Terribly Alone and Forgotten, Part Two

This past weekend our Deep South home was Comfort Suites for our Northern pals, Pastor Phil and Deb E, here for a Pastoral Leadership Institute presentation at our church.

Reunited, we did it all-- dining out, partying in, games, walks, catnaps, and great chats. Phil tandem biked with My Beloved Hubby. Biking between rain showers, the back rider, Pastor, got skunk-striped muddy from the back wheel spray. Oh, how the two guys wheeled in joy for 7.2 miles around our Deep South village Saturday.

Sunday morning our family savored again the melodic cadences of our former preacher. His words rightly pricked the conviction of our fallen human condition, and then lavishly poured amazing, good news grace over we the audience. His current message echoed messages that his and our former church, the “best church for us in the whole universe” heeded and applied to the hurting community around them.

Hurting is what we were as we arrived in that church's community after a job layoff seven years ago. MBH was terribly alone and forgotten in Pennsylvania, after he was ejected from a salaried position he did well.

Relocating westward, we were a gloom and doom mess. No, we didn’t travel by train, nor on elephant backs, but via a two-car caravan. We also had to transport two female cats.  Our teary farewell worsened as one feline bit my PA friend while she fed it a useless sedative. MBH drove the sedan with the cats caterwauling the entire trip.

Force to relocate again in 2008 we knew what we had to do. We waved our goodbyes to, one, the best church for us in the whole universe and, two, both cats that would not endure a daylong journey to the Deep South.

Here we remain three years later, savoring echoes of what we can never return to. Phil and Deb have moved onto PLI endeavors. Our former church has taken a year to adjust and redirect toward a new pastor and newer vision.

For me it has taken three years to adjust, to redirect. I so miss what was. I do.

But I now willingly wave aside nostalgia to embrace what God this day offers my family in this place, our community, with the best church in the whole universe for us . . . right now.

Where you are now is where God is speaking . . . to you.

Let His words prick you to turn to Him, and be blown away by the amazing gifts He offers you this day, where you are.

Like the gift God recently offered us, scrunched in a carrier next to an auto-feeder on a local Red Cross office porch.