Summer 2011

As I sit here much later at night than I should, I find that I am annoyed at myself for not being a more prolific and frequent poster. I have too much in my head now and too much to say for one night. I know that it’s one of the consequences of being an internal processor. Most of the time it requires too much energy for me to process things out loud or written down. But then after a few months of the silent, internal brooding, voila…it all comes out. And sometimes it all comes out on this lovely little blog. I can see where it takes either extreme discipline or a need to process things via journaling to write daily. I don’t have either, I suppose. At least not in regard to this. However, I do like the chronicling of our lives in some way, albeit infrequent as it is. And I suppose in a lot of ways, that’s what this little place in cyberspace has become for me: A place to get all the stuff in my head out and to record some of the big things that happen in our life. That’s why I will occasionally defy the commonsense of proper blog posting by back-dating my posts. I am anal enough to want them in their proper order even if I don’t get around to writing about something until months after it happened. I don’t even care if that post doesn’t take top billing as long as it’s in its proper chronological place. Weird, I know.


Tonight I am in Arlington at my parents and as I said earlier, up much later than I should be due to the fact that I went to a late movie with my mom and drank a large diet Dr. Pepper. I don’t regret it (it was really good and I had to have it with the popcorn), but now I’m all jittery and hyper-vigilant. This week is actually the beginning of our big summer adventure. We just spent the last month preparing to move away for the whole summer and it’s finally here. And since I haven’t posted in such a long time, I haven’t even made mention here of what that summer adventure is.

We are spending a large portion of the summer in Nashville. And now here's the brief back story of how this came about. Over the past few years, Ross has been traveling to Nashville to song-write and meet other people in the song-writing/publishing industry. He has received lots of favor through his time there and continues to hope that song-writing will keep growing until it takes up a larger piece of the income-pie than it does now. I fully support and hope for that too and it turns out our church does too. It so happens that is the year for Ross’ sabbatical from our church. Every seventh year, our elders take a 3 month paid sabbatical from ministry at the church. We believe it’s a way to love our leaders and help them love leading us. And since we started the church in 1998, it’s time for his second sabattical. Back in December, the other elders (who are also our very good friends) suggested that Ross take this summer and move to Nashville to have more concentrated time song-writing. At first it seemed impossible, but as we began to mull it over and talk about it, we thought, “why not?” I was up for an adventure and since I married a very high-change, visionary man, that’s a good thing. Fairly soon after we decided to go for it, the pieces fell into place for us to rent from/house-sit for another singer songwriter, Andrew Osenga. We didn’t know him at the time, but were introduced by our friend, Britt. It happened early on in our decision making process and confirmed to us that we could do this. And, since Com Church is not Ross’ full time job, we knew we’d need to raise the money to live there all summer and take care of our bills back home. God has provided for us in so many ways, and so here we are, at the beginning of what the kids keep calling our big summer adventure. If officially started Monday, May 16 and will probably end around August 12. In that time we will be in Arlington (1 ½ weeks) , Austin (3 days), Nashville (8 weeks), West Virginia (5 days), Myrtle Beach (6 days), and Breckenridge, CO (3 weeks.) That’s quite the itinerary.

The past month has been a whirlwind as I prepared our house for the sweet people who are taking care of it and  tried to figure out how to pack for this kind of thing.  I am used to packing. It’s as natural to my life as anything else, but I’ve never packed for something like this. I’ve packed for 3 week trips, overseas trips, camps, cold weather trips, beach trips, trips to be with family, trips with Ross for gigs, but this has been a very challenging one for me. What you need for a whole summer is different than what you need for a couple of weeks, yet it’s not like we’re permanently moving there. And we’ll be in so many different climates and locations. I made a packing list over the course of a few months and every time I would think of something, I’d run and add it to the list. Last week was very hectic as I packed and packed, but on Monday as we loaded, I felt exhilarated that all the packing was over and we were on our way. We drove to Arlington and then Ross drove by himself (with all our stuff) to Nashville on Tuesday. After staying here with my parents for a week (and going to Austin), me and the kids fly to meet him on Monday.

I feel excited and hopeful in so many ways. I really think that this summer will be a summer that grows and changes all of us. I feel hopeful for Ross’ career as a song-writer. I feel hopeful for the things God wants to do in me as a result of being away from my own house and all my stuff. I feel hopeful for what he wants to do in the kids as they get more concentrated time with each other and with us. I just feel really, really hopeful which is such a great feeling.

The other night at com group, Jen Kilzer had a really great blessing she spoke over us. Ross had told our group that he wanted God to give him a word that would describe and somewhat “rest over” our summer. She said that the word “refresh” kept coming to her mind for us. Both in terms of feeling refreshed by being away, but in the computer use of the word, like when you hit the refresh button on your screen. Things look the same and yet they don’t. She said it’s like we are going to come back and won’t do things the way we’ve done them before. God will do a new thing in us. I feel the same way. Refresh means to revive, to fill up again or replenish, to renew by stimulation, to give new freshness or brightness to, and to restore. I receive all those things for our family.

Furthermore, as part of this summer, I want to chronicle our adventures, our day to day, and Ross’ engagements in a more consistent manner than I usually do. It’s one of my top priorities. And along with that, I plan to have the kids chronicle their versions of this summer too. So, this blog will probably get a lot more attention from me than it usually does.

So, there it is in a rather large nutshell. And now I'm worn out.