A Month and a Half

So much for trying to update this blog every week or so. Wyatt, work and a pleasant development in my search for a call have altered my typical blogging schedule.

Where to begin?

I’ll start with Owensboro, KY. That is the place on this broad map of our nation that God has decided to place us – tucked away as it is in the hills, woods and acres of the heartland, a place not completely flattened or devoured by the great icebergs that once migrated south.

In this city of barbecue and grain silos, there is a church, an old Presbyterian Church, seeking to continue its legacy and rebirth itself for a new century. That church, First Presbyterian Church, has extended a call to me to be its associate pastor. They are calling me to be a minister of the Word and Sacrament – to use language and visible signs to bring God to them.

They are also making it abundantly clear we will be surrounded and loved by them. Thus, we feel like we are being sent by God and being received by God’s people.

As I scanned a plethora of openings in Presbyterian churches and read through a long list of church descriptions, I was drawn early to the way FPC of Owensboro summarized their ministry and life together. I was also excited about the type of person they were seeking to call; the attributes listed seemed very much to fit the mold God has been shaping me into.

But, the greatest confirmation of God’s presence in the dialogue I’ve had with this church really began when I started speaking to Jonathan, the head pastor of this congregation. Like-minded and common spirits we seem to be. Even more, our wives share many of the same interests, and we all four share the new joys and responsibilities of parenthood – ours the fusses and smiles of a son and theirs the coos and cries of a little girl.

That’s Owensboro in a nutshell, and there will be more to come about that place.

Now about Wyatt … Well, if every day were a battle (and I’m not saying it is, but if it were), than Wyatt would have won today. Anna and I have just come through what amounts to two hours of fussiness and screaming over the last three hours. And to think this day began with such promise; he slept a miraculous three and a half hours earlier today. But, those hours of peace slipped away into prolonged cries.

As best as we can figure, Wyatt doesn’t sleep enough. We’ve heard newborns are supposed to sleep something like eighteen hours a day. Wyatt maybe sleeps ten a day. He goes through a normal feeding period and begins to yawn and his eyes begin to close. But right at the moment of surrender something pulls him back; it’s obviously upsetting to him as he eventually works himself into a grumpy, fitful fury of kicks, screams and sharp jabs with a left and then a right. For Anna and I watching his insomnia is just as exhausting and irritating to us as it is to him. Like tonight when he was well into minute thirty of a screaming episode, we just found ourselves lying on our bed at 8:30 pm in complete darkness. We couldn’t go anymore; so we just lay there in the early hours of the evening conceding defeat and praying silently yet together for some moments of rest and rejuvenation. We’ve thought and talked about getting Wyatt onto some form of schedule. We’ve been around and around what might help ease his situation. And, yet for all that, we still find ourselves being finished more often than we find ourselves finishing a day as we planned it.

Wyatt is going to pull out the best and the worst of me. All those wonderful traits I’ve longed to equip myself with and live by – things like patience, peace, gentleness, forgiveness, grace – those traits are no longer ideas or abstractions. They are realities that I can choose to live by as each new crisis arises in Wyatt’s young life.

To be sure there are moments of grace, beauty and happiness – more than enough to make me thankful everyday for Wyatt. Often they are mixed right in there with the struggles. This past week, for instance, I awoke with Wyatt at 6 am since he apparently could find no more cause to rest. There we lay together in the early light of day: he alert on my chest and I dreary yet thankful he was quiet if not asleep. He managed to pick his head up and hold it in the air just off my chest. His eyes found something wonderful about the Venetian blinds dancing back and forth from the fan in our room. And I just sat there looking into his dark eyes – seemingly holding the depth of the cosmos and equally dark and mysterious. I looked long and hard into his eyes, hoping to find some early treasure of his awareness of me. No such luck, but I was happy for what was given me: the abundant curiosity of a newborn - coming alive to the richness of life and to the beautiful simplicity of contrast and movement. That’s Wyatt.

I want to close with one other episode from this past week, which has impressed itself upon me. It occurred at work, a place I have unfairly downplayed as robotic, which it can be at times. But, there have been numerous positives about work, and it is time I shared one. I’ll tell this as if you were with me.

It’s 10:00 am on a Friday morning, and I’m gearing up for what is always the most difficult and busy of days: payday. Already, as soon as the doors opened at 9:00 am a steady stream of people have been strolling into the branch seeking some money for the weekend or trying to cover some payment with their latest paycheck. Some of these people I will see only once, never to remember them again. Some others though I recognize in an instant – having familiarized myself with them after many, many visits. I never knew the bank could have such regulars, but indeed it does. Some people even come two to three times a day, as though this were a great deli or bakery. Lester doesn’t visit that often, but he does come every payday.

He’s maybe in his mid forties and the first time I met him, I didn’t get him. Seemed just a little flighty to me; one of those people who will be in mid conversation about something only to break his train of thought or change who he is addressing by looking around while he’s talking. Struck me as being anxious or timid. But over time I saw Lester has a huge heart, and it was probably the third or fourth time I helped him he told me what a gift his job was and how we should all be thankful for employment.

Anyway, it’s 10:00 am on Friday and in walks Lester. He comes to my window with his big smile – still looking to his left and his right as he approaches. He then looks right at me and addresses me by my full name, “Hey Wesley, how’s it going man?”

“Good Lester,” I reply, “how’s your day going?”

“Oh, I’ve got no complaints. Just thankful to be alive. Say, how’s your little boy doing?”

“Wyatt, oh he’s a handful! He’s doing well.”

We go on like this for a few moments, and I finally ask him if he’s working today. Lester says he isn’t because every once in a while he plays the pipe organ at different churches around LA. He tells me his boss is understanding of his desire to do so, which means he can usually get the time off as needed.

Now I think I know Lester pretty well by this point, but this absolutely surprises me. It’s not everyday you find someone who plays the pipe organ, and Lester just doesn’t fit the stereotypical pipe organ persona. I take this as a sign and opportunity to tell Lester the difficult news I have: after months of getting to know him and intersecting at this place or market of his life, I am about to move on. I began by telling him how much the pipe organ has meant to me recently … a segway of sorts. Finally, I get to the tough part.

“Lester, I’ve got some bad news that is also good news. I’m going to be leaving this job in the next two weeks to move to Kentucky.”

“W-o-o-o-w … that’s a long way away, bro. What’s in Kentucky?”

“Well, actually, I have taken a position as an associate pastor. I’m going into ministry.”

This floors Lester, but not in a bad way. I stop talking, and I just start observing. He looks through the bulletproof glass at me. At this point his attention is clearly centered. More than that, his eyes are beginning to tear up. Right in the middle of a busy Friday morning, Lester’s standing there looking at me as though I just told him his daughter is getting married or his father just passed away. He is moved by emotion, and I feel the awkward delight of knowing God has used me to touch this man.

“I knew it man,” Lester finally says to me. “I’m surrounded by angels in this place.”

And that’s it. That’s all Lester can muster up, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more. He takes his check with tears still in his eyes and leaves my window – leaving me to soak all this up.

Now I’ll be the first to admit I’m no angel at work – especially on a busy Friday. But, I’m also mindful enough to know Lester and I were able to engage in conversations well beyond whether he prefers $20’s or $100’s or who I was making his check payable to. Our transactions were more personal. And I also know that for Lester my calling to be a pastor had a profound effect upon the type of transactions he was engaged in. As soon as he realized there was a spiritual component to my own life, he was able to see and appreciate a spiritual realm in his own life. I give thanks to God for this.