Crack! Crunch. Schlup. Tink, tink, tink.

I love the sounds of breaking ice. I don't know why. Maybe it is the inner rebel in me loving the sounds of things being broken to bits. Whatever the reason I love it.

Today is this beautiful, bright and sunny day. I would not say it is warm exactly since the high was supposed to be 28, but the sun makes you feel warm anyway. I had to revel in the beauty so I took Nisswa for a walk.

It would be really hard to guess who was the most playful, the black lab who is still a bit puppyish, or me. She took every opportunity to run she could find, chasing any scent or imaginary animal she could detect beneath the abundant snow. Once we got out of town (which incidentally takes about 3 minutes if I take the long way) I let her off her leash to run, chase, dig, roll, and eat snow to her heart's content.

I, on the other hand, looked for every clear patch of ice visible so that I could stomp on it and make those delightful noises! Today the beauty of those noises was in the change from even just last week. Today they sounded much more like the spring cracking that you hear as the ice begins to melt under the power and intensity of the sun. Today each crack and crunch held the promise that the patch of ice would not remain ice for long. Even knowing that March may hold piles and piles of snow within its deceptive days, we can rest assured that the promise of Spring has been heard in the stillness and sunshine of today.

The storms of winter are behind me, and the storms of spring are yet to come, but for today I am reminded of Elijah hearing God in a still small voice after earthquakes, fires, and storms. For me, it was just a distinctive crunch, in the ice.

Winter Blues

For some unknown reason I feel compelled to share that I have been feeling a little blue lately. This is indeed a very odd reaction for me. I am one that tries to conceal these bouts of feeling down from all but a few people.

I never mean to be dishonest about who I am, but I have this compulsion to always show the happy, optimistic facet of who I am to the majority of people. Well, and to tell the truth, I have found that if I put the blues aside and show the happy, well-adjusted person I want to be, then it is easier to forget about the blue mood. In short I am able to lead myself into seeing a brighter side of life.

Yet here I am typing out my woes for anyone to read. In large part that is probably due to a news reporter I heard out of a Sioux Falls T.V. station talking about the large number of people who are in bad moods and dealing with the winter blues.

Wow! What a release. To know that I am not alone. Other people too are feeling a little down, a little cranky, and a little like they might bite someone's head off if that person were to look at you wrong. There is such power in knowing that you do not walk a path alone.

That knowledge helped me in another way as well. As many of you may know I struggle with depression and have been on an anti-depressant for a while. I have been doing very well with this and I have a good support group around me that helps a great deal. Yet still when I start to feel down or blue, there is always the fear that something is out of whack once again. So to hear that this is not just me, took a great deal of worry out of the equation. Once again that feeling of not being alone just set my mind at ease and helped me see that there is nothing wrong per say, I am just human.

So Why am I sharing this with so many people? Well it could be that I just feel the need to reach out to someone, and my normal support group people are, at minimum a 3 hour drive away, and most of the people I would talk to about it live a couple thousand miles away.

And why am I feeling this way? Hmm, well take your pick. It could be the loneliness eluded to above. It could be that I am ready for winter to come to an end, because let's face it even if you have a good attitude towards winter it still wares on you, and this has been a tough winter! Maybe it is that I haven't seen family in 6 months. Or it could be because in August I will be finished here and I will not have any idea what is next for me for at least 2 months. Maybe it is because my birthday is coming up and I always get a little blue before my birthday. Or it could even be that I am just an emotional girl and go through moods now and then. It could even be a combination of all of these things.

Hey, at least I know I am not reacting out of the norm. That list is enough to make even me give me a break!

I do assure you, there is no need to worry. I am doing well all around. Although I am really looking forward to March when I will be in Arizona for a week, surrounded by all of the family I can handle!

Esther's legacy?

I have been pondering the book of Esther lately. Especially the first two chapters. It really is a fascinating tale.

If you have never read it let me give you the highlights. A great and powerful king is having a huge party that lasts days. After a few days of drinking the kings decides he wants to show off his wife so he summons her. She tells him no. The king's advisors are horrified and the queen is then dismissed. So now the king doesn't have a queen. To rectify this there is a contest held. The most beautiful women in the area enter the contest, they have beauty treatments, are put in the best clothing, and are treated as future queens while living at the palace. Then they all go have an 'interview' with the king. The king then chooses the one who pleases him the most. The king chooses Esther, the heroine of the story.

This is a rough summary of the first 2 chapters. The rest of the story is wonderful and shows how God can work through the most difficult situations. I encourage you to read it.

But it is this part that has fascinated me lately.

I have had the pleasure of studying this book and the person of Esther in several classes. This part of the story always brings so much discussion and controversy. Who would ever do something like this?

I have heard more than once how wrong this is and how blessed we are to live in a time when this doesn't happen.

Really? This doesn't happen?

You mean there are not men out there who just get tired of there wives for some random reason and choose to find someone new? Really? I can think of a few politicians, actors, famous business men, and yes even sports icons who have done this very thing. Of course we do live in a time when women are able to do the very same thing, and some take full advantage of that fact.

And we wouldn't put a bunch of beautiful women in one huge house and have them vie for the attention of one man? Maybe not without a few T.V. cameras, a host, and a bunch of producers to call even more attention to it all. We can not forget however, that we are living in a time of equality of the sexes, so in the next season it will be a bunch of attractive men competing for one woman.

Yes, I have been reflecting on Esther. And the conclusion that I keep coming to is that we have not really changed so very much.

Well here it is February 1st.

Where does the time go? And the really scary part of it all is that January seemed long to me in the midst of it. Yet that was just an illusion, and time was blurring past me just as fast as ever. In fact today starts the sixth month of my internship.

As I am gearing up for all that the sixth month mark means for internship, I have been pondering the value of time. All of the mid-term evaluations will be completed this month, so in effect we will be determining the value of the time that I have spent here. This means trying to find a way to measure the success and value of what I am doing here.

There is no real quantitative or even objective way to truly measure my time here. There are certainly things we look at. A whole list of things with standards to measure them by. But nothing concrete. There is no tally I can look at and say, "Yes, I was successful because of X or Y."

Trying to figure this out makes me understand why some people keep track of things like the number of souls they have saved, or the number of confessions and promises of repentance they have received. It gives a concrete way to apply value to the time and work that a person has applied to a place. There are times when I long for this type of concrete evidence that what I am doing is worthwhile. Yet the number of lives that are touched during my time here or anywhere will forever remain a mystery to me. As it should.

I followed this path because I made a conscious decision to follow God. That means leaving the true value of my time up to God. My supervisor, intern committee, and I can all sit and reflect on the job I am doing. We can offer subjective responses to subjective questions. the true value of my time here though will be determined by God and by God alone. My guess would be that it will be measured over God's time as well.

This is one of the truths I have learned over my time of following God. We don't get to decide what is important and what is not. God does. When we try to make that decision, we end up with practices like counting saved souls, and flaunting our piety.

So as frustrating as it is I will never know the "results" of my time in Southwestern Minnesota. I do know that I am enjoying it, and I am growing. I know that it has helped me prepare for the road ahead. (Probably it has helped prepare me in ways that I will never even guess at!) I also know that I am grateful for this time, frustrations, times of loneliness, challenges, accomplishments, and all else that goes with it.

Challenge 3

Okay, admittedly, this last 'challenge' of my internship time is really more of a frustration, but the fact that it is an ongoing and seemingly endless frustration makes it a challenge.

Challenge 3 is having to continually face the uproar about what has become known as 'The Vote'. Now just in case you are not sure what 'The Vote' refers to, it is the social statement regarding sexuality and the statement regarding ordination of practicing homosexuals that were both voted on and passed at the ELCA church-wide assembly this past summer.

Now let me be clear about what is NOT part of the frustration or challenge for me. I am not frustrated if people have a different opinion than mine. I will say this much about my personal beliefs on the matter: if I were frustrated with or challenged by people around me having different opinions and beliefs than me on this issue (or a variety of others), I would have left the ELCA. I believe it is healthy and necessary to have many voices present. Can it be challenging to come together and be productive when there are differing opinions? Absolutely it is, but it is also the only way that all people will be included in the Lutheran body.

No, what I find vastly frustrating is how consuming this one, and I will upset a lot of people here, relatively unimportant issue has become.

It is challenging to hear so often about how wrong this is. It is frustrating to read a letter encouraging people to with-hold money from their congregation until 'the problem is fixed'. It is frustrating to have to put so much of my own energy and time into discussing an issue that is not furthering the ministry or mission of the church or even helping people with their own discipleship, and to watch all of the pastors I know do the same. It is frustrating to have one of the first questions asked of me by most of the people I talk to be, "So what do you think about this vote? What is your church going to do about it?' It is frustrating to think that this has been a consuming topic in ministry since before I went to Japan over seven years ago, and that I truly think it will be a consuming topic for the rest of my career. Mostly it is frustrating that it is taking the focus away from not only sharing the Gospel, but living the Gospel.

For me, the frustration can be pinpointed to the term, 'The Vote'. It is as if this was the most important thing to come out of this or any other Church-wide Assembly. There are many people who feel that the issue of human sexuality does hold a key in sharing and living the Gospel, and I suppose that it does. However, I truly think that anytime you focus on one thing, one issue, whatever it is, that you loose the fullness of the Gospel.

We are a people of God, not a people ruled by sexuality, or social statements. We are called to be DISCIPLES and to WITNESS to a world through our lives. That means our whole lives, not just one part of it.

There are no easy answers or solutions for this time in the ELCA. But after all that is part of being Lutheran. We as Lutherans are constantly caught in paradox. We believe in the sinner and saint, the justified while still being redeemed, and being freed from the law to be slaves of Christ.

I suppose the true challenge for me is to get used to having disruptions in the church like this, since I don't think the human desire to be 'the right one' will ever go away.

Challenge 2

One aspect of being a pastor in a multi-point parish that I had not counted on was having to arrange so much of my own time.

I suppose I just never thought about it. I mean teaching, especially in middle school, is very structured. There was maybe 5-8 hours a week that was not previously accounted for, and very often that would be taken over by one event or another. I never had enough unscheduled time to get all the planning, grading, research, mentoring, or prep-work done.

This is one way that my previous career left me not quite prepared for this particular role.

Other than some weekly meetings, and of course, Sundays, how I spread the work out during the week is up to me. For someone who has never been a great scheduler, this is a bit of a challenge. Making it even more interesting is having one day that is meeting intensive, and the other days are often completely blank and waiting for my scheduling abilities to take over.

This would be tricky on its own, but added to it is the fact that I work out of the house. There isn't really a central office. We have meetings at the various congregation's buildings, but each of us has an office at home.

Let's put it this way, having an office at home for me is like setting a ten year old in front of a a live sport game, a video gaming system playing his favorite game, and a box full of playing puppies and telling him (or her) to do homework. A child wouldn't even need to be ADD to be easily distracted.

Well that is me. Easily distracted. Did I turn the stove off? Are there still clothes in the wash? Oh, I forgot to put the trash out! All those questions that get shoved to the back of my mind when I get to work no longer have an opportunity to get placed in the back of the head.

Figure out a schedule for the week.

Figure out how to follow the schedule without getting distracted by being at home.

These two aspects of my internship would be cakewalk for many people. For me they are challenges. Not challenges that can not be handled or adapted to, but challenges just the same. add to it the sometimes overwhelming schedule of the parish and some days it takes me an hour or two to figure out what to do that day.

Yet that is what internship is for. To help each person figure out what he or she will have to be aware of in their own work life. Well I definitely will have to be aware that scheduling my own time is not something that comes naturally to me. I absolutely love it when there is so much going on in a week, that I am grasping every free moment to get the office and paper work done. That is how I function best. However I am learning to schedule my own time in a less distracting and more productive manner.

Challenge 1

"What has been the biggest challenge for you?"

This is the most common question that I have received from everyone about my internship. It seems everyone wants to know what has been difficult.

I suppose this is because when people ask me how the internship is going, I go on about how great it is. Now let me be clear. This does not mean that I do not have challenges from day to day. I promise that I am not living life looking through rose colored glasses and only seeing the positive. It simply means that I am learning a lot and enjoying the process of that learning. And yes that does indeed include challenges and difficulties along the way. However, I like to see those challenges in a positive way. They are after all part of how we learn and grow as people.

Yet there are three things that do take up a lot of energy and time. These are the things that can drag me down a little bit. They are still part of the learning process and have great results, but wipe me out emotionally, mentally, and physically.

The first of these challenges is the schedule. Okay, I admit it, schedules are always hard for me to adapt to. The more complicated a schedule is the harder it is for anyone to figure it out. That is normal. (I hope!) Believe it or not the schedule of a church has a lot more to consider than Sunday morning services and education classes. There are also mid-week Bible studies, youth events, visitation, and counseling, council meetings, committee meetings, various other events, and then any out of the ordinary occurrences from day to day. Realistically though this is no crazier than a school schedule. BUT, and yes it is a big but, that is for one congregation.

Prairie Star is an area parish with 5 congregations, and an education/retreat center. So there are five Sunday services and Sunday schools, 3 confirmation groups, 4 women's study groups, 5 council meetings, plus the Prairie Star council, various quilting groups, community Bible Studies, 4 area high schools, many different towns and town events, and that is not including anything that is going on at Shalom Hill Farm (the retreat center). It is enough to make my head spin, which it has been doing for several months now.

I am not complaining, mind you, merely sharing with you some of the ins and outs of rural ministry. This is what any Pastor serving more than one congregation experiences. I have simply not completely adjusted to it yet.

Do I like it? Absolutely!

Is it exhausting? Beyond belief!

Is it worth it? More than I could ever explain.

(More to come on the other two challenges!)