Dear Friends,
It will be one month tomorrow of living out of a suitcase, with ten more days to go until I fly back to Bozeman to wrap things up in Montana and make the long drive to Illinois. Though hard being away from Megan (and, of course, Peaches!), attending the PCA General Assembly in Memphis and then getting started early with Exodus Pres in Springfield was a good call. It’s been helpful to reacquaint myself in person with our national denomination (strengths and issues alike), as well as hit the ground running and get a month under my belt before needing to take a break to actually move into our house (we’re due to close next Friday, July 14).
I should probably feel more in limbo than I do, but God has given much peace by way of relationships with old friends and the personal and ministerial work involved in making new ones. Thankfully, there's not been much pain in flexing these muscles, but a real joy in doing what I trust God has called me to do (plus, the Midwest humidity met me with a soggy wet kiss when I landed at St. Louis’ Lambert Field a month ago, so it’s felt good to be so loved).
Ten days ago, Springfield experienced some pretty violent storms, knocking out power to over 30,000 residents (as of this writing, some 3,600 are still waiting for the lights to come back on). The following morning, after making some calls to Exodus’ older congregants to check on them (they were fine), I drove over and parked in front of what will soon be our house and looked for someone who needed help cutting trees and clearing branches.
I met Carol, a woman in her late fifties, whose tree had fallen onto the corner of her neighbor’s roof. A guy with a chainsaw had already cut it up into pieces for her, but she needed help gathering it all to the street for the city to eventually pick up. As we were pulling the branches and the heavy trunk chunks across her yard, Carol’s neighbor, Marty, introduced herself as the “neighborhood faller,” toodling and teetering around her porch before going back inside. Carol later explained to me that Marty fell a lot and often needed help getting up.
When we finished Carol’s yard, she walked me two houses down to meet Richie, an elderly man with seven Stage 4 cancer tumors in his body. A native of south Chicago with a classic Cicero accent, Richie didn’t have any trees down, but was trying to mow his and his neighbor’s lawn with a cane in one hand with the other pushing the mower. I asked if I could take over for him and he seemed relieved to have me do so. When I offered to mow his backyard as well, he thanked me and asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was preparing to become a pastor, to which he earnestly said, “I’m glad to know that. I need your prayers.” He then introduced Regina, his wife of 48 years, and asked me to come back this week to see him.
All that to say, it’s been a good first month, sure to only get better when Megan and our things arrive. Thank you for your interest in our journey and, for so many of you who have given funds in support of it, we are in your debt. Please pray for safety for our travels July 24-26!
As always, thanks for reading Second Drafts,
Craig
The Next Two Months
Moving day is almost here. For those playing at home, here’s a look at what’s ahead:
July
14 - Close on Springfield house
16 - Exodus Officer Training (Session #4)
17 - Craig flies back to Bozeman
21-22 - Pack and load moving truck (if you’re in town and want to help, drop me an email)
22 - Yard sale from 8 a.m.-noon
23 - Last Sunday at Trinity Church/Farewell Party at The Lakes at Valley West Park (Laurel Parkway and Westmoreland) from 3-5:30 p.m.; everyone is invited (drinks/snacks provided)
24-26 - Craig and Megan move to Illinois (with Maddie in tow to help unpack)
August
8-9 - Megan begins teacher training at Springfield Christian School
14-15 - SCS teacher meetings
16-18 - Millie (with Katie in tow) visits Springfield on her way to Covenant in Chattanooga
21 - Megan’s first day of school at SCS
If you’re in Bozeman, we’d love to say goodbye on July 23, either at church that morning or at the farewell party that afternoon. No need to bring anything; just stop by when convenient.
A Long Goodbye (Part 2)
As I did two summers ago, I asked Megan to write Part 2 of “A Long Goodbye” (my Part 1 is here) for this month’s newsletter. If you’d like to contact her directly, you can email her.
It’s Monday morning. I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with my right eye semi-glued shut because I accidentally got sunscreen in it. My third daughter, Katie, is to my left pouring lattes for the good people of ABQ, and I am watching her do it.
With my left eye.
It’s the first time I’ve gotten to visit Katie since she left for the University of New Mexico in January. She came to Bozeman for Chloe’s wedding in March, but it’s been a bit since I’ve had a front row seat to her life. And I’ve missed it. The highlight reel via FaceTime just isn’t the same.
Craig asked me to write this post months ago and I’ve been putting it off and putting it off. It isn’t that I have nothing to say; it’s just that the pain that accompanies saying it feels too overwhelming and I’d rather just keep that buried for as long as possible. I prefer to think I’m cultivating a bulb that will one day burst forth in beauty. As it is, I’m fairly sure the seed I’m stuffing is producing already visible weeds, and they are the thorny kind that are difficult to pull out.
Learning from a Bear of Very Little Brain
In June 2020, I walked into the doctor’s office to ask for help to stop crying. I walked out with a prescription for generic Zoloft and embraced the emotionally numb life.
I was overdue.
I have no problem with people needing supervised chemical help; I needed it and I’m thankful for it. But what I didn’t fully understand at that time was the pendulum swing that would come; rather than cry all the time (I still cried some), I defaulted more to a period of not feeling anything. The problem with this is it becomes difficult to not only regulate the intensity of the sad moments, but to also fully embrace the good ones in an appropriate, joyful, and honest way.
I had no joy. I had no sad. I had nothing.
Fast forward to June 2023. I’m tired of being placated by prescription therapy and decide to go off the antidepressant all together. I wish I could say I’m feeling the glad side of things more (and I do…some), but I find I’m giving in to the sadness more. I feel guilty for being sad because, honestly, what do I have to be sad about? We’re really in a pretty good spot as our needs are met and our kids are all doing well. Yet I think of Winnie the Pooh, when he, in the midst of processing his own form of loss, says, “How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard?”
That bear of very little brain gets it.
A Balm to the Soul
It may be presumptuous to write, but it feels like (and I hope that) Craig and I may be entering our “New Testament Paul” phase, in which (at least with our kids), we’ve done the work leading to the privilege of follow up. I understand a bit more why Paul traveled so much and checked in on the people he once ministered to—not only was it an encouragement to them that he still cared, but it was an encouragement to him that they still loved the Lord and were doing the work he hoped they would do.
In our age of “anything goes,” being able to visit my adult kids in their adult contexts and seeing them striving to be faithful in the Lord is a balm to my soul. In the book of 3 John, John writes to Gaius,
“Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
It’s true. When I go visit our girls and hear from others who are with them how thankful they are that our girls are there and doing the things they are doing, I remember that this is what shooting your quiver of arrows into the world feels like. As much as I desire to create a giant compound and have all the girls, their husbands, and their children live with me for the rest of their days, I know that’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Love them well, teach them to love God and serve others, shoot them off and trust God to hit the target of his choosing for the work he has planned for them to do. On an intellectual and a spiritual level, I get this; emotionally, though, it is just so stinking hard.
First Times, Good and Otherwise
Back in 2005, when we left Colorado Springs for St. Louis, I remember being excited. At that time the girls were 6, 4, 3, and 18 months, so they went where we went. Leaving our Navigator friends in Colorado was hard, but our family was all together and I was excited about the seminary adventure upon which we were embarking. At the time, I didn’t realize how special our group of friends in the Springs was, nor how hard it would be to create again.
We lived in St. Louis for six years and they were good ones for our family. I realized (maybe for the first time) just how much of an introvert I really was, and how hard it was going to be to develop friendships there. It took six years, but it happened…and then in 2011 we moved again, this time to Oklahoma City.
By then, I had a better idea of how hard moving would be and how hard it would be to find and cultivate friendships, but again, the move seemed right—as each one always has—for a myriad of reasons: it was Craig’s first school to lead and the girls’ first experience being in a blended homeschool/school; it was our first experience with church planting as well as serving the foster care community; and, it was the first opportunity we had to help care for a dying parent, as my mom (who lived just two hours away in Tulsa) succumbed to the ravages of ALS in 2014.
It was also our first time to have our lives completely upended by people we trusted. I’m not sure I will ever get over the personal trauma that came out of our time in Oklahoma City. The girls felt it—they were 16, 14, 13, and 11 then—but they were more resilient than I was. That summer, the movie Inside Out was playing, and I can’t think of a better representation of how all that felt.
We were moving…again. At least it was going to be pretty in Bozeman.
Crack
Unfortunately, in that summer of 2015, our living expenses increased exponentially because…Boz Angeles. Enter me, who, after 15 years of homeschooling, was now without biological or foster kids at home and had to get a job.
This was the beginning of a stage that caused little cracks in my identity. Not only was I not a stay-at-home mom anymore, but nobody here knew new I used to be one. Crack. Not only was I not homeschooling my kids anymore, nobody here knew that I could. Crack. For the next two years, my entire family—Craig and all four girls—went to school together all day while I drove to a job working for Gallatin County Love INC. I’m grateful for my Love INC experience and the people who were part of that with me, but my heart was in a school four miles away for the bulk of the day.
That same year, we ended up with a ton of medical bills when Maddie suffered a strange hemiplegic migraine. Since I’d already jumped into the shallow end of the “working mom” pool, why not try the deep end? In addition to Love INC, I went to work for Target from November 2016 to July 2017. Maddie then graduated from high school, and all of us had to move to a smaller rental house to avoid another massive rent hike from our then-landlord. Crack.
Thankfully, though things with the school were challenging, they were going well, and because of the growth and a supportive parent, an opportunity opened for me to teach there. This patched the cracks a bit; if I couldn’t be home homeschooling my own kids, at the very least, I could be with them (and Craig) at school, available as needed, able to check in when wanted. It seemed this might be a good way to put things back together for me.
It was in this window of time that I started recognizing my identity wasn’t only wrapped up in my girls or in my role; it was also attached to Craig and his role as well, so when that abruptly changed in somewhat the same way his previous one did, I resolved to never trust anyone again.
That included God.
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Craig was let go at the end of October 2019, and the rest of that semester almost flattened me. I would get asked repeatedly what my plans were. Was I going to stay? Was I going to continue teaching first grade? I was asking myself the same questions.
By then, Maddie had moved out; Chloe had graduated the previous spring and was making plans to do the same. But Katie and Millie still had one and two years left, respectively, to go at the school we had loved and given the past four-and-a-half years of our lives. As hard as it was to stay at the school that had let Craig go, we couldn’t uproot the girls again. Not now. So Craig found a new job and I continued teaching.
Everyone knows what happened in 2020: Covid. As much as it was a pain to record myself making teaching videos from home, that period of time was actually a relief for me. I could do what I really wanted to do (teach), be where I really wanted to be (home), and with the people I really wanted to be with (my family). I wasn’t forced to interact with hard relationships on a daily basis and could (kind of) forget about all the hard that had happened in the fall. The quarantine life was the life for me.
Over the next three years, I pushed on. I signed a contract for the following year…and then the next, even though all of the girls had graduated. I had a feeling Bozeman would not be where Craig and I landed forever, but it was the place where we were and I needed to work, so I might as well do what I loved.
You would think I could move past what happened after three-and-a-half years, but you would be wrong. When your identity is so completely wrapped up in your family, every experience you have ends up being in praise or in defense of them. I do not know how to separate myself from my family, and I probably never will. I’m not saying it’s right; I’m just saying it is.
Leaving Our Own Nest
All this is what makes our move to Illinois so painfully complicated for me. I want nothing more than for Craig to be in a role that has deep meaning for him again. I’m grateful for his selflessness to take on the work he did for the sake of our family since the beginning of 2020, but I’m even more grateful for this new calling to be involved in a ministry context serving people in the part of the country he loves the most.
Truly, I am.
But I equally want nothing more than to be with our kids. I know it is naive to think all of us will be together in the same location, but it doesn’t stop me from hoping that it might happen one day. Even as three of our kids have left Bozeman and already moved to three very distinct and different parts of the country, leaving Maddie here while we “leave our own nest,” as Millie once observed, is absolutely killing me.
I was talking to a friend and semi-lamenting the fact that, in 26 years of marriage, Craig and I haven’t really given our girls a consistent place to come home to. She gently reminded me that it’s not the place that is ultimately home for them; it’s us—Craig and me—we are “home.” And, when the times come when we are able to all be together, they will be sweet because the girls will be “home,” no matter where we are.
Walking the Line Between Lament and Self-Pity
As I read back over my musings here, I sense a common theme at the core; that is, as one of our poets has said, “It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.”
I want; I need; I am sad; I wish; it’s not what I want. Maybe if I could take my eye off “I,” the eyes of my heart will see again and anew how to trust God.
Pastor John Piper nails it when he writes,
“The problem of self-pity is a problem of sight. Self-pitying people have not set the Lord before themselves as he really is—glorious, kind, sovereign, and just. They mainly have set themselves and their circumstances in their field of vision. Rather than crying out to God in our big and small moments of distress, self-pity would have us whimper in the misery of our own hearts…
…We can trust our Father’s compassion and pity. He knows our circumstances and sadnesses better than we do. There is not one circumstance of our lives that has not passed through the sieve of his sovereign love for us. By faith we declare with David, ‘I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken’ (Psalm 16:8).”
I get it. I know. Yet I’m here to confess that there is a very thin line between lament and self-pity. It’s so easy to cross over from the one that is good and right into the one that is self-seeking and wrong. But as hard as it is, I do feel it important for my kids to see me striving through the struggle.
I want my girls to know that life is hard, and the proper Christian response to that is not to put a happy shiny face over that hard and pretend like hard doesn’t happen.
I also want them to know the proper response isn’t to give in to themselves and their hurt indefinitely. We may never outlive our pain, but we must continually trust God’s purpose for it, both now and for the future. This is what their mother is trying to figure out how to do right now.
C.S. Lewis understood pain. He wrote,
“It takes courage to live through suffering; and it takes honesty to observe it.”
I don’t know how much courage I have, but this is as honest of an observation as I can make. Sometimes this honesty comes out in tears, which Craig says are my prayers.
O, Lord, hear my cry.
Goodbye, Bozeman. And hello, Springfield.
Ready or not (but I’m working on it), here we come.
Farewell Gathering: Sunday, July 23
Montanans love to get out on weekends, but for those in town, you’re invited to join us for a farewell gathering next month before we head east on July 24. The details:
Who: Anybody who wants to come (kids especially welcome)
What: Drinks and snacks provided
When: Sunday, July 23, anytime from 3-5:30 p.m.
Where: The Lakes at Valley West Park (Laurel Parkway and Westmoreland)
Why: No agenda; just come and say goodbye
Maddie is coordinating the party, so contact her if you’d like to help with the event.
Until next month…
Thanks for considering becoming part of our support team (all gifts tax-deductible).
Know someone who may be interested in our ministry in Springfield? Let them know.