Indy's Back...and So Am I

I can't wait to see the next installment of the Indiana Jones movie. Indy is back!


And, so am I. Well, the decision has been made. The offer has been accepted. The last of the t's and a few i's have been taken care of. I will no longer be unemployed as of June 1st. I will be the new Romeoville Campus Arts Director at Community Christian Church. Many of you are saying: Yay!....huh? Ok, here it is in a nutshell, so please just follow along.

First of all, it is awesome to be back. To be honest, I wasn't sure when I first brought it up on Mother's Day. However, things moved very quick and, well, here I am!

Before I talk about all the cool stuff, I want to answer a question that has already come up a couple times (and, I am sure will continue over the next handful of weeks). It is this: "Why would you come back to a place that let you go? After all that has happened..." All that has happened...wow, quite a bit. Here is the simplest way I can explain it. If I still retained bitterness, hard feelings, and lots of other nasty things in my heart then, to be honest, I have no business applying for a ministry job in any church. Take it a step further. Forget the job piece for a moment. How can I serve anywhere with those continued feelings? To say I loved God and not certain people felt hippocritical. One of the things I have learned, and you should know this if you have been reading this blog for any length of time, is to just let it go. Forgive and move on. It will eat you up if you keep that going. Yeah, I had it for a while in those first few weeks. But, after that period, it was time to move on. And wasn't it interesting that, after I did that, opportunites began flooding in? Think that God might have been waiting for me to get over it too?


So, after all that, and the interviews and offers were arriving, along comes this opening at Romeoville. Now, why wouldn't I inquire about it? I mean, I fit the bill regarding what the qualifications are. It is only a mile from our house. We go there for goodness sake. The only reason I wouldn't was if I still had those feelings. Well, they were gone. So, go for it. And I did. And, seeing how things are transpiring now, I know it was the right move.

One part of the job involves oversight of Romeoville School for the Arts. This is a new role for me but it will be quite interesting to see how it works out. It is a first for SFTA. We will be evaluating it over time to see what works, what doesn't, what could be better, what is awesome about it, etc.

So, how did we get here? There was much I had to hold back for some time. However, things ramped up quickly starting on Mother's Day. That was when I first talked to Jon about how it would be a win for all of us if I had an opportunity to come back. I won't go into all the details of everything but suffice it to say, it was an agreed upon win. So after a couple meetings and conversations we got it to work. I have to confess that I had a few other offers on the table that I had to address real soon. Those might have been catalysts for the quick movement. One funny thing was after I got back from Philadelphia, I literally got off the plane, to my car, woofed down lunch, and headed to a meeting about the Arts Director job!

Mary and the kids were definitely in favor of it. Katrina and Alec do have their friends and are very attached to the Student Community at church. Mary is doing well at Whole Foods. It just didn't feel right that we were to move at this time. However, I should say, I do feel that I am more ready if the call ever reaches us in the future.

So, there you have it. Want to know about the journey to this point? Start at the March 3rd post and follow along. Wow. I want to repeat it again: I am so thankful for the journey I was on. Thankful to God for showing me and teaching me lessons along the way. It was a good thing. Call me crazy but that is how I choose to look at it.

I have more to say but, in the tradition of great stories and movies, we need to break it out into other parts. I never liked long blog posts and this won't be one either. I have a couple other posts to follow this one. One concerns the people I met along the way. I want to tell you about them. You also need to know about Greg. See, he is moving on from Romeoville Arts Director to help start a new church in Schaumburg called Waterfront. Without him, I don't know where I would be. Stay tuned...