It's New Years Eve, and I'm standing in a church basement, as music hangs in the air and old memories come to the surface. Here was the contradance practice before the Pemberly Promenade, when my feet, previously accustomed to marching, tried their best to approximate a Virginia Reel. There, where the piano used to sit, four figures had practiced parts for a Christmas Eve quartet performance of The First Noel, one of them warring with a tendency to sing flat. Over there, a gameboard had been laid out, and my amateur performance had resulted in a rapid elimination from the battlefields of A. D. 1066. Now, singing along with others at a hymn sing, I hover in the liminal space between the past and the present. I close my eyes and find myself an insecure high-schooler in a choir rehearsal. I open them and find myself a middle-aged father and pastor. The space is the same. The smells are the same. The sounds are the same. But it's been twenty years.
In my rear view mirror dreams, I see myself staring back as a kid, asking whether I believe in all those songs I sang the way I did. He says, "Now you've got a wife and kids, and the scars that life alone can give. Do you still honestly believe that we were meant to live?" --Jon Foreman, "Eulogy"
A lot can happen in twenty years. I've experienced six moves, seven years of higher education, twelve years of teaching. I've served eight years in ministry, four of them ordained. I've been married for fifteen years, and a father for twelve. And, looking at both ends of those two decades, the point I now find myself at may seem quite predictable and natural. Twenty years ago I was considering a family friend's advice that I should consider ministry; today I serve in bi-vocational ministry. Twenty years ago, I was a member at a small presbyterian church in a rural context; today I pastor a small presbyterian church in a rural context. Twenty years ago, I was taking choir at a small classical Christian school; today I teach at a small classical Christian school, and lead the singing in our morning assemblies. Twenty years ago I had recently wrapped up a year of competition in speech and debate; today public speaking is a regular part of my vocation, and I teach Rhetoric among my other classes.
Despite this apparent predictability, however, the course I've taken through life felt anything but predictable as I lived it. Neither teaching nor ministry factored into my life goals twenty years ago, and I certainly did not expect to be, at this point, a long-term resident of coastal Alabama. Rather than a straight shot, the similarity between my launch point and my current trajectory feels much more like looping around, like coming full circle. In many ways, I am more similar to my high school self now than I have been at any point in the past twenty years, as my perspectives, priorities, and values have shifted, adjusted, and shifted again, converging back to where they began, returning me to myself.
It's like coming home.
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The hymn sing ends. The crowd disperses. I return, once more, to the present, to marriage, to fatherhood, to ministry, to all the blessings and responsibilities of this life that I've been given. I step outside into the cold, familiar Pennsylvania air. It's going to be a good year.
This is your life. Are you who you want to be? This is your life. Are you who you want to be? This is your life. Is it everything you dreamed that it would be, when the world was younger, and you had everything to lose? --Switchfoot
The more things change, the more they stay the same
We are so very blessed that you chose to become part of our family too!!!