Happy Halloween!

We debated taking Israel trick-or-treating, but decided in favor of it rather last-minute. Thanks to a very cute outfit a friend gave us from her trip to China, a cereal box, and a little creativity, we think we pulled it off fairly well. (...given that we started the whole process at half-hour before dinner...) We also had a little fun carving our pumpkins last night and thought we'd share the "fruits" of that labor with you as well. Enjoy!

Pat's is the symbol for Christ (left) and Lezlie's is a bird flying with a nest and egg in the background (right).

The only shot of Israel actually wearing the hat while putting on the finishing touches.


Trick-or-treating with mom

trick-or-treating with dad

Our blonde-haired, blue-eyed China doll.


Happy Halloween!

Black and White and Red all over

What is black and white and red all over?
-A newspaper.-
Ha, ha.

So that joke isn't really funny. But neither is what I'm actually talking about.

Our sermon yesterday was on loving your neighbor. Most of you know that we have moved into our neighborhood to do just that in the most literal sense imaginable. We chose this "downwardly mobile" path into the economically, spiritually, and educationally depressed part of Muncie along with 10 other families in order to get to know and love the people who would be our neighbors here. So far, we know the man next door fairly well. He's an avid gardener who has been down on his luck for many years and is now in his 50's. We had him over for cake on his birthday last year and for meals sporadically. We prayed diligently for him when we found out we were friends with his son (and daughter-in-law and grandson), from whom he had been estranged for years and did all we could to facilitate their renewed relationship. We receive all kinds of gifts from him in the form of vegetables and do what we can to give back to him. Loving our neighbor? Check!

But that's not the end of it. Because he is not our only neighbor. We also have a couple with two little girls across the street with whom we have had the opportunity to become friends over the past year and a half or two. This year we went to the guy's birthday party and to the baby shower for their newest daughter. Pat even helped him land a job with his cleaning company when he got laid off. But we haven't had them come to our side of the street yet. This is because there is a lot to cross in that street. And that is because this family is black. And we're white.

When Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan, the moral of the story was more than, "Be the nice person who is always willing to help someone in need." There were two races involved here: the Jews and the Samaritans (who were half-Jew and half-not-Jew and were hated because of it). Jesus told the story because a Jewish man, seeking to justify his "love of his neighbor," asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" The answer to this is of the highest importance, because Jesus tells us that loving God and our neighbor is what all "religion" should boil down to and that if we do not love our neighbor, we cannot say we love God. So it's pretty important that those of us who claim to love God get this right. In answer to, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan. It's the story of a man who gets beaten and robbed and left for dead. Two religious Jewish men pass by, while a Samaritan tends to the man's wounds and pays to have him stay somewhere safe for awhile. Jesus asks the Jewish man a question in return: "Who was the neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The Jewish man answered, "The one who had mercy on him." He did not say, "the Samaritan," but that's who it was. The Samaritan -- the one least like him and who his culture treated with no dignity -- was the neighbor.

It is not always easy for me to love people like me. I could spend my whole life just trying to love the people who are my friends and still fail miserably. But trying to love the person most unlike me? I find it hard to even strike up a superficial conversation. I don't think I hate the people who are most unlike me. I do a nice middle-class thing and just don't love or hate them; I avoid them. That's pretty neutral ground, right? How can you un-love someone you never spend time with? But what I was reminded of is that not spending time with those unlike me is me not loving them. I'm pretending they don't exist. And isn't that the worst? Isn't that what the two religious men in the story did?

So...my neighbors. They are good people. We actually like them. But they're not like us. And that can be intimidating. We finally invited them to come over and play dominioes this week, but it's taken us this long to extend the invitation. I've been afraid of making a complete fool of myself. I've racked my brain trying to think of anything we have in common to do, but thought there was nothing. Our skin is different and so are our cultures, even though we live in the same neighborhood and have grown up in the same country. I don't listen to the same kind of music they do. I don't use the same lingo. There are tons of hidden rules from our cultures that we're not aware of and we will step all over them without knowing it. (I've been reading a book by Ruby Payne that helps teach me what they are, though....things like everyone talking at once is not rude and the T.V. being loud is just the expected thing in a house. But man, do I value my sort of orderliness and peace and quiet!) There are plenty of little things I'll have to compromise on or be flexible with and forgiving and apologetic about if I'm going to have any sort of meaningful love for my black, across-the-street neighbors. And they'll have to accept me and my cultural weirdness, too. I mean, what if they come over and think my nerdy sense of humor is lame and that I'm just really boring? What if I'm overly-sensitive about the race issue? What if we never talk about it at all? How would we really be friends, since race plays SUCH a role in Muncie, without talking about it? But what is there to say? ...Maybe we'll all just be really into dominoes. What then? Dinner? They don't like vegetables! What'll I ever make for them?

These sound like stupid little things: what we like to eat, how we carry on conversation, what kind of music (if any) we keep going in our house all day, what style of clothes we wear, what we think is funny, what kind of atmosphere is familiar and comfortable for us. But these are the sorts of things that are hard to give up for friendship. We want our neighborliness to be comfortable. I mean, who wants to go do things and have conversations that feel awkward and easily offensive? Isn't it just easier to avoid those sorts of things?

And that's the problem. Jesus came to make a body on this earth that would represent Him. And he was pretty plain that it was to cross lines of race and money and gender and age -- things that keep us apart so easily. But if His body doesn't look like that, then it doesn't represent Him well. If the gospel we preach isn't strong enough to bond people with light skin to people with dark skin, then it surely isn't strong enough to bond crooked human beings to a Holy God. What kind of gospel are we preaching, after all?

We're here to create, in the most blunt of terms, a church that is black and white and red all over. We want our representation of Jesus to look like he meant for it to look: people who have not historically liked each other coming together under the blood of Christ. But, though some lines of financial means are slowly being crossed (and it is very hard to be friends with someone who has significantly more or less money than you do...), the race issue is proving tricky here. There is not a single church around here (and probably not in your town, either,) where blacks and whites worship together. Our church is hoping to change that, but it takes a long time to tear down walls that have been up for so long, both in our personal lives and in our racially-charged community. (Did you know Federal mediators had to come to Muncie last year just to re-name a prominent street near a black part of town Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.?) It took someone giving his life blood to make it possible and it will take us and many others laying down our lives for others to really see what He did.

Please pray for our church as we look for ways to truly partner with some African-American leaders to help heal the wounds in our community. We have a diverse generation of kids who we are discipling to be the leaders of this community in 10-15 years, but we would love it if the leadership of our church was more diverse before then. We know this will take sacrifice on our part to give up things we have had control of and it will take sacrifice on the part of whoever joins us to put up with us as we learn how to give up that control.
Pray that we (Pat and I and the other families in our church) will be good neighbors to the people around us who are not like us. It so often seems like we can't even keep tabs on each other very well, and we could easily become a church where all we do is take care of the people who started it, but if we are to really do what we all know God brought us here to do, we have to begin the slow, hard work of really getting to know and love the people into whose neighborhood we moved.
Pray for some black leadership so that we can show that the difference between our families and the families of the kids we know is not primarily a difference of white and black, or middle- and lower- class upbringing, but of having Jesus and not having Jesus. (It's just that the people who lead the church right now all happen to be white people from the middle class...and we will not have done our job until that changes.)

After all, if we can't show a gospel that bonds us together with our neighbors, we can't show a gospel worth having at all.

Greetings from Pat (who is in the process of collecting whatever fruits, nuts, or other food he can find to harvest around our neighborhood), Lezlie (not pictured here, who is in the process of collecting her thoughts on life post-college, pre-second-child, and pre-election day), and Israel (who is collecting bits of nature for the house and words for his expressive vocabulary such as dog, cat, and down verbally, and "hey, look at me," and "please" in sign language). (Wow. That was quite a sentence!)

This post will likely lack some of the coherence of its predecessors, but it's about time to put something new up here. Our family has been trying to enjoy fall to its fullest. It's strange that both Pat and I feel like we start to come alive when the plantlife starts to die, but that's how it goes for us. We love the fall and squeezing as much as we can out of the few drops of evening sunlight left.

With the financial good (as opposed to "great") depression looming ahead, this is a great time of year to renew our efforts at living frugally. It's harvest time and we're doing all we can to keep the fruits of our labor (and our neighbor's labor and the labor of the fruit trees around that no one tends) from rotting on the ground. We're still picking yellow pear tomatoes from the renegade plants that grow in our garden year after year, whether we plant them or not. As I write, I have a couple bags of them as well as a bag of actual pears that I need to save from rotting in my kitchen. I've taken to canning this year, and it's really not that hard. I've put away yellow pear tomato preserves and pear honey and Pat and I worked on canning the green salsa together. It feels good to plant seeds, water them, pick their fruit, cook it, and have it in jars in your pantry. Talk about seeing a process through!

my first small attempt at canning pear honey

I have been heading outside during the days with Israel to enjoy the moderate temperatures and the colors. Pat and I went on a nature walk with him through Christy Woods here in Muncie this weekend, which he loved, since his new favorite toy was scattered all along the path: sticks. Israel loves to pick up, turn over, carry around, chew on, spit out, and share most any stick he meets, whether it is the size of his hand or twice the length of his body. He seems to like them even more than his second-favorite toy: rocks. (They get the same treatment as sticks.) So we spend as many afternoons as possible in the native environment of his inanimate pets.

Much of Israel's time outdoors has been with his friend, Judah. The difference in their approach to nature is funny to us moms every time they go out together, as Judah likes to run and explore the whole place at once, it seems, and Israel prefers to take it slow and appreciate each little twig. Every now and then their paths cross and they "play together." Lauren and I might still have more fun with their interraction than they do (since they share good taste in sticks, apparently...) but our times together make for camera-worthy events. Here are some samples.

Israel staying close by as Judah scopes out the scene.

sharing good taste in sticks

aah...the stick.

The dogs join us for fun, too. That's Judah's dog, Max, in front, and our dog, Sophie, in the back. They share good taste in tennis balls.

"I know there's a stick in here somewhere."

There. Now that you're enjoyed some of fall indoors with us, go out and enjoy a little of it outside! And feel free to drop by if your outdoor trek brings you this way.

Sweet little boy

Israel is such a sweet little boy these days. Here is just one example. I couldn't wait to post. Even though the quality isn't the best in one respect, it certainly is in another!

Waking up in Red River Gorge

This weekend, Pat and I celebrated our fifth anniversary! Wow. We combined milestones and had Israel spend his first night at his Granna and Papaw's without us. It was a little harder than I had anticipated to leave him and drive and hour and a half away to the middle of Red River Gorge, but the report is that he was even better behaved for his grandparents than he is for us at home. He had a blast -- went to bed and woke up happy every time!


Red River Gorge is our favorite place to wake up celebrating our anniversary; we have gone there four out of five years. Last year, we didn't think Israel was old enough either to go camping or go without us.... Next year, we will have a six-month old, so we will miss the Gorge again. That meant this year was to be cherished. We went on a hike on part of Rough Trail. (That's really its name.) There were parts of the trail that lend themselves easily to our joke: "Geez! This is a rough trail!" It was challenging for a pregnant woman, but the sites and the company made it all worth it. We took a nap (meaning Pat took a nap and I laid there resting) on the forest floor on our way. The ground there was even more comfortable than our camp site!

This is a rough trail!

Under one of the many rock formations along the way.

On our honeymoon in Ithaca, New York, we promised ourselves that we would return there on..oh...say, our fifth anniversary. It's strange, the way we project ourselves into the future. It felt like we were a fledgling new couple at the time, at least financially, which seems to be the primary way the world measures your stability. I figured that by our fifth year, we would be much more "stable." Pat and I both thought, at the time, that we were spiritually ready to conquer the world as we met new and interesting people in Ithaca, including a hitch-hiker we picked up who blessed us before being on her way. We felt like our whole life we would give and receive blessings from all kinds of people wherever we went (and "wherever" had a broad scope, then, it seemed). While I hope that Abrahamic promise may still prove to be true, (and I certainly can count blessings that have been given to us along our way so far) life at five years of marriage doesn't look quite like we had expected, though we also aren't sure what we expected. Maybe we thought we'd have careers. Maybe we thought we would live in a house that wasn't half undone. Maybe we thought we would be doing something really cool and ministerial, like planting an urban church community.

Life has a way of being what you thought it might be while at the same time being nothing like you'd expected.

If you would've told us that we would be a helping start a church in an urban neighborhood, working with a racially diverse group of youth and alongside a group of people who had committed to the same task for years to come, we would've found that a wonderful way to live. And of course, we knew there was an Israel McCrory in the picture at some point, so why not now? And here we are, doing exactly the work we thought sounded ideal and with not only Israel, but a cute, healthy, babbling, walking Israel and his sibling on the way! Yet our life sounds more exotic when described in a sentence than when you're mowing the weeds in the yard of your urban house or doing the dishes dirtied by the youth who just left your house. I wonder if ministry and models have that in common: they're glamorous from a distance, and less so when you wake up with them every morning. But life is all about what you wake up with every morning.

So Pat and I wrestled somewhat with the way we thought things should be at this point while we were in the Gorge. It isn't Ithaca, but it is a beloved, familiar place to us (and it doesn't cost a plane ticket to get there). We weren't hiking near waterfalls or going to the great farmer's market there or eating at one of the MANY ethnic restaurants Ithaca had to offer, but we did hike in the mountains and we did go out for Thai food a couple nights before with our good friends Josh and Michelle (and Heron, their little one). So we are where we hoped we'd be in some ways. And in many ways, we haven't even begun to dive into all the possibilities in the people around us. There is more to explore in the exotic? Muncie. Sometimes it takes going away to realize it.

We read our vows to each other on the cliff where we have re-read them times before. I am glad we wrote them as things we asked God to help us do rather than things we promised we would do, because the things you have to do to have a good marriage are too hard to be able to do on your own. Had we not prefaced our vows with words like, "I call upon God to help me to...," I would feel like a miserable failure every year. But instead, we renew our call out to God to help us love each other and live our life together well, in service to other people. And we read over some of your notes to us that you wrote at our wedding. Some notes are from people who are far away; others have since passed away. They serve as a reminder of the "cloud of witnesses" who cheer and encourage us through this life. And somewhere between the calling on God and the voices of people who have gone before, or are coming after, or are going alongside us, we are renewed to go and wake up embracing our life for another year.

On the cliff where we renewed our vows and ate some good camp-food dinner: Pat, Lezlie, and "Peanut", 98 days big.

family night

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Cold rockin' it on a Friday night. Israel was getting bored with just walking.

Israel's first birthday

Israel's birthday has been...SWEET! I had not intended for Israel to be overwhelmed with the typical sugary-sweetness of the typical birthday all of a sudden just because he turned one, but things don't always go according to a mom's theory about things. Israel didn't seem to mind one bit. So here is the low-down on the people, the food, and the new things Israel has enjoyed for his first birthday.

We wanted to stick with things and activities for his birthday that Israel would actually enjoy, but that can be a little tricky when he is pretty happy just greeting his dog in the mornings. On his actual birthday, we spent the afternoon with Judah and his mom, who you may have met in previous posts. We all ate lunch, played in the living room, and went on a bike ride together. That evening, our families went to Puerto Vallarta, a local Mexican restaurant that Israel has enjoyed in the past. He likes Mexican food (shares our fajitas and salsa and gets his own guacamole) and the music that plays in the background. We also thought he would like the employees singing to him and clapping. You can see the results of our experiment here:

His unhappiness didn't last very long, so don't worry. He had the sympathy (the "aw...'s" at the end of the video make that apparent) of the whole restaurant, and besides that, when the "noise" was over, he was left with a tortilla covered in honey, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream in the shape of a number 1. I had not expected a restaurant to present a birthday dessert to a baby (though I should've known better by the number of people in the general population who ask if they can give him lollipops...). He dug right in (with a little help from his dad).

We also had fun opening a few presents for him. He got several cards and a book on his birthday. He liked pulling the cards out of their envelopes and being allowed to play with them.

He has since received several more presents and has liked them all. His favorite thing, though, has been the mylar balloon we bought him. I've decided it might be "the" gift for a one-year-old. I hope he stays this easy to please. He has a great "I find this interesting" sort of face he puts on when exploring the new things and will often point at them and say, "daaa....." in a tone that lets you know he's patiently explaining the thing to you. He got his first puzzles and likes taking the pieces out of their spaces, if not putting them back in. He also got new clothes that we will all appreciate in future pictures when the weather gets cooler.

On Sunday, we went out to lunch with the grandparents (minus Grandma Terri and Grandpa Jim, who couldn't make a drive from Arizona in time for lunch...) and came home to enjoy carrot cake. Our dog, Sophie, seemed to have enjoyed ten of the twelve cupcakes, but we had a couple still left when we returned in addition to a small cake. (How nice of her to share!) Israel liked the small gathering and REALLY enjoyed the cake his dad had made. He ate nearly the whole cupcake in ONE BITE! (His dad was able to take a little of it away from him.) You can see some of the action in the video clip at the end...it took him too long to chew up what he had bit off for me to record it all. Suffice it to say it was more of the same for at least a minute or two. Watching it reminded me of one of those nature videos where a snake swallows some poor creature three times the size of its mouth.

While not officially part of his birthday celebrating, Israel has been honing his walking skills and wanted to show them off to you. He goes all kinds of places using only his feet now and can walk the length of living rooms that aren't as long as ours. Tune in again for more of Israel's sweet adventures!

Big Stuff!

It has been an incredibly long time since my last post! There are three reasons: 1. I've not been feeling well until recently, 2.I wanted to wait to make a really cool post after our trip to Seattle, and 3. we had lost our camera for several weeks. But now we have found our camera (what a crazy story that is) and we just returned from Seattle last night after sharing our great news with them in person, and I'm feeling better now that I'm through my first trimester of our second pregnancy!

That's right. You'd better read my writing closely.

So...surprise! We could not have been more surprised by the news ourselves. Israel seems like he couldn't care less and I'm glad he will just grow up thinking his sibling has always been around. They'll be about 18 months apart, with the youngest being expected to arrive mid-March 2009. So that's pretty big stuff.

Israel is also pretty big stuff these days, and is taking his first steps. He took two in Zack and Gala's house in Seattle and four in the Las Vegas airport on the way home. Israel will turn a year old this month and that is craziness to me! Wow. There just went a year...!

We had a good time in Seattle. The weather was unseasonably cold (hence the sweaters we bought while there...) but that did not stop us from enjoying being outdoors.

This first group of pictures is from Golden Gardens -- a nice park not too far from Zack and Gala's. We parked at the top of the VERY LARGE hill and hiked down and back up. The stairs pictured are not nearly all the ones we had to climb. I consider it my initiation back into active life after a first trimester of laying in the recliner. What an initiation that was! (Regardless of the way it seems from the last picture, it really was quite cool...I had just been working that hard!)



Our other and more major trek outdoors was with Drew and Sara, who took us to the Soqualmie Pass to hike up part of a mountain to Annette Lake. The scenery and the conversation were beautiful, though the weather was not. The hike took five hours and we all worked together to make it carrying Israel, a diaper bag, and a backpack. (I mostly just carried "Peanut.") It was probably our favorite day in the Northwest. Maybe we'll go back when we don't share part of the trail with cold rain. We all (including Israel) felt like "more than conquerors" after making it back to the car -- a good feeling!


We enjoyed all kinds of food while we were there. With Israel napping between breakfast, lunch, and dinner, going out to eat was our main outing each afternoon and evening. Our favorite place was probably a really small Mediterranean restaurant called Gorgeous George's. George was a great host/cook who is from Nazareth and loved Israel's name. We had falafel and a gyro and they were both amazing, both in taste and size! It will likely take our taste buds awhile to adjust to Indiana fare as we enjoyed Cuban sandwiches (that made your lips hot from eating them), pizza approved by the government of Naples, and Thai food that was nothing short of amazing in its own rite. There was one little spot that deserved a second trip called Molly Moon's -- an ice cream place that makes its own ice cream and waffle cones in-shop. They have the traditional flavors, which are surely really good, too...but Pat loved the salted caramel ice cream and I can't even conceive of a better taste than the balsamic strawberry I had. I would use pregnancy as an excuse to eat a pint of it a day! I wish I had good pictures from that place....

Israel was a trooper and loved the different foods as well. He ate some of everything we did (except the ice cream), but he especially liked my Thai dish, which I thought was too hot for him (even though we do give him spicy food pretty regularly). We offered him more tame things during the meal, but he kept reaching for the tofu and bamboo shoots from my "summer heat" dish. Ah, I love my son! We both agree to claim him, if only for his taste in food! This is Pat in the Thai restaurant, me eating a Scandinavian pastry, and Molly Moon's.





We loved taking in the colors and fun foods at the Pike Place Market. The booths were beautiful!

Pat really liked the fresh figs we bought at this stand. Once again, beauty abounds.

Our favorite taste from the market: fig balsamic vinegar. I liked it even better than the blackberry kind they had here. If you know about my love for blackberries, you know how much that means. This place was great! This guy would shout at all females (regardless of age) going by: "Excuse me, young lady. Would you like to try some chocolate pasta?" We did. It was good!

As great as the restaurants were, the coolest meals were those shared with friends. We shared a meal with Josh and Amanda Sandoz at their house (which we don't have pictures of, since our camera was stolen on the bus onthe way to their house. Long story....)
Our last night in Seattle, Jeff and Chris Ramsdale (pictured immediately below with not-their-son Miles) graciously hosted a slew of former Indiana folk at their house for dinner and tea. I wasn't able to get pictures of everyone who came, but this will give you an idea of what it was like. Believe it or not, there were several of our old Muncie friends who weren't able to make it!

Amanda Sandoz with a great face. (That's Sue Weinraub in the black hoodie.)

Romeo Martinez.

This last picture brings back so many fond memories. We stayed in Zack and Gala's house, but they had just left to come to Indiana the day we left for Seattle. So we stayed in their empty house, which was SUCH a blessing! We took advantage of the nice space by hosting a dinner of fish tacos made by Pat and Drew (a duo in the kitchen from years and years back). This is one for the books. Around the table, here are: me, Pat, Sara, Drew, Lori, Susan, Matt, Miles, and Israel.

Block Party

This is a short post, but I wanted to give anyone interested the link to the newspaper story about the block party our church throws each year. Leslie Draper came up with the idea and this is our third year putting it on. Pat is in charge of a 3-on-3 basketball tournament and I run the cake walk. The article isn't bad for our local paper...though...why the talk about mowing lawns? What does that have to do with...?

Schaivon and CC, who are quoted, are two of "our kids" from a previous post with Israel. We're proud of them. There are also pictures of the party if you follow the link on the right side of the article page under the main picture. Maybe I'll get a couple of my own on here in the next few days. We'll see.

What I love most about the article is finding out what our neighbors think about the party. For some reason, it's amazing to me that it seems to be serving its intended purpose: to bring out the assets of our community and bring people of all backgrounds together to have an evening of good, clean fun. It honestly made me tear up to see that people are proud of our community. I don't know the other people in the article, but they have noticed our church's work and that goes a long way for me.

go read the news article

unlikely ceremony

Today Israel and I went to Jacob's funeral. I sat there, watching this beautiful couple go through such a hard time and dwelt on the fact that nothing is certain in life. We serve a God who offers us no guarantees as to our life's circumstances. I have one friend who is having a particularly tough time with this, as she knows both families who lost infants this summer as well.

I have been thinking about a response to this time. When my friend told me what a hard time this brought on between her and God, I didn't really know what to say. I feel like I thought a lot about the problem of evil in college and went through my time of disbelief then. I told her I tend to just trust that I've already been through the questions. It takes a lot of emotional and intellectual energy to wrestle through such an issue, and I don't have the energy to do that again in life. I know the end result of my time of questioning was that I decided to trust God. But that answer just doesn't quite satisfy even me. After all, isn't that like putting faith in my own past questioning? That surely must be shaky ground.

I decided to think it through a little bit and reminded myself that there are three options: Good God, Bad God, or No God. Either God exists or He doesn't and if He does, He is either good or He is not. The problem(s) of evil notwithstanding, the world makes a ton more sense with God in it than not. And if there is a God, what is there to do besides trust him? We are helpless against him and totally at His mercy. Not yielding to an all-powerful Creator is, at best, not smart. There. I knew I had already thought this through.

But that's not a good response to someone in the middle of questioning. Perhaps it's correct, but it comes off a bit cold and calculated.

At the funeral, I stood beside my friend as we sang songs of worship to God -- songs about how God is good, no matter what, and how we are willing to go through tough times if only to know Him better. And I remembered that this relationship I have with God is just that: a relationship. At some point, I made a decision that I was going to trust God, no matter what. It was a bit like my wedding day: promising to do and be certain big things in the face of an unknowable future. On some level, you have no idea what you're really getting into, but you promise to believe the best about the other person and to fight for your relationship above all other human relationships. And a relationship with God is like a marriage, but the believing-the-best part is made more complicated by the fact that God has ultimate authority and is not ever wrong. If you find yourself disagreeing with Him, then, well...you have some tough decisions to make. Either you can wrestle it through with Him, leave Him, or just trust Him despite your own judgment of the situation. This time, I think I'll take that final option. It's scary, since I know full well that there is nothing about me preventing some similar tragedy from coming my way. But I see how God loves people in the midst of this and that helps. It still doesn't make sense to me that these things happen when God is in control, especially as I found myself saying in the conversation with my friend that continues in my head, "When God takes charge of everything, He has said he will take away all of this sort of thing." But God IS in control now. And why doesn't that piece of heaven push its way into this crummy world? There is no good answer for that. But I look at Jesus, who, having all power, submitted himself to the pain and sorrows of this place and I know that I am to submit myself to whatever comes my way as well. I am to follow Jesus and trust that God knows what He's doing, no matter what happens in my life.

In that way, the funeral was a sort of renewal of my vows.