Hi everyone!
I thought I would share what I was doing exactly a year ago today.
Eleonore was overdue and I decided I should try to “dance her out”.
I started doing this on December 10th, 2011 since her official due date was the 9th.
Since I don’t normally post on Sundays I am revisiting two of the videos!
More to come in the week ahead.
peace to you,
meredith
Well, I feel exhausted.
I did a video last night with my cat Madeleine L’Engle.
I have a mild allergy to Madeleine L’Engle (the cat).
When I hold her next to my face while singing a song, I apparently end up looking like this:
In my Benadryl induced haze, I am having a little trouble thinking theologically, so please bear with me.
Last night we had an amazing Bible Study/Prayer Service.
Generally the focus in the first week of Advent is Hope and the second week it is Peace. It is in this perspective we came to our Gospel lesson, Mark 1:1-8.
1 The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah,[a]the Son of God,[b] 2 as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
I’ve found (by trial and error) that most of the “instructions” in the Bible aren’t just for the heck of it.
Not just for kicks, because God “can”.
It really is in our best interest for ourselves and our relationships to freely give and seek forgiveness. It’s the only way we can truly have peace.
It’s hard to humble yourself. It’s like dying to yourself. A little death that comes before a whole lot of life. There is so much freedom when you humble yourself and ask for forgiveness. A huge weight is lifted off of you and you can feel again. I’m not going to try and fool you, that it doesn’t open you up again and again to the possibility to be hurt again and again. But that is the danger with truly living isn’t it? The danger when we choose to fully participate in humanity.
In my short experience on this earth, the peace that can be experienced is far greater than the turmoil. The possibility of deepening relationship, of showing true love, it can be amazing.
I couldn’t get this song out of my head with the Gospel lesson from yesterday.
To me it speaks beautifully about looking beyond ourselves at the world around us, and the importance of taking responsibility for our actions “and not waiting for someone else’s hand”. The specific line that keeps speaking to my soul is:
“but brother how we must atone, before we turn to stone”
It is a simple truth.
If we aren’t vulnerable to one another, and are incapable of humbling ourselves, we will turn to stone.
The further we separate ourselves from humanity the less human we become.
Let us all take this Advent season as an opportunity to seek forgiveness where it is needed and to freely give forgiveness as it is asked of us. Not many better ways I can think of to honor the coming of Christ who came to us in a humble vulnerable human form so that he could grant us ultimate forgiveness and redemption.
peace to you,
meredith
Our wedding ceremony was probably my favorite part of the whole wedding.
Though I may give all I possess
And, striving so, my love profess
But not be giv’n by love within,
The profit soon turns strangely thin.
Come, Spirit, come; our hearts control.
Our spirits long to be made whole.
Let inward love guide ev’ry deed;
By this we worship and are freed.
it is a hymn I haven’t sung since our wedding day six years ago, and I find myself struck by what little that 21 year old girl/woman (still feel like a girl/woman, but that is for another post, at another time!) knew of what true, real, hard, life, love looked like and would look like. And yet I/she knew enough that there was truth to these words, that something resonated with what this marriage thing was supposed to look like. What a gift. what joy, what bliss, this deep true friendship and community I have been given in my husband is!
I am so aware of how “lucky” I am. So grateful.
And often times when I laugh so hard that I fart in bed, because of the hilarious things he says, I half expect a parent to come in and tell us to be quiet, that it’s time to go to sleep, because I don’t know how I got to have a sleepover with my best friend every night, I feel like I must be doing something wrong to have so much fun and get to spend every waking moment with my best friend.
Bet you didn’t expect me to talk about farting, but that’s how I roll.
Or better yet, how WE roll!
peace to you,
meredith
We got done with Bible Study and it is late so I am posting pictures now, and more on the wedding tomorrow!
This Saturday (November 19th) will mark the 6th year Nate and I have been married.
WHOA!
To try to grasp how long this is, it would be like making it in the same relationship for all of Junior High and High School. . .
I realize that this isn’t the point, but it does give you a tangible way to grasp the length of time.
I have dubbed this wedding week, where I will take time to highlight different aspects of our relationship so far!
Monday-How we met
Tuesday-The Proposal
Wednesday-The Wedding (worked out well alliteration wise eh?)
Thursday-Where we have been
Friday-Where we are going
It was the Summer of 2003. I had come home from my freshman year at Millikin University and had already made plans to transfer to Illinois State University, switching from Music to Theatre. It had been a wonderful year of finding myself thanks to so many wonderful people, and an asset was that many of those wonderful people introduced me to wonderful music. I needed a job, and had slacked off in those efforts. My wonderful friend (and future Maid of Honor) Michelle, suggested that I should work at East Bay Camp on Lake Bloomington. I had been to EBC many times as a child and adolescent, but something about being stuck at camp for weeks at a time seemed suffocating, and I was hesitant. I wasn’t working hard at finding anything else, so EBC it was. Miles Price (an amazing friend and future reader at our wedding) hired me to be in charge of implementing a new daily day camp.
So I begrudgingly took my dyed black hair, blunt cut banged, industrial ear pierced, vintage track jacket wearing, Norma Jean/Flaming Lips listening self to the first day of orientation and training.
It was June 6, 2003
All the counselors had assembled, except for one.
In came this tornado with a sideways cap, hoop earrings, thick black glasses, tattoos and a soul patch. He didn’t seem phased by being late, and just jumped right into the conversation.
I just thought COCKY,COCKY,COCKY, cute, but, COCKY, COCKY, COCKY.
Well, thinking the cute boy was cocky wore off pretty quick.
We flirted (a lot).
We prayed together (a lot).
We read the Bible together (a lot).
And by the end of the Summer, we were already talking about marriage.
This was overwhelming for me in so many ways. I had a list of I never’s that I have talked about before. This was when I knocked the first two out of the park. Nate was the first guy I had ever dated that was shorter than me, and he had experienced a call to pastoral ministry.
1.) I will never marry a guy who is shorter than me
2.) I will never marry a minister
3.) I will never live in Bloomington-Normal permanently after school
2 out of 3. . .for a time.
I had never been serious enough about a guy to have the “meeting of the family”.
I was terrified. A twin brother who was the president of his Christian Fraternity who was engaged to a beautiful petite art major, and a Mother who was a music teacher, but also a ridiculous composer and musician.
The first time I met Jake and Kenz was in Peoria at Ruby Tuesday’s. I think I cried most of the way there begging Nate to take me back because I was so petrified.
When I met them, they were great and so nice. But I did notice they looked at me a little odd when we first walked in. I was already PLENTY self conscious about our height difference. I am 6ft. he is 5’8, and figured they just thought we looked funny together. Later that evening we went to meet his Mom and stay the weekend. She too gave me an odd look.
What I found out years later is that Nate said this to his family right after we met.
“Mom, Jake, I think God wants me to marry a big girl.”
So why the odd looks? They weren’t expecting someone tall, they were expecting someone overweight. They thought I was a new girl, and they were obviously perplexed since he had talked about marrying the “big girl”.
He hasn’t ever lived that one down, probably never will.
I’m glad God wanted him to marry this “Big Girl”. Very glad.
peace to you,
meredith
Tonight we had our Wednesday night Bible Study.
It was a wonderful time of fellowship, study & food.
Some of our community is still around and it is 12:22 AM. What an inexplicable joy.
So my post will just be a quote by my favorite author “on community”.
You have already had a sneak peak of one of our photo shoots with Eliza Morris of Eliza & Liz Photography.
I thought I would share the highlights from our last ridiculously fun shoot.
We are so blessed to have found such a talented photographer to capture Eleonore as she grows so quickly!
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| Look up “Bosom Friend” in the dictionary, and this is what you’ll see! |
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| Liesl and I enjoying a good “brew” on our German Day Trip! |
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| Chris, Elisa, Father Greg, Alicia, Nate & Me at our confirmation/Greg’s ordination! |
I thought it might be a good idea to share with everyone what we are doing “Back in Bloomington”.
In simple terms, we are “planting a church”.
There are different ways I like to describe it.
I prefer “starting a Missional Community”.
But I do like the imagery of planting. Of nurturing something, of sustaining something, of having responsibility for it. But normally you don’t see the planter burrow down into the soil with the seed, and get their fingernails dirty, almost drown when there is too much water, and feel the seed break from its casing to take root, becoming entangled in them, becoming one.
So perhaps we should go with “Planting a Missional Community”.
We knew from the beginning of our relationship that there would come a time in our lives when God would call us to be a part of a new church start/plant/missional community. We were just waiting for the when and where.
It finally became clear to us this Spring that we were to plant a church with the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA). Nate had done an internship at an AMiA church his last semester of sminary, and that is where our connection was first fostered.
Through a series of events God made it clear that we were to plant a church in Bloomington, Illinois.
This was not what I or Nate had expected.
In fact it was on my list of “I will never’s”.
When you realize that your three main “I will never’s” were:
1.) Never marry a pastor (Being a pastor’s daughter and grandaughter, I wasn’t interested in “the family business”.
2.) Never marry anyone shorter than me ( I am 6 feet tall)
We know how those two turned out, as I have been married to a 5’8 (he says 5’9) pastor for 6 years on the 19th of this month!
3.) Never move back to Bloomington-Normal
I wasn’t doing to well with my “I will never’s”, but I was still being stubborn enough to claim that last one.
Have I learned to “never say never”?
In some capacity. . .not completely though :o).
So we packed up, and moved from a three bedroom house to a one bedroom apartment,
and we were officially “Back in Bloomington”.
And what happened next?
Find out tomorrow!
peace to you,
meredith
P.S.
The Hopping Home 