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Learning to Lament Part Two: Our Changing Relationship with Pain.

Sorry for the long delay in the follow up to the previous post: I've had this more or less mapped out and written for nearly two months, but had a hard time competing it in a way that I feel comfortable sharing. I realized pretty quickly that this topic needs a lot more attention than a few simple blog posts can explore.  Also, I have become keenly aware that my life up to this point has been fairly pain free--I don't suffer from any conditions that require regular medication, my life has not been affected by major tragedy, so it feels a bit superficial for me to take on such a task based mostly on theoretical knowledge, but here we are.  The following is a combination of what was supposed to be two independent posts. While I feel like I left out a lot of what I wanted to say about this subject, I feel like I need to put the topic to rest for now, though I hope to be able to return to it some day. Pain is ubiquitous.  We generally avoid it as much as possible, but it i
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Learning to Lament: A Lenten exploration of pain, sadness, discomfort and loss. Part 1

Hello all, this blog is meant to be about the journey we are taking through life and ministry together.  However many journeys are inward and only reflect spiritual, emotional or intellectual movement.  Over the next 40 or so days leading up to Easter, I am going to attempt a series of posts that reflects such a journey.  I apologize in advance for its sprawling, rambling nature.  It is hard as a writer to post ideas when you know that they are not your ideas in their final form, but in order to be true to the process, thats what I feel is required.  Hopefully you can identify with it anyways and find something helpful. Also, its about death, which is uncomfortable.  So if you don't read past the next two sentences, I won't be offended. SPOILER ALERT: You are going to die. The people you love are going to die too. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but its going to happen.  Also, if you are just now realizing this, you likely have bigger problems than just mo
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Kali and I had been on a wild journey of prayer, discernment and discovery which led us to do some things that parents of four young children don't normally consider.  Yet there we were, shivering on the windblown shores of Fife, standing on the Ancient ruins of St. Andrew’s Cathedral, seriously considering uprooting our family and moving to Scotland.  We knew it was crazy, but the more we prayed the more obvious it was to us that we needed to go. The ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral Even before we were married, Kali and I sensed that our pursuit of God’s Kingdom would take us on a journey down some lesser traveled roads.  Even after a particularly  crazy season that saw the completion of two Master’s degrees, a cross country move, one failed pastorate, 3 new business ventures and the births of four children in four years, we had emerged to the realization that though we were thankful to have survived, we were still being called to a path that would take us far away.  
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Hello all!  Thank you for taking the time to read our story. Its hard to say if this is the start of a new journey, or just the next step on a path that we have been on for quite some time, but after several months of searching, praying, listening, learning, exploring and dreaming together, Kali and I have responded to something that we believe is both a divine calling and a really great opportunity for our family to serve with an international church planting organization called Communitas International in Edinburgh, Scotland. While this is in many ways a dream come true for us, and a fulfillment of a desire we have shared since our marriage to be part of a global Church movement,  it is certainly not a conclusion that has come easily to us, or without a lot of accompanying sadness.  The hardest part of this process by far (and its not even close) has been the thought of pulling our family away from an abundantly safe, stable and loving environment and into an unfamiliar city 7 t
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