my "geeky interests" are the city of Chicago...the Chicago Housing Authority and racial segregation and reconciliation in particular.  I also enjoy reading about The Vietnam War in both nonfiction memoirs and...

My 3-month Sabbatical is winding down and our family is transitioning into "fall mode."  Our days spent at the pool are over (though we may stop in now and again in the next week or so); We enjoyed a day at the coast to enjoy Labor Day; the kids started school this morning. In some ways, the summer flew by -- it's hard to believe that September is upon us and this Sabbatical that we've been planning for and anticipating since February of 2016 is just a few days from being over. I think back to the first Monday where I didn't have to go in to work -- and we went out for breakfast instead -- and that seems like just yesterday. In other ways though, it has been a long summer, in the very best way. Amy and I started this Sabbatical by going on a marriage retreat in Prescott, Arizona, and when I reflect on that time -- eating pizza in downtown Prescott, enjoying coffee and conversation on the deck with Joey and Robyn, our mentor couple, hiking through desert landscape ...

Our last weeks of the summer were a time of recovering from our trip to Michigan as well as squeezing those last minute outings in before school began.  We came home the day before the solar eclipse (August 19th). After we enjoyed full totality and experiencing all the hype and excitement on the 20th--we crashed into a time of fatigue and exhaustion.  Rob was still on the other side of the world until that Saturday the 26th.  I never sleep well when he is out of town and I was jet lagged from travel.  I was getting up multiple times in the night and not getting good rest. I also was dealing with fall planning regarding my job.  Plus I had a few different conversations with others regarding church matters which pulled me back into a "non-sabbitcal mode."  It is amazing how easily that happens without really trying. Everything Rob does to keep our family going comes to light when we don't have him with us...even the little things.  I am not used to g...

Well, the long, slow trek home came to a happy conclusion on Saturday afternoon at PDX airport. After something like 25 hours in the air (including two night-times, in the span of Friday-Saturday, thanks to the phenomenon of crossing the international date line), with an additional 12 hours in various airports, I walked through the "arrivals" door at my home airport, and saw my family waiting for me at the "Kissing Post." It was indeed a glad reunion. It's not to say that the trip home was terrible; as far as international air travel, it was actually enjoyable. Have a look at a few of these pictures I snapped along the way: A Jetstar Boeing 787 parked in Bali, waiting to take us passengers to Sydney.  A view of downtown Sydney, Australia, taken from the window of the Qantas A-380 that would be my ride home. Maybe one of my favorite photos I've taken -- a view of the famous Sydney Opera House as seen from the air. Sunrise over the...

Typically, the work of ITEM focuses on teaching and training pastors, elders, and teachers in churches around the world. My work with ITEM has, to this point, been involved with teaching seminars in preaching that help pastors in the task of Christ-centered preaching. Typically, the groups we have range anywhere in size from 30-60 church leaders. We've found that the ideal size is around 25-40 students; this allows for productive and involved small-group time, during which we put the pastors to work together in groups, discussing and studying the texts of scripture, with an eye towards preaching them. Any smaller, and the chemistry of the group may not be there, and any larger, and the group discussion can become too difficult to hold together. Well, our experience in Indonesia became very different -- and we had to adapt on the fly. When we stepped into the classroom (our facilities were at a local Christian church & School -- see the photo above and the photo to the right...