New City, New Job, A New Life

Trust me, this LAST thing I wanted to do was add to the excess of dribble already floating around cyberspace. But alas, here I am. Due to a combination of recent life circumstances (future post to come) and the encouragement from our church’s worship pastor, Chad, I decided to take the plunge and let the world in on my thought life. Which is all this is. As I stated in the About  section, this site is merely a reflection of my struggle to be human, a Christian human, who is both spiritual and physical all rolled up in one unique and broken package. So here’s a taste of what is to come:

New City
Having lived in the old Swiss Avenue neighborhood in east downtown Dallas, TX for 4 years, moving to Fort Worth would prove to be one of the more difficult migrations I have ever experienced. Katy was almost 6 months pregnant and I was coming up on the end of a very long and difficult seminary career. Making things a little easier though, we hired movers and waited until after I finished classes that spring semester to move. Even still, that first summer was brutal.

No it was not the Texas heat that got to us, although that did not help. It was the transition from one way of life to another that made it difficult. I only had two seminary classes left and they were two of my favorite yet most difficult ones I’ll probably ever experience (*knock on wood). Because of my unique seminary experience (future blog post to come), I had to take OT (Old Testament) 3 and 4 that summer. These were OT Hebrew language classes that challenged my faith in God’s Word more than ever. But the real hardship that summer was not the ridiculous academic challenge of attempting to learn the Hebrew language, it was the fact that we now lived in Fort Worth as pastors at Journey Church, while commuting 3 days a week to downtown Dallas to finish classes. Since I was spending three days a week in Dallas, Katy decided to keep her part-time job there so we could commute together and share the burden of the long car ride across the DFW metroplex.

New Job
Having decided early on in seminary, we waited until the end of our education to begin the candidacy process of becoming pastors at a local church. This was the best decision we could have ever made. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to have a comfortable and decently paid position as a respected pastor during seminary, but the stress would have literally killed me. Being a volunteer at a church with few responsibilities and a mind-numbingly simple part time job as an office administrator made classes that much easier. Granted, the professors were very creative at making things as difficult as possible at times.

The day after we moved to Fort Worth was my first Sunday as a youth pastor. I had no idea what I was doing. I had a deep and profound understanding of the Bible, a firm theological framework, viewed through the lenses of church history… and it only made things worse. I loved seminary so much, and dove into the challenge of academics so deep, that the stress and relational nature of being a pastor nearly drowned me. I absolutely love teenagers and my wife and I have had a passion for youth ministry for a number of years now, but we were never prepared for the brokenness and hardship that accompanied the life of a pastor. It floored us, both mentally, physically, and most importantly…spiritually.

I love my church. I love our community, both inside the church walls and outside them. I’m actually writing this post as I sit in a Sport’s Bar down the street from our church (our church staff comes here once a week for lunch). Eagle Mountainites are edgy, thick-skinned, tattooed Texans who have been burned and scarred by their rough lives in semi-suburban north Fort Worth. Katy and I fit in here perfectly. It’s almost as if God knew what he was doing when he called us here…

Upon finishing seminary in August last year, Katy and I began looking to the future for our new life. For me, everything made sense. Our daughter would be born a few months later, our diplomas were hanging on the wall, and our new church had accepted us with grace and kindness. Everything made sense, except one thing. Headaches. And when I say headaches, I mean at least one migraine level headache every. single. day. Even though seminary was over. Even though we had been living here for 4 months. Even though everything made “sense” in our new life, I was still having daily headaches…

Stay tuned next week for “Headaches: The Monster Within.”