Now.

Tonight the council of the church I serve is meeting. Meanwhile, I made the kids tacos, took hot bath with Aveeno and have had about half a bottle of my favorite Australian shiraz. (sorry if I slur my writing.) I can’t eat, but I am watching Olbermann on DVR and nibbling on guacamole and chips. The future of my career depends on tonight. After weeks of agony during which I avoided our deranged preschool director and did not eat or sleep much, it has come to this: the treasurer managed to force a meeting of the council after the brave president documented the accounts of verbal bashing of me from six current and former preschool teachers and got a resignation of the director. A list of accusations: I messed with the thermostats, I am stupid, I am totally fake and do not even believe in God, I deleted files and am stealing money. The treasurer is totally in cahoots with the preschool director. She won’t even listen to anyone else’s version of the story (mine, the teachers who also sit on church council). Our gutsy president did have the foresight to ask the church’s attorney, whom he has been working with on all of this, to come with him. I am scared, and yet, the words keep coming to me: Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid or dismayed. (1 Chronicles 22.13). I am wearing my Obamamama t-shirt and my favorite flannel pajama pants, hoping against hope that my man Barack and I will both be exonerated in the next 24 hours. Pray, my dear friends. I need it. My congregation needs it. Gracious God, reveal your will and show your mercy.

My Baby is not a Baby Anymore!

I just hugged her goodnight. I held her for an extra long time tonight, remembering the night thirteen years ago when I, a terrified 22 year-old, found myself hooked to an IV flowing with Pitocin as two weeks had passed since her due date. The following morning, my little Aprille Foole was born.

She is almost as tall as me and is the most beautiful, self-conscious size 7 I have ever laid eyes on. A major contributing factor to her beauty is that she has absolutely no clue how gorgeous she is. She's goofy and sweet, smart and sassy - everything I admire in other women. If I am honest with myself, the truth is that we have spent a good deal of time raising each other.

God help me, I am the mother of a teenager.

How I Spent My Spring Vacation

The children were off from school this past week - and I thought it particularly fortuitous that their Spring Break was the week following Easter rather than during Holy Week as it was a couple of years ago. So, back in January, I planned to take the week off, including Sunday, and cleared it with the Church Council. Then I was informed by my Cluster Dean (no real power, but someone I respect) that the Cluster has an annual retreat after Easter every year. Oh, and I would I help plan and lead a Communion service? Oh, and it starts on the 25th.

Wait a minute! That's our anniversary! I knew better than to get married during Lent as a seminarian, but I was headed for internship in North Dakota and needed to be married to him so I could bring him with me. A few years ago our big day was on Good Friday and we didn't even see each other until bedtime, when I was exhausted from being pregnant and doing 3 emotionally intense services in 24 hours.

We had planned for a small beach getaway after the retreat, honoring both our seven married years and getting the children out of town for a couple of days to see some different scenery and breathe some fresh air. The winter has been particularly long and we are in a significantly more wintry climate to begin with. So on the morning of our planned departure, the Husband calls the hotel to check about golf and finds out they are having THUNDER, LIGHTNING and SNOW at the beach. Why pay a hundred bucks a night to sit in a hotel with the kids and watch it snow when we can do that at home for free? So we stayed home. We watched movies, cleaned house and had a couple of visitors. It was okay. I have not seen the ocean in more than a year now. I miss it.

I needs me some ocean time. Soon.

Cheaper than Therapy...

Yeah, I am probably the least consistent blogger in the blogosphere. The truth is, I write under the assumption that this is for me, and if anyone else reads it and benefits, that is just icing on the cake. Nevertheless, I am going to have to blog more to stay sane during the three years of the term call I presently find myself in.

I am 2 1/2 months into my new call and I love them, but they are a needy bunch of strong personalities. They have been without loving pastoral care for so long that I find myself in the middle of just about every triangle they can create! I love that folks are already feeling comfortable enough with me to really open up, and I have done a lot of trying to step back and encouraging them to deal with one another directly. I have also done a lot of listening, nodding and "uh-huh" ing. They seem to just need to be heard out sometimes, and most days I am emotionally and spiritually spent by noon. I swear, I have never been so tired in all of my life. I kinda live far from some of the resources I once had at my disposal now, too. I am less rural, but somehow more isolated. There are no Spiritual Directors in my town, so for now I will blog more and talk over the phone with my old Spiritual Director. And thank God for my husband, who is loving me through and into this transition.

Yesterday was Valentines Day. I did not get flowers or chocolates or even dinner out, just the two of us. What I did get was my husband secretly combing the internet to find and order me not one, but two CD’s by my favorite obscure British folk-pop group, The Housemartins. If you have never heard of them, that is okay, nobody has. Except for me and the two people the Husband managed to find who sold him their used CD’s online. Not only that, but as I rushed out the door and into the car on a busy Friday morning, worried about the time and anxious over my lengthy to-do list, my favorite song started up on the car CD player as I started the engine. That is some big love, my friends. That moment carried me through to this very moment, and will continue to make my day. What a guy. What a gift. What a love!

Questions and a Rant

First, how is it that only five years this side of ordination, I find myself overqualified for every call my synod office wants me to interview for? I have some theories, but I am curious if anyone else has had this experience? A few of my thoughts:

• Congregations are trying more and more to go on the cheap, and even my meager years of experience price me out of these calls.
• Churches are willing to take a less experienced candidate if it means they will save money.
• Call Committees are not representative of the entire congregation.
• When a congregation does this, they set themselves up for doing it all over again in just a few years.

And what is with these congregations who think they can get a two-fer by calling someone with non-ordained youth experience? Do they really expect this to fix the quandry of not having young people? I just lost a call to a candidate for ordination who had been heavily involved in Boy Scouts. Boy Scouting, while it has its merits, is not ordained ministry. There is a lot of other stuff that one has to do as a pastor. Like take panicked phone calls from parishioners who come home from work to discover their dog is dead, only because you are driving down the highway on your day off you spend the first several minutes thinking she has just told you her dad is dead. Or burying people - like the 45 year-old alcoholic cat-hoarding dwarf. Or find someone to finish the job on the parsonage ceiling that the leaky upstairs toilet started, since nobody on the property team seems to care that the home they ask you to live in is falling down all around you. I mean, with all of these activities to attend to, it just may be that additional leadership is needed in the area of youth and family.

So yeah, I guess I am angry. I have spent my entire summer agonizing over calls I seem to have stood fairly little chance of getting to begin with. I have tortured my family with the ups and downs of the waiting game. I have been assured it is not my lack of appropriate plumbing, but something I heard recently haunts me. In a gathering of clergy women, the presenter said to us, "Let's face it, the reason most of you are in the calls you have is because they couldn't find some nice boy." I do not want to believe that, and yet it feels as if I am bumping up against the stained-glass ceiling.

I mean seriously, is the best I can do really a half-time call still woefully under guidelines in a congregation that refuses to fix the parsonage, let alone change lightbulbs at the church when they burn out? This is what I earned my MDiv and its corresponding debt for? I guess you never know what will happen when you answer, "Yes, Lord. Send me." You might just find yourself broken hearted, crying and blogging at 3:30 AM.

Listen to the Rhythm of the Fallin' Rain

It is a cool, wet night here in remote Clackamas County. Even after the unbearable heat we had last week - heat so bad it was 90 degrees or more in this old Parsonage and I really wanted to just cry at times - the thing about living in the Pacific Northwest is that that heat becomes a quickly faded memory and we brace ourselves as those first raindrops fall. Don't get me wrong, the rhythm of the rain becomes the rhythm of life when you have lived here long enough, and there is that point in the fall when it FINALLY rains again and you feel your soul has returned to you after spending all summer wandering the Earth, parched and pale, seeking the refreshment only rain can give. But when it comes in mid-July, we brace ourselves, wondering, "Is that it, then? Is summer already over?"

So this fall could mean more than just getting my wandering self back. I interviewed at a bigger (like 10 times bigger) church this week and it went pretty well. I think the call might come, and then I'll be an Associate after being on my own in this ministry thing for the last 5 years. It could be great, but it will be a big transition for all of us: no more parsonage, full time work for me, new schools and home for the kids. The timing of all this change could easily coincide with the coming of the autumn rains. Imagine that!

Another School Year Comes to an End

Today was the end-of-the-year assembly at the elementary school. I was there because the eight year-old's class was doing a performance to thank their teacher for giving his time to teach free guitar lessons after school. He played guitar in class, the kids all got guitars for Christmas, and he offered to teach them how to use them. Which really was the least he could do since his extreme coolness influenced all those kids to ask Santa for guitars.

But I digress, because I wanted to complain about how I had to stand next to my rival Supermommy, the other volunteer coordinator, who was the only one introduced as such. I just got my name called...grrrr...

Is getting elected to Synod Council and being on the Transition Team for the new Bishop and planning his installation reason enough to resign for next year? I thought at one time I'd be moved away from here before fall, but mobility in this synod is slow right now. Most things are about a year out - they are just going vacant and need the year's interim. And I guess it would be bad form to leave the synod after being elected to its Council, right?

But back to my rant. I dressed up a little for the assembly since I knew I'd have to get up there in front of everyone. I was similarly thanked last year and went up there HUGE preggers and in sweat pants! I learned. SO we are up there, and the other volunteer coordinator is dressed to the nines and has the hubris to turn to me and ask if I knew we'd have to go up in front of everyone. As if she didn't! All her jingly-jangly bangles where chiming as she strutted up there.

Hmmmph. I am out of venom. Thanks for listening. I feel better and am in touch with how completely shallow I was just being. SO SHS Junior year. Sorry, Jesus. Sorry, Other mom. Sorry, folks.

PS Part two of this rant will be about the eight year-old not getting any awards today, and how I was trying really hard not to compare her to her older sister. Be warned!