Holding Pattern

You are probably thinking to yourself (four followers of this blog): Cassie is still alive? She is bothering to write on this silly, forgotten thing??

So obviously the answer to both of those questions is YES! I am alive, and in fact, freshly another year older (26 to be exact). Are birthday resolutions a real thing? If so, this sad and lonely blog is one of them.

The main reason I have not been writing a blog is that I have been feeling lately that I have no story to tell. Why litter the internet with more meaninglessness and frivolity? I don't have a baby, I'm not planning a wedding, and I don't have a clever idea about cooking with Julia Child. Nothing is happening, so I can't really write about nothing.

You may be thinking, "But you've moved out to San Jose to plant a church...that's got to be exciting! Why don't you write about that?" And you would be right. It is exciting. But so many exciting things about church planting are very intangible or else really not exciting-sounding when you write them down.

"I talked to someone today." "I invited so and so for coffee." "I talked about Jesus and someone didn't run away and not want to be my friend." "A child whom I had never met ran up and gave me a great big hug on the playground today."

There are two phrases that I feel I may have been overusing in the past ten months, and I will share them with you here: "up in the air" and "holding pattern". Since a nice indie-type movie came out recently with the first phrase as a title, I decided to settle on the second for the title to my great comeback blog. =)

Planting a church is a holding pattern in many ways...how long until we kickoff? How long until we start a Gospel Group? How long until someone accepts Jesus as their Savior? How long until we launch a Sunday service?

But it has not been just that in our lives since we got here. There's been: "When will Chris get a job?" "When will my depression lift?" "When will I start enjoying Gymboree again?" "How long will Chris be interim pastor at Willow Glen?" "How long will it then take for him to find another job?" "When will we get our own place and be able to support ourselves somewhat?"

It may sound like whining or impatience when put all together like that, but these have been the questions I've asked of God many times while being here. Thankfully, He has brought us miraculously through many of these questions and into a wonderful new phase of our lives. But there are still many questions. Both my job and Chris' job are up in the air right now. Willow Glen Baptist sounds like they are on the verge of choosing their new pastor and then what for us? My part-time turned full-time job is about to go part-time again...but we only kinda know the whens and hows. Did we make the right decision to move downtown when everything is so unstable?

However, I have realized that our God is sovereign over all things. When I say I believe that, I have to actually believe that ALL means ALL: God over my questions, God over the answers, God over this city, God over our Church, God over our apartment, God over our marriage, God over our families and our futures.

He's got it. But He's not always going to send me a memo in advance about it.

So I wait...

And while you wait with me, you can enjoy some pics of our "new" (hundred year old) apartment: