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Gabe

Back in the warm South.

It's been nice to be back in the warmth of the south... I take that back; it's been incredible. While snow is beautiful, and even ice as it glistens in the sun on the power lines and dead trees (sarcasm intended), we are glad to not be confined to our tiny living space, cranking three heaters and cooking in the oven so we can use that as a fourth source.

Also nice is the feeling of completion that I'm beginning to feel. I say 'beginning' because it's taken me at least a week to get out of work mode. I'm done with the semester, and now, my mind knows it. Making all A's is something that I haven't done since high school. Even in my best semester of college, I couldn't shake off B's and C's. I say that with some embarrassment, but I also say it realizing that the academic struggles I experienced then have been important in shaping the way I approach academia now.

Yesterday, I checked the syllabus for my January term class, CL616 Leading Change. I guess that I should have checked earlier, because I discovered that I have a pre-class paper due on the 3rd. Just as I was getting relaxed...

Gabe

I really miss that home

It's true that one of the things that you grieve after a move is the place that you had in other's lives. For instance, after church this morning at Southland, I'm grieving being a worship leader. I still am, of course, but no one here knows that I am. Seemingly everyone here is in a fight to assert their own identities among everyone else. New seminary students especially are fighting to keep from becoming lost in a sea of people who can out-perform, out-test, out-paper, our-sermon, out-worship, out-do everyone else. I'm grieving my comfortable place in the sphere of people I am fortunate to call my friends and family. It's like those people make up the walls of a home in which I walk in, I know where things are, I'm comfortable, and I know my place among those walls. We're in a different home now.

But I know that God is with us. I know that these things take time. I know that these temporary feelings of isolation are what some people suffer with their entire lives. I know the blessings of my life, and I wouldn't change anything that brought me here. Today is just one of those days where I think back and lament,

"I really miss that home."

Gabe

Fall is here

I miss 'em

Moving

I can't say that the move has been terrible, but it hasn't been fun either. I guess moving never really is. It was much easier when we moved to Fairhope - moving an apartment into a house. But now we're moving a house into an apartment, and if I had to put numbers on it, I'd say that's 10 times more difficult and 100 times less fun.

Starting out, the 16-foot Penske truck didn't fit everything we wanted to bring, but it brought everything we needed. I really can't thank my loaders and unloaders enough. Bobby, Chad, Luke, Jeremy, Mark, Lans, Ben, and Lyle were awesome in making the puzzle pieces fit, loading 1500 square feet worth of stuff into a 16-foot moving truck. Those guys blessed my heart with their willingness and desire to be there with us to help. The drive was uneventful, taking exactly 12.5 hours from door-to-door. Lynne, Sara, and Lynne's mom and dad were a couple of days behind me, stopping to stay with friends in Chattanooga. That allowed us to travel (a bit) easier and let me get some things unloaded, unpacked, and set up before they arrived. When I arrived, Tom (Lynne's long-time friend Joy's husband) helped me unload about half of the truck. The next morning an awesome group of seminary students helped me to unload the rest. Long and boring story short - the home was now boxed up and sitting in the middle of a 900 square-foot apartment.

Even with these challenges of downsizing, moving a dozen hours away from home, and trying to help a 15 month-old adjust, we feel incredibly blessed. The amazing people of Fairhope United Methodist Church provided a love offerring that is making things much easier, and we sense the thoughts and prayers of our friends back home. We miss everyone. Greatly. Now we're looking forward to what God has for us. I can hardly believe the journey here and how His hand has been in everything, and I know that it will only get better. I'm sensing though that the length of this post has already exceeded the entertainment value. So I'll save more for later.

Gabe

No cable

In an effort to save some money Gabe and I had our cable turned off a few months ago. To our surprise, we don't miss it all that much. (Except maybe ESPN. And HGTV. And maybe the Food Network.) I didn't realize how much time we used to waste. Now that our sweet Sara is here I have really tried to limit the time the TV is on, especially since she seems to be so enthralled by it. I am already feeling the need to protect her eyes and heart from the violence that is portrayed so gratuitously on primetime dramas and sexual images in daytime commercials. I've been fighting the urge to get rid of the TV altogether and the idea became closer to reality after reading John Piper's thoughts on the subject in Pierced By the Word. (Thoughts that I would share if Gabe hadn't taken the book to his office and left it there. Sigh.)

Thank you Momma and Daddy for loving me enough to mandate my television viewing when I was young and for giving me a stern "NO" when I begged to watch The Real World: New York.

Lynne