~Enigmatic Meanderings~

So, progress has definitely been made on the job front. I think we’re finally honing in on just what my new position will be at Student Life. We’re not real sure of the job title yet, but my basic responsibilities will involve contributing much more to our Bible Studies in the are of content and creativity. I’ll still be pretty involved in our stage and screen presence at events but will no longer be concerned with the administration of those events.

It’s definitely going to be a change.  And change can be hard.  But it can also be really good.  I think this particular change is going to be both, for myself and Student Life as a whole.

This has really been a process for me.  I have been confident in a calling on my life since I was 17.  However, I’m not called to be a producer at Student Life, but that has how my calling has been manifested in the form of a job for nearly seven years now.  Recently, though, I have had trouble thinking beyond Student Life to however else my calling might play out.  I think part of what God is doing in me right now is taking me out of that to say, “it’s okay if you don’t do production the rest of your life.  I’ve got plenty of other things I want to do with you.  Trust me.”  And I do.  So, I will.

It’s going to require me letting go of a number of things.  I think that’s good too.  Thankfully I’ve been able to work with an incredible team.  I’m not only confident in their talent and abilities but also in their own divine guidance.  I trust them too.

So, I’m looking forward to this, though I’m anxious, and we’ll see how it goes.

At least it’s exciting.  Right?

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So… here’s the deal…

In 2001 Liza and I found out she has a condition called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. This meant we would probably have some trouble having kids. That was fine. We weren’t married yet but were glad we were able to go into it with eyes wide open. We also knew that we wanted to adopt. So, we knew it would all work out somehow. We would be parents regardless.

Fast forward a bit… we’d been trying or not NOT trying for about four years. Things weren’t working out, much like we expected. So, we went to see a fertility specialist and to try IUI to see if that would work. This procedure and everything it takes to get ready for it can be pretty costly, especially if your insurance doesn’t cover it (and ours didn’t, which isn’t necessarily unusual). And… long story short… it didn’t work out.

That was in March. We took April off to re-coop and then took May off because I was so super busy getting ready for camp and Liza was trying to wrap school up. Then we started trying to decide what to do next.

Liza really wanted to try IUI again. She desperately wanted to be a biological mother. I wanted to go ahead with adoption. The biological part wasn’t that important to me and I couldn’t see spending that amount of money again with no guarantee (not to mention that we didn’t have that money to spend; we had already exhausted all of our financial resources). So, we were at a bit of an impasse… However, I eventually relented, and we planned to call Liza’s fertility doctor and move forward trying that route again. But, we held off for a little bit because I still had a bit of traveling to get done with a three week stretch where I was going to be in South Africa and then Liza would join me to go to Daytona Beach and then San Francisco.

While in San Fran, Liza was really, really sick, just nauseus, like, all the time. So, we knew something wasn’t right. However, whenever Liza call’s her doctor with these type of issues, one of the first questions they always ask is, “have you taken a pregnancy test?” So, she has to take one, and it’s always negative, and she get’s really upset. But we knew before we called that she needed to take one. She usually keeps one or two generic brand ones on hand. So, the day after we got back from San Fran, before she drove to Jackson to pick up our dog, she took one.

Now, we have to pause here to explain to those of you who don’t know about pregnancy tests how they work (this isn’t true for all of them, but is for the one’s we used). When you take one, there are two little circles. The one to the right has a vertical line in it if you used the test correctly. The one to the left will then either have a horizontal negative symbol. if you’re not pregnant, or a positive symbol if you are.

Following is what we were used to seeing:

Here’s what we wanted to see:

Here’s what we saw:

Well, actually I hadn’t seen it yet. I was at work. But Liza called me on her way to Jackson on the verge of freaking out. She explained it to me, and I tried to calm her down and just told her that she should take another one since the one she had taken had obviously messed up. I was thinking that somehow that left circle got turned around so that it was still a negative symbol, but turned on its side.

However, that night we were talking on the phone, and I went to the trash and fished the test out. When I looked at it I saw a very faint horizontal line in that left circle. That meant a positive symbol, which meant we were pregnant. So, I was kinda freakin’. Totally.

Well, the next day Liza drove back, but decided to go on to our house. She called and asked if I would pick up a pregnancy test on the way home. So, I did. And I bought name brand. And I bought two different kinds. One that used the symbols as I’ve explained and another that was digital and would just say “Pregnant” or “Not Pregnant.”

I came home and sat them on the coffee table, and Liza and I just sat around talking for awhile. She had just gotten out of the shower. So, she decided to take one of the tests while she dried her hair. We decided on the digital one, and she went off to the back. While she was back there I just kept praying, “Abba, please, please, please, by your grace and power, in the name of Jesus, please make her be pregnant.”  I heard her flush the toilet and then heard her start drying her hair.  Then I heard her turn the hair dryer off, and I listened but didn’t hear anything else.  Then she walked around the corner, white as a ghost, and looking on the verge of tears, which wasn’t unusual following a negative pregnancy test.  But then she showed it to me and this is what I saw:

I started yelling, “I KNEW IT!”  Liza’s knees buckled and she just collapsed in front of me and started crying. We hugged and cried and screamed and everything.  I grabbed my video camera and started filming her and then got my other camera and started taking tons of pictures like the one above.  I also made her take another pregnancy test just to be sure.

The next day Liza called her doctor but he couldn’t see us until today.  So, there’s been a week of waiting and wondering and trying not to spill the beans to anyone until we knew a bit more.  And now we do.

Baby Kinsley is somewhere around nine weeks along and is due on February 25th.  He or she is about the size of a grape and has little arm buds and eyelids and a tiny little heart that is beating like crazy.

We’ve been ridiculous already.  We went and bought some books (What to Expect When You’re Expecting and The Expectant Father).  We’ve spent time going and looking at all kinds of baby stuff.  I’ve even made a three-page-long list of names I like for a boy or a girl.  Liza went through the list with me and narrowed it down a lot.  So, we’ll see how that goes.

The best thing is that the only one here who deserves any credit for what’s happened is God.  He truly made this happen, and I can’t praise him enough for it.

A funny thing that’s happened is how humbling this has been.  Here’s why: throughout this journey for us there have been a lot of people trying to encourage us by telling us about Hannah, the mother of Samuel, from the Bible and So-and-So.  Who’s So-and-So?  So-and-So is someone who was having trouble getting pregnant but finally did once they tried fertility and it didn’t work or started adoption or finally quit worrying about it or…  You get the idea.  This, while nice, was also a bit frustrating for us because there’s no guarantee that that does happen or that it would happen for us.  It obviously wasn’t.

Well, guess what?  Now we’re So-and-So.  Who would’ve thought?

And now you’re caught up.  We’re glad to have you along with us.

Thanks.

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I’ll write more later, but in the meantime, get excited!

Plus a new blog: Daddy Kinsley

Oh, and that was the doctor’s appointment I was referring to.  So, nothing to worry about.

Yea!

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One of the projects some of us have been recently working on around the ol’ SL is the next Bible study in our Just Like Christ series. This one is an adaptation of our Here and Now summer them and focused on looking at the life of Joshua. We’ve made some changes to it and added a passage from the New Testament to each session, and I think it’s going to be pretty good.

Most recently in our creative team meeting we were working on the session that focuses on Joshua 1:1-9 that’s commonly referred to as “The Calling of Joshua” or “Joshua’s Commission.” These are the verses where God tells Joshua three different times to be strong and courageous.

We spent a good bit of time discussing the nature of courage and just what constituted a courageous act. I won’t get into all of that here. A lot of the conversation was driven by Taylor, so maybe he’ll write something about it. But I was just thinking about it lately and thinking about it in relation to God basically telling Joshua to get off his butt and get going doing what He had called him to do.

Makes you think.

Hmmm…

Are we being courageous?

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So, some of you know that my job is changing at Student Life. If you didn’t know that previously, now you do. And you’re pretty much caught up with how much everyone else knows. Just how is it changing, exactly, we might ask. Well, there’s a few people in the process of figuring that out right now. And there is finally a time this week that it will hopefully be decided and we can all get going and move forward.

But what to say about it?

I don’t know. I’m not even sure what would be appropriate to say about it.

(*sigh*)

I believe in Student Life. Student Life has been extremely gracious to me and has taken amazing care of both Liza and me. I want to be there. But this whole situation has been odd. I don’t even know exactly how it happened, but somehow my old/current job no longer (or soon to be no longer) exists. So, I’m in this perpetual state of waiting to find out what exactly this new position is so that I can pray and think specifically about it and try to discern if it’s the right thing for me and/or Student Life.

I hope it is. Right now it just feels like I’m floundering a little bit and that people are throwing me some bones out of obligation because they don’t know how it’s supposed to work either.

However, I am confident we will know soon.

It just sucks ’cause this is one of those situations where you and (hopefully) God have a sense of your ministry calling together, yet you still have to weigh that against the realities of a job. I wonder what that first group of guys did back in the first century? Oh, yeah… they tossed their “jobs” out the window and acted in obedience.

Should some of us be doing the same thing?

(*pause*)

In other news I have a big doctor’s appointment Thursday morning. Been keeping it on the DL. Don’t want to get everyone worked up or feed into the gossip machine. But I’ll keep you guys posted. I promise.

Onwards and upwards!

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I can’t tell you how many times I have come here intending to write a new post.  I never could seem to get it done, though.  Of course May and June are always busy months around the office, but there is no excuse for my extended absence.  If any of you still check this thing out, my sincerest apologies.  But, man, it feels good to be back.

For some psychological reason, I tend to keep things, especially thoughts and feelings, very close to me.  I mull things over to no end.  This has landed me in therapy more than once.  So, the practice (and discipline) of blogging is something that is very beneficial for me, and I’m extremely grateful to those of you gracious enough to share in it with me.

So, what to write about?

I think I’ll go ahead and tackle one I’ve been meaning to for awhile.  This speaks to the question of why I love doing what I do.

More than once on this blog and elsewhere I have made allusion or direct reference to my frustration at producing short sketches for upper-middle-class, suburban white American kids.  I have long ago tried to make some kind of peace with this.  What follows is a short picture of why I actually love it, however frustrating it can be at times.

Earlier this summer, on June 1st, in fact, I was up at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA with our Blue team for their first week of camp.  This is a great team of people.  We at Student Life were extremely blessed this year with regards to our production staffs.  Sure, there’s been some struggles along the way, but for the most part, they’ve been awesome, and the Blue team helped set the bar.  This particular day was their second day of camp.  So, they had been through Orientation, Celebration and two nights of Worship and had done a really grate job.  However, at 10:30 that night they had to tackle their first night of Late Nite.

This particular night was called “Gendergeddon” and involved a number of different activities that pitted the guys against the girls.  Throughout the night they have various opportunities to score points for their particular gender.  Intermindlged throughout the night are some funny videos.  There was a lot of chaos going on in trying to get it all set up and ready to go, but once things got going, they did a great job, in particular the Blue team actors, Jill, Ian and Matt.

About halfway through Gendergeddon there was a moment where one girl would be brought onstage to be crowned the queen of Late Nite and one guy would be brought onstage to be crowned the king.  The girl they had chosen was older, late high school, and pretty.  An obvious candidate.  She came up and was given her crown.  Then they called out the guys name.  The one they chose was a seventh grade boy who was actually sitting down in a row about midway back through the room.  When he heard his name called, he tentatively stood up, stepped out into the aisle, and nervously looked around.  There was a huge group of older guys crowding the front of the stage.  They were all looking around for who had been chosen as king.  They looked up the aisle and noticed this junior high guy.  When he saw them staring at him, he threw his arms in the air triumphantly.  The guys all cheered and ran down the aisle, picking him up and hoisting him on their shoulders.  The put him up onstage.  Matt lifted him up again and Ian bestowed his crown upon him.  It was glorious.

Now, you might be wondering why that illustrates why I love what I do.  After all, there wasn’t a whole lot of creativity in that moment.  It was much more up to random chance that it even happened.  There doesn’t seem to be hardly any spiritual benefit at all to that moment and we don’t even get to know what happened to that kid after Late Nite that night.

So, allow me to explain.  No, it wasn’t a big moment, spiritually or otherwise, and I really didn’t have much to do with it at all.  But that’s the beauty.  Who knows who this kid was?  Who knows what was going on with him?  Who knows how the rest of camp went for him or what kinds of things he had to deal with once he went back home?  I don’t know.  But what I do know, is that for a short amount of time, this shy junior high boy was honored.  He was lifted up and elevated and encouraged.  I guarantee his group was talking about it.  I guarantee he was talking about it.  I also can expect that this silly, little moment also kept him engaged.  God ordained a ridiculous Late Nite called Gendergeddon and had Matt pick this guy specifically for that moment to happen, for him to have fun amongst other Christians, to be able to carry that with him.  That moment alone isn’t really significant, but what we get to do at Student Life hopefully engages students in a series of those types of moments.  Some of them have a lot more spiritual value, but my prayer and desire is that all of them serve to assist churches and youth workers in keeping their students interested and engaged in ways they weren’t expecting.

As I read back over this, I’m not sure it will make a lot of sense to you, but it does to me.

And I love it.

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