Intense

As daughter Carrie so aptly stated on her facebook status last night, yesterday was a rather intense day. I'm not sure exactly how she meant it, but there was a lot going on with a lot of people at church yesterday.

Of course it probably all started with the fish fry and some of the emotion that comes out of a bunch of people working together to try to do a good thing. But we also had a couple of families suffering through some heavy grief. We have two couples who lost teenage sons in the past few years - both couples are in their forties - and their sons birthdays were only days apart. That kind of blew my mind when I discovered that. The one boys birthday would have been Thursday or Friday, and the other one was yesterday. So their was a lot of emotion from the parents, their other children, siblings and other family members, as well as the people of our church who generally feel their pain and are doing our best to share their grief.

There were also some other things going on before/during/after the morning worship time. A couple of people made some very important discoveries about themselves; some were finding out some things they didn't necessarily like; many seemed to simply be in the midst of some regular ol' soul-searching. And perhaps what is oddest is that nothing really had anything to do with "church." So I wasn't overly preoccupied with preaching yesterday, but was rather quite heavily praying through all the "down" times. It's probably good that my sermon was a little "less than" too, I suppose; so as not to interfere with the work the Spirit was doing.

In the afternoon we looked at another house, and that was interesting. It happened to be the first house we ever drove by and thought, "You know, maybe we should start thinking about buying a house... and that's a nice one." After going through it, it actually is pretty nice and is a definite possibility.

Then last night was the third session for our "Foundations" meetings (The Present Future). We didn't watch a video for this session, but were to have discussion about the previous video. There was some really good discussion too. However, there was a gaping hole of leadership. I was the only member of the church council present. I'm sure everyone had their reasons for not being there, but those things don't go without being noticed, and I wasn't at all sure how to answer the question, "So if these meetings are supposed to be 'foundational' for the future of our church, then why isn't the church council here?" I don't really know, and I'm not real sure I even want to. One of those things, I guess.

Then there was other stuff last night too. It was just an intense day from start to finish. Not all bad stuff by any means, but I'm a bit worn from it.

This week probably came at a really good time. I have a training thing in Findlay for a couple days; spending some time back home with the family for a couple days; and another lecture in Findlay next Monday. It'll do me good to get away and have something else to occupy my mind with for awhile.

Peace out, folks; and in.