Be Like the Turtle

When our kids were younger, they spent a lot of time in churches, courtesy of parents who were so often there themselves (sometimes because one of us was being paid to be there, but frankly we would've been there all the time anyway). Just like fish don't really "notice" water, they got to the point where, as I was forever reminding people, they saw the church as "just another room of the house."

Of course, I was really trying to insulate all of us against the kind of disapproval that results when kids behave like they do at home but they're someplace else. But even when I was trying to excuse them, or at least protect them, I felt like I had stumbled on a semi-profound truth.

Maybe I wasn't really talking about them at all. You see, my children and I have something very important in common: we have a parent who's a pastor. In my case, it was my dad, and though the leading occupational hazard of being part of a "parsonage family" is frequent moves, he had relatively long tenures, so I was spared repeated upheaval.

The first move was when I was 11; the biggest issue with a summer move is that the kids aren't in school, so it can be tough to locate a new peer group. As it turned out, I hadn't had much of a peer group to begin with, and I was spending a lot of time listening to baseball on the radio as the Mets accidentally won a pennant, so in some sense I didn't notice much difference. And there was the new church, and new friends there, so I adjusted pretty quickly.

When I went away to college, my Christian school held Sunday services in the chapel/auditorium, but while I attended, I didn't have a real connection; it was almost like watching "somebody else's service" on TV. In fact, in general my time at school was marked by a vague sense of disconnectedness.

As a graduate student, I ended up at the church where I was born (not literally, but pretty close). I didn't really know anybody there, since I had left on my 3rd birthday, but somehow it felt familiar. Then after getting married, the first thing we did was find "a church for both of us," and were blessed to find a place close by that was not only a great spiritual home but also gave us a peer group that we're still happy to call our friends 30 years later.

At that point I felt really grounded, really comfortable in who I was, so when my wife announced that God was calling her to go to seminary, I almost didn't even give a second thought to what it would be like to pick up and move 678 miles to a new home 3 states away. Just another new adventure...

... until we actually got there. It was a new world in every possible way; among other things, we had a very hard time finding a church where we felt at home. And I also ended up in a depression that necessitated counseling before I began to pull out of my tailspin a little.

For several years I understood those two facts as "two things that happened in Ohio," but eventually I grasped that they were 2 sides of the same coin. I have been formed in such a way that -- although we lived in a quite comfortable apartment -- without a church I could really call my own, I was for all intents and purposes homeless.

Being married to a pastor means that, since that trying time, I always have a church readily available to me, one that has at least some level of commitment to me because I come as an accessory to the one they're really invested in. Or I thought it would be an "always" thing, until she had to take a year off from ministry because of a health issue.

We knew we would move back to a familiar area, and also knew we would need a church; it was there that I put my foot down. With so much disruption and upheaval, I believed that I would only survive if I had a church where I was instantly at home.

We went back to that same church from my teen years, and it was the best decision I ever made. Many there remembered me, and still fondly remembered my parents; at the same time they (mostly) didn't make me stay a teenager but allowed me to be an adult. Perhaps it helped that even as a teenager I was pretty much a middle-aged man.

So I'm writing this not only because of my unwavering gaze in the rear-view mirror, but also to thank those folks for being home to me at a time when I needed one almost like I needed oxygen. And also to thank them for most recently graciously sending me out, since we are beginning a new adventure in a new church.

This time I know I'm going to be fine... since I know I have a church to call home, it feels as if, like the turtle, I'm carrying my own home with me on my back.