Confused Thankfulness

I've been thinking about this post since last night, unsure of if/how I wanted to write about what's on my mind. It definitely won't be the most well-crafted blog I'll ever write, but I would like to share my thoughts anyway.

It started last night with a conversation with Drew's brother and sister-in-law, who are expecting their first baby within the next couple of weeks. Without divulging too many personal details, I'll simply say that, thanks to a recent change in doctors, a problem that may have been overlooked at the previous hospital was noticed in time to prevent the baby from being in danger.

Upon hearing the news, my first response was to be grateful. I breathed a sigh of relief and a prayer of thanks to God for watching over our loved ones, born and unborn. It was a reminder of His faithfulness that I too often overlook, in such a tangible and dear situation that it was hard to grasp.

But that gratefulness was rivaled by some confusion and sadness as well, because of other stories of people not so fortunate. Of babies lost, due to circumstances that may have been prevented if noticed earlier.

Now, this post is in no way meant to degrade medical professionals or our healthcare system. No, my confusion in all this is centered around my faith, or rather, the One in whom I have faith.

I struggled last night with thanking God for delivering my family from a tragedy, when I knew other families are mourning the loss we were spared.

Why? This is what plagues me. Why were we so fortunate, when others were not? I believe God hears and answers prayer. I know Drew and I have prayed protection and health over our sister-in-law and the baby, but that thought does not settle me. What of the other families? What of their prayers? How can I be grateful for Providence in our situation when it seems lacking for others?

I studied Religion at Ashland. I've had the Problem of Evil discussions. I know that for thousands of years people have dedicated their lives to this project, and it still confounds us. I don't know that I have any observations worth discussing, or anything close to resembling an answer. I simply felt compelled to share my struggle.

I don't understand, but I continue to be thankful in the midst of my confusion. And I'll continue to hate and struggle with the evil and pain in this world, while believing in the good God who created the world. Why? Because I believe that God's heart is grieved as well. Because this broken world fraught with struggle and pain is not what He wants for us, and He has promised deliverance.

[Home]

Angela, one of my [many] cousins, is getting married next weekend, which means Drew and I will be spending a couple days in Fredonia. The last time we were in WNY together was New Years. I spent about 48 hours there this summer for another wedding, but that's it.

To say I'm excited would be an understatement.

Don't get me wrong, I love the home that Drew and I have made in Durham, and I will be very sad when it comes time to move. But there's just something about being in the place you grew up. The familiarity, the comfort, the sights, sounds and smells. And that's just the physical place. Add into the mix my ridiculously large family who still reside in Fredonia, and it gets even better :)

Being in the family house on the family farm is something I love. It's a bonus that it's the beginning of fall! The grapes will be ripe, the chestnut trees will smell amazing, and hopefully it'll still be warm enough to sit out on the porch and enjoy the scenery. Angela conveniently chose a wedding date that coincides with my Dad's birthday, and I'm pumped to be able to be with him on his actual birthday for the first time in I don't know how long. Dad's not a huge "celebrate me" person, but it'll be nice to have the whole family together, even if we're just talking on the couch or playing cards.

I mean, who wouldn't want to see these beautiful people?? For all the cool things 2012 has been, it has also been the year that I have seen my family (immediate and otherwise) the least in my entire life. Mom, Dad and Tom came down here for Drew's graduation, and then I saw Mom and Dad again in Ohio for Drew's grandma's funeral, but that's it. I know that's what happens when you grow up, but it's still lame. I also know that distance isn't all a bad thing. We're all different and independent people, and probably would drive each other crazy if we all lived under the same roof 365 days a year. But going 10 months with less than a week of facetime with the ones who I have spent most of my life with is crazy. I'm not sure it'll get better over the next couple years, so I'm going to enjoy every second I get to spend with these dear ones.

PLUS as if a regular reunion weren't enough excitement, Tom and Cait are now ENGAGED! I can't wait to give my brother a congratulatory hug, gush over the ring, and talk with my soon-to-be sister about wedding plans.

So here's hoping the next week goes fast, that this lingering cough goes away, and that travel goes smoothly. Because I can't wait to pull up that long stone driveway, let Stanley out of the car and watch him run around the home that I grew up in, to pick a few grapes to eat, to hug my parents, to ride around on the 4-wheeler with Drew, to marvel at how big my little cousins are getting, to eat spaghetti, and to watch my beautiful cousin walk down the aisle.

Monday, Monday

And here we are, at the beginning of another week.
Remembering how sick I felt last Monday, though, I'm not going to complain about this Monday, because other than a lingering cough, I feel much better.

This past weekend included:

- Going out for Italian with some neighbors on Friday night. I don't often get excited about Italian, because the only Italian I really crave is Nana's spaghetti, but dinner was delicious and our neighbors are fun and it was very nice.

- Saturday and Sunday I spent several hours helping out a family in town for a wedding. There were about 65 of them, and they were Orthodox Jews. Basically I spent my time in a hotel room that had been transformed into food central. The mother of the groom who hired me went to Costco and bought enough to feed a small country, but as Friday-Saturday night was the Sabbath, they needed some help, so I opened a lot of containers, turned on lights, and cleaned up. Surprisingly it was really fun. I like being there to help people be less stressed so they can enjoy time with family. And in addition to being paid for that time, we got a ton of leftover snack food, so Drew and I will eat well this week.

- In between working on Saturday, Drew and I stopped in at Duke Hospital to meet our dear friends' new baby girl! Ms. Isla Rowan Lee Baker was born on Friday night, and she is precious.

[Drew holding little Isla, and her Dad, Adam]

- Saturday night I had a bunch of Duke Lutheran gals over to bake and watch movies. It was super fun. Tangled and How to Train Your Dragon are both excellent movies that you should watch. As soon as possible. Plus two of the girls made a raspberry & strawberry pie (with crust from scratch), I made a pumpkin pie on graham cracker crust (per Drew's request), and we made these lemon bars. Holy crap. So bad for you. So extremely delicious.

- Sunday I woke up way too early to go back to the hotel and continue helping out. So when I got back, I took a shower and promptly fell asleep :P After waking up and hanging with Drew for awhile, I then went out and laid in the sun since it was almost 80 degrees. Living in the South is awesome. The day ended with Duke Lutheran's worship (you should totes check out Drew's sermon. It was legit), and watching the Emmy's.

All in all, I'll call it a success. Plus, there's so much to look forward to in the near future! How I Met Your Mother premieres tonight (!), I just got some great new books from a friend, and now it's only 10 days until Drew, Stan and I head up to New York for my cousin's wedding. Most excellent.

[Another great JJ Heller song you should listen to]

[Pinterest] Weekend Adventures

Mondays are lame.
Being sick on a Monday makes it even more lame.


In short, I hope your Monday was better than mine :)

Despite the super lame Monday, this weekend was pretty great.
Drew and I took Stanley out to the Eno River on Friday. It was pretty great. Stan is hilarious in the water, enjoying himself until it gets a little deeper than he was expecting, at which point he leaps and bounds every which way until he finds his way to higher ground.

[grainy cell phone picture of my two boys at the river]

Saturday was lazy. Went to Buffalo Wild Wings and watched the OSU game with Drew. 

Then it was baking time :)

I had to help with dinner for Duke Lutherans this weekend, so of course I volunteered to do the desserts.

I made these cookies [from here]. Brown butter chocolate chip cookies with nutella in the middle.

Yep, they were as good as they sound. Do yourself a favor and go make them. Now.

And I made two of these cakes [from here]. I put chocolate chips in one of them, just for good measure. It was also a hit.

Oh Pinterest, how I love thee.

Oh, and to continue my Pinterest kick, I made a version of these for some friends tonight. 

I heard they were well received also.

So, if you're looking something to brighten up your Monday, I would recommend any of these. But especially the cookies. Seriously. Make them now, thank me later :)

Belonging

I got to spend this past weekend at Carolina Beach with Drew and some of our Duke Lutheran students. Despite still being in some pain, it was pretty great. 
[p.s. i seem to be turning the corner in the pain department. the last two days have been much better. thanks for all your prayers. if you don't know what i'm talking about, read my post from last week.]

The theme Drew chose for DL this year is "Belonging," and we focused on it during our sessions over the weekend. It's been an interesting idea for me to process, as the past two years have brought such changes for me that I haven't always known where I belonged, or felt like I belonged where I was. Or, worse, I've struggled with knowing that I do belong in a particular place, and feeling like I'm not good enough to be there.

On Saturday morning our friend Aaron led the discussion, and his topic was "We Belong in God's Marvelous Light." Several of his points really hit home with me, and I'm still mulling them over:

- At one point it was discussed why we might not want to be in the light. I suggested that it's because you can't hide when it's light. All is exposed, everything is made known. That's not a comfortable thing. Sometimes we prefer darkness, because we can keep our secrets hidden.

- Then, he talked about the Creation story in Genesis. In the story about Adam and Eve we read that one of the first effect's of sin is that, no longer feeling like they belonged in such close proximity to their Creator, Adam and Eve hid from God.  God had made them to belong in that place, to belong with Him, and rather than stay in that light, they hid in the darkness

Then Aaron said two things that really stuck out to me:

It's lonely to walk in darkness.
It's hard to belong when you're hiding.

Yeah.

The cost of keeping our dirty laundry from being exposed in the light is banishing ourselves into darkness. The downside of hiding from what we don't want to face, is that we can't be where we really belong.

God has called us to something greater.

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." (1 Peter 2:9)

I'm definitely not good at exposing myself to the light. In the short term, hiding is generally more comfortable for me. But let's be honest, darkness is not where we belong. My soul craves the light, it wants to come out of hiding. My heart is restless.

I need to be in His marvelous light.

Finally Friday

Not a lot of words tonight. I'm waiting for Drew and the rest of the Duke Lutherans to join me at the beach for a retreat. Should be fun.

Rediscovered this song on my iPod on the way down. It's a gem.

Take the time to listen.

Ouch.

Despite the long weekend and thus short work week,
the past few days have not been the greatest for me.
My back decided that it'd been too long since it made a fuss,
and apparently Sunday night seemed like a perfectly good time to start.

Ugh.

For those of you who don't know, I have scoliosis, which is a fancy way of saying that my spine is curved. I've known about it since I was eight, wore a back brace in middle school/high school to try to curb the progression, and then, when that didn't work, I had surgery to correct the curve in June 2009. It was an intense procedure. I was on the table for 9 hours, in the hospital for a week, and laid up for much of the summer recovering.

[before, my curve was about 85 degrees]

 [after, curve reduced to about 35 degrees] 

[side view, just because it's crazy] 

Although what I'm experiencing now is not the worst pain I've been in [the year after surgery had some pretty low points, but the pain I was in before surgery was even worse than that], to be honest I've been dealing with it a lot less gracefully than I have previously. I think it's been so long since I've struggled like this that I lost some of my tolerance for it. Monday night/Tuesday were definitely the worst. I was so frustrated with the lack of relief that every action seemed like a chore. Fortunately, Drew seems to have been given an extra helping of patience this week, which is nice because I wouldn't have blamed him for taking me by the shoulders and shaking me. While I hoped relief would come when I woke up this morning, it did not. Part of me wanted to scream, but it seems a bigger part of me has found some resolve and reminded me that I'm capable of pushing through this until it passes.

And so, I press on. And as this pain reminds me of what I have already survived, it also reminds me of how faithful God has been through that journey, and the things He has taught me. The biggest lesson I had to learn? Humility. Not much else you can do when you can't even get out of bed without someone's help, let alone feed or dress yourself. I was reminded of it again this morning, when I had to ask Drew to brush my hair for me. My parents, Drew, and friends and family have stepped up in a bit way. It's a difficult pill to swallow; I much prefer helping to being helped. But at the same time, I'd never felt more loved, and it is such a beautiful illustration of the way God loves me, too.

I would never wish pain on anyone. 

I also don't believe that God desires for His people to suffer.

But, pain happens. 

And what I do believe is that God works in the pain for the good of those He loves.

[this is a video a friend at Ashland made a few years ago,

where i tell a specific story about my recovery,

and a place where God taught me something.

watch if you have a minute.]

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Well... the cat is out of the bag.

As I alluded to in my first post, I knew some changes were coming for Drew and I in this upcoming year. This past week it became official, and yesterday we announced it to our students, so now we can share with the rest of the world.

First, some helpful background info: Drew is in the ordination process for the Lutheran church [for those of you who don't live at a seminary, that's the fancy way of saying he is working towards being a Pastor]. Part of that process is getting a Masters of Divinity, which is the degree he completed at Duke this past spring. However, since Duke is not a Lutheran seminary, he is required to take some additional Lutheran specific classes to complete this process before he can be ordained. This is something we were aware of and had prepared for. Our plan was for him to commute to the closest Lutheran seminary (which is in Columbia, SC) part time over the next two years to complete these courses. This would allow us to stay in Durham and for him to continue his work with Duke Lutherans. At the end of those two years, we would move somewhere for our "internship year" which is another part of the ordination process, and then he would officially be a Pastor. Huzzah.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, however, some things have changed. In a turn of events that requires a lot of explaining [and possibly a strong drink] to get through, going to the seminary in SC part time is not a viable option. As we were not made aware of this fact until the weekend before classes started, that did not give us a lot of time to figure out an alternative. I'm not gonna lie, it was a very long weekend of discouragement and frustration. Fortunately, God is good. Drew's ordination committee from Ohio rallied around us, as did our local church here in Durham. Thanks to their advocacy and some compromise from the seminary, we have a new plan in place.

Thus, as of October 1, Drew will begin his internship year, serving as the "vicar" at St. Paul's here in Durham. St. Paul's, for those of you who don't know, is the church Drew is already employed at, the church that sponsors Duke Lutherans. This means that Drew will continue his work on campus, as well as pick up extra responsibilities at St. Paul's. The internship year for an ordination candidate is to immerse them in full-time ministry under the supervision of an experienced Pastor, and we are beyond pleased for that to be happening here at St. Paul's. If the past year of Drew working there had not been enough, the overwhelming support we received yesterday at church after it was announced was just further encouragement that we are in a good place, surrounded by good people.

On the other hand, this means that next summer, once internship is over, we will be leaving Durham in order for Drew to be a full-time student at a Lutheran seminary. After a year of full-time classes, he will be eligible for ordination and we will take our first call. Crazy, right?

While we are excited for ordination to be a full year closer, we are also aware of what we are giving up for that to happen. Our plan for Drew to commute for his classes wasn't ideal, but we chose it for a good reason: we wanted to stay here longer. We love Durham, Duke, our students and our community. We are invested in this place and these people, and we were so looking forward to living life here for two more years.

But, ordination is the goal. Better still, ordination is the call. So while we may not love all the steps to getting there, we know that pressing on towards that call is what we need to do.

So... we are going to enjoy every single second of this year. Retreats, worship, meals and fellowship with our students. The beautiful weather and amazing food that Durham offers. Enjoying and encouraging our friends as their own lives change. We are excited for what's ahead of us, this year and beyond. It'll be crazy, but it will be great :)

...except for packing the house. that won't be so great.