I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
Sometimes we all feel like this, but youth pastors can especially get hit with this. This is kind of related to what I was saying that Pastor Steve, at Mary’s church, was preaching on. Although, this has more to do with God dropping you little notes that you are heading in the right direction. I remember a few times, when after teaching the 7&8th grade class in Sunday school, or when I just didn’t feel that connected to the Senior High Youth group, asking myself if I was cut out for working in youth ministry. Then a kid or one of the parents would say something, like the note that this youth pastor got from one of his kids, and I would realize that I was on the right track. The momentary frustrations are worth it.
Okay, so some might not agree with my rather simplistic approach to supporting US involvement in Iraq, but I view it the same way as involvement in Kosovo and others. The simplistic analogy I make is what would you do if you had a neighbor that was obviously beating their spouse? Do you report them to the police and risk getting involved? The beaten spouse might, usually from fear or a twisted sense of love, not press charges and return and the beating spouse comes after you for causing trouble. Or do you do nothing until one goes out in a body bag and the other in handcuffs?
I guess whether there were WMD’s or not is not the question. Saddam was biding his time for the sanctions to be lifted and put his plants back in production. However, to me that is irrelevant. He, his family, and henchmen were routinely beating torturing and killing people in their country. So the question is how long do you wait until you are sure that there is no other option? What level of involvement do you give to oust a dictator that doesn’t care about anything, but his own personal pleasure and is willing to gas his own people. Some claimed that the Shi’as or the Kurds should have rebelled, but both tried at one time or another. Right after the Persian Gulf war, of which I am a veteran, the shi’as were encouraged to rebel, only to not get any support from US and they got cut down. The Kurds would think about it and they got gassed. So the spouse would try to stand firm over being beaten only to be cowed in fear from the stronger spouse.
While I wasn’t a real supporter of Clinton, I was a supporter of his involvement in Kosovo. One of the few things that I thought he showed some fortitude to do what was right instead of what was politically expedient. Any of the Republicans who think that was a misadventure and supports Iraq are just as hypocritical as Democrats that supported Kosovo and didn’t or don’t support Iraq, at least in my view.
Now, with all of that said, I think that the Bush administration underestimated and did not prepare the country for what could happen. So we have ended up being the policeman who is dealing with the abusing spouse’s drinking buddies after the fact.
Now I said that the analogy was rather simplistic, but it all comes down to, at least in my mind, loving your neighbor as yourself. If you are being beaten down with little way to control what is happening to you, wouldn’t you want someone to get involved? There are some Iraqis that actually do appreciate us being there. So those are my thoughts.
My first Sunday at Mary’s church(GCC) worked out pretty much as planned. I got to her place about 845 am and we (Mary, Karlie Mary’s youngest, and myself) drove up to her church for their first service at 900 am. We started out with some praise and worship for about 15 or 20 minutes and then celebrated communion and the offering. By the time Pastor Scheer began to preach, it was almost time to go so that I could make it to get with the choir for our 1030 am service. I felt bad that we had to leave early. He was preaching on recreation and taking the time to rest in God. This is important to me, because I do have a tendency to overschedule. Mary has stressed to me that we don’t have to try to spend all of our free time together if I’m going to get stressed out because I overscheduled (Have I said that I love this woman?).
We then went to FUMC and things went well there. Rev. Naile has been preaching on preparing for Christ, since we are in Advent season. A good sermon. I have the notes I took on my Dell PDA.
Later in the day, Mary had a short run through for a scene in GCC’s play that they are doing (the original version of Scrooge). While we were there, we saw Pastor Steve. I wanted to apologize for leaving early and explain to him what the two of us are doing. The thing that came was that he said that this Sunday he would be announcing a new schedule for the first service. Very cool, because if it is moved back even a half hour that would make the whole issue of leaving early a moot point. So we are waiting to see what the new schedule will be. Of course the two of us mentioned to each other how this is a God thing and how we took this as confirmation that we are on the right track with our vetting each other.
Currently, I am sitting in the NWS office that I work at doing a ham radio special event. We have this special event recognizing our ham radio severe weather spotters during the first weekend of December. It is a great way to have fun while going into sleep depravation. Although, I’m kind of immune from the sleep depravation this week as I just finished my round of midnights.
I brought my radio in that I can only use a bit as I’m only licensed for the VHF bands. I’m hoping that in the near future I can learn the code and upgrade to General and get on the HF Bands. I can only operate on HF when we do these special events, because there is a control operator who is a General or above in class.
We are making contacts with radio amatuers and many of the other NWS offices nationwide. It’s fun way to spend 24 hours.
I read a news blog from time to time called Religion News Blog. They scour the news sites from around the world and post articles on other world religions and cults. Well, this article was interesting. If you aren’t familiar with Kabbalah, in a nutshell it is Jewish mysticism that is all the vogue with the spiritually inclined Hollywood types who aren’t into Buddha or Scientology. Anyway, the material girl is a little miffed at the press for not understanding her.
“Yes, it irritates me when the press criticize my beliefs. Because what I would really like is for people to do their research and try to understand what it is I’m trying to study and understand,” she said.”If they did that, then they’d have a completely different view. I wonder if they’d be less irritated if I was studying existentialism. Maybe they would.”
Sound a little familiar? At least the press likes to pick on other religions other than Christianity. I’m sure that the problem is that the press look at what your life is like and whether it measures up to what you believe. So for Madonna, it looks like it is hokey until she really starts to show some sort of concrete witness in her life. We all go through that. That’s just life.
The previous post was actually worked on over the course of a few days, then I wrote this one.
When I started my blog, I knew that I would share some of my personal thoughts and struggles and how they pertain to youth ministry or meteorology, my two greatest passions. However, I didn’t expect to be writing about a budding relationship a month and a half into blogging. I told Paul Block, about 6 months ago, that I felt in my spirit there was going to be a change in my relationship status. I just kept trusting God that it would come to past in his timing. Well, here it is with Mary! and I am now writing about relationship items.
Mary’s recent post about her coming to church with me is pretty good, but only the first half of a discussion that we have been having about our future together. What we discussed is that as we date we need to know and see how each reacts in there own element and with us that is our respective churches. She goes to Gaylord Community Church and I go to First United Methodist Church of Gaylord. Hers is charismatic and mine is old guard mainline. While I haven’t delved into my more charismatic beliefs on this blog yet, eventhough I’m a member of a mainline denomination, I don’t have a problem with going to her church. We are, after all, one body in Christ. So the discussion hinged on the fact that we want to get to know each other, and that if this relationship progresses to the point of marriage, we will need to make decisions in the future of where we are to attend church.
I made the remark that it was my feeling that we both needed to stay active in our own churches since we are not married and we each have obligations that we need to attend to at our home churches. So we decided that we would go to both churches for a while and see where God leads us. This decision was made rather easily, because of a couple of “God things” that we have noticed.
Very interesting. So today the plan was for her to go to her church and meet me at mine, since I am working midnight to 9 am this week. However, her car wouldn’t start so we ended up just going to mine.
This will work out most Sundays with my schedule. I am still going to be a back up for Sunday school, sing in the choir, and help with the youth groups. She is still going to continue to help with the youth at her church as well.
Our feeling is that God will show what we are to do as we go through this familiarization process called dating without rushing through things. Everytime we have to make a decision, we will try to remain open to God for guidance so that we may do his will for our lives.
First, I refer you all to my main squeeze’s blog about things that we have in common and those “God things” that others would call coincidences. Not to mention the quote on her post about reading our blogs will give a testimony to “Jeff and Mary’s love story.” I prayerfully want people to be able to read our blogs and realize that our love is not based on the superficial things that seem to pervade our society. We especially recognize the fact that since we both work with the youth groups at our respective churches that we can set an example as a couple on how a godly relationship occurs and matures through the dating/courting (for you Josh Harris fans) process, not to mention the struggles that every couple go through whether you’re a teenager or around 40 (or even older).
That brings me to today’s topic which is the fact that the younger generations don’t seem to catch onto the fact that older generation has gone through the same problems that they are struggling with currently. Whether it is relationships, peer pressure, materialism etc. This doesn’t come as a complete shock as it took me until my late 20s or early 30s to realize that we often don’t go to those who have the experience when it comes to personal problems. Each generation goes through this when they are teenagers. For whatever reason, we think we and our peers have the answers and that the older generation is out of touch with what we are going through. Really, the only thing that the older generation may be out of touch with is the generational culture, but as far as personal/relationship problems, the same problems keep repeating themsleves in every generation. It isn’t until the teenager becomes a mature young adult, and usually with kids of their own, that they grasp this fact. Then they try to communicate these facts to their own kids.
For me this illumination, occurred as I began to work in youth ministry (since I don’t have my own kids). Although I did go to my parents for some advice, I had never considered the fact that as a teenager, Mom and Dad may have experienced what I was going through. I was no different and today’s teens aren’t either.
I was discussing with one of our graduated youth group members about a doing a bible study during the summer and if they may want to help lead it with me. They came back that they didn’t think that they could lead it because they didn’t think that they were “good enough,” and apologized if that disturbed me. I proceeded to tell them that I wasn’t good enough either, going through some of my past and that in some ways I was in the same boat about 20 years ago when I was in college. I then reminded them that when they were in youth group that I would tell them that they needed to keep in mind that Bethany (the youth pastor at the time) nor myself popped out as mature Christians. We went through our own struggles with faith and life and still do. This reminded me of the time as a kid it was hard to fathom that Mom and Dad were kids themselves because since I had always known them, they were always grown ups. I think that it is that matter of perspective that is lost on younger generations, that their parents and adult friends were never kids, because they have always known them as adults.
So what to we do to combat this perspective? The biggest thing I think, as adults, is to mentor kids and teens, and be able to share your struggles. Not just the past ones, but the current ones as well(within reason). This will help them to understand that we all go through things, and that the key is how you handle it. As I have dealt with teenagers and 20 somethings over the past 5 years in youth ministry, it is the pesonal relationships that we forge and maintain that determines spiritual health of this generation and in the long term, the spiritual health of the church.
This is probably the one place that the church, in general, fails. The attitude that I run into at times when trying to recruit more volunteers to come to the youth group is a “been there done that so I don’t need to do it anymore,” attitude. However, God doesn’t call us to stop once your kids are out of school. We all have responsibility to teach the future generations whether they are your own biological kids or not.
Several things have been going on this past week. First, Mom and Dad were up last weekend for and early Thanksgiving and Mom’s Birthday, since I am currently on midnights. That was a good time as we went to Applebees. The great thing about it was that M&D got to meet Mary. Things went well enough that Mom invited her to our little Thankgiving celebration. The only new thing was that Mary met Rosie (M&D’s dog). Of course, Rose being Rose took right too Mary bringing her the infamous tennis ball. To see Mom and Dad’s impression of the weekend in detail you need to go here. Mary and I had a good time. So the first part of meet the family went pretty well.
After M&D left, there was planning for T-day here in Gaylord with Mary and here Kids. I’ve met and interacted with Mary’s oldest (Trisha) and her boyfriend (Ben), since Trisha being 21 is able to visit her mom more often then the younger ones and I’m happy to say that both are pretty cool and I get along well with them. Kaleb and Karlie (13 and 12) are pretty typical middle school/junior highers and are pretty good kids. I won’t divulge all of the things said, but I have their approval to be dating their mom. Brandon (19) was the only one I hadn’t met before Thursday. He seems pretty easy going and we got along pretty well. So I believe that the other family hurdle has been cleared. Now I’ve met all of her kids.
So with that out of the way, Mary and I have been have discussions, of the getting to know each other type. This has been going really well as we discussion our views on emotional, intellectual, and spiritual matters and find that we have a lot more in common than even we were aware of. Some of the neat things that we have discovered are what some people would call coincidences, but we chalk them up to being a “God thing” as that neither of us believe in coincidences. Mary and I first met last fall working an Emmaus weekend in Alpena. I was working on the auxiliary crew (janitorial type work) and she came over to help out in the dining room. I saw her and decided to try and talk to her while we ate lunch that day. She has told me since we started dating that she actually was checking me out as well, looking to see if I was wearing a ring. We talked a bit, but nothing seemed to come of it at the time.
It wasn’t until the recent Emmaus weekends when things began to take shape. I was the board representative on the men’s weekend and because one of her younger kids got sick they ended up staying in Boyne Falls with their father. So Mary came in and helped to work the weekend. Good thing too as we had a computer crash and needed to someone to type in the addresses of the attendees. Since she does that for a living she stepped in and since it was one of our church’s computers that crashed I was there checking on things. Well, the two of us began talking as she was typing (did I mention how talented I think she is?) and I was trying not to be too obvious, as was she as it turns out. She was helping out in the dining room again this time as well and I was taking pictures which got us talking, when she protested about getting her picture taken.
During the women’s weekend, we both began to notice that we were interested in each other. I came in to help out for the Saturday dinner (a big thing) during the weekend and we were trying to talk to each other without being obvious and doing our jobs. Well, when it came time to clean up from the dinner, the fun began as I was all over the place cleaning up with the occasional dance on a table, pulling down decorations, and making here laugh at my goofiness.
Most who know me know that I have trouble asking women out. Well here is one of those God things. A couple of months ago I was praying while driving into town for something and mentioned that since He knows my heart and that I have this trouble that I’ll need some help with getting anything started (This was before Mary and I started talking at Emmaus). As it turns out, Mary was on our local Emmaus message board and noticed that my email address and web page was there. She checked out my page and my blog then proceeded to email me, not knowing what kind of reaction she would get from sending an unsolicited email to me. Well, I was quite thrilled by the email and we began emailing back and forth. That grew to IMing and when my schedule didn’t work out for me to hang out with her and her friends (some of which I know through Emmaus) she asked if I wanted to hang out some time. I suggested my next day off which was a Monday. After we agreed to meet, we both admitted later that we both asked ourselves if we had just made a date. You can read the rest of this on the post called First Dates. We agreed that it was no coincidence that it happened that way. I’ll post more about waiting on God’s timing and praying on another post.
This post by my dad was great. In all of my euphoria of the last week or so, I didn’t read his blog. The post is about how he and Mom went to Indiana, towing the jeep. It was a great story.
How do I start? About a month back, while working an Emmaus men’s weekend, I struck up a conversation with a woman (Mary!), who I had met on a previous walk. I thought she was cute and there seemed to be a mutual attraction. Well, the following weekend, at the women’s Emmaus weekend, she was working the weekend while I was acting as part church rep and general troubleshooter (I am on the board of directors as well). We hit it off pretty well and I began wondering… I didn’t have to wonder much, because after I got back from the National Youth Worker convention, I got an email from Mary. Emails lead to instant messages and eventually she invited me to hang out with her and some friends.
Of course, the couple of times that she invited me, I couldn’t make it so we decided to go to dinner and hang out last Monday. Later, we were both wondering if we had just made a “date.” Well we went out to dinner and sat and talked for a few hours. We were both pretty nervous. It’s amazing even at 38 that I still felt like I did when I was 15 when it came to talking to her. We decided to go out again on last Friday.
So Friday, we went out to the Red Mesa Grill in Boyne City. That was pretty good, but we were still both pretty nervous. We again decided to sit and talk again and our conversation finally entered a point of no return. I began talking about trying not to do anything that would run her off or make her uncomfortable, because I was open to just being friends if that’s what it was to be, but eventually I asked if I could kiss her and she said “Yes.” !!!
So now, your humble blog writer is in the beginnings of promising, fledgling relationship. I think that a few people were trying to get ask me that before Mary and I went out, because she had commented on my blog several times, however, it wasn’t until recently that the giddy excitement of the first dates has actually happened. I’ll probably blog later about the spiritual aspects and challenges of this relationship, but right now…I’m pretty stoked!
