Minneapolis

Last night our friends hosted a gathering at Wabun Park near our home in Minneapolis.  It was absolutely humbling and deeply joyful to see forty or so people who have meant so much to us for so many years in one place together to wish us well.  I can’t begin the recount the stories and the kindness of these beautiful people.  All I can say is thank you.

In 2003, Carrie and I returned to Minneapolis after four years in Iowa.  We were on the brink of divorce that year, and when God opened the door for us to come to Minneapolis, it was a gift beyond recognition.  We needed the support of the community of those who loved us, and we found it in immeasurable abundance.

There was a night that July, I remember driving on 35W in the rain, when I first heard Norah Jones sing on the radio.  Tears rolled down my face then as they do now, my heart aching for my beautiful wife.  I didn’t know then if our marriage would survive, and with much trepidation, we settled in Minneapolis even though it meant a long commute for me.  The only joy I knew that year was that of our precious little kids, and the thought of an hour and a half each day commuting was a calculated risk, forgoing the time with them to gamble on the prospect that the community of those we loved would heal our family by the grace of God.  Such was the opportunity before me.  So we settled at 4645 33^rd Ave and rejoined Immanuel Baptist Church.  The friends we knew and loved poured themselves into our family.  New friends came and enriched our lives in unbelievably wonderful ways.  For eleven years, we lived among saints, among noble, generous people.

Within six weeks of moving into our home, Carrie was diagnosed with cancer.  The goodness of Providence was never more real to us than in the love and support of the people we had returned to.  And this home, and this place, and these beautifully kind people helped us to heal.  They are our family in every sense of the kingdom meaning.  Every face I looked upon last night at Wabun Park reminded me how much God loves us.  It is sad to say good-bye - but our family is eternal, we can never truly say good-bye.  We are linked to these people through shared immortality.  They shine in glory now, as they ever will, and in that great final unending Day, we will see them again with joy, and love, and inexpressible gratitude.

The Emigrants

July 18, 2014

The movers just left.  Most of our belongings are on their way to Kenya and in one week we will arrive in a foreign place far from here.  I thought I would be a little more sad to see our house empty, but it is a different feeling than I expected.  We are together again, and perhaps the joy of being together is off-setting the sadness of leaving a place so special.  Eleven years is a significant chapter in life, especially when those eleven years see your children grow from six to seventeen.  This home and this neighborhood, this place and this city have been good to us.  Even the trees are familiar to me here, personal friends in some sense.

And now we move across the ocean for some period of time, to a place unfamiliar and vastly different.  Yet we are always immediately in the presence of God, Who is everywhere and always there.  We are always and everywhere in the presence of the mysterious, unfathomable, yet deeply personal One in whose care we are entrusted.  I was reminded of this again yesterday.  Standing waiting to board in Houston, reading Kierkegaard on the Kindle app on my phone:

“But let us understand one another; the journey of which we speak is not long… it is only a single step, and you, too, have emigrated, for the Eternal lies much nearer to you than any foreign country to the emigrant, and yet when you are there the change is infinitely greater.  So then, go with God to God, continually take that one step more, that single step that even you, who cannot move a limb, are still able to take; that single step, that even the prisoner, who has lost his freedom, even the one in chains, whose feet are not free, is still able to take: and you are committed to the Good.  Nobody, not even the greatest that has ever lived, can do more than you.”

Step into the Eternal today.  Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.