The Bitter End

As I get oh so close to finally finishing off my MDiv, I am reminded of how hard it is to finish things off. When I go running, the last quarter mile is the worst. When I take a long road trip, I always have to pee really bad and the last hour or so seems to take thirty. When you have worked a long day, the last hour takes the longest. I hope and pray that the last four and a half weeks of my seminary education are not the longest or the hardest, because that would put them as pretty dang hard.

I combine the feeling of hoping that the bitter end goes quickly with the rush of excitement and possibility that someday soon Robin and I and some friends will be embarking on a whole new adventure. We will finally have a chance to settle, and settle for the foreseeable future, when we get to Denver. It has been a drive for at least a year and a half. We look forward to having kids, trying to buy a house, having dogs. But more than anything I look forward to being able to finally get settled down and live for the present for a while. I know, as soon as I try to do that, we will get pregnant and will be looking nine months into the future. But at least that will only be one change at a time.

I feel like I am meant to have a church in Denver, to make a difference in a community that really needs the touch and the light of Christ. It is hard to think about leaving behind a lot of what we love here, I love being a student, kind of, I love being a youth minister, I love our youth, I love our pastor and his wife, I love that Robin has a job she loves, I love the price of rent. But I know that these things are not the things that we are supposed to do in the long term. I hope our church is good, I hope that we can help people come to know Jesus, and I hope I can lead in a good way. Mostly, I look forward to enjoying the present...