I know from my experience when I see a number next to a blog title I get scared. I don’t want to read THAT much, I think to myself. Well, I’ve sowed my oats and here they’ve come. So do not feel obligated to read it all (I hope it doesn’t run you off entirely.) I have gone through and cut and cut and cut, and the what’s left below is what I didn’t know how to cut.
Home for me has always been contingent on my father’s life as a pastor. I was born in Texas where my father attended Dallas Theological Seminary. When I was small he got his first pastorate in a rural Kentucky town. Our little white house was flanked by a grassy ridge on one side and on the other a cow pasture. For these nine years we would walk to church, and I still remember the adjustment to driving.
I was raised on that hill in Owensboro. I graduated from kindergarten and tricycles and parent-tied shoes. I retreated into our basement to take care of my baby dolls, and scrambled out the door to play army with Samuel and Matt. I discovered the thrill of reading and was enraptured with biographies of Clara Barton and Michelle Kwan. I fished with my dad, shot basketball with my friends and played volleyball with my sister. I rode my Schwinn to and from church thousands of times, climbed trees and one day biked home with one foot (I wasn’t a very good tree climber). I was also in an accident that almost cost me my life, and I still have the scar. I didn’t have a bedroom and I admit it bothered me considerably. But Dad promised one day I’d have one.
One year everything changed.
I didn’t understand why the air in business meeting grew thick that night. I was ten or eleven, and the dissension went over my head but the tension didn’t. Around that time I often found my dad sitting at the kitchen table listening to recordings of his own sermons for some inexplicable reason.
You must know that my father has always been a man of few words. Yet he is the most faithful man I’ve ever known. He has the strongest character I’ve ever relied on. He has the best wisdom I’ve ever followed. He has the longest patience I’ve ever witnessed, and he has the greatest love for Jesus I’ve ever seen modeled. During the twilight of this pastorate and the ending of an era in my life, his leadership was never in question. And phone calls started streaming into our tiny parsonage. Hopewell Baptist was on the other end.
It was February of 2003, and my older sister had been commuting to Boyce for a semester and a half, but her heart was fighting to let go of Sugar Grove. One day I had tagged along with her, and we were driving familiar roads of both of my childhood and her adolescence. I had thought up something nice to tell her like “Maybe we won’t move.” She snapped back “Oh, we’re moving.”
That’s when it hit me. We’re leaving.
My father had been the pastor of Hopewell Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky for two months, and since we didn’t have a home yet we were staying at Southern Seminary on the weekends. Soon our roots would be finally and wholly uprooted and transplanted to a two-story brick home ten minutes from our new ministry. My entire family got an entirely new life, and I got my bedroom Dad promised me.
I enjoyed this memoir. The part about your dad’s upright character was encouraging. PK’s for life!
Thanks for the encouragement Trevor! Praise the Lord for faithful pastors, eh? [PK all the way.]
Wow, Becks…just wow. I love how you captured all that. Brings back a lot of memories, I must say. It was definitely hard at first, but I’ve seen over the years how being at Hopewell has grown you into the woman God has in mind. Love this. =]
both you guys will have to fill me in on the life of a PK 🙂
and i can fill you in on the life of a…….well i dunno, but i have some stories!
i agree with trevor great memoir and encouraging,i like the new background banner at the top too, its gotta be in englad somewhere i bet
Jess, I couldn’t help but think of you while doing this post. No matter what new paths you follow or races you run…I’ll always have older stories than your new friends. So there.
Same with you, friend.
Thanks, Steve! Don’t forget those stories, I want to hear them sometime!
Makes me think of the “It’s Chuck,” story I’ve heard before haha. I’ve lived in the same house my whole life, so I can’t even imagine how hard that move must’ve been on an eleven year old. But I’m so glad your family came! From the day you and I played ball in the church hallway (basically my first memory of you), you have been such an encouragement to me, Becca. 🙂 You are a beautiful girl, inside and out! Aaand I’m pretty sure that bedroom was just icing on the cake.