Saturday, September 22, 2007

Blessed Beyond Belief

I’m happy to say that my cold is finally over. I feel so much better than I did last weekend. I literally spent all Saturday afternoon on the couch, except to get up to take the dog for a walk and make myself something to eat. On Sunday I skipped church since I still felt lousy and stayed in my pajamas until 11. About 12:30, Gregg called to say that his parents had just pulled off the highway and were meeting him in the church parking lot. He said they’d be at the house within 20 minutes and asked me to walk Tess before they got there so she wouldn’t get excited and pee everywhere.

Gregg’s parents took us to Rosalie’s, which has awesome Italian food, and thankfully I could actually taste my lunch! On the way back, we passed by Shatzer’s Fruit Market where Gregg & I bought a gallon of yummy Apple Cider and his parents got some apples and peaches. We said our good-byes there before they got back onto the highway and we headed off to Walmart to do our grocery shopping.

Wednesday was my last day at The Mental Health Center. I expected to feel a huge sense of relief when I left around 4, knowing that I wouldn’t have to ever come back, but instead I felt like I had unfinished business there. Did I say everything I needed to? Did I tie up all the loose ends? Did I leave the new person with enough idea of what he’s going to be doing? Why can I never make a clean break?

I was supposed to start my new job at Family Care Services on Thursday, but they need me to have a physical first and I couldn’t get in to see the doctor until Tuesday morning. So I’ve had a much needed few days off which has been really nice. I got laundry done (even folded!), cleaned the house and had time to make a decent supper for my husband before he came home from work. As a result of getting dinner on the table before six, we were able to go out afterwards on Thursday night and take a walk around downtown. We stopped at the Big Oak Café and I ordered that Chai Latte I’d been craving. It was truly “autumn in a cup”.

It was nice enough to sit out on their patio so we did and got around to talking about Covenant. My friend Monica from Florida wrote me an email the other day and said that CPC would be undergoing a 10-day revival with Life Action Ministries. It’s something the church can certainly benefit from after all the upheaval they went through at the end of ‘06/beginning of ’07. I imagine it’s still pretty unstable.

Talking about Covenant and us leaving made me wistful for our home back in Palm Bay. I still miss our house down there and the people we became close with. Sometimes I wish I could sail through life and not become so attached to people and places when I go from one phase to the next. See what I mean about never being able to make a clean break? I feel like I’ve left pieces of myself all over the East Coast!

I know that some people are meant to be in your life for either a reason, a season or a lifetime and that God doesn’t see it as little individual chapters or snippets but the whole story with each piece weaving the tapestry of your life. But it’s hard when all you see are the snippets and feel the pain of losing things when you move on. When we moved here to Pennsylvania, I felt like I had undergone so much change in a short period of time and left so much behind that I didn’t know who I was anymore. I still feel like that occasionally, but significantly less since we’ve been here for five months now and have settled into our own place. Things are a lot more stable, for which I am very grateful.

It’s helped too, that we’ve gotten to know people here that we want to become closer with. Gregg started attending a men’s Bible study every week with two guys from church to get deeper into God’s word, and we joined a small group that starts on October 2. Gregg and I are going to start a devotional of our own too. I’ve been feeling this desire to have deeper intimacy spiritually with my husband so I’m really glad we’ll be doing this. We'll be reading a book called Searching for God Knows What.

I was also invited to a ministry staff wives’ get together which was held last night at the senior pastor's home. It was great to get to know these amazing, godly women “behind the men” a little bit better. Women who know what it's like to experience a lot of change because their husbands answered the call to ministry. We're all in various stages of life, the oldest having just celebrated her 55th wedding anniversary with grown grandchildren and the youngest (me) looking forward to her fifth and starting a family.

We shared with each other pictures of our families, how we met our spouses and what we like to do in our spare time. I introduced the ladies to the wonderful world of blogging, since that's my favorite thing to do when I actually have spare time during the week. It was the natural progression of my extensive journaling throughout the years since I attended middle school. I still have all those old notebooks I wrote in from back then! Other women shared their scrapbooks and quilting and pottery as expressions of their creativity when they get alone time, and we enjoyed a delicious pumpkin-y pecan dish & coffee for dessert.

Angela, the wife of the junior high pastor, shared her vision for the get-together saying that she intended it to be a regular occurance where we could support each other and pray. She expressed that sometimes being the wife of a minister could be a lonely one and she would love for our group to be a safe place to share our feelings and concerns with women who are in a similiar boat. I felt like God right there and then had answered my prayer for female connection and friendship. This is what I wanted! Not just another thing to go to where you share a little piece of yourself and then everyone goes their separate ways, and hardly ever speaks to one another again. I left yesterday evening feeling incredibly blessed.

It is wonderful to know that God is meeting my needs for friendship here. He knows how hard it was to move from one place to another, but that we did it out of obedience to Him and He will take care of us.

2 comments:

erin said...

Marisa, you're making me crave all things fall!! :) I feel like just skipping out on work and going home and baking up some pumpkin pie, soup and lighting some spiced candles and sitting with a pumpkin spice latte. Mmmm....:)

I am SO glad for you that you found a new and better job. I pray that this new job will be a better match for you and that you will not be so burnt out and overworked.

And what a blessing to connect with some women and what an answer to prayer. God is so good, isn't He?? I will pray that you continue to connect with these ladies and that they will help fulfill your need for female friendship. I know how hard it can be to find that when you're in a new town.

And I'm so glad you're back!! :)

Love,
Erin

RecoveringCoffeeholic said...

Got to love how God is just so faithful!