2010: A Summary

What a year... Whew... I'm happily exhausted just thinking about it. Let's review, shall we?

January 
Daryl flies back to Nashville to resume coursework. This marks our 5th month of living apart since September.  Boo.

I fly back to New Jersey to start my final semester of classes at Princeton Seminary.

I start rehearsals for "A Caucasian Chalk Circle," the spring seminary play where I am cast as (yay!) Grusha, the resourceful peasant mother. One of my best friends is cast as Natella, the evil villainess, and we enjoy verbal sparring on our rides to and from practice.

February
I watch my friend Jinelle skate to Olympic silver with the U.S. Women's Hockey Team. Since the seminary doesn't get the channel, we watch from a nearby Mexican restaurant...

Daryl and I celebrate Valentine's Day apart by cooking the same meal and having a Skype dinner date. Not the real in-person thing, but still pretty good.

After noticing that there are few church jobs in the Nashville area, I apply to the Nashville CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) partnership as a chaplain. I anxiously await word back.

March
We welcomed our new niece, Sophia Joy, into the family! She was, and still remains, the cutest baby EVER. (Besides our other niece, Aleah, of course!)

I have my final review at the Presbytery of Chicago where they officially certify me as ready for ordination in the PC(USA)!

Daryl and I travel (together!) to California for spring break where we visit his family and lots of friends. We also eat at In n' Out Burger about nine times. In one week. Yum.

I hear back that the Nashville CPE partnership would like to interview me. I interview, and a couple of weeks later in...

April
...I hear back that I've been accepted as a chaplain resident at Alive Hospice in Nashville. Daryl and I both breathe a sigh of vocational and financial relief.

I performed in "A Caucasian Chalk Circle" at the seminary. After performance #1 I lost my voice for several anxious hours. Lots of tea with lemon (prescribed by the director), lots of prayer (my addition), and it came back by showtime the following night. Phew.

May
Daryl and I slogged through finals and were rewarded at the end... with one another. The long-distance marriage was over! Hooray!

My parents treated us to a cruise to Mexico. All the gluten free food I could eat, delicious sun, and lots of napping. It was A-MAZ-ING.

We returned to Princeton for my graduation! All done, seminary!

We packed up all of our belongings, and with the help of my parents, loaded them into a storage POD that was sent to await our arrival in Nashville.

June
We headed north to Wisconsin to spend much of the summer with my family resting, reading, and relaxing. A wonderful  reward after nine months living apart from one another, three years of seminary, three part-time jobs, and a whole lot else...

July
We trekked to Nashville to pick out a new home and found the townhouse of our dreams. Less than two miles from Vanderbilt for Daryl, less than two miles from the hospital where I'd be working, and within our price range. We signed the lease the very next day.

August
We travel to Michigan for a week-long family reunion with my dad's side of the family. There are games. There is food. It is awesome.

We move in  to our new home in Nashville, after waving goodbye to our wonderful family in Wisconsin. After hauling in box after box in 105 degree heat, we both agree: this is the LAST move we are ever doing ourselves. Next time (which we think will be years and years down the road), we're hiring movers.

I begin work at Alive Hospice on my birthday, August 30th. Lots of orientation, lots of preparation, lots of great people.

September
Daryl begins his second and final year of coursework at Vanderbilt.

We travel to Asheville, NC with some dear friends to visit Posana's Cafe, an all-gluten free restaurant. It is worth every mile.

We head back to Wisconsin to watch two other dear friends tie the knot in an outdoor ceremony on a beautiful lake. Then we dance all night.

Daryl travels to Oxford to deliver a paper at a conference. He visits all of our old haunts, even eating one of "Ben's Cookies" for me at the covered market.

I receive a semi-cryptic email from a church in Wisconsin asking me if I'd be willing to move to Wisconsin... I respond in the affirmative... They interview me over Skype and we immediately hit it off.

October
The church flies me up for a weekend interview. It goes wonderfully, and at the end of the weekend they extend the call to me! Daryl and I take a week to pray about it and feel nothing but confirmation. I call them back with the news - it's official (though not yet Facebook-public, as I still need to be examined by the Presbytery)!

Daryl's dad and step-mom visit, and we hit up the Frist Museum and the best Predator's game of the year.

My mom and dad visit and we visit an outdoor Chihuly exhibit and explore Nashville and Dad teaches me to make the best gluten free cookies ever.

November
I meet with the PC(USA)'s Company of New Pastors at their conference in Nashville. We spend hours talking and learning about prayer and how to incorporate Scripture into worship in different ways.

We eat the world's best Thanksgiving dinner with some dear (and gluten free!) friends in Nashville. I can still taste that cornbread stuffing.

Friends from Michigan come to visit us and we play board games for hours and hours.

I finish my final day of CPE and say goodbye to some wonderful patients, staff, and fellow chaplains.

Daryl surprises me with tickets to a Ben Folds concert after my last day of work. I sit, enraptured, listening to one of my favorites perform.

I fly up to the Wisconsin for the congregational vote and Presbytery examination. Both go well and now it is officially official - in January I will start my tenure as pastor of 1st Presbyterian!

December
Daryl finishes his coursework after a grueling two weeks of final exams. Cough drops, coffee, and meals I cook and set in front of him get him through.

Back to Eagle River, Wisconsin for a white Christmas at home with my family. Restful, fun, and full of delicious food.

Down to Nashville to pack up a few suitcases and await the arrival of movers who will take all of our worldly goods north to Wisconsin where we will move into the church's historic and very beautiful manse (parsonage).

Which brings us to New Year's Eve, where we'll say goodbye to Nashville and ring in the new year with some dear friends and a pile of gluten free goodies.

Whew... What a 2010! What will 2011 bring? I can hardly wait to find out... New Year's plans coming soon!

My Sister, the Photographer

My little sister is ridiculously talented. She makes wedding cakes that look like they're straight out of TLC's Cake Boss (see an example here). She gave us a framed abstract block print for Christmas that is so gorgeous I cannot wait to hang it in my office ("Is that Mondrian?" "No, it's an authentic Caroline!"). And the girl takes amazing photos.

As part of our Christmas present she gave Daryl and I a photo shoot and then touched up the pictures, adding color, changing the effects, and just generally making us look way better than we do in real life. Knowing that we'll be apart (again! baahhh....) for the next several months, she wanted each of us to have a picture to put on our desks.

The really crazy thing? This photo shoot took maybe twenty minutes. We bundled up, drove half a mile from my parents' house to a frozen lake, and she shot away. The result? Awesomeness. I wish I had one iota of her artistic skill, but I'm happy to just have her in the family. What a Christmas present!

 

She's one January-term course away from being a college grad, so if you need some photos, you know who to call... I'm sure I can get you a discount. ;)

Update

It has been too long.

I'm sorry, friends. This past month has been an absolute whirlwind, and there were things I couldn't post about on here until they were sure things, which now they are.

I'll write more in depth later, and post some great photos, but for now, the summary is this:

I've accepted a call as a Presbyterian minister at a church in southern Wisconsin! I start January 9th, and my ordination service will be January 30th.

Daryl and I will be moving our belongings from Nashville next week, and he will return here to finish his coursework for the final semester of his PhD. He'll join me up north in May.

Wonderful blessings. I'm moving back to Wisconsin, my home state, to a beautiful, vibrant church. I'll be close to family once again. I'll live in a landscape that feeds my soul, full of trees and prairies and snow and summer grasses. I'll have the chance to pursue the vocation I've been training for over the past several years, and the one I've felt called to since college. I'll be close to dozens of friends and family in Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

All changes come with a tinge of sadness too, of course. This means more time away from Daryl. It meant I had to end my CPE program early. It means leaving Nashville--a city I love--and my Nashville friends who have become like family.

More to come about the job, Christmas, the death-flu that my whole family came down with over the holidays (eeesh...), our favorite new holiday board game, the best book I've read in quite awhile, and just general Christmas joy.

I'm back. Updates to come.

Ten on Tuesday: Hospice Edition

Changes are afoot in my life, but for the next few weeks, I'm still working as a hospice chaplain. It's important work, work I both believe in and enjoy. It's also exhausting work. It's sad watching people's bodies shut down, their families grieve. Death isn't a pretty thing.

I've had to learn what helps me pick myself back up after a difficult day. This isn't just a list of happy things, it's a list of ten things that help me process, grieve, and let go of patients I've lost, families I've cried with, and pain I've witnessed. It all has to go somewhere, and it's best if that somewhere isn't permanently on my shoulders.

I think knowing these things about myself will bode well for a life of ministry, and using them for a "Ten on Tuesday" gives me the opportunity to ask: what picks you up after a difficult day? Share!

10. Phone calls with friends.
My good friend Katie called me during my lunch break a couple of weeks ago. "Courtney!" she chirped in that exceedingly extroverted way she has. "I need to talk to you!" What freedom to be able to call a friend mid-day, after work, on the weekend, to say, "Gosh, this was hard for me. What should I do? Will you pray for me?"

9. Puzzles.
I process while doing puzzles. It gives me a way to decompress that isn't just plopping myself in front of House. Though, admittedly, sometimes I do puzzles while plopped in front of House. Doing a puzzle gives me that think-but-not-think state of mind where I can say goodbye to a difficult day while beginning to transition to the rest of life.

(This is the one I'm working on now. I am loving it.)


8. Good, good music.
I have the most utterly absurd CD in my car right now. It contains songs by the most random assortment of artists known to humanity. Journey, James Blunt, Black Eyed Peas, Jeff Buckley, Dar Williams... it's pretty ridiculous. But somehow, after I've witnessed a patient's death or cried with a patient's loved one, there always seems to be the perfect song for the moment. Sometimes it's "Hallelujah." Sometimes it's "Don't Stop Believin'." Sometimes it's "It's Gonna Be a Good Night." Some days I'm singing along at the top of my lungs with the windows down in traffic to "Viva Las Vegas." I don't know why, but it really helps.

7. Baking.
When the world seems crazy, it gives me incredible comfort to mix up some eggs, sugar, flour (gluten-free, of course!), butter, and cinnamon, roll it out, and come up with cinnamon rolls. It's like, "Glory be, at least something in this world has gone right today."

6. Surprises.
I had a hard weekend. I finally had enough time and space to process through the past couple of weeks which have been crazy. Just plain crazy. Chaplaincy has easy weeks and hard ones, and these past have been really tough. Daryl and I sat in a parking lot on our way to a date and I just cried. I cried because of patients I've loved who have died. I cried for the grief of their families who now have to go on living without them. I cried over the dysfunction of families who try to love each other and just can't sometimes. I cried because it's just plain hard to listen to people's stories all day every day when those stories involve cancer and Alzheimer's and strokes and heart attacks and suffering of every shape and kind.

Daryl listened patiently, as he is incredibly amazing at doing. He prayed with me. He held my hand. Then, after I'd dried my tears and said, "Okay, I think I'm good now," he asked if he could tell me a secret.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Well..." he said quietly. "You mentioned that you wanted to go see Ben Folds with the Nashville Symphony..." (I had mentioned this once, briefly, and completely forgotten to follow up and look for tickets. When I thought to look, they were already sold out.)

I was shocked. I wasn't even sure he was listening when I mentioned it weeks earlier. I definitely wasn't sure we had the money to spend.

What a sweet surprise.

5. Organizing.
This is like baking. When the world seems like it's in shambles (read: lots of people are dying of lots of terrible things), I come home and organize a cabinet. I fold laundry. I rearrange some furniture. Then I stand back and say, "Ah. That's better." It helps.

4. Prayer.
Anne Lamott says that her two most often-used prayers are "Help me help me help me" and Thank you thank you thank you." I find myself praying these more often than I imagined before hospice. Pulling up to a patient's house: "Help me." Leaving after a visit: "Thank you." Sitting with a dying patient: "Help me." Witnessing the power of God in the life of a family: "Thank you."

There are many other prayers, but often this one rings in my mind.


3. More prayer.
Then there are days where "Help me" and "Thank you" don't seem to cut it. A friend of mine said recently that he finds himself praying certain lines from the Lord's prayer over and over again. Worried about money? "Give us today our daily bread." Struck by the tragedies of this world? "Deliver us from evil." Jesus gave us this prayer for a reason: it really does cover just about anything we might encounter in this crazy world. Forgive us. Thy kingdom come.

In the face of death and disaster within families' lives, often I can only reach for these words from Jesus. My own words fail me, and I am so grateful for his on my behalf.


2. Daryl.
Daryl is a source of deep and abiding joy for me. No matter what the day holds, at the end of the day, there he is.

1. Jesus.
Would this be a good list if it didn't end this way? Well, yes, but not very truthful to what really helps me (or better yet: who).

In hospice, sometimes the only thing I know is true is that Jesus is with me. We serve a God who suffered and died on our behalf, a God who is no stranger to suffering, brokenness, disease, and even death. When I sit with a suffering patient and feel like I can't do it a moment longer because their pain is too much, too hard, too excruciating, I remember that I am not alone in that room, in that house, in that hospital. I go with Jesus. Jesus goes with me. And Jesus loves that patient more than I ever could.

This is what helps me this Tuesday.

What helps you?

Wedding Bells and Belles

My good friend Tonia got married this weekend.

You can check out her awesome blog on greenin' up your life here.

She was pretty much my third sister growing up, so both of my sisters and I got to be in her wedding! It was so fun to be bridesmaids together, though we couldn't help continually cracking this joke:

"Oh my gosh! I can't believe we showed up in the same dress! How embarrassing!"

And then laughing like ninnies.

It was an amazing, beautiful wedding, and one we'll never forget. Here are some of the photos from the big shindig:

My awesome cake-making sister Caroline made them a Packers vs. Vikings cake. Tonia (the Packers fan) fed Mike a Packers piece and Mike (the Vikings fan) fed Tonia a Vikings piece. That's true love, that is.

Almost all of the decorations were handmade, green, and gorgeous.

Aleah was adorable and hilarious, as usual...

We danced and danced, but stopped long enough for a few photos. We don't look this good that often!

I hear that this is called "photo diving." I call it super fun!

Thanks for the party, Tonia and Mike! Many, many, many blessings on your marriage as you begin this wonderful journey together.

I Loved this Summer: Part 2

Part two of a wonderful summer begins in July. We celebrated Daryl's birthday in Wisconsin with gf German chocolate cake... Yum, yum, yum... I'm thankful to have a husband who was more than willing to let me bake him a gf cake so that I could share in the gluttony. He proclaimed it, "Just as good as a glutenous cake, and maybe even better. The frosting was definitely better!"

I discovered that making German chocolate cake frosting from scratch is pretty easy, but it's a bit horrifying what is in it. It is not good for you. But, birthdays are birthdays, and it was well worth all the butter and egg yolks for the amazing taste.

Aleah helped me do P90X. She was pretty awesome at it. She actually figured out the yoga positions and would do downward dog and upward dog before the fitness guy told her to do them. She's going to be quite the athlete!

Caitlyn was convinced that the water reserve tray for Daryl's coffee-maker birthday present was actually a giant remote control...

Daryl decided that we are probably not ready to have kids for awhile... (This is my favorite photo of the whole summer. You just can't beat these two facial expressions and matching outfits!)

We went to St. Joseph, Michigan, to visit our wonderful friends, and rode a bicycle surrey with a fringe on top. During our visit, Daniel (backseat) proposed to Megan (pink shirt) and she said YES! It's the first proposal I've ever been a part of (besides saying yes when Daryl asked, of course), and it was a wonderful and joyful day.

We had a great family reunion in Michigan (notice how many girls are in our family!). People came from as far as Pennsylvania for the annual event.

Sophie discovered her feet.

Aleah curled her... eyelashes?

We played about eight hundred games of mafia with the cousin crew (and I actually won one!)...

We saw the Cubs lose to the Cardinals on one of the windiest, hottest, rainiest days of the year. My knee-length skirt kept blowing up around my waist, so I actually had to change into some shorts I had in my backpack from staying at a friends' house the night before... I was never so grateful to have a backpack full of trip stuff. Came in verrrry handy.

We moved in to Nashville! This is a perfect picture of how randomly we packed some of the boxes. On top of those two boxes are the following: a three-hole punch, lavender soap from Trader Joe's, a makeup bag, one white heeled sandal, a small box of checkers, a handmade table runner (thanks, Caitlyn!), and six Christmas candle holders. What do these things have in common? Absolutely nothing.

And dear Eliot helped us unpack.

It was a good, good summer indeed. I'm sad to see it go!

I Loved this Summer: Part 1

Well, the new academic year is upon us. Daryl heads back to school on Monday. I start work the following Monday. I'm grieving the end of an incredible summer. Does it really have to end? Below are some of the promised pictures from a really wonderful and blessed time with family and friends in states across the country. I wish it never had to end...

We hung out at my parents' lake in Wisconsin and swam, swam, swam.

We visited Bayfield, Wisconsin, on wild Lake Superior with all its natural beauty.

We celebrated our friends Daniel and Emily's wedding with a post-wedding reception in northern Wisconsin. This is a photo of our old homeschooled group of friends. Sigh... Everyone's so grown up now!

I read books to my four-month old (and ridiculously adorable) niece, Sophie.

The girls had days out on the town.

My niece Aleah helped me put on some makeup for date night.

Sophie bonded with her great-grandpa.

Aleah wanted more brownies...

We visited the soon-to-be-married Mike and Tonia up in Duluth.

We saw Split Rock lighthouse on Lake Superior.

I wore my Chacos pretty much every day (and now have a rockin' sandal tan).

Daryl and Dad grilled in a downpour. That's dedication!

Mom and I did some great flea market shopping.

The rest? To be continued (including my very favorite photo of the whole summer!)...