The love I feel for my former church is so intense. I have been so careful to not share about our current journey for fear it would look like we somehow didn't like them anymore.
Let me save you the trouble of looking for dirt if that's why you're reading this- wondering if maybe I'm gonna spill some big, juicy drama that occurred between us and our former church home. NOTHING (bad) HAPPENED.
The road to a new church home has consumed the last year of our lives. So much so, that I'm going to share that experience in two parts. Not for a drama factor, but just for ease of sharing.
I have been a member of 3 (now 4) churches for all of my life. The first one, I was born into. The next one, I chose because of my time and service in Chapel Hill. The last one, we found after a long search when we moved to Winston. We knew going into our membership there that we didn't line up theologically 100% (spoiler alert: we're sorta liberal)... but we fell so in love with the people and the fellowship that we allowed ourselves to look beyond any differences and dive right in. It was in this place that our biggest life events to date took place: we longed for, conceived, lost, and gained children. We developed deep friendships- and lost some of those friends to tragic, unbelievable death. We prayed fervently during extreme illness of children and parents... some with joyous outcomes, and some that won't be joyous again until we reach heaven.
In short, we grew in all ways during our time in that sacred space.
Along the way, especially as Elizabeth began to ask hard questions, we wondered if we needed to look at other church homes. This is where the beauty of our marriage partnership became even more evident. When I would feel a need to go, Dan would gently remind me that we don't all need to "look alike" in a church... and we would stay. When Dan would feel a need to go, I would remind him about our beautiful fellowship... and we would stay. Last year, however, we both came to the same point of needing to go at the same time.
We wept, we talked, we prayed... and we repeated that process over and over until we knew we were doing what was best for our family.
Last summer we began the Church Search again... a long and lonely process of not feeling rooted. We were blessed, however, to explore so many neat places of worship all over our city. We met people we wouldn't know otherwise and got a chance to see how Others are "doing church" oh so well.
We found a Community close to our house and were so excited to be welcomed in to their fellowship. Our kids were part of their Christmas program. We were loved well during the loss of my Mom. It felt good.
And then....
One Tuesday night in February, my Book Club went to serve dinner at the Overflow Shelter at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church.
When we walked into the building, I had an experience that I can only accredit to the Holy Spirit. As I entered the church, I knew it was a special place. I knew it was somewhere we were supposed to- at least- visit. St. Tim's had been on our short list, but since we'd plugged in elsewhere, we weren't continuing to look at new churches. Prior to walking in that first night, I'd had 3 good friends mention to me how much I'd like it there. One of those friends had a child in E's class and she'd also invited E to come.
So right in the middle of heading toward plugging in elsewhere, we decided to give St. Tim's a try.
And that was the end of that.
We've been there ever since.
Tomorrow's post... Liturgy Newbie
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