Dear Shoreline Cov

Today I announced at Shoreline Covenant Church that Darrel and I will be moving to Ohio where I have been called to be solo pastor of Bethany Covenant Church. Following are approximately the remarks I made.

This past week I was the third wheel with Doug and Erika Haub at the ECC Midwinter Conference for Pastors in Chicago. It’s a good thing I have other friends at Midwinter, or it could have gotten awkward.

On Monday, I took part in my final ordination interview, and I was approved for ordination.

This photo is me with the final ordination interview panel, celebrating with me. Apparently, it’s become a tradition to take a selfie with the interview panel, so we took the selfie!

On the screen you will see a copy of my Midwinter nametag. Look at it closely.

It does not say Shoreline Covenant Church. It says Bethany Covenant Church in Lyndhurst, Ohio.

You may have wondered why Pastor Erika was hugging me as if her life depended on it in the middle of the aisle right before church began last week. Moments before that hug, I had received a text that said: “We did vote to hire a new pastor. Her name is Debbie! Alleluia! We just completed the vote, and it was nearly unanimous!”

A week earlier Darrel and I had been in Ohio, where I preached, and where we ate a lot of potluck food and met almost everyone in the church. Last Sunday afternoon, I accepted the call to become the new pastor of Bethany Covenant Church. Here is a photo of the church. Yup, traditional white church with a steeple and a fellowship hall in the basement.

Darrel will be retiring from his teaching position in Seattle Schools where he has served 40 years. I will be leaving my position as Bible teacher and Junior High Chaplain at Bellevue Christian School. In a few short weeks, we will have everything packed up and we will move to a place where, until a couple of months ago, we knew no one.

We have not decided on a final timeline, and there will be plenty of time to share our departure details, but today I want to tell you the short version of a story about you and Darrel and me.

I married into this church. Darrel brought me here to visit before we were even dating. From my very first moments at this church, I knew I was home. I knew I had found something I had been longing for my whole life. I have been a believer since I made a profession of faith in a Baptist church in Germany when I was six years old, but I’d never truly found the home I was looking for until I came here.

Darrel and I got married almost 10 years ago. Shortly after, this church called Pastor Erika to be our associate pastor. I had come from a tradition that did not affirm women in ministry, so this felt a bit strange to me. But Pastor Mike did an excellent job of educating us about how it was completely biblical for women to use all the gifts that God has given them in service of the church, even pastoral gifts.

I saw for the first time that biblical women such as Deborah, Huldah, Mary, Hannah, Junia, and Priscilla were not aberrations, but women whose lives revealed the truth of Joel 2.28 and repeated in Acts 2.17: Your sons and your daughters will prophesy.

Still I felt no pastoral call on my own life. I did, however, need to do some continuing education for my job as a teacher of English and Bible at Shoreline Christian School. I decided to take a couple of classes at Fuller Seminary so I could be a better Bible teacher.

After I had taken my first class, I knew that God was calling me to go to seminary. I still had no inkling that I was being prepared for anything else. But I quit my job and enrolled full time.

When I told Pastor Erika that I had done so (and you have to remember, at that time Erika and I were not friends yet), she immediately said, “Oh, then let’s get your internship set up.” I wasn’t even sure what the internship was supposed to be, but she and Pastor Mike did just that.

Then one Sunday, Laurel Idso, whom I didn’t even know, plunked herself down next to me in church and said, “I hear you’re going to seminary. Are you planning to get ordained?” I had up until that moment no intention of even considering ordination, but Laurel opened up the future for me in that brief conversation, and she has been faithfully praying for me ever since.

She and Sue Kerrigan and Florence Gustafson, three women I didn’t know very well, became my prayer support team during the time I was completing my seminary studies—basically the prayer dream team.

A few days before the first time I preached here, I was at a gathering with Phil and Barb Whitmarsh. Phil said, “I hear you’re going to preach Sunday.” I said, “Yes, I am. Will you be there?” Phil’s response is forever etched in my memory. He said, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

For my second internship, Mike Matteson made it possible for me to do an internship in the chaplaincy program at the King County Jail where he had been faithfully serving as a volunteer chaplain since his retirement.

You released me to serve as Associate Pastor of Renew Covenant Church, and you supported that multiethnic church plant with financial gifts and people and worship teams for two years.

And when my time at Renew was over, you again offered me opportunities to lead and teach and preach and influence this body, but really you were the ones who influenced me.

This church taught us to love deeply. This church helped turn me from a person who maybe wanted to take a couple of Bible classes into a pastor. Who knew? Apparently you did.

God has called us to leave Washington, leave our children and grandchildren, leave our jobs, leave our friendships, and leave Shoreline Covenant Church to go to a state where until recently we literally didn’t know a soul.

We are deeply saddened by the necessity to leave so many meaningful relationships behind, but the call of God on us is sure and compelling. As much as we hate to leave you, I also can’t wait to be there, doing what God has called me, and that you have helped prepare me, to do. We go with the wind of Shoreline Covenant Church under our wings. You are the reason we can go, and you are the reason it is so hard to leave.

I have been asked to tell you that the people of Bethany Covenant are deeply appreciative of you, truly grateful to the people of Shoreline Covenant for your investment in me, and for your nurture of both of us in such a way that this moment in time is possible.

Please pray for us: for the transition and all the details associated with it, and for the new work that God has given us.

Let me finish with this shameless request: We would love to spend time with you before we leave. Invite us over for dinner. Take us out for lunch. Let us be with you as much as possible. We are who we are because of you, and we want to celebrate that with you. And then we will depend on Facebook and messenger and email and Skype and Christmas cards and airlines and road trips to keep being Jesus to one another.

Thank you for being my church. Thank you for being family for Darrel and me. We love you.

The Word for 2017 . . . and 2018

For the last several years, I have not made New Year’s resolutions. Rather, my daughter has challenged me to choose a word or phrase for the year, and most years I have done that. The “word for the year” has proven to be a gentle reminder to orient my choices in the direction I want to go, or maybe more accurately, the direction I believe God wants me to go. This has always been a spiritual task for me.

Last year at the time I would be making such a choice, I was at Darrel’s bedside in the hospital as he was recovering from major spine surgery. This, as many of you know, was a much more arduous road to travel than we expected, and it consumed much of our energy for the year. One day back at work, I slipped on the ice in the parking lot, fell hard, and wrenched my already aching, arthritic knee. The very next day, while running an errand before driving to the rehab facility where Darrel would spend a month recovering after nine days in the hospital, I slipped on the ice again and wrenched it even worse. I could barely walk.

I went to the doctor that day, and it turned out the immediate damage wasn’t that bad in spite of the extreme pain, but I decided I was tired of living with subpar knees and I scheduled myself for physical therapy. That proved to be challenging to fit in my schedule, and I didn’t love that first physical therapist nor the dungeon-like location of the PT clinic in the bowels of the hospital. I quit going for a while.

Then my daughter’s boyfriend (and a former student of mine) suggested I come in for a fitness analysis at his workplace, Experience Momentum, which offers physical therapy, fitness classes, massage, nutritional counseling, and more. I accepted his challenge, but after the fitness assessment he said that he thought I should start with physical therapy to address my knees and improve mobility in my shoulders after nearly three years of frozen shoulder that no other treatment had successfully addressed long term. So I decided to try PT again at this new venue.

I love the Experience Momentum approach to health. Everything was oriented towards my personal goals and functional living. The therapists listened to me when I described what was happening in my body, and made adjustments accordingly. If I couldn’t do an exercise they gave me, they modified it so I could do it. When I told them I hated the exercise bike, they put me on the rower instead. If I hadn’t been able to do my home exercises, they never shamed me, but they invited me into greater health every time. I learned to use different muscles to do my daily life; my favorite new skill was learning to walk up and down stairs without pain! I sometimes felt like a toddler—how on earth can I not know how to climb stairs?—but relearning such skills was worth it. I saw quantifiable gains.

The success I had there transferred into other areas of my life. During the summer, Darrel and I swam several times a week, and I became strong enough to actually swim laps and not just splash around. I figured out I could do moderate walks if I used hiking poles, a simple and inexpensive adjustment that enabled increased activity. When my younger daughter and I traveled to Arizona to help my mother move into a retirement community, we stopped in Disneyland as an early birthday present for her; the hiking poles helped me get through our long day of extreme fun with minimal discomfort.

When school started in the fall, I felt ready to face some new challenges. My job assignment had changed, so that in addition to teaching Bible 8, I would also take on the new Junior High Chaplain position, working with a small chapel leadership team of Junior High students to plan and present our weekly chapels. At church I became Pastor of Confirmation for this year, working with seven wonderful Junior High aged students to review the whole Bible and church history and, we hope, grow in their faith. I continued to preach as needed in areas churches.

When I told my physical therapist that I wanted to start taking some of the exercise classes, but I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough to succeed, we agreed that a good intermediate step for me would be to do some personal training. I signed up for and completed ten sessions with a personal trainer, also at Experience Momentum, again with the goal of improved daily functionality and specific preparation for the kinds of movements I would be doing in the yoga and boot camp classes that they offer. I never worked so hard in my life! And because I was paying out of pocket for the personal training, I wanted to get the best bang for my buck, so I actually did my home workout assignments each week. And if I ended up skipping one because of life or health or whatever, I chose not to shame myself. Indeed, I actually missed my workouts when I couldn’t get to them. I went to my first yoga class last week and signed up for a month of boot camp and yoga classes!

Somewhere along the way, I realized I was ready to tackle my diet again. I started every day drinking a glass of water. I began carrying a large bottle of lemon water to school each day and made sure I drank the whole thing; sometimes I filled it up again and drank a second bottleful. I cut my Diet Coke consumption in half. I went back on my ketogenic hot chocolate breakfast routine, had salads for lunch whenever possible (not always possible with our schedules), and prepared healthful dinners in the evening. I mostly quick snacking. If I did want a piece of birthday cake in the teacher’s lounge, I ate it with gladness and joy, and then backed off of sugar for the rest of the week. I didn’t make Christmas cookies this year. We mostly kept junk out of the house. I have lost a total of 25 pounds over the last three years from my highest weight, about 10 of it in the last four or five months.

I have more energy. I can do stairs. I can carry groceries in without feeling winded. I have learned to be gentle with myself when I need to be, and push myself when I can. I say to myself, “Do it now,” and most of the time that helps. I have been able to say yes to many life-giving activities, such as preaching and confirmation and gatherings with friends, in spite of the extra time that exercise and new assignments take.

All of this not to congratulate myself, but to say that my word for the year was a retrospective. I didn’t start 2017 with a word, but I ended up with one: self-care. Somehow God showed me that I was worth the effort, the money, and the time it would take to be healthy. I finally gave myself permission to invest in my longevity. The women in my family live a long time, and I knew I didn’t want to live those years as an invalid, constantly struggling with health, weight, and pain. I didn’t want to retire from serving God! I also came to terms with the fact that health, especially at my age, takes intentional effort. In taking self-care seriously this year, I have had more margin for ministering to others, more joy, more gratitude, more capacity for generosity, more ears to hear and eyes to see what God is doing in me and my loved ones and my world, less need to self-protect. 2017 was my year of radical self-care.

So what about my word for 2018?

I decided that a couple of sessions with a counselor to sort out some interpersonal struggles would be beneficial. I’ve been in counseling before, and I’m a believer in its value. But this time I contacted the insurance company representative who can obtain referrals for us, got the names of some therapists, and finally made an appointment (it was a four month journey from the first contact to the first appointment, but I persevered).

My new counselor invited me to be present with my own feelings when I have a visceral reaction to a difficult situation—to notice what is going on in my body, to name the sensations and sit with them before I try to solve the problem at hand, before I try to minister, before even I try to have empathy for the other. She wants me first to have empathy for myself! She likened it to the announcement they make on airplanes: “Put your own mask on first before you assist others.” I must not rush past my own experience. I must take care of myself not instead of taking care of others, but in preparation for taking care of others. Then I can truly and authentically be the non-anxious presence that others sometimes need from me—as a friend, as a teacher, as a pastor, as a family member, as a neighbor, as a citizen of the kingdom of God.

So my year of radical self-care has led me to my word for 2018: presence. I want to live into the calling to be truly present—with myself, with my body, with God, with my family, with my reality, with my church, with my world, with whoever God brings into my sphere. I want to put down my phone more often, listen better, react less, read more, and be more available to the Holy Spirit’s whispering in my life. I’ve begun again the practice of contemplative breath prayer.

This won’t necessarily be easy for me. I’m a multitasker; I can be easily distracted, as my husband and children will attest. My brain is often full of ideas and tasks that mentally take me away from what’s right in front of me. I’ll need discipline. But one thing I’ve learned from my year of radical self-care is that God will give me what I need to move forward into the next thing I need.

I am confident in this, that he who began a good work in me will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1.6 paraphrased)

What word is God giving you for 2018?