Finding Wonder Moments

The word to the old Caedmon's Call song echo through my heart this week as I attempt to have some semblance of faith. God has always been faithful, has never been faithless to us. Has never let us down or left us out in the cold, though he frequently has left us in the dark as to what he's up to. So why do I shake and quake everytime I come up against hard times? Why do I freak out instead of resting in peace in Him?



We've announced our departure from church. We've started plans for a new church. We are finishing out our time and responsibilities. Part of what we have to do is find income until our church plant can support us. That seems fairly easy, but in this economic hard time and with 2 children and one only 11 weeks from joining us, it's harder than last time we were looking. For one thing, I'm nearly un-hire-able seeing as how I'll have to take maternity leave almost immediately. And secondly, Jonathan would really prefer for me not to work because he wants me to be with the kids and most of my paycheck would just go to childcare anyway! So that leaves the burden of the responsibility on him. And I believe the burden should be on him. I think that's how God designed marriage and family for the most part. But I'm so much of a do-er instead of a wait-er or a relax-and-see-what-happens-er.



This has been stressful at best and near-stroke-inducing at times. And I'm so ashamed of that. I'm a minister of the Gospel for a God that is bigger than anyone or anything. He is Lord of Hosts, Creater of the Universe and the Author and Perfector of our faith. He's going to have to work this out for us and IN me!

Because there was a large RAT in my nightstand! My NIGHTSTAND!!

So, here's the story:

We watched a movie and fell asleep on the couch. At midnight, Jonathan woke me up and told me to go to bed. I stumbled around getting my contacts out and my water and went to bed, falling quickly asleep. But through the next 3 hours, I woke up pretty frequently. I thought it was because I was worried about not feeling the baby kick much this evening. But everytime I woke up, I thought I heard my night stand thumping around. In my grogginess, I figured I was dreaming or else had pregnant lady neurosis. So I'd go back to sleep.

Finally, at 3, I shook Jonathan and said, "I think there's a creature thumping around in my nightstand." He immediately turned on the light and got a jar and began pulling out the top drawer. We instantly knew that something was amiss, because my birth-prep book was shredded! I was furious! But still now sign of the creature. He hunted through the papers in the drawer, gently, but finding nothing alive, he set it aside. As he began to pull out the bottom drawer, we saw movement at the back and the animal ran out of the open space, behind the nightstand, under the bed, then across the room under my vanity.

At that point we realized: This was no polite, little house mouse. This was a full-sized rat. No honey jar was going to be sufficient to catch him. He would require greater measures being taken.

Jonathan pulled the liner from the trashcan and laid it on it's side by the vanity and began blocking all other points of exit, then slowly moved the nightstand. It appeared to work, as the rat ran into the trashcan, but seeing no exit, he quickly ran back out, ran up on top, scurried down the length of the trashcan, through the bathroom door, into our closet and into the airconditioning closet.

Ugh! My nightstand has been defiled! And now of course I'm wide awake at 4:30 because I can't get back to sleep. I can proudly say that I did not scream. I did not dance around on top of my bed. I didn't wake up the whole house with my fear. I actually wasn't scared at all. Just totally offended that in my two-story house, with metal spiral stairs, a large rat had made his way upstairs and into my nightstand to tear up my things. I'm more scared of water roaches than rats. But I don't like the idea of him being upstairs near my kids bedroom. So Jonathan will be buying traps in the morning...well, later in the morning anyway.

I have the most wonderful husband in the world. He's not perfect, but you will rarely (if ever) hear me complain about much at all with him. He does the typical: doesn't think he needs to call even if he's out to 3am with his buddies; can't hit the laundry basket with his clothes if I paid him; thinks his whiskers magically disappear out of the sink after he shaves. But I can deal with all of that because he is also the most tender, gentle, loving husband and father. He adores me and he delights in our children. He sings to my preggie belly so the baby will know his voice. He wrestles with my boys and tickle them til they pee in their pants. He can fix anything. In fact, our youth group has a saying: It ain't broke 'til Jonathan can't fix it!

Last night I had a freak out. I know I shared that I was nervous about following God in this crazy venture, but last night I was struck with deep and utter terror. I didn't think I was going to be able to go to sleep for worrying. We aren't just two college students taking off for Uraguay with $2 between us. We're late 20's with 2 1/2 kids and a house and we support my father as well. I just felt this huge burden of, "how in the world are we going to do this with so many people depending on us."

I was tossing and turning and finally Jonathan reached over and wrapped his arms around me and said, "I love you so much." I said, "Yeah, I'm so scared!" He asked me about what, and just layed there and let me articulate my worries and concerns. Then he told me what I already know, but needed to hear again: "Our God is really big. He can handle this." I told him I knew that, but I was struggling with believing it and with my faith. He told me to ask God to give me the faith I needed to trust Him. Again, I know that. But I just needed to hear him say it. Immediately God gave me the verse: He is the author and perfector of your faith. I didn't even bother looking up the address, I just claimed that verse, and started asking God to perfect my faith. Then Jonathan said something that I hadn't already told myself. He said, "Jennifer, we aren't responsible for all those people that rely on us. God is responsible for them. He will provide and take care of us." That was wisdom.

I don't know where God is leading us. And I know that lots of people who follow God end up burned at the stake, beaten, ridiculed, losing their house, living on welfare in a van down by the river. Following God doesn't guarantee me anything except HIM. But I have to decide every morning that He is enough, more than enough. That His Love is better than life. I don't always believe that down to my core, but I want to believe that. And sometimes I just want to want to believe that. But I think that's my mustard seed, and God is going to move the mountian of my heart based on that confession. Jesus is Lord. This is all know!

Thank you Jonathan for your enduring faith and your patience when I doubt. I love you and I wouldn't follow any other man in the world down this crazy rabbit hole after Jesus. But I'll chase Him hand in hand with you.

In my bio to the right it says that I'm planting a church with my husband. While that is true, it's not entirely accurate. Or at least it doesn't tell the whole story.

We have served as youth ministers for 3 years at a local church, and have loved doing it. Our degrees and passion and calling has been youth ministry for as long as we've known each other. However, the church we were working at started going through a lot of changes, and the elders invited us to start visioning not only for the youth ministry but also for the church as a whole about a year ago. Through that process, they also asked my husband to start preaching occasionally, so that his personality and passion could come through to the larger congregation. Those two invitations opened up a new passion in my husbands heart. He began to pray and seek God on vision and on preaching pastorship, and soon, he felt a burdening call to be a preaching pastor. God had really stirred his heart for a larger group of people beyond the teens, and he began to see ways to give the Gospel that was both powerful and effective.

Finally, he could not resist the call anymore and approached the elders with his dreams and calling. He offered to apply for a preaching pastorship at our current church and start to implement these God-given dreams and vision there. The elders prayed about it and returned to us and answer. They felt like his vision was godly, his model for leadership biblical and effective and that he was in fact gifted to preach. They didn't feel like the current church could handle the changes necessary to implement that vision however, so they blessed us and told us to plant a church.

That was a scary and liberating announcement. I went through all of the normal roller-coaster emotions when they told us: fear, anxiety, excitement, anticipation, doubt, betrayal, exuberance, hopefulness, hurt, sadness, etc. It was the most painful thing in the world to tell our teens that we were leaving this church to plant another. And they gave us until school starts up again to finish out our curriculum and find other means of income.

However, we had not annouced it to the congregation at large until today. And now, I'm going through another dark valley as it's sinking in that we really are going to be out on our own in a few weeks. My husband has some job leads, but he's not actually hired anywhere yet. And that terrifies me. We have 2 kids and one on the way, and we need to provide for them. We have a mortgage, bills, student loans, gas, cars, insurance, all the normal demands of any family. And here we are walking away from our sure-thing job to chase this calling by God! Holy cow! What are we thinking? Are we insane? Is God? Maybe.

But I just keep praying for peace. I keep asking for faith. "Oh Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!" Like the father in Mark 9, I need Jesus to build the faith in me that He says I need to move mountains. I can't even drudge up in myself the faith I need to follow Him. Even that He has to give me! This is so hard and desperate for me. I think about all those faithful witnesses in Hebrews and I have a lot of sympathy for them all over again. Did Abraham have sleepless nights as he led Sarah out across the desert to "a place I will show you"? Did Noah, as he pounded on his boat for 120 years decide to throw in the towel ever? Did Samson, Elijah, Isaiah, Rahab ever think they must be totally insane? If this is what it means to be a fool for God, am I that foolish? Or as Mother Theresa said, "If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!"

So, we're chasing Him. Chasing Him into I don't know where to do I'm not sure what. But where else can we go? He has the words of life! He's got the only way! He offers the only hope. So, as Steven Curtis Chapman says, "Sink or swim I'm diving in."

Please pray for us! Pray that we are faithful. Pray that He increases our faith that we can see His face and His glory! Pray for a job. Pray for God to build this church he called us to plant. Pray for the Gospel to go out among these people in new and effective ways, with us and others as the tools.

Today was my date with my oldest son, Judah. The Missoula Children's theater was putting on "The Princess and the Pea" at the Cultural Activities Center, and they offered a Prince and Princess Party prior to the showing where you could make a crown, have a snack and meet other kids. Judah and I got tickets and decided to go.

He was so excited to take me on a date! I asked him, "Will you take me on a date, Judah?" and he said, "Yeah Momma! That sounds like fun! But Momma...you'll have to drive!" I laughed really hard at my literal, problem-solving child.

Of course, we were one of like 5 little boys there in a room full of little girls dressed up as princesses, but the 5 boys present crowded around one table and seemed to be more comfortable. Safety in numbers and all...Judah went right to work coloring his placemat and playing with the compass they gave him, which he told me was, "just like in Pocahontas!" What really made me enjoy him was his desire to be a part of this event without being girly. They had crowns for us to make, but Judah was really concerned that only girls wore crowns. When the lady was passing them out, he told her, "No thank you! I don't want one." I appreciated his politeness, but I told him that while girls wore tiaras, boys could wear crowns, and that seemed to soothe his manliness a bit.

Turns out he LOVES cheesecake. They had cheesecake bites as the dessert, and Judah wanted one of each flavor. I had to limit him to one cheesecake bite and one cream puff. He so delights in new experiences and tastes.

And he's so full of wonder and imagination. Does this eventually die out, or do we just quit encouraging it in ourselves. He is such a delight. He wanted to know what everything was for and "WHY?", which is our favorite question right now. But he's also good at coming up with possible answers too! He speculates a lot. "Maybe they use that for...." I love that about him. He's so literal in his understanding of phrases and situations, even to the point where when he's pretending, he wants to make sure you know that he knows he's pretending. But he's also very creative in his imagination for what things could be or what we could use them for. I just love that! He has the heart of an inventor or explorer. But when you ask him what he's going to be when he grows up, his answer is always, "I'm going to work at the church and in the garage with my Daddy!" Good man!

So, I posted on Wednesday about my little accident-prone 2 year old, only to need a follow up post today about his continue dispute with gravity! (Warning: One of these accidents are my fault, so don't call CPS on me!)
My husband and I are finishing up our time as youth ministers for a local church, and part of what we do is service projects with the teens. We were out doing some gardening for our local cultural center, and I might note that it was 105 degrees outside and I am 28 weeks pregnant. My two boys were "helping" the teens as usual, and I was trying to watch that none of us got overheated. Every time I started "sweating like a man" as I call it, I would take the boys inside for a cool down in the airconditioner.

Well, Judah, my 4-year-old, announces that it is time for a trip to the potty and insists that he is going "by myself". But Gideon also had a dirty diaper, and so Gideon and I followed him back towards the bathroom. Judah was tugging heartily on the very heavy door as we approached, so I headed toward the handle side of the door, and Gideon headed around behind me to intercept Judah. Judah had managed to tug the door open a crack, and was moving around to push from the inside just as I caught ahold of it and shoved for him. At that highly inopportune moment, Gideon reversed directions and came back around the other side of me, just in time for me to bash him right in the forehead with the heavy bathroom door as hard as I could shove!

I hit him so hard with the door that he toppled right over backwards, clutching his forhead with his hands and screaming, "My head, momma! My head! It hurts! Oww!" Like any good, decent mother, I snatched him up, trying to assess the damage between my hysterical giggles. I couldn't help it! It was hilarious!

Almost immediately, a huge blue goose egg rose up on his forehead right above his left eye. Luckily the woman who works the front desk is also my mother, and she got us some ice for his forehead.

This morning, Saturday, while he still has a bump on his head, he had yet another tumble! We are upstairs in the play room, and we use a futon as a couch, except this morning, it was laid down into a bed for the boys to watch cartoons on. I'm talking to my husband about what his plans are for the day, and Gideon starts trying to get my attention. We have rules about interrupting, and we train our boys to be polite and wait their turn to talk by putting a hand on our leg or saying "excuse me, Momma." But, of course, that system isn't perfect in our 4 year old and really doesn't translate at all to Gideon yet! So, I'm ignoring him and he is getting more and more frantic, yelling about wanting his "cup, Momma! My Cup!" He's dancing around in circles, high stepping and waving his arms! It's really hilarious actually, and hard to continue to ignore, but we are wanting to make a point about not interrupting. Finally, he loses it. Spins around in a complete circle and runs as fast as he can towards the futon, intending on throwing himself on it in protest. However, two steps from the futon, he steps on top of his little toy laptop, which slips like a banana peel and launches him headfirst into the edge of the futon. He bangs his head against the metal support rail right on top of his goose egg from Thursday! Then he collapses in a heap, face down in the carpet screaming like he was shot.

I scooped him up and cuddled him, but he was inconsolable for quite awhile, clutching his forehead and wailing. He didn't want me even to kiss it because it hurt so bad. He wouldn't take his hands off and let us look. When I finally gave him something for the pain, and offered to get him some more ice, he calmed down and took his hands away, and I saw that he now has a cross-shaped bulging bruise on his forehead. The door left a verticle bruise and the bedrail left a horizontal bruise imposed on top! It's actually hilarious to me!

Raising a clumsy child is always an adventure. If he wasn't smart to start off with, he would have knocked himself retarded by now!

I'm in the process of attempting (by God's grace) to raise to precious but very rambunctious boys. My oldest, Judah, is 4 and knows everything. He thinks that he is really 15 and his best friends are in truth 16, 17, 18. Since we are youth ministers, we knew our kids would grow up thinking they were older than they are, but it's been funny and at times challenging to watch Judah try to talk, walk, and act like a teenager. He's very smart and insightful, so he does catch on to teenage nuances very quickly. Of course, this often leads to him being a little big for his britches, like when he thinks he can jump off the top of the stairs and won't get hurt. When I asked him what he thought I should do when he jumped off the stairs and hurt himself, he replied, "Put a bandaid on me!"
However, with all of his rambunctious and infectious energy, Judah is very graceful. He rarely hurts himself and almost always lands on his feet. He can climb anywhere, walk on ledges like balance beams, shimmy up poles, climb the wrong way up slides (even backwards), and go several rungs on the monkeybars. He was in gymnastics for awhile and was the most fearless child in there. OFten that equals the most injured as well, but Judah never got hurt and was able to preform way above his class level. He's convinced that he is, in fact, Spiderman.

So, I was completely unprepared for Gideon. Gideon has just turned 2. Gideon thinks he should be 4 as well. Gideon thinks that he can do everything that his brother can...Gideon is WRONG! Gideon is stockier, shorter, and above all clumsy as an ox. He is beautiful and precious and tender, but he can not walk from point A to point B with out falling over his feet. He can't sit on his knees in his chair at dinner without falling out to the floor. He knocks his head into nearly everything he walks by. That child bunked his head so much once he started walking that I was afriad he'd be a little "touched" as the old-timers would say...

And I'm being a little unfair here, as he has gotten better, but it was a huge adjustment for me as a mom to go from Judah to Gideon. We were letting Judah climb around on playground equipment when he was 18 months old. We let him stand up on high things, and while it makes other parents nervous, our son was very well balanced. Then we had Gideon, and we quickly learned that not all kids are created equal in the grace department!

So yesterday, after our MOPS steering committee meeting, we went to Chick-fil-A for lunch with our friends. After eating a sufficient amount of nuggets, I let the boys go to the indoor playground there to burn off energy before naptime. Judah of course was scaling the outside of the playground equipment and telling me he was Spiderman. I had to make him stop so that other kids wouldnt' think they could do it to. Gideon was climbing up the right way and sliding down the slide. Everything was going fine, until Gideon wanted to put his shoes back on...And then at a full out sprint across the playroom, Gideon trips on his own sandals, and face plants into the hard corner of the "mom bench" with his upper lip! Blood went everywhere! He wasn't hurt that badly, but he takes it so personally when he's hurt at all! He was so upset. He wailed and yelled until we got him some ice to suck on.

It was one of those moments where I was trying not to laugh because the fall had been so funny and once I cleaned up the blood, he looked like a chipmunk! But after his nap, his daddy took him for a ride in the jeep to get icecream and that made it all better.

How different God has made us all. One graceful and surefooted, one clumsy and unbalanced, but both are tender, sweet, caring little boys that make my heart hurt with loving them so much. Oh God, please don't let me fail them! Let me see their hearts and see Your image in them!