The Perfect Church

Growing up, I never really had to worry about where I was going to church. Being a preacher's kid sort of determines that for you.  When I went to college, it was really the first time I had gotten to chose where I worshipped, although there wasn't a whole lot of choice there, either, because I went where my friends who had cars went (though I did get to chose which friends to go with depending on where they were going).  Then, when I got married, we worshipped at the congregation Jeremy's dad preached at.  (Yes, we're both preacher's kids!)
When we moved to Texas over five years ago, it was the first time either of us had really needed to go out and think about what we wanted in a church home, what we were comfortable with in worship, what we needed so that we could find our niche and a place to serve.  We found a wonderful congregation during our time in central Texas, even though it was a lot bigger than any other congregation I had ever attended. It is our family -- especially with our physical families far away from us.
Now that we're moving again, we have to go through this all over again.  We've visited several congregations up here so far and have a couple more to "try out" before we decide which one to place our membership at.  Some, I was comfortable with except that they had children's worship and I have a big problem with that (if you want to know why, I might expound on it later, but that's not the point of this particular post).  Others had praise teams, aka micced men and women who helped lead in singing.  This is way too close to a woman being in a leadership role for me (see above note about children's worship).  We went to one on Sunday that just felt right.  I know, this sort of sounds like Goldilocks, but it's way more important than the right-sized bed.
The funny thing is, growing up in the church, you come to expect certain things:  prayers before communion, accapella singing, scriptures, preaching, etc.  I, however, get this sense of everything being right when I walk into a church building and it smells like wood and old song books and stale perfume from the years and years of old ladies that have worshipped there.  Silly, right?  I'm not going to let myself say we need to worship there just because it smells right, but it does make me feel more like it's where I'm supposed to be. I guess we can call it fond nastolgia.  It doesn't hurt any that everyone was super friendly and they gave us yummy loaves of bread for visiting.
What makes you feel like you're in the right place when you walk into a church building?

Let Go and Let God

My husband and I have been talking a lot lately as we drive around looking for a place to live. He mentioned the other day, “what would happen if we just threw it all in and said we’re going to stay here for a while and just let God work out the details?” We’ve been looking for a place to rent because we weren’t sure what his job situation would be like next year (it’s a really small school and the attendance goes up and down by the year so they’re never really sure how many teachers they’ll need). But renting up here is crazy expensive and buying a house is a big investment but cheaper per month. Of course, we haven’t even sold our last house yet, which is part of what’s holding us back. And if we bought a house and then had to sell it before we’d lived there three years, there’d be a lot of taxes to pay. But it is an interesting thought – do we trust God enough to work out the details? Am I even trusting Him enough to work out the details of renting? Is that why we haven’t found anything yet? Because I need to learn to trust more?


I like to say, “If God will bring you to it, then God will get you through it.” I’m just wondering if my heart truly believes it or if it just likes to think it does.

Possessions

So, our bodies have moved to the new town, but our possessions are still in the old one. There have been a lot of wildfires in Texas lately, in case you hadn’t heard. Driving up here last week, we could see smoke somewhere nearby almost the whole trip. Acres and acres have burned south of Austin. More acres, although not quite as many, have burned up here. Walking outside and smelling smoke is not something I enjoy.


When I was little, I was terrified of earthquakes. I was a girl scout and one year we had the theme, “Don’t be scared, be prepared.” We had that theme because there was supposed to be a huge earthquake that year. I had nightmares about the earth opening up in huge cracks and me falling in. We had earthquake drills at school where we climbed under our desks and covered our heads. Then, I actually felt a small earthquake and realized it wasn’t any stronger a shaking than a cotton truck driving on the highway in front of our house. I could handle that (even though I know they can come stronger, I wasn’t scared of them anymore).

Then, tornadoes took the place of the scariest thing. I have had nightmares about that for years and years. And I’ll probably always be scared of those.

But wildfires are different. In some ways they’re scarier than a tornado because they can destroy more and in several different ways, not to mention last longer. In other ways they’re less scary because you can see them coming and it’s easier to get at least yourself away from them. They’ve been evacuating people for over a week now and the news shows them looking at the flames eating up their homes as they stand by their pickup trucks full of stuff they were able to grab before they had to leave.

It got me to thinking: if I were told to evacuate my home and had time to grab a few things, what would I grab? I know they’re just possessions, but a lot of them have special meaning. What would you grab out of all the things in your home if you could only take as much as you could get out in the next hour? I’m honestly still not sure what all I’d take. I hope I never have to decide.

Blessings

Even though my life is completely up in the air right now – looking for a job, a home, money to pay bills, someone to buy my house, etc. . . – we are extremely blessed. God has given us a wonderful family to stay with in our new area. It’s the guidance counselor from Jeremy’s new school (Mike), his wife (Nora), and their daughter who is a student in Jeremy’s class. They have opened their home to us and told us that it is our home and to help ourselves to any of the food and to let them know what else we need.


It’s almost enough to make me feel guilty. I feel like such a mooch.

But at the same time, I just keep reminding myself that this is the way God is taking care of us right now. The family continues to tell us to not rush, but to take as long as we need to find somewhere to live. . . which is proving to be harder than we thought it would with our two cats in the picture and a very small budget (at least we assume it will be very small once I get a job as well). Have I told you how bad I am at waiting? I feel like I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s almost impossible to keep doing it longer. I yearn for a place to settle down and get into my own routine and set up my Halloween decorations. Instead God keeps telling me to wait a little longer.

I offered to make dinner for the family this week . . . my way of helping out any way I can. They have crazy busy schedules and are hardly home so I thought this might be useful. I mentioned it to Nora and she said “Oh that would be great! What ingredients do you need?” Then, she started going through her cabinets and freezers showing me where everything was so I wouldn’t have to buy anything. It’s not exactly what I meant when I offered to make dinner. But it shows you how blessed we are, living with this family who refuses to kick us out and tries their hardest to make sure we have everything we need.

Thank you, God. Please help me remember that this is a blessing from you and that you will help me through this time of waiting, even when I don’t want to wait anymore.

Spoiled

It’s hard to realize how spoiled you are until you have to go without something you’re used to having. One of the reasons I haven’t posted in a while (and am posting so many at once today) is because I don’t really have internet access right now. I’m stealing a few minutes here and there on our host family’s computer or at Starbucks or having Jeremy look up my emails for me when he’s at school. It’s not ideal, especially with me trying to run my home sales business during this time of transition and not being able to keep up with the emails my hosts are sending me. But it’s working.


I joked that when I moved up here and didn’t have internet access all the time like I was used to that I would go through withdrawals. After all, what does a person do without facebook to keep up with everyone she knows? Well, in my case, she isn’t missing that aspect of her life as much as some others. I miss being able to check emails whenever I want. I miss being able to post blogs. I miss being able to get online to look up things I read about or see here and there . . . like apartment listings. But I’m not shaking from my withdrawals. I’m just realizing I was completely spoiled.

Savvy Shopping

Mostly, what I do anymore is windowshopping (if you can call it windowshopping even though most stores don't have windows that I go in).

When I was younger, my grandparents used to give me a certain amount of money and then let me pick out what I'd like to buy.  My Grandmother would always comment on how far I could stretch $20.  I was the kid who wanted to look at EVERYTHING available first and then decide what I wanted, even if it meant going back to the very first store we went to several hours before.  I just wanted to make sure it was exactly what I wanted and that I was getting my money's worth.

One set of grandparents still sends me money for my birthday every year.  So, I went to Target last Thursday to see if they had any of their sandals on sale.  Thursdays are usually the best days to catch shoes on sale at Target, no idea why.  Unfortunately, the store closest to me is remodeling so they didn't have much in the way of clearance (although they did have some major school supply clearance going on so I spent 30-some-odd-cents on a new spiral notebook to help me as I give in my writing urges of late).  They did, however, have some of their new fall items out.

In the summer, I'm a tank top and shorts kind of girl almost every day.

In the fall, when it actually starts cooling off, I love me some sweaters: cardigans, pullovers, layering, whatever.  So, when I saw this, I fell madly deeply:



And wouldn't it look cute with these?


Yep.  I'm in love.  Bring on the cooler weather. . . . and maybe some Christmas money because my move is taking up too much of my money right now to splurge on such wonderful things.