It Seems to Me -- The End

            I have been telling myself to write this blog post for weeks now. I intended to write it before I left Shawnee. I expected to write it as soon as we were a little more settled from the move. I planned on writing it as soon as the wedding was over. I anticipated writing it before we left for Minnesota. I was determined to write it while we were in Minnesota, or at least on the way to Kansas to settle Zach into school. I should have written it in the downtime between returning home and starting my new call. But here I am, sitting at my new desk, in my new office, in my new church home, three full days into the call, and I am finally forcing myself to write this.

            Why am I procrastinating more than usual on a writing project I have set for myself? Well, because this is it. This is the last piece I am writing for this blog. I started this creative exercise when I answered the call to serve as pastor of United Presbyterian in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Seven plus years later, I have left that call. I am now the Head of Staff at First Presbyterian Church of Pulaski, Tennessee.

If you were paying close attention to the first paragraph, you recognized that the last two months of my life have been filled with change. Most of the changes have been good and filled with hope. The most joyous is that I have remarried a wonderful, kind, funny, silly, lovely man named Brent Stoker. He is my best friend and the love of my life, and I am sure you will hear more about him down the road.

Yet, marrying Brent – such a wonderful and unexpected enterprise – brought other changes. The hardest one was leaving my church in Shawnee. What a dear congregation, filled with so much love and so much courage. Leaving them was harder than I could have ever imagined.

But on the other side of the sadness is the joy of moving home to Tennessee. Not only are Brent and I making a home for ourselves together, I have also found a home in my new call to Pulaski. This congregation is filled with so much love and so much courage. They fill me with hope.

Perhaps the two most poignant changes in this sea of change has been sending my baby, my youngest, my son, Zach, to college at KU in Lawrence, Kansas. I know Zach is more than ready for this transition in his life. I know he will do well. I know it is time, and that this is what is supposed to happen. But I miss him more than I can say. It is a quiet ache, always with me. But I am happy for him and delight in the adult he is becoming.

While Zach is entering the wide world, my father, my dear, sweet dad, is seeing his world narrow. He is slowly leaving this one for the next. When we said “goodbye,” to him in Minnesota, I knew that it could very well be the last time I see him on this side of the great divide between life, death and beyond. He is still with us, and I am so grateful for that, but I anticipate the ache to come. It will be a quiet ache, and it will always be with me.

With all of these changes, I knew that another change needed to be made. It was time to end this blog. I began it in the life that I have left. It is time for something new. I intend to start a new blog in the weeks to come. I do not yet know what it will be or where it will take me, but it seems to me that writing – even though I procrastinate and delay it as often as possible – is the surest outlet for my creativity, my imagination, my ponderings, my musings, my grief and my joy.

So this is it. "It Seems to Me" has been a work of love. Writing in this space pushed me and challenged me and helped me grow. Thank you for reading it. Thank you for following. Thank you for traveling this road with me. I know I’ll see you soon.