The Week Behind and the Week Ahead

The adventures of living in Boston, of being a family of three, and of life in campus ministry (an alternative lifestyle to our dominant culture for sure) continue!

Over the past week we’ve been in a mild (to extreme) state of panic regarding our housing situation. Turns out looking for housing with a 9 month old child is a lot more challenging than we anticipated. Add to that an inflated and competitive rental market and we’ve come up empty so far.

Thank the Lord for understanding landlords. They’ve modeled grace to us and given us more time to sort it all out.

In the meanwhile we head in to two weeks of “vacation”. I use quotes because while this trip will be a break from the norm, a break from the heat, and will involve some sweet time with family, it will also include fundraising, recruiting, spring break reconnaissance, and speaking.

And it will involve traveling back and forth across the country separately. I just said goodbye to the girls as I am about to get on a plane and fly to Portland for this. I am looking forward to spending time with the great Ryan McRae and hopefully being inspired and challenged. But, knowing that Amy gets on another plane tomorrow, just her and Marina, and I can’t be there to help them…well, that’s less exciting to me.

I am confident the next two weeks will be great, and I feel much more ready to enter into it knowing some of our housing questions are behind us.

Sometimes I lament the instability that being a missionary brings on my family, but one thing I know for certain: it is never a boring ride!

Fathers/Daughters (Father’s Day, Part II)

I have been a father for over 9 months now and I love it. There are so many things to say about parenthood and how it is shaping me, challenging me, growing me. It’s a long list, and I have more to say about it than I would have ever imagined.

So, let me keep this post short and sweet by sharing this: here’s the thing I love the most about being Marina’s dad. I love that I am dad (read: male, father) and that she is daughter (read: a girl).

For some reason I have had the sense that part of my destiny, to sound dramatic, has always been to be a father to a girl. Not that I don’t want a boy, or have never imagined parenting a son, but somehow I always knew there would be a girl, and I am so ecstatic this girl is Marina.

Why did I think this to be my destiny? I’m not sure. Maybe it was having two sisters. Maybe it was having several good friends who were girls. Maybe it’s my experience shepherding young women as a campus minister.

It’s just a sense I’ve had.

There’s something precious and important about the ways father’s treat their daughters. I’ve seen it in my family, and I’ve seen it in the lives of friends, and in the students I work with. A father makes a tremendous impact on his daughter’s life for good and for bad.

Amy is an amazing mother and I marvel at her work and way with Marina each and every day. And yet, there are some things that Marina needs from me that Amy can’t give her (and, of course, the opposite is also true).

Time will tell if I will be a good father or not. I hope and pray and strive to be a good dad.

What I do know is this: I believe I was meant to do this…not just to be a dad, but to be a father to a daughter. And I love it, I relish this challenge, and it’s all a bit frightening, but I am also hopeful and excited about where this journey will lead!

Adventure, Love, Suffering (RePost)

From Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost (The Faith of Leap)

“To love is to suffer…and that’s probably why we generally don’t do it well. Unwillingness to venture, plus a desire to be safe, holds us back from love. To be sure, most of us do have a vision of what makes a good life, and as believers we know that it involves growing in the love of God. What we seem to lack, however, is the will to attain to this good life of love. Most of us prefer to skip over the pain and the discipline, to find some easy, off-the-shelf ways to sainthood. Christian self-help spiritualities are a classic dodge of the real issues and manifestly do not produce maturity. We do well to be reminded of the cost of shortcuts in Carl Jung’s penetrating statement, ‘Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.'”