It's Raining in Baltimore....

Life is full of bitter sweet moments and through all of those moments, especially in my life through all those moments music has had a defining place in what is going on. 

I tend to relate to music better than other ways to deal with whatever emotion I am feeling.  I also tend to gravitate toward a certain type of band, Counting Crows is one of my favorite bands.  They are not one of the more popular bands of the day but I love their sound and 98% of their lyrics. 

SO right now as I sit at 3 Bean for what will likely be one of the last times, I am listening to August and Everything After, great album.  The song in the video is on that album, and funny enough it's been raining in Baltimore a lot lately. 

If I had to be honest the last two years in the Newell house have been full of a lot of rain, a lot of storms.  In some ways we are still dealing with storm clean up, the battles with cancer, my tendency to internalizing and taking everything personally, walking away from the church that I was supposed to save, being angry at everyone involved in that process including myself, mostly at myself. 

The song talks about things that fall apart and about the need for a phone call, a raincoat some kind of connection with anyone and that's where I have been for a long time.  When we first left the church I was in a bad place, people reached out to me and I just sort of read their posts, words of encouragement all that and either ignored them or unfriended them.   I made excuses to not go to church, made sure I had to work as often as possible on the food truck, attempted to start writing again and in doing so posted a couple of angst filled rants.  Then something happened, well a couple of things happened. 

I have this amazing woman that I can say with complete honesty I don't deserve.  The amount of mess she has put up with in the last 23 years qualifies her for sainthood.  My best friend was having a birthday party, in Oklahoma and while we couldn't go she asked if I wanted to talk to him.  Now to be fair, he was one of the guys that reached out to me when everything fell apart and I just didn't respond.  Turns out the party was in Youngstown, also turns out we were going to be in Youngstown at the same time he was.  We couldn't go to the party but that didn't really matter, Joyce asked if I wanted to see him and I said sure why not.  Keep in mind I hadn't spoken to my friend in 7 years.  Long story short after along walk in the snow with my dog we had reconnected and when we got back to the house he mentioned that his nephew had preached the Christmas Eve service at NCA. 

Which brings us to where we are now.  We found out that NCA needed a pastor, I submitted a resume and this past Sunday the church voted us in.  Long journey actually,  full of prayer, conversation, prayer, conversation, evaluation, phone calls, prayer, travel to Ohio more than once, sermons and questions and all of it.  God did some pretty amazing things to bring us to the place we are at now.
He brought us to a great church in Baltimore that reminded me about how much God cares, he opened the hearts of the people in Niles, He opened my heart to realize that HE wasn't done with me by a long shot and that there was a place for us. 

The thing is all of this excitement comes with a bit of sadness.  We have friends here in Baltimore, people who we have grown to love.  People who have stuck with us, people that have been there.  We will miss them.

I will miss them.  Perhaps one of the ones I will miss most of all, is Jim.  I can say with a hundred percent surety that without Jim I would not be heading back into ministry at all.  Without his encouragement, friendship, and prayers I would just be sitting in my room with the lights off listening to Bathsalts (really dark angsty song) over and over again.  He and I came to Locust Point at the same time.  He left before I did and then I left and we have maintained a friendship that transcends ministry and shared vocations. 

God has done some pretty amazing things in the last six months.  I can't wait for all that he is going to do in the coming weeks, months, and years.

So there it is.  It's raining in Baltimore, but there is a light on the other side and well I can't wait to see what's next.