The Trek

It's not exactly the 40 year route from Egypt to Canaan, but clearly they could have chosen an easier, more direct path. FBC is leaving for his second year of college today and I'm clearly up at an unreasonable hour unable to sleep. Sort of like last year as he was leaving for his first year of college.

This year though, he travels by Penske Truck with his own bedroom furniture. His pal W. from Austin will make this trek with him and they have made the truck their own: bobble head Jesus is on the dashboard and a Rock Me Sexy Jesus air freshener - courtesy of my colleague M. - has made the cabin smell oh so sweet. There are supplies of cookies (homemade and Milano), Swedish Fish, chips, and a cooler filled with Dr. Pepper and oj.

They'll leave here to go towards Austin by way of New Jersey to pick up a friend's furniture, then on to Ohio to pick up another friend's furniture, and then to Memphis, Texarkana, and finally "home." FBC called Austin "home" yesterday -- so excited to return to the land of Ruby's Bar-B-Q and the Alamo Cinema & Draft House. I may as well have my own chapter of Necessary Losses -- a book our "Young Clergy" group read together, long before I was married much less somebody's mother.

These little deaths are tough emotionally, but we have to have them. HH and I are so grateful that our children are getting to go exactly where they want to go to college. But TBC looks a bit forlorn at the thought of being an only child and we won't even be able to go into FBC's bedroom and sit on his bed taking in the aura that is FBC. His room will have no furniture until we replace his Pine Factory bed with something comfier for guests.

I was talking with M. - the purveyor of RMSJ rubber bracelets to go with the air freshener -- yesterday about the discernment process as our congregation ponders -- not even "becoming a new church" but simply entering into a time of discernment about becoming a new church. It's scary.

In the hopes of quickly figuring out where we are supposed to go as a congregation, we've often tried to choose the easy way. Maybe God would make it very clear with little effort on our part. Sadly (but not surprisingly) it's usually not easy discerning God's will. It takes time and the most traumatic part is that Something Is Going To Die along the way. We know this on some level. Scares the daylights out of most people.

It's so easy to go along our merry way, continuing to do what we usually do. Maybe we know it's unsatisfying. It might even eat at us a little - how a certain event or program feels more like a rote exercise than a transforming experience. We like our comfort zones.

We watch ourselves go in circles. We go through rough patches and nobody addresses the deeper meaning.

Any congregation seeking to follow Jesus in a new way faces a difficult - and yet exciting - journey. And the truth is that Something Is Going To Die. Maybe it's a long-standing Bible study that has met for years but somehow suffocates the congregation. Maybe it's the leadership of certain people or a practice "we do every year." Maybe it's the pastor. It's all part of the trek.

So in about 30 minutes, this man-child I love will set out with his friend to go north before heading south. It doesn't make any sense to me, but it makes perfect sense to him. Part of me dies realizing that he is about to create a home with four others that will not be my home with him.

Living in a dorm was a taste of that. Living in an apartment takes his independence to a new level. But this is a necessary loss so that he can become the person God created him to be. The church is like this too - if only we'll let go.