In The Refiner's Fire

Deliberate (Adjective): Done consciously and intentionally Looking back over 2017, and quite frankly, since John started Seminary so many years ago, I've spent a lot of time living in a manner that left me feeling at loose ends.  I had to pick up a lot of things that John had to leave behind and drop a lot of things that meant a great deal to me - like my degree work (though I never dropped out, I had to take time off from the program).  In 2017, John settled into his First Call as a Pastor and our lives relaxed quite a bit on many, many fronts - schedules, finances, and family health (this last having nothing to do with John's Call).  We're now been more than a year into First Call and it's been wonderful - the congregation is everything we could ask for and more, we've established a routine, people have been gracious and kind, and we've been definitely blessed.   During this time I've allowed myself to heal, both physically and mentally. I still h...

So, this last week John and I celebrated 15 years of marriage. I've known John for 20 years now.  Since we started "dating" a month after we met, we have been a couple now for 20 years. It truly seems like it was just yesterday that we met at college and I was calling my friend and saying "There's this guy.  And he's so cute!"  :) We've been through so much together and I'm so very, very grateful that I have had him to go through all these difficult things with. A friend of mine who has now been divorced for a few years asked me what we were doing over Memorial Day 2012 and I said going to visit my in-laws and getting family photos taken to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.  She asked, in all seriousness, "How do people stay married that long? Do they just put up with a lot of s&$t?" After a bit of discussion, since I was truly puzzled by what she meant, it was revealed that her ex-husband was mentally, ve...

By now I should definitely know better than to think things are going to get "easier" around here any time soon.  I think that's a pipe dream until both John and I are done with school and then we will have new challenges but hopefully a little more "wiggle room" in the schedule and the budget! Last week I hit the wall with my health yet again. I knew I was sick but I had no idea how sick.  One thing that living with a chronic illness has taught me is that it is very hard to know if you're actually sick otherwise. At least when the illness is similar to what your chronic illness is.  I have chronic sinusitis and a chronic digestive tract problem too.  It turned out that this last week I found out I had not only a full-blown sinus infection but a very bad case of pneumonia too.  Bad enough that I would have needed to be hospitalized if it was any worse than it was. They think I've had both for 6-8 weeks. Yikes. And no wonder I've been so ti...

This is part 2 of my faith and health story. To read the first part, go here . My College Years Like many young people do, I graduated from High School and went away to college. Only I really went away - three states away to be exact. I chose the school I did for their top quality Physics and Astronomy program and the ability to do actual scientific research as an undergraduate, something that is rather commonplace now, but was rare 15+ years ago. I also knew that if I didn't really leave home, I never would. So I went somewhere I wouldn't be able to go home on weekends. I attended the campus ministry our church had there. I visited because it was something I was looking for (a faith community to be part of) and I had received an advertising flier telling me about it before I left home (the staff were so pleased that direct mailing worked!). Campus ministry became a huge part of my life. Not only was it my peer group, so to speak, but it was also where I met John and where we...

Since one of the purposes for this blog is to share my faith story, I'm actually dedicating Thursdays to writing about it. Here is part one - the beginning of my life and part of the background that sets me up for this refining process that I'm currently going through. The Beginning I was born to parents who had been married for more than 15 years, never used birth control and had been told they would never have children. They never intended to have many children, but instead were planning on probably 2, and had most likely expected them to come much sooner than we did. I am an identical twin - a real sock as my parents didn't know they were having twins until my sister was born. I was born second. We were same sack twins - which is how they knew we were identical and is a very rare things - and we were born at approximately 29 weeks gestation. I weighed 3 lbs. My sister contracted an infection and died a few days later. My parents were also in the middle of moving ...