Changes

As I type this I am surrounded by equal parts empty space and boxes.  We are packing up life in Illinois and though the accumulation of six years and 2 kids later will fill the U-Haul, we find that we are leaving much behind of ourselves with the people of Central Bible Church with whom we have loved and invested ourselves.

Six years ago, after much prayer and waiting, God called us to Illinois to be on staff at Central Bible Church for Aaron to fill the position of Youth Pastor.  Much has happened since then, barely a month after we arrived the Senior Pastor, Ken Weddle, was diagnosed with cancer and died a mere 2 months later.  Around that time we discovered we were pregnant with our first child.  We grew in our ministry, our marriage, as individuals and in so many other ways as we learned ministry while the church grieved and was refined through the pastor search process.  One more son and senior pastor later, we were watching our first class of 7th graders in their Senior year when the Lord began to tug on Aaron and mine's hearts individually toward our next step in His will for our lives.

Again, with much prayer, we are responding to His call on our lives to serve Him at the ministry of Friends of Alcoholics in Jackson, Mississippi.  This is, of course, the ministry where we both grew up, our parents serving at F.O.A.  While as Youth Pastor, Aaron led his youth group in two missions trips to the ministry of F.O.A., and last year had the privilege of leading a teaching conference there as well.  Though F.O.A. has always been so much a part of our hearts, we were not expecting to be called there to serve and while we are sad to leave the people at Central Bible Church, we are delighted to be able to see God's clear direction for our lives and to be walking in that.

Please pray for us when you think of us-we anticipate moving very soon.  The drive, the settling in, the selling of our current house all need prayer.

Please pray for CBC as they search for a new Youth Pastor.

Also for our family as we adjust to our new life/ministry in Mississippi. 

Please visit F.O.A.'s website at www.friendsofalcoholics.blogspot.com and explore and acquaint yourself with it's amazing ministry!

Thank you!

Brittany (for all of us)

P.S.-Also, we will be needed a new blog name-any suggestions?!

Character share

Our favorite villainous sidekick:

LAMPY

Dance with me Lampy!








From Veggie Tales' Larry Boy.

Quote

Joel to Mommy: "I love you all the time."

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"I close my eyes and lean into Ernest, smelling bourbon and soap, tobacco and damp cotton-and everything about this moment is so sharp and lovely, I do something completely out of character and just let myself have it."



"We called Paris the great good place, then, and it was. We invented it after all. We made it with our longing and cigarettes and Rhum St. James; we made it with smoke and smart and savage conversation and we dared anyone to say it wasn't ours. Together we made everything and then we busted it apart again.

There are some who said I should have fought harder or longer than I did for my marriage, but in the end fighting for a love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city. I couldn't bear it, and so I backed away-and the reason I could do it at all, the reason I was strong enough and had the legs and the heart to do it, was because Ernest had come along and changed me. He helped me see what I really was and what I could do. Now that I knew what I could bear, I would have to bear losing him."



"He and I had already had our time, and though it was very close and real to me, as beautiful and poignant as any place on the map, it was, in truth, another time-another country."



"...I only cried a very little, and then it was gone."



"The myth he was creating out of his own life was big enough to take it for a time-but under this, I knew he was still lost. ...that he feared death so so much he sought it out where and however he could. He was such an enigma, really fine and strong and weak and cruel. An incomparable friend and a son of a bitch. In the end, there wasn't one thing about him that was truer than the rest. It was all true."



I have read little of Hemingway's works, but fell in love with A Moveable Feast. Paula McLain has created an amazing story, almost poetry at times. I loved this book. A novel, yes, but in a way it felt like a peek into reality. I appreciated the complexities of the individuals...the contradictions in character. It made her characters feel only so very real. The way the lifestyle of the peers that Ernest and Hadley wrapped around themselves slowly influenced them-to the sorrow of those same peers in the end. I stand in awe of the author as I agonized over the startling reality of the Hemingways' marriage crumbing around them and their life continuing with it's disorienting moments of normality.



Falling away from each other is not clean or easy or quick or simple, it pulls us and tears us...two people who have become one in a marriage cannot be torn apart by circumstance or choice without losing bits of themselves in the process. Without leaving pieces behind and carrying broken parts with you. I think the harshness of this was felt in the story of Ernest and Hadley.



You fell in love with him right along with her, and you ached as their marriage was ending. As in life, we are more than one-dimensional, we are vindictive and kind, we are confident and insecure-one person isn't painted "villian", but many facets of their person was given and in the end-it was all true.



I gave this book 5 stars even though I don't admire or agree with much of the content...the worldview is so different from my own, but because I personally appreciated it very much. If you enjoy Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, Paris, complexity of character, a good debate-starting point (ha!), this is a must-read.



**Caution to younger readers.



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