the year in review

I've been reflecting on the everyday, everywhere tangle of beautiful and difficult rather a lot this Advent season. Every year I see Christmas a little bit differently and this year I have been awed that Christ came in the midst of such a big upheaval. His unwed mother was told by an angel that she would conceive and give birth to the King of Kings. Her would-be husband, upon finding out that she was pregnant, was going to divorce her (a kindness, as the Law would have allowed for stoning), but an angel appeared to him in a dream and told him also what he had told Mary. And the drama increases. The Romans are in charge of the country and they force a census on the Jews, the young couple travel together eighty miles to Bethlehem while Mary's in her last month of pregnancy, and when they arrive there is no place for the young girl to give birth but in a stable.

The King of Kings is born in a stable.

And we celebrate that often, and I love the humility of our gracious God, but I am stunned too by what followed. The wise men who brought gifts to the child inadvertently told the king of the birth of the child Jesus; Herod then ordered the death of every boy in Bethlehem under the age of two.

Every boy. Under the age of two.

Sometimes I am shocked that God allowed it. But it shouts too, doesn't it, that Christ was not coming to set up an earthly reign - then. The true light that gives life to every man came into the world, and He shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not understand Him. His light persists amidst the darkness, and the darkness has not overshadowed Him, but neither has it been dispelled. Oh yes, I know and rejoice absolutely that He has broken the sting of death. But it is a mystery too, isn't it, that in some ways we live always on the Saturday between the Friday of His death on the cross and the Sunday of His resurrection; we live in the already and in the not yet. We who know Him see in our lives both the long-term effects of sin (our own and others) and also the long-term effects of redemption (pure, beautiful, merciful grace of God!).

Sin and redemption, difficult and beautiful. That's what I'm thinking of tonight as I pause to remember this year. I haven't seen it clearly until tonight but it feels very much like we have been going hard this year, like it has been a long journey through countless trials, not unlike the journey of Much Afraid to the High Places or the epic journeys of Bilbo and Frodo in their own missions.

That's definitely stretching it a bit... our journey has not been so epic... but it's been a challenging journey, and we're still on it, and I'm very much able to relate to the beautiful characters in Scripture and history and fiction who have journeyed long and far before reaching the end of their journeys.

Last January found Keith unemployed again. He had quit his job as a log truck driver because it was too hard on our family; he took another job in the woods, this time as a log forwarder; and two months later he was out of work again. At seven months pregnant, my body was hurting, and Abraham had only just begun walking, and so I loved having Keith's help and very much needed it. Yet it was challenging too, just as every laid-off season has been, because there is such a difference in our family rhythms when Keith is working all the time versus when he is home all the time, and of course trying to make ends meet on just unemployment benefits and savings is rather a big challenge as well.

March came, and with it the arrival of our son Ezekiel. We had another home birth and I am glad we did, but the end of labor was frightening to me. He came out partway but then was stuck, and I was exhausted, and the contractions ceased. It was not the most difficult labor ever but it was a frightening end, and I thank God often for the skill of my midwife, who got Zekie unstuck and got him out. That labor too seems like a bit of a metaphor for the year overall: peace, but also pain, and confusion followed by scariness, and everything right and beautiful in the end but not because of my own doing.

Keith was home in the weeks following Ezekiel's birth and that was a richly blessed time. I so much needed that time to rest, not just because of Ezekiel's birth but also because of the strain of these last several years. It was so good and so healing.

April found me beginning a time of questioning how church is meant to look. Good in that I am realizing that my frustrations are with those things that we (corporate church "we") have added into Christianity; hard in that I'm still unsure where to go with it all. And we bought a van too in April; we were and are tremendously grateful for it, and so thankful that all of the money for it went to support the Union Gospel Mission; but we also have more debt because of it, and that is a disappointment after we have been trying so hard (and God has been helping us) to get out of debt.

Keith went back to work in May and soon began to work away from home for a week at a time. Meanwhile, Ezekiel cried constantly. He did not love to nurse, seemed only to eat because he had to but not because it gave him comfort, and I can't remember when I've cried so much. The evenings were so hard. It seems that we spent every night from 8-11 pm trying to soothe him, trying to help him, doing everything to calm him but only to have him scream and cry again. At last in June I began taking him to the chiropractor, making what felt like epic journeys in themselves, going to Coeur d'Alene with the three little ones by myself. After seven trips, he was like a new baby, and I was grateful but also deeply filled with remorse that I hadn't gone sooner when I'd known all along that I should have.

In July, we had a misunderstanding with our landlord and friend of two years. We'd asked him to tell us when he was going to be using the water spigot in our yard; he was offended and asked us to move. We had literally just been praying that afternoon for guidance as to whether to move to Spokane so that Keith could begin sonography; we took this as our sign to move, even though we were and are grieved by the loss of the friendship. But Keith was spending all that month and the next working away from home for a week at a time, camping out in the woods and usually without cell service; we were trying to find a house to buy in Spokane as well as pack up all of our things; and here I was trying to figure out how to mother three little ones.

In August, we moved in with Keith's parents. This was another of those lovely but challenging things. We've lived with several families now and living with Keith's parents has been the best, but their home is small and of course there are challenges in merging families. The older children adored living with their grandparents and being farm kids, but Ezekiel didn't sleep well there; Carmen and I loved having time to visit together and help each other while the menfolk were camping away, but Keith and I also greatly missed having time together, and I realized how much I needed alone time with nobody else at all around.

In September, Keith's grandpa was dying, and we were glad we hadn't yet moved to Spokane, because Keith was able to be there with him quite a lot in his last days. He also officiated at the funeral when he passed away. Being able to be available was good, and yet also challenging because Keith missed two weeks of work, and we were still trying to recover from the laid-off season of the spring.

In the early fall, Keith began his first course toward sonography prerequisites in Spokane, and we felt settled with going forward in the sonography plan. Yet at the same time, many people began urging him to move toward ministry. We sought counsel from several friends and family members, each of whom sincerely encouraged him that his giftings are pastoral and that he should become a pastor. I too have known for years that Keith had a pastoral heart, but he's never felt sure of his calling toward that, so we have waited.

One Sunday in September or so, we were at church and I was watching him with people and we had been trying to decide when and whether to move to Spokane and I was just wishing so much that God would let Keith use his giftings, would open a way for him to be able to be in pastoral ministry. I sat down with Rilla at the front of the church sanctuary after the service to pray with her and asked that if the Lord wanted Keith to become a youth pastor, he would make it really clear. (It's the only time I've prayed with her for that specifically... I just needed to pray with somebody, and she was the only one around.) Less than five minutes later, materializing out of a seemingly empty church building, a guy who'd worked with Keith in youth group last year found Keith as we were getting ready to leave and began the conversation with, "Keith! WHY aren't you a youth pastor?? God WANTS you to be a youth pastor!" and proceeded to encourage him with that, and tell him all that the Lord had laid on his heart about it. It was beautiful.

Super encouraging, right? And that was followed up right away by going to the home of our close friends who counseled us that way too. So we continued to pray and we sent out lots of resumes for ministry positions, probably forty or fifty now. But nothing has come of them. There were a few good emails, and one interview for a youth director position and another for a Hospice position, but mostly silence. So we have decided to go forward with the ultrasound plan, believing that if the Lord wants to lead Keith toward a different career path, He can and will. And if Keith is able to be bivocational someday, possibly pastoring, that might just work out beautifully and be God's plan anyway.

But so it has gone. Blessings and challenges and sometimes confusion intermingled at every turn. And sometimes we feel so in the dark and sometimes we are so in awe of the beauty God has given us in this life we share together and with our family.

In November, we moved to an apartment in Spokane which perfectly suits our needs. I was thanking God for this with Rilla tonight at bedtime and so I'm kind of basking in it again. God is GOOD. We needed a place to live; every place we could find was dumpy or out of our price range; this place is perfect. Here we have a bedroom and private bathroom for Keith and me, a large bedroom for all three children, an office space for Keith to study and for me to write, another bathroom, a spacious (enough) living room and kitchen area, a field to look out on, windows that face south, a beautiful sunset, even a playground for the kids and lots of other parks nearby. The library and post office and grocery stores are close. And I am super thankful. Our first month's rent was free and I had high hopes of being able to buy a few new pieces of furniture; but then Keith was out of work again, and has continued to be.

Blessing and challenge, blessing and challenge.

One of the great blessings of living in Spokane is reuniting with old friends as well as being able to see Keith's sisters and their families more often. Yet we are also longing for a new church community. Today again we ventured to a new church; having slept in, we only had a few choices; I narrowed them down because the picture of the pastor's wife at the other place with an 11 am service looked kind of scary. Yep, I'm super spiritual like that. And I have been continuing to wrestle all this year with what church is supposed to look like and how the body of Christ is really meant to function, and I have never struggled with it before, really struggled, but now I wrestle with it every Sunday even as I see clearly my own failings to live out my convictions about church and community the rest of the week.

And so it goes. We have just wrapped up the Advent season with our kids; they have memorized most of the Christmas story as told in The Advent Book because we have been reading it every day; and I am so proud of them and so happy that they love Jesus and also tremendously glad to be done reading that book for a while. (It would be fair to say that some of the struggle from this year is the crankiness and snarkiness of my own heart.)

The great shining blessings of 2012, I think, are our children. I just love them. And I think every parent can relate to how there too the struggles and blessings are all mixed together... but the blessings so far outweigh the struggles that the struggles are absolutely worth it. Keith and I were lamenting a bit tonight that Rilla has made it a habit this month to dawdle at bedtime and has been staying up too late. She keeps herself awake talking to Jesus, singing praise songs to Him, declaring her faith in Him in deep theological truths. And when I tuck her in again she talks about things like how Jesus is going to have a big, big kitchen in heaven and Jesus and us and all the other people who love Him are going to hold hands and dance around together. Really, how can I say anything is hard when my sweet daughter has faith like that? And any grievance with Abraham is much the same, that he sings praise songs to God too loudly sometimes and I'm afraid the noise from drumming so hard on the xylophone will damage his hearing or wake up the neighbor's baby, but his face beams with joy because he adores singing and making music to the Lord. And Ezekiel is the happiest baby now, and scoots around all day and is jumping through milestones like standing! and transferring! and getting down again on his own! and is happy, happy, happy all day. They are blessings, each of them, better blessings than I ever dreamed of.

And we have a warm home and electricity and running water, and we have a plan to go forward but we also know God will be in that and will direct us and change our plan if He wants to, and our children are happy and healthy and they love one another well and are bright and gentle and funny and affectionate. And Keith and I love one another still and more all the time and our biggest grief is not getting to spend enough time together, even though he's out of work still, we just never have enough time together. Money is that great constant stressor, and taking on more debt is so not what we want to be doing, and yet we are grateful that we live in a country of opportunities and that there is a way to borrow money to get through school and someday pay it back.

So God is good. And He has been good all year, even though I have not understood all that has been happening or why. I don't need to. Someday He will come and set everything right, but for now He is here in the midst of it all, and I am glad that He is Immanuel, God with us, in the midst of the pain and hurt and confusion and joy and peace and love. He is here with us, and has been with us, and will be.