It goes like this…

If God was going to send us to Alaska, I didn’t want to caravan with two vehicles. It would be double the fuel to get there and I really didn’t want to drive that much by myself; in winter, on over a thousand miles of icy roads that I was so unfamiliar with. I asked God to please provide someone who needed a car. I wanted the car to be a blessing, just as it had been a blessing to me. Three days later, Sean was told, by a coworker, that a Vietnam Veteran was in need of a car. The heater had gone out in his vehicle and he needed something warm and reliable. I was so excited! When I met this gentleman, I knew he was a treasure. I was so blessed to meet him and holy cow, was he excited about the heated seats and heater that worked so well😊 I absolutely love it when God provides places for me to pray to be a blessing and then delivers in such an unbelievable way.

Lily and I started packing and carrying boxes down to our garage. I recorded the contents of each one and numbered all of the boxes; excellent advice we had gotten from people who knew about border patrol. I was nervous about missing something they might require for us to cross into Canada and then back into the U.S. at the Yukon/Alaska border. We still weren’t sure when we would be moving but I felt it was going to be closer to January than June. I prayed God would give us a house right away to stay in. Staying with friends was fine, fun even and I would be super grateful, but it would be so nice to just move right into our own space. Sean got a text from a college buddy, (who, incidentally, had been the one to ask us to Church plant in Butte, Montana) that night, “I hear you’re moving to Alaska! When will you guys be here? We’re taking our yearly Florida vacation and we’ll be gone for two weeks. Can you come and house sit for us?” There was God, showing up with a house for us to rest in. Okay. I asked for a house, this wasn’t what I meant but I can take a hint. They go to Florida and we go to Alaska. I laughed out loud. What a sense of humor God has! That’s crazy!!

We needed to be at their house by February 3^rd.  I was willing if that was God’s plan. Sure enough. We were to leave for Alaska on January 24^th. It felt insane but I thought, He will bless the road, the weather, our Spirits, and get us there safely. This is high adventure with Jesus. We are going to cross Canada and drive through the southern Yukon, with all of our possessions, our daughter, and what most certainly would be considered ‘illogical’ trust in Jesus; in January. What are those temperatures going to look like? Oh gosh.

So, for Christmas, Sean got an exciting array of survival equipment. Gas cans, emergency mylar blankets, a hatchet, rope, emergency candles and light sticks, a solar powered-weather radio, propane heater, water purifier; protein bars… You name it, Sean probably got it. Lily and I had a lot of fun reading reviews and ordering from Amazon.

“It Keeps You Runnin” -The Doobie Brothers

I should reference, now, that Sean had been running to and from ministry for about 5 years, and I was running right along with him. That was what, the whole, ‘Florida thing,’ was about. When things get hard, Sean wants to run to Florida, his home state. And for my part, I enable. I think I felt guilty and so I wanted to give Sean something. So, I latched onto Florida, too.

In 2015, we had taken our first ministry job with a church, our birth church, actually. Our pastor, called it our “natal church.” It was the church God gave us after recovery started. (Sean’s recovery from drugs and alcohol and my recovery from codependency, a process that is ongoing.) But we weren’t supposed to have taken the job. A friend later described it as a, “false start.” We got in front of Jesus instead of being led by Him. Sean was getting a degree in Pastoral Leadership with a focus on counseling, taking this position was logical. It was our home church, after all. But just because it’s logical, doesn’t mean it’s Jesus.

When Sean went back to school for his degree, our church had specified that we would come back and work there, and that was our intent when we left. Sean had a year before graduation and with this offer, it would require that he do an adult completion program and extend out graduation for another year. Not at all what he wanted to do. We also would be going back into a legal denomination that God had already released us from. Sean had reservations about taking it. He said, “I feel like I need to take my name out of the hat.”  From time in prayer, I knew that ‘the job was the senior pastor,’ meaning that Sean and I were to minister to the pastor and his wife, not necessarily take the church position. But I got scared about finances and decided we could do both jobs. Minister to the pastor and his wife and take the ministry position within the church. Why shouldn’t we take it? That was the plan in the beginning, right?! So, we pushed into it.

We shouldn’t have. We did neither job well, we damaged our marriage, we hurt congregants and we regressed in our walk with Jesus. Lily talked about how it felt like there was a “big stone heart” in our house. Some friends came to visit us during this time, and I told my friend, “I just feel like I can’t rest, and I can’t hear God.” She said, “When I can’t rest it means I’m not trusting Him and there is no way to hear when I can’t rest.” Yip. That was exactly what was going on. I hadn’t trusted God since I decided Sean should take the job at the church and convinced Sean to do it. What had I done?! God’s voice was like a bumblebee hovering over wildflowers, like soft whispering, but there was a freight train raging between us. I couldn’t hear a thing but the roar of my own fear.

God had delivered us from a lot of legalism, and I thought we were supposed to go back into this specific church and help deliver it, at least on some level. But that wasn’t what He was asking. He wanted Sean and I to see the damage legalism does and be completely delivered. He didn’t want us to combat any of it. Just observe. And let the lead pastor be our ‘job.’ Just, love and abide with him. But I thought I knew better. And I ended up going headlong into a battle God had already won for me. God wanted this experience to solidify our departure from ‘denomination domination’. But just like in C.S. Lewis’ book, ‘The Silver Chair,’ I “missed the first sign.” And then all the signs after. And then we ran for all the wrong reasons, in all the wrong directions. This was a massive lapse in judgement; where fear became God and God got backed into a corner in my imagination.

So, we had run hither and yon’ to find our place in ministry and in ourselves and with each other and for Lily and with the Lord; and it was futile. It would stay futile until we could stop running. Thank God, He let us be fired. Thank God, He created a space for us to just stop. And now He was presenting Alaska, The Last Frontier. Hmm. Okay. What is this going to look like? When are we supposed to go? Certainly not in winter, that would be stupid!! The Alaska Canadian Highway in January? That would be as foolish as it was dangerous. And also, what about our dog, Ellie?

We sat at the kitchen table, the three of us, asking each other what we thought God was trying to tell us. We came up with different answers and a few of the same ones. After prayer and meditation, I felt like we just needed to be patience and trust His process. We would spin our wheels trying not to do that. Should we take an offer to go to Arizona? Should we go back to Portland? For what? Florida too, was, still a temptation. So silly to even think about going back after the struggle to stay and the ‘necessary roughness’ to get us to finally leave. Sean would say, “Man, I would rather be truck driving then be doing this.” The idea of long-haul trucking was really on his mind. It was an ‘out’ for Sean.  He could be doing something he wanted, that he was skilled at and something he actually cared about. I mean, at least he liked trucking. Rig work was a misery to him. But Lily and I would always remind him that God had put us here and this was the center of His will. Both of us knew though, that it was Sean, who had to go out there on the field, in the weather, with the crazy, ‘rough necks’ (a term for rig workers) every day. For lack of a better phrase, this season, totally sucked. We endured and stuck it out anyway. Finally, we were doing a hard thing, a thing we didn’t want to do that God was asking us to do. It made no sense; we didn’t see a benefit to anyone or to ourselves. This did not fit the ‘following God guidelines’ we had made. We did it anyway. It was weird. It didn’t feel like the struggle we had in Florida, trying so hard to stay there. It felt frustrating but peaceful. The world hadn’t stopped but we had. There was no, ‘try this’ and ‘do that’, clawing out a place for ourselves with our fingernails. It wasn’t desperate. It was just uncomfortable.

Sean got a call from a friend, and college classmate, who had moved to Alaska and started a Recovery church there. He told Sean he wanted us to come up and partner with he and his wife. He told Sean he would have never asked him while we were in Florida because he knew Sean was right where he wanted to be. I had an immediate aversion to the idea. I mean, Alaska?! You’ve just got to be kidding! Do you know how cold it is up there? Uuuggghhhh!!! We already hated the cold and what about the dog? She would be a warm, little hors d’oeuvre, for a wolverine or a bear. Not to mention the fact she would be miserable, if she didn’t freeze to death first. No. We can’t do that. That would never work. But the more I thought about it, the more I could see that it was pretty obvious God had brought us to Sidney, Montana, for some big reasons. If going to Alaska was on His agenda, the wishful Floridians that we were, He would have to toughen us up regarding the weather. He had done that in some pretty major ways. We would have to not like where we were and not have a lot of connections. Check. We would have to be aware that we weren’t in a place we were going to stay for jobs or family. Check Mate. Nothing else that we came up with felt right. I got angry. Of course, He wants us to go to Alaska. In anger, I prayed, and in compassion, He answered. “I’m not asking you to go to Alaska for others. Alaska is for you.” Alaska is for us? How? Why? We’ve never wanted to go there!!

 To give us our heart’s desire, God had to take away our fuzzy, warm, security blankets and comforts; like places we loved and people we loved. He wanted to get us willing to ask the question and ask for the desire to follow Him down the bottomless well.

So, our friends had gone. We were in a place we didn’t like. We were isolated, resentful and hurt. And there was nobody but Jesus to talk to. Sean was working on the oil rigs of North Dakota, a job he absolutely hated. Lily and I tried to make some connections to no avail. We prayed and petitioned God for an answer. What were supposed to do? All we got was, ‘Stay with me in this.’ Sit in this sorrow and disappointment and isolation. The weather was starting to turn really cold. Sean was working in wind chills of -35 on those North Dakota high plains. Having to go inside every 10 minutes to prevent frostbite. We had never experienced temperatures like this, ever. Our dog, Ellie, was miserable in this weather. She had loved soaking up the Florida sun. Being a short haired, Boston Terrier, she enjoyed being a ‘hotdog.’ She laid in front of the heater in the kitchen all day. She stole Lily’s heated blanket. She had to put a coat and booties on (She hated her booties.) to be able to go outside. Her life had gotten hard, too. We all learned quickly about base layers and muck boots, balaclavas and gloves that could withstand the wind. We went through a lot of car batteries, because of the cold, before we figured out what kind of preventative maintenance they needed to function in those temperatures.

While in prayer, Sean was told this season and the rig work, specifically, would be, “a rich blessing.” A promise He was always skeptical of. How was this ever going to be a rich blessing? We were isolated, living on a frozen tundra, and neither Sean nor myself were doing what our hearts desired. Lily was mourning the loss of her friends and community and we were 4 hours from a mall or Taco Bell. This was not an awesome time for her. Our friends were pregnant, with their first baby, when we moved to Sidney. The consolation for Lily, having to leave her Florida community, was that she would get to be with their baby. She was so looking forward to that. In fact, she couldn’t wait for the baby to arrive. She had a countdown on her calender and in her phone. Lily was able to go to a sonogram and that was really cool for her to get to experience, but they moved before their baby was born. For our friends, that was an amazing blessing, and we praised God for it. For Lily, this was a deep hurt that took a lot of time and experiences with God, for God to heal.

 Our dear friend, Susan, whom we had met in Florida, and her daughter, Elizabeth, sent us books and cards of encouragement and friendship. It was just the best thing to get a package from Amazon we weren’t expecting that reminded us we were loved and cared for and not forgotten. And God did provide one amazing friend for me, while we were waiting. Stacey, a wonderful woman from the church our friends had served at, became a very dear friend. We discussed what had happened with the Sidney Church. We talked about our individual walks with God, deep hurts we had, and we prayed for each other. He brought her and I together right when we needed each other the most, and I am so blessed to know her.

Even though we were all blessed in different ways, we struggled, hard. Sean was really struggling both with our undesirable circumstances and with his relationship with God. “If this is His best for us, why should we serve Him?” We all felt that way. Even Lily, who knew God can make good out of any situation, really had a hard time reconciling this. It was just bizarre. Had God brought us here and then forgotten us? Job complete and now we can be discarded. It really felt like that. It was a miserable time. I cried at God, a lot and loudly. We would have moved, run away, as per our usual, but this time, there was literally nowhere to go. At least, nowhere we could think of. So, we waited. We listened. It hurt but we were willing to stay there until God opened a door and showed us the next step. We had made so many bad choices that had ended us up in an ash pile. Waiting on Him was peaceful, even though it was painful.

 In Florida, I learned submission in small ways and then in vast ones. I learned to submit to circumstances and supervisors. And I learned how to stop running and submit to God’s authority. I told my friend, who lived in Montana, after we had been in Florida a few months, that I was like a wild horse bent on trying to climb trees rather than run the forest, or prairie or the race set before me. She laughed and so did I but, it was true. I did not, would not, could not submit to what I didn’t want to do. If it didn’t sound like fun or if it didn’t ‘seem’ right, I wasn’t going to do it.

Sean and I had been asked to help possibly plant a church in Butte, Montana. We did not want to go to Montana. First of all, it got cold there, like, really cold. And it was land locked. Too far away from the ocean. Living in Portland, Oregon, if we were going to go anywhere, it would be to Florida. Sean’s home state and our beloved Gulf of Mexico. I was all about the gulf coast. Florida seashell gathering was almost an obsession for me, they were always in the passenger car door, in my coat pockets (in Sean’s pockets because I had no more room), and in big zip lock bags in the house. Joy! The sun, the humidity, the palm trees, white sandy beaches and see-through water; where you could watch manta rays slap the shore with their fins; gliding back and forth in the surf. Why in the world would we go to Montana? No Way!

With God, I don’t think it was ever about going to Montana. That was not the point at all. For Sean and for me, God presented Montana so that we could exercise willingness. Give up telling Him what we would and wouldn’t do and submit to what He presented. Instead of asking Him to bless our will, why didn’t we ever ask Him how we could to be a blessing to His? We had, after all, told Him we would follow Him and give our lives to Him. We did this with certain reservations though, we weren’t really aware that we had done that, but we had. Following Him had to make sense and be beneficial to others and to us. If we didn’t see or think that it made sense according to our guidelines, we didn’t do it and felt God wouldn’t ask us to do something outside of those carefully crafted and safe policies we had constructed.

Hearts of pliable, open willingness were what He wanted from us and we gave him hearts of stone. Now we were being told to go to Montana, willingly and obediently; to our friends, who were pastoring a small church in Sidney. So, we did. Sidney is about 5 miles from the North Dakota border and what felt like a million miles from anywhere we desired to be. We thought we were being sent there to be comforted and receive tenderness and gentleness after the violent push out of Florida. Instead, we were sent to comfort, to give compassion and mercy and to tell our friends it was okay for them to leave Sidney, even though we had just moved there to be with them. We were sent to help them go. We thought we had been sent there to help build up a church, we were sent there to watch it lessen. This didn’t seem beneficial or make logical sense, just like leaving Florida didn’t. But, like it was so perfectly put in a sermon I heard, “Sometimes you have to grow down, to grow up.” Just like a seed that sprouts; It grows down into the earth and then up to the sunlight.

Florida, finally, felt like it held a future for us and it looked good. So, so good. Sean was fulfilled and doing what he loved and what he was created to do. Lily and I had been blessed with Treasures, an amazing homeschool group that we plugged into, we had prayed for months to find a community just like it! We also had exercise class with our dear friend, Susan, who was wonderful enough to lead us and teach us. We ‘wogged’ (think between a speed walk and a jog) around campus and the alligator pond and enjoyed the Florida sun. We had purpose and felt we were right where we should be. Ahhh. Just glorious. I didn’t have the ‘wanderlust’ that normally followed me around. I didn’t necessarily want to ‘settle down’ there, but my eyes weren’t on the horizon like they always seemed to be. I knew I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. It felt right. I knew I was super lucky when I was asked to work part time as the school secretary on campus. So much fun and so rewarding.

Then Sean and a few other employees started to notice things that didn’t seem right. Sean approached his immediate supervisor about the issues. He was supported and encouraged to take the issues straight to the director. After a lot of back and forth dialogue between the director and himself, Sean was fired and told we had two weeks to vacate our house, as long as there was “no drama.” A reference to us going quietly and not raising a red flag. The director told Sean I could keep my job but told Sean he understood if that would make me feel uncomfortable. We were devastated. I didn’t want to leave. Sean didn’t want to leave.  

Our community gathered around us; prayed and cried and helped me pack. I have joked to many people that had they not shown up, I would still be standing in the middle of the kitchen, paralyzed with shock and hurt. Not evening knowing where to begin. We agonized over what to do. We prayed and heard God, “As long as this director is in leadership here, there is no place for Sean.” We knew that was true. So, we took a day and went to Panama City Beach, watching the waves trying to let them lull us into relaxing a little. Sean prayed. We were supposed to go to Montana and be with our friends. (Montana, the catalyst for helping us make the decision to run to Florida in the first place. Of course God was instructing us to go there!!) These were our directives. And we had ideas about what they meant. We had ideas about what God was going to do with us regarding these words. All our ideas about what the directives meant were completely and totally wrong.

We had worked so hard to stay in Florida (way too hard), for the first time in years, we didn’t want to move; anywhere. We didn’t want to run. And now, quiet harshly and almost immediately, we were being thrown out of Florida and sent to a place we did not want to go. To give up the beautiful swamps, and natural springs and the gulf coast for, what was to us, the wild barrens of eastern Montana. Oh man. We wanted to see our friends, but we didn’t want to go there.

We were told it was wrongful termination and we could fight it. We prayed, we did what God asked and then we let go. Our wonderful friends were literally, the hands and feet of Jesus. They brought us food, helped me sell my furnisher, packed our house, cried with us, didn’t leave our side. It’s an odd and sickening feeling to live where you are not welcome. It’s the most amazing feeling, though, to have friends come and be with you while you’re being rejected and dismissed.

We were so loved all the way through that process. And when it was time to go to Montana, we had an envelope with $1,000 in it, tucked under the windshield wiper of our jeep. That’s Jesus. That’s love. God knew we needed not just finances to perform a move that quickly, but we needed to know people saw what was happening to us. And not just see it but care. I worried for just a second, about how being fired and essentially kicked out of our house by a pastor would affect Lily. I was silly to worry about it even for a second. The thing about Lily is, she is completely awesome. She doesn’t equate pastors with God. Smart girl. Of course, Sean and I being her firsthand experience with pastors and ministry workers, Lily knew we could be just as difficult and confused and sometimes just as callous, as anybody else. And just like she had said to me, when she was eight years old, and I was really struggling with God, “Mom, God wouldn’t let it happen if He wasn’t going to make something good come out of it.” Amen. Thank you, God, for Lily.

After over a year of struggling, in Florida, to find our niche, we had finally landed where it felt like there was real purpose and opportunity for a future. We had been through a cross country move to a job that, by the time we arrived, was no longer available because of hurricane Irma. Sean was to take an administrator-in training position for a Christian Retirement Corporation. A week before we arrived in Florida, Irma flooded many of the company’s properties, forcing resident evacuations and facility shutdowns. Now they had no position to offer Sean and no solution to our terrible dilemma. We were in Florida, essentially homeless and jobless. What now?

We stayed with some friends in Naples, helped them clean up their house and property from the hurricane. It was really, really good to see them. We prayed and looked for work and ended up back in Panama City with family wondering if we should just return to Oregon. We prayed again and made the decision that unless God provided work we would go back to Portland at the end of the week. Not 5 minutes after that prayer the phone rang with a job offer, in fact, when all was said and done, Sean ended up with four different jobs in Florida and one for me. So, we stayed. And it was beautiful and joyful and sometimes horrifying and terribly, terribly painful. All of that having to do with the fact that Sean and I were running away. We needed to be broken from the cycle, but we didn’t know it.

When Micheal, a category 5 hurricane, devastated huge portions of the panhandle, in October of 2018, we had to evacuate our house, (we lost only a window and a laptop, thousands of others were not as lucky as we were). We had the opportunity to do a lot of ministry; taking food and water to stranded families. If your home hadn’t sustained damage, electricity still might not be restored for over a month or longer. If you had well water, you not only didn’t have power, you had no water. The temperature, most of the time was in the 80’s and 90’s with that high Florida humidity. It was awful and people were sick and desperate and scared. We had been very blessed. Our good friend, Roger, offered us shelter after being evacuated and a place to stay until our home was livable again. So being at our friend’s house, I was only about 40 minutes from a big grocery store and fuel station. There were no gas stations operating or grocery stores open for a week or two in certain areas. It was really scary. It felt apocalyptic at times. Sean was working for a home medical company then, delivery oxygen and home medical supplies to hospice patients. It was unbelievable, some of the things he saw. People in homes without a roof or walls, patients and family members begging him to drive them up to Alabama where there was power, water and food. He had to tell them no. He worked, in the days following the hurricane, 20-hour shifts with just a few hours of sleep in the middle and then back at it again. The need was immense. When Sean slept, he would have nightmares about what he saw. People living in horrible conditions; shocked and grieving and so, so scared. Trees broken in half and thrown every which way or permanently bent sideways. Sticking out of the ground, as if still cowering to the fierce wind that no longer blew; bowing in the fear of remembrance. Beautiful Mexico Beach, my favorite beach for shell hunting, looked like it was ground zero for a massive bomb attack.

It was devastating. It still is. But we were blessed because of Hurricane Michael as well.

While we were staying with our friend, Pastor Roger, and Sean was driving to patient’s homes (at least to the ones the roads would allow him to get to), Roger and I were sitting at his dining table talking. “I know what Sean needs to be doing! He needs to meet the director at Teen Challenge. My sons went to high school with him and that is where Sean is supposed to be working!” Roger immediately picked up his cell phone, called the director, and set up a meeting for Sean to meet him the very next day.

The facility where Sean was to work, was a Christian military style campus that worked with troubled youth, counseling and teaching them, and in many cases, probably most cases, saving their lives.

Three weeks later, Sean was working there. We couldn’t believe how everything fell together. The director was an interesting man. After he had offered Sean the position and Sean accepted, putting his notice in with his hospice position, the director called Sean and said he now couldn’t have it, that the job offer was no longer available. Sean was silent. Stunned. And then the director laughed, “I just wanted to know what you would do.” Sean was unnerved by the whole thing but reasoned that emotionally and mentally you must be prepared for anything because of the nature of the position. He was just testing Sean to evaluate his emotional stability. Looking back, I know it was bullying and intimidation. All the same, both of us knew Sean was supposed to take the job. At the time of the interview, Sean’s salary offer was about a 1/3 of what he was making. He knew we couldn’t afford it, so he prayed, God told him to take it. It didn’t make sense, but Sean obeyed. The moment Sean said yes, the director said, “Would it help if I offered you housing included in your salary?” Wow! God, You are so good!

Roger was right, this was where Sean was supposed to be and we were so honored to be able to serve in a way that was so relevant and challenging and beautiful and honestly, really scary! We were humbled and we were finally in a place where we understood that in ministry, and with people, it is an honor to serve. Serving should never, ever be taken for granted or be something that we are entitled to do. It is an honor, a blessing, to serve. In the past, we had taken it for granted. We were lucky and we knew it. We were learning so much. This was it! Everything was coming together for Lily as well, she had real community and the friends we had prayed for her to find. She was happy and excited about what we were doing. After all this time, hurricanes and struggle, our niche, our purpose was being revealed. Sean loved it and so did I. The staff at the schoolhouse were amazing and the volunteers were the most incredible people. We were so blessed by who we got to meet and work with and live alongside every day! When Sean was asked, at his 90-day evaluation, how long he thought he would want to be there, he responded, “10 years at least!” with joy and without hesitation.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

What following God looks like is unique to every person. No story or walk is the same. I think everyone has a book, if not a series of books, inside of them, and I believe we get hope and strength from sharing our experiences.