Springtime Changes

It has certainly been awhile, but finally it is time to update this blog with the new changes in my life; Beth's and my life. It has been a very busy spring with lots of craziness, but alas, life keeps tickin' and we keep rollin' and Jesus just keeps on leading us. It is all very exciting....

I think the last time I 'updated' it was just about Christmas time. Christmas time... wow. It was in early January that I approached our interim pastor at church to be frank and honest about some feelings I was having. Beth and I had been really feeling a moving in our hearts that was yearning for a deep, authentic community. The kind of community where you share life with one another-you know, baby-sit kids, cook for one another and eat together, watch dogs, or share shopping bills. The kind of community where you know each other so well that you hurt together and cry together, share burdens. Where you pray for one another and hold each other to a higher standard of living. Beth and I were longing in January to be known and accepted, simply for who we were, no expectations, no guilt. The problem is that community comes around only once in a great while. We have experienced it in two places: Oshkosh, Wisconsin and Colorado Springs, Colorado.

So there we were, really feeling this deep stirring for this community thing, but being and working and living in a place where we didn't feel known, didn't feel accepted except for what we were doing or how we performed, and longing for something deeper. So I talked with our pastor to communicate this and let him know upfront what I was feeling-especially knowing that staff evaluations were coming up... and... the church was beginning a study to see what options existed for keeping current staff in relationship to their ever decreasing budget.

February rolled around and again I talked with our interim-I was going to join Beth for a vacation trip to Wisconsin, and had the opportunity to apply for a couple of residence life jobs at UW schools nearby Oshkosh. I told the pastor about this, and he let me know that he was pretty sure a reduction in staff was iminent and that I should for sure go ahead and see what opportunities might be available. So the middle of February, Beth and I headed to the homeland of Wisconsin.Interviews went well. Well one did, in Stevens Point. They offered a second interview so I flew back out, two weeks later in March. This interview went extremely well, and a week later they offered the job.

I turned it down.

I don't know. It wasn't like I felt that God was telling us what to do, I prayed a lot, but didn't feel a leading in any direction. Except that Beth and I had had this longing for community. Now I have some very best friends in Seattle, about an hour from Anacortes where we were living, but you know how often I saw each of them? About once a year. Stevens Point is about an hour from Oshkosh. And our desire is to share life with our friends and our family. An hour just wasn't close enough, so call me crazy, but no job for Greg-just the hope of finding some purpose in life and a home in Oshkosh.

Well, time went by, and life moved on. March 15 was a big day. The church council was confronted with the options of what to do to balance staffing and budgeting. And here was the decision-although not without much disagreement that is lasting even to today. Matt and I, the two full-time associate pastors were given the 'option' of keeping our positions but on a part-time basis (15 hours a week, $20 an hour) or taking a severance package and terminating employment effective May 1st. I wasn't surprised by the decision or the outcome, but the quickness of the timing was very shocking to me. It didn't take Beth and I long to come to our decision about what to do. It was kinda the final straw that helped make the decision for us, so starting March 22 we began making plans for a re-directed future.

Only one thing remained as a part of our job in Anacortes, and that was our church's mission trip to Nicaragua. We were so excited to join the team that was going, so we couldn't leave the church without finishing with this trip. And it was good. Two weeks of living in a resort, a mountain village without a bathroom, speaking spanish solamente and eating a TON of rice and beans. Not to mention sharing some really good times with some dear friends from our church. Enjoy some pics:

When we got home from Nicaragua we didn't have much time left in A-town. We found some renters for our basement apartment at the Cranes' house and that meant we could leave Washington around May 15 and save quite a bit of money in rent. So we did. But we had one trip to take care of first-the Oregon coast was a destination we had long been hoping to see, and since we only had about two weeks before we moved, we left the very next day after coming home from Nicaragua. What an amazing and beautiful trip-and we needed it for the processing of all that had happened to us over the past two or three months....



And so one week after getting home from Oregon, we packed up all our crap and moved eastward to Colorado. And here we are. We're living here (in my parent's basement) for the summer and we'll be working at Cross Bearing Adventures. (This is our Colorado community and we love our family here) And then in August we'll be heading to Wisconsin to find out what our next chapter is-all we know for sure right now is that we'll be living in community; sharing life and relationships with friends and family. Baby-sitting, watching dogs, crying over hurts, praying for one another, cooking and eating-relationships and suffering... and laughing and enjoying life together. Yup, that is where we are headed. And it is a great thing.