Surpassing Knowledge

It's almost been 2 weeks since I was placed on bed rest and a week since we experienced more complications. We are taking it day by day, but each day I feel good physically and we remain positive.
Thank you for your prayers and encouragement and for all the Southerners living in NYC who have brought food! They have buoyed our family up in uncertain times. Many have offered me this verse as comfort: Ephesians 3:14-21. It has become our daily mantra. After reading it several times, I remembered this was the text I chose for my service of ordination. I chose it because it spoke of God's "love that surpasses all understanding," and I felt that phrase best described how I felt God's presence in my life. There was probably a part of me that thought it was broad enough to let me off the hook a bit when I didn't get
something, but now I realize it demands more of me to live daily in the unknown and to trust in what I cannot see than to try to explain what cannot be fully explained.
Over the last week, I have received a lot of medical information and statistics, things doctors can say we do know. What often gets left out, dropped from the end of sentences or said as afterthoughts on the way out the door is all that we don't know. What we don't know is the territory I find myself in right now, and which is where, if we are honest, we all live. The second part of the Ephesians's passage that those who've faced medical uncertainty have encouraged me to see is the part about how God can accomplish " far more than all we can ask or imagine." Oh, right! That is how it happens isn't it...great things can happen when we believe in pushing the boundaries of what we know and of what we allow ourselves to dream? Two Sundays ago, I prayed during the pastoral prayer to "surrender my need for control." I do not know what the future holds for my family, for you, for us as a nation, but I know that it is far, far more than what I could plan.

As you pray for my family as you do for yours and for our world, consider reading Ephesians 3:14-21 every day. We read it as a family in the morning or before bed, and I hear it differently together than when I read it alone. But every day, I am pushed to imagine more for the people and earth God has made.

Eph 3:14-21: "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father/Mother from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of God's glory, God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through God's spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth
and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen."

Help turning Desolations into Consolations

My mentor , Rev. Becca Stevens, reminds me that we can find the true God in the places and the times when our expectations are disappointed. She has an amazing way of turning a Desolation into a Consolation and bringing more hope out of it than if God has meet us the way we expected and demanded of God. Listen to this MP3 and hear for yourself.

I tried attaching it. If you can't access it, go to itunes and choose the below book and track.

I know these are extra steps--BUT IT IS SOOO WORTH IT!


Go to: http://www.apple.com/search/ipoditunes/?q=becca+stevens.
Book: Sanctuary. Track 10: Waiting for a Horse.

Lenten Reflections: Practicing "Examen"

My group of 8 youth leaders are doing an on-line group practice for Lent. It is based on one of the steps of "Examen," a process for discernment developed by Ignatius in the 1500's.

What you need: a journal. 5 minutes a day to write down 2 moments you remember.

Write down a moment you felt God's presence that day (Consolation) and a moment you felt in need of God (Desolation).

"Examen" is based on one of the steps to a way of learning discernment and prayer developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola. He called them the "Spiritual Exercises" meant to give people a profound sense of God in their life and renewed a calling for service. He wrote the text over 19 years after many people had sought his guidance in this method. They were first published in Latin in 1548. We will publish ours in English.

A Prayer to Get Us Started:

"A Daily Check-In"
Jesus, you have been present with me in my life today--Be Near, now. Let us look together at my day. Let me see through your loving eyes...When did I listen to your voice today? When did I resist listening to you today?

Jesus, everything is a gift from you. I give thanks and praise for the gifts of this day...I ask your healing in...I ask your forgiveness and mercy for...

Jesus, continue to be present with me in my life each day.

(Taken from The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed, (148) ed. Dyckman, Garvin, Liebert.)

Each week, share what your prayers are for with us.

The Mis-Adventures of Being A Wife

This blog started out as a tongue-in-cheek response to a book called "The Adventures of Being a Wife" written by "Mrs. Norman Vincent Peale," the power behind the positive thinker and legendary wife to the late minister of the church where my husband currently serves as associate pastor.
But that was when I had only read the title and was only engaged to my future spouse. Now, four years into marriage and three years ordained and one chapter shy of finishing Mrs. Peale's book, I have a great appreciation for her insights on how to lead a good life though they are very much of her time (Publication date 1971). One of the ideas I admire the most is her description of wifehood as a career--if only because she enjoyed a partnership that most married people of her generation did not have. She recognizes her blessings but neglects to critique the social forces that prohibit others from having this.
I agree that being a wife, particularly, a minister's wife has always been a career. Yet, things get tricky for the modern woman when we have a career at home and outside the home. For me, it is not just about having a "Second Shift," but a mirrored identity. I am both minister's wife and minister. I feel all the contradictions of playing two roles at once. My experience of how the public and private spheres entangle isn't unique to being a minister/'s wife, but I do hope my efforts to wrestle with this female archetype and to inhabit this patriarchal profession may intrigue, may enlighten, or just may simply entertain.

Peace and Blessings,
The Reverand and Mrs. W L