How I nearly died.

When we moved to TN to work with the parachurch organization I had been hired at, we had no idea what life was going to look like there. We had been as creative as we could manage in trying to buy a house, but given that we had very little credit history and even less verifiable income we could not get a loan. We stumbled upon a USDA grant that helped first time home buyers and had driven down several times to look at houses to no avail. We had the idea of buying an old country church and renovating into a house (a dream we still hold on to for that ‘someday’ when everything works out the way we would like). We found one old church that seemed promising. It still had all the old pews in it and everything, but we could not put together the financing. Fortunately we were eventually put in touch with a friend of the ministry who owned a house in the downtown area who was willing to rent it to us at a discounted rate.

I love you too, just don't hug me.

Yesterday I griped a lot about those who chose not to support us financially in our ministry in TN. I wish I could say that for everyone who chose not to there was one who did, but that isn’t true. What is true is that each person who felt God calling them to partner with us in ministry was a blessing that far outweighed those who didn’t. As much as I was surprised at the creativity exhibited by those who said no, I was blown away by the generosity of those who wanted to share with us. There were some individuals we never considered approaching because we knew their financial situations well enough to know that asking them to absorb another expense in their monthly budget would be too much of a stretch. Those individuals were some of the first to come alongside and support us. We received some incredible blessings at the hands of God’s people.

How much am I worth to you? Let's put a number on it.

Alright, so it’s been really cold and I took a day off. It’s not like anyone reads this thing anyway….

                In the weeks and months after Hannah’s brush with every life threatening disease the world has ever known that turned out to be a simple kidney infection we were smack in the middle of the interview process with a parachurch organization in Eastern Tennessee. It seemed like the position and ministry were tailor made for me and my gifts. The ministry was designed to supplement resources and administration for the local church in order to facilitate more effective and farther reaching ministry within the church as a whole. The position I was interested in was to plan and oversee all of the concerts, conferences and other events that came through the area.  In other words I was going to do a lot of work in order to spend a little time meeting famous people so that the famous people could minister to the local churches. The only catch was that each staff member had to raise their own support. I really had no idea what that meant, so I was in. What could a small thing like money mean?

And now... the rest of the story

                So if you remember from Friday, at some point in our past between 5 and 14 years ago Hannah was in the hospital with a mysterious low grade fever that had lasted over 2 weeks. We had been admitted and were placed in a shared room. The nurse had informed us that I wasn’t allowed to stay in the room with her overnight and she would return when my curfew had arrived. Well, the next thing I knew I woke from the cold hospital floor to Hannah crying and the nurse whispering in harsh tones to the pair of us what horribly disrespectful people we were. How dare I disobey her when she specifically informed me that I could not stay the night in the room? Hannah was exhausted and kept trying to explain that we had simply fallen asleep waiting for her to return and tell me it was time to leave. I was so groggy from lack of sleep that I wasn’t really processing any of it, not to mention my left side was half frozen from sleeping on the floor and half broken from, well, sleeping on the floor. As the nurse ensured we were sufficiently shamed for our ridiculous behavior we heard a quiet, strained voice from the next bed calling the nurse. The nurse gave us a look like, “You see what I mean? Do you realize what you’ve done to that poor woman over there?” (her expressions were wonderfully effective).