sarah's blog

I forgot to share my cooking joy with everyone a couple weeks ago. John told me on my birthday back in July that he was buying me a KitchenAid mixer. He had found one on Craig’s List that was in great shape and a fraction of the price for a new one.

It ended up taking another 2 weeks before we connected with the seller and went to their house to pick it up. I had to wait a month but it was worth it, I’m finally the proud owner of the sweetest mixer on the market.

As a bonus it turned out the seller goes to our church. Small world (but big church, hence why we had no idea).

The past couple weeks have really been, challenging. It just seems to be one thing after another. A snowball effect. One day you wake up and you’re snowed in.

It just seems like in the last couple weeks so much has happened around us and involving us that John and I keep looking at and each other and wondering what is going on.

It started last Friday when I came down with a bad cold. No wait, back up. It started months ago when for various reasons my job almost got the best of me. It’s such an insane time of change, new things, unknowns, being short-staffed, still getting used to my role… I was taking a lot on and it was showing physically, emotionally, relationally. Stack on top of that John’s role that seems to expand daily and we were a thinly stretched couple. Oh and we’ve been married less than two years, moved twice and going to do it again this summer. Good times.

Back to last Friday. I got this cold that still plagues me as I write this post a week later. I really did not need this because I have to be at 110% if I expected to get everything done before we leave on our trip next week.

At home sick on Saturday morning, the bomb dropped. One email and a couple phone calls later it was clear that our church was in crisis. I have blogged about our church before and what an amazing, welcoming community we have found there. John is very close with some of the leadership guys, I have found friendships with some amazing women and we both look forward to worshiping with them every Sunday. But now some vital members of the community have left the church and everyone involved is hurting. I don’t know if we will ever know the full story but I suspect the truth is somewhere in between what both sides sincerely believe happened.

Church on Sunday was hard. Almost everyone attempted to show love and grace and come together as a church but the hole left by those who were missing was obvious. They are our friends, we love them, no one knows quite what to do but we do know things won’t ever be the same.

On Wednesday the wife of the Director of Church Relation, Glen Driedger, passed away. She died in her sleep and was found by her teenage twin daughters, who will graduate high school in a month. She was a friend to many in my office and the reaction to her death was palpable.

We have staff chapel on Thursday mornings and this week we took time to talk about Irene’s death, as well as what turned out to be three other deaths, and a baby born that will not live, among staff families. It was so much to take in at once and everyone felt the weight of loss.

I picked John up at lunch time yesterday and hugged him so tightly he had to put the car back in park and let me finish. I told him I don’t want to take him for granted. Glen said he didn’t know the night before it would be his last time with Irene. I tried to imagine what I would do if I said good night and in the morning her was gone.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. I forgot all about it until I got to work and Lynnette was wearing green. I was disappointed too because St. Patrick’s Day is one of the cooler holidays… low key but festive. Like you don’t really have to decorate your house or make a big meal or anything, as celebrating pretty much involves parades, pub food and lots of green beer.

John and I had been invited to Earl and Rhonda’s house for supper. Earl is an elder at our church (which for us is like one of the pastoral staff because we don’t really have pastors) and they have 3 of the coolest little boys, Owen, Hadden and Phoenix. We brought Guinness and Kilkenny so the meal could official be a St. Patrick’s Day party and everyone enjoyed the rare treat when more people from the church arrived after supper.

I brought my camera and got some candid shots of all of us hanging out, but most of photo shoot time was taken up by the 3 boys who enjoyed trying to dodge the camera or make the funniest possible faces and then laughing at themselves in the pictures. I didn’t end up with anything suitable for framing but then again, if I framed pictures of other people’s kids that would just be creepy.

I love hanging out with people from church and getting to know them better. Vintage is the first church that John and I have ever picked together. And it is probably the first time in my life, maybe his as well, that we have been able to choose a church without any external factors- family, school, obligations- coming into play. I found the church through the Acts 29 church planting network site because John and I listen to podcasts from Mars Hill Church in Seattle and Village Church in Dallas and we knew they were a part of that network. I thought that would be our best shot at finding a church like theirs in our area. It’s a 30 minute drive every Sunday morning but despite that I look forward to being there every week.

It’s a small church plant, about 3 years old, and it’s full of young people. There’s only one Sunday school class so the older ones come to the service, and we meet in a movie theatre, but it is the most sincere, real church I’ve ever been to. I’ve seen door greeters before and I can tell who volunteered to help me find a seat, but this was the first time I had been invited to lunch after church on my first visit. After 2 visits I didn’t feel like visiting any more churches. For the first time in my life I can be the same person with the same tastes, clothes, sense of humor, friends, hobbies, passions and yes, even music, on Sunday as I am every other day of the week. Plus they take the verse about “eating together” literally so we have alot of potlucks. : )

I am a bit worried now, as we look at the future and consider moving closer to Vancouver for John’s commute, that we will be moving even further away from the church. I don’t want to even think about leaving after building these relationships over the last several months and for me that isn’t really an option. But driving 45 mins every Sunday morning, Wednesdays for home group and Thursdays for women’s group, isn’t a pleasant thought either. Oh well, as John and I have become very good at saying, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

If you live in the Abbotsford area you should come check out Vintage!