This Old House

Despite the fact that when we moved here the house was in shambles and I worked for a month to get it to a livable state, I love having the parsonage.

We wouldn't be able to afford to live on his salary without it. 

It's not often that people in our position get offered a parsonage. There are blessings and curses about it. Blessings include tax free "pay", free lawn care, and a short skip over to work every day that saves in gas.

I consider every power bill they pay, every water bill, and every month's equivalent of rent we don't have to pay as part of his salary. And since we don't technically see the money, we don't pay taxes on it. It's lovely. For so long we lived in an apartment, paid high rent, and got to hear our neighbors abusing their children on a daily basis. It wasn't something I wanted to do any more and it's a blessing my closest neighbors are 3 houses down.

Curses include living in not the best area of town, the age of the house and things often breaking, and something we are lucky to have not experienced yet - church members popping by unexpectedly or asking for access to the church randomly. I had big fears that would happen a lot. Has only happened once in months. :)

Last night my husband about overflowed the bathroom toilet. Since the house is so old, the plumbing is original. The main pipe that takes away waste water was made out of terra cotta - clay. Well, there's this gorgeous old tree outside next to the house, where the roots have decided to grow through the pipes, crack them, break them, and clog them up. We knew this a day after we moved in, when we backed sewage up into our tub, sink and toilet after running the washer. They dug out the roots and, despite the plumber telling the church contractor it needed to be replaced, he pushed it off, waiting until the pipe was absolutely destroyed. Unfortunately, this happened at 9 pm at night, and any time we went to the bathroom we had to go through the church parking lot to the church. I really don't like that instead of fixing something they knew was broken, they pushed it off until we were inconvenienced with it, especially at night. Honestly, I don't want to be anywhere outside of my locked doors past 10 pm around here. If it's broke, why wait to fix it?

So this morning I have 2 men coming in and out of the house, running the tub, flushing the toilet and replacing the pipe. And, despite the fact that last night I held it until I couldn't any more, and peed in my toilet, I love that I don't have to pay for them to fix my plumbing. :)

"The Widow's Pew"

There's a name for the people who like to cause trouble. The people in the church who seem to look for fault, imperfection and weakness. In our church, where the median age is probably 60, they call it the Widow's Pew.
Every Sunday, the 2nd pew is lined in a row with cute little old ladies with white hair and pant suits. They seem so innocent and nice... They've probably gone to this church since they were my age, if not younger.
I heard some of the younger people, the 45-55 year olds (yes, this is our "younger people") talking about the Widow's Pew...
They said that basically they were all widows and the women are the ones in church that complain every step of the way. They're the pastor's worst nightmare. The ones that become outraged at every little thing, that despise change, and that like to nitpick. I don't know who they are exactly, just that I should probably steer clear of them. Apparently once your husband dies you've got nothing better to do than sit in quiet judgment of everyone else and call Pastor on Monday morning about stupid crap. Yes, crap.
They had brought a particular story up, about how the little children (who receive communion first) were drinking more than one mini-shot of juice, or eating a few of the crackers (honestly I don't know why ANYONE would want more than one of those disgusting crackers)... the Widows had seen this TRAVESTY and they actually got the pastor to make clear to the children not to eat more than one cracker or drink more than one juice. Well, they went on to say that a few of the Widows had stayed late one day and saw a male church member drinking the left over juice from the little mini-shots and had a FIT about it. I immediately wondered if the Widows have seen me doing it yet, I have been doing it every communion Sunday since we came here... but, the church serves those little crackers... the worst things ever to happen to communion. I eat the little cracker and try to wash it down with the juice, but it's never enough. Those crackers are like cement when they hit your saliva. Every communion Sunday I'm always leaving the church picking the Jesus out of my teeth.
Our first communion Sunday that we were here, I stayed late to help clean up. I came to find that the communion committee people were just taking all the leftover crackers and putting them in a Ziploc bag for "next time" and taking all the juice that was left untouched and pouring it in a bucket that would be sent down the sink drain. So, that Sunday I decided to have a few extra shots of Jesus juice, in attempts to wash down that nasty cracker. A few people who were there late cleaning up had made cracks about how I shouldn't be so sinful through the month and I wouldn't need so much juice. My husband always laughs and tries to pull me away from the altar, but if it's just going to go to waste, why is it so bad that I drink it? Isn't pouring Jesus' blood down the drain a little worse?

I *should* be a Republican...

When the church found out that I wasn't exactly conservative, they weren't exactly happy. I'm kind of a strange anomaly... I support gay rights. I support gay marriage. I support choice. GOD gave us the ultimate choice. Taking away the choice because it's "un-Christian" is modifying God's plan. Give a woman the choice, her only judge will be God. God gave us free will, to choose Him. If he took away the free will, we would be his lemmings. Our love wouldn't be true. 


If you think about it, Jesus was the ultimate liberal. When he came to be known, there were religious structures in place that he openly defied. He supported the "lame" and the poor. He forgave prostitutes, adulterers, sinners. He even liberated women. He was lover of everyone, even His enemies.


Read the Bible. You'll see it.
Conservatives constantly are aligned with Christians. They support the "Christian agenda"... it almost sounds like the religious right don't even see how much like the Pharisees they have become - the same group that Jesus called hypocrites! 


What we need to get out of all of this is that we, as children of God, need to show God's love to EVERYONE. People who harm us, being who don't harm us, gay, straight, black, orange, every single person regardless of who they are need God.
Being gay doesn't stop someone from loving God. 


I hear constantly about how people have fallen away from God... most of the time after the've come out as gay, or support the liberal agenda. They are disowned sometimes. Is the the way Jesus would treat them? No. It's not.


People don't understand, no, they don't know HOW it is to love everyone. They don't know how to forgive. It's the hardest thing we have to do as Christians. God tells us to live a life like this, try to be more like Jesus, and it's probably the most difficult thing for us to do.


What I don't understand, is with a man like Jesus, from God Himself (the same God who inspired Leviticus) who was so Liberal, that Christians so commonly align themselves with conservatives who want to take away equality from all people. How is this Christian?

Nightmare on Church Street

When I married my husband, I married the “student” version of him. I knew that eventually I would have to deal with him being a youth pastor, but in the moments prior to our marriage, he was working part time and going to classes. The first year of our marriage, he taught 5th grade at a private school, and I finished up my degree. What I did, or said, or acted like, wasn’t really the concern of anyone but myself. No one paid attention to me, or expected anything of me. Life was as it always had been for me: I do what I want. I realized very quickly that after Jeff got his first ministry job, what I did and said were very far from what I wanted.


It was hard to transition at first, to being the wife of a clergy member. I had to change many mannerisms and behaviors. People expect a certain poise and class from the wife of a pastor, even though everyone told me the expectations are slightly different for a youth pastor’s wife. Wrong. They’re about the same.


I didn’t have a mentor, or anyone to talk to about it, or help me transition a little more smoothly. I was on my own.


I think it was particularly difficult for me because not only had I literally just graduated college and had to figure out life after COMP 101, but I had also moved 250 miles from everything I knew, AND became “the pastor’s wife”. It was more than just a slight change, it was a complete overhaul of just about everything I had known for a quarter of a century.


We moved from a very large city in Florida to, what I consider, a small town in Georgia - to them it’s considered a metropolitan area. The main criteria for that classification was the existence of a Wal-Mart within city limits. The first week we were here a delivery man asked why we would move from Florida to here, and laughed that the only thing to do in town was go to that Wal-Mart. He wasn’t lying.