When it rains

I’ve written many times about how ferociously blessed I am to live here in Santa Cruz County and to be doing the work I was born and called to do as a pastor. I pinch myself on the regular these days. 

And… I’ll also say…

The last few months have also been challenging.

We’ve lived in four different homes since last August. 

It’s been… 
A lot. 

All the while, certain events have been hammering us. The onslaught started right after my official installation at this church. I came down with a flu-like virus that laid me out for a week and a half. I don’t know if this certain plague hit your home (it seemed to be everywhere at the time), but I had a cough that lasted for three months. And as someone who gets compensated for being with people and speaking in public on at least a weekly basis, this is no bueno. 

I’d get better… The fever would go away (usually, thank God, I was okay enough by the following Sunday to preach and preside somehow)… And then, a week or two later, BAM. There it’d come again. I missed Thanksgiving and Christmas family dinners because I was in bed with a fever. Then Alex got sick with the same thing (of course). And then Rory.

Rory has had the roughest go. She’s missed thirteen days of school this year, mostly due to various illnesses, including pink eye and borderline pneumonia. (In fact, she’s getting over yet another cold now.) I’m beyond grateful to have good insurance at the moment, but wowza, have the pre-deductible urgent care bills been piling up!

We’re super fortunate to have found a home we love here and to actually have pulled off buying it in this merciless housing market - all contingent - I might add - on the sale of our home in Loyalton, which I thought would be impossible, but we sold it in a day.

In that way, we lucked out. But in all honesty, I’ve been grieving not having our little place in Loyalton. When we first moved here, having it was like a security blanket. If this Santa Cruz County thing blew up, for whatever reason, we could tuck our tail between our legs and go right back to life as we knew it. But when we signed those closing papers, it became starkly apparent that there was no going back. Onward was the only direction. 

Moving was awful. We had one of those scenarios where the moving truck didn’t show up, so Alex had mere hours to find a plan-b (thanks to my mother-in-law, who came in clutch with just that plan) so that the dominoes of moving all fell into place. I remained here in Aptos with Rory, who was - of course - sick (again), so Alex handled moving out of our place in Loyalton with the help of her folks and some friends. And now, there are various issues with the new house that we’ve been dealing with (if you’ve ever had septic and plumbing issues, my heart goes out to you). 

Tax season has been brutal (of course, April 15th came around when we had a ton of money going out for the new-house issues). Then, our car had issues, and that was almost a whole paycheck out the window. 

Two weeks ago, I was working at the kitchen table (aka my home office) when I looked over to see Gilmore, our pet rabbit, dead. I picked Rory up from school that day and told her the news in the parking lot. She melted in a pool of tears and was beyond devastated. (Hell, we’ve all been devastated. It’s so weird not having that fluffy little guy around.) 

Anyhow, I don’t mean to bemoan my woes too much. You probably have the same issues or worse. Really, we’re okay. I’m not going for sympathy here (please, no sympathy comments!). No one here is fatally sick. We’re not undergoing bombing raids or famine, and no natural disasters are currently sweeping through our area. We have some money in the bank and live in a beautiful home in one of the most phenomenal locales I can think of. I’m a full-time pastor at a wonderful little church. I have enough spare time to sit and write this to you. Alex is doing meaningful work and is on her way to being a published author (this winter!). Rory loves her school and has made several friends. There’s so much more for her to do here than there was in Loyalton, and she’s growing into such an amazing human in so many complex ways. My complaints are steeped in privilege, I know… 

But do you sometimes get the feeling that cosmic forces are conspiring against you when all nine levels of hell break loose simultaneously?

I should know better! I have a fancy theology degree and should know that God does not play that game! That the God revealed in Christ Jesus is not a scorekeeping puppeteer god. But my mind can’t help but go there sometimes. 

I find myself saying things to myself like… “Is this a sign? Is God trying to tell us that we shouldn’t have moved here?

There I go again… Crafting an image of a sign-giving god who toys with me, zaps me when I go astray, and rewards me when I’m on the right track. 

Ugh… This is not the God that I believe in with my conscious mind. Why is it so often the god that I go to when times are rough, and I’m in my lizard-brained fear? It’s brutal, I tell you! 

I have to remind myself… No… 

The God that Jesus reveals is not one we can gamify. God does not hold the right answer behind God’s back and wait for us to choose the correct hand. 

In Lutheran theology, there’s this amazing insight called the ‘Doctrine of the Concurrence.’¹ It’s pretty complex, and I won’t bore you with endless gobbledygook here. But the gist of this doctrine is that God is not a puppet master in the sky pulling the strings. God does not keep score on our deeds done/undone. God does not punish us when we stray (nor does God reward us when we do good things). God has created us to have agency in this life (we won’t go so far as to say “free will,” but that’s for another blog entry). And whatever direction we go… No matter which way we choose… God moves along with us (in other words, God “concurs”), picking up our broken pieces and mending what is torn. Working all of it - good and bad - into the rich tapestry of our life. And shaping it towards intimacy with Life. 

I also have to remember that God, the Father/Mother to whom Jesus prayed, is the God of the Hebrew Bible. With this God, we sometimes have to take off our gloves to wrestle a blessing out of Him. 

But Jacob stayed behind by himself, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he couldn’t get the best of Jacob as they wrestled, he deliberately threw Jacob’s hip out of joint.

The man said, “Let me go; it’s daybreak.”

Jacob said, “I’m not letting you go ’til you bless me.”

-Genesis 32:25-26 (The Message Translation)

Another thing I need to keep in mind is the insight that poet and theologian Parker Palmer articulates as “keeping the tension.” He says this…

“Hope is holding a creative tension between what is and what could and should be, each day doing something to narrow the distance between the two.”

-Parker Palmer

Some of the best stuff is found in the tension of life. When things get challenging and our footing is not as sure as it was before. Our life is growing and we are being sprouted along with it. Ready or not. Growth is not a game of comfort and complacency. Growth involves growing pains, awkward moments, and large doses of uncertainty. 

My old life in Loyalton will forever remain part of my tapestry, but it is part of the tapestry that sits behind where the needle is working now. It was a good, sweet, and simple (albeit confusing in a liminal way) season where we made several life-long friendships. Living there worked well when I was in seminary (98% of it being online), and the pandemic was in full force. But now, God has moved along the loom of life with us into this next season. God was with us when we signed that closing contract and lit that bridge back to Loyalton aflame. God was with us when we were wondering what the hell we were doing, making such a drastic change in our lives with almost zero time to discuss or plan (or budget!) just how it would play out. She just massaged our feet and breathed wisdom into our hearts while we took one swift step after the next headlong into our next chapter. A chapter our hearts were longing for. 

When I look around, I can see it. This is the life we’ve been wanting and praying for, even though we didn’t know what it actually looked like. And though there are challenges, just like in any chapter of life (yes, there were plenty of challenges in Loyalton that my mind has smoothed over already), God is moving… Here. And if I have to wrestle a blessing out of God, well… So be it. I need God to get me to trust. To wrestle the skepticism and fear away. To turn my gaze HERE, not THERE.

To tell me - promise me - that God concurs. 

Amen. 

Grace + Godspeed,
Jonas

1. http://storage.cloversites.com/outpostreformedministries/documents/Doctrine%20of%20Concurrence.pdf