Long ago and far away, I found myself cleaving to my husband in the midst of a very rocky sea. We were just shy of 10 years married, had 3 beautiful children, many wonderful friends and a very aggressive church leadership in the church where my husband served as pastor. That is a story for some other day. The results of that story is for today.

 

In pain, my love resigned as their pastor and we moved from the safety of a parsonage (ie a house we did not own, but lived in as part of his salary package) to a very small rental house in our town. We were stripped of our income and most of our dignity. We were supported by some very dear friends from the church, but we knew that they needed to remain in this town of theirs and we would not – so it pained us to draw them into our struggle. We prayed and fasted over what God wanted us to do.

 

What He did was take us to a place that was familiar for my aching husband. Home. To Kansas. We were so happy to be near to his mom and others in his family, as we had been without any family support structure all of our married lives. That was 25 years ago. We arrived on our 10 wedding anniversary.

 

Over these past 25 years, there has been joy, pain, excitement, fear, love and most of all – God. He has been our beacon of light. Our buoy. We have rejoiced and sobbed over lives, decisions and directions. We have grown wiser and oh, so much older.

 

In the midst of those years, finances became an incredible burden for us and for our church. It was then that we made a decision that my hubby would apply for and later accept an adjunct teaching position with a local community college. It was a very difficult decision.  We knew that once we introduced any additional income into our family, that we would never be able to go back.We also knew that becoming bi-vocational at any level would be the beginning of the end of the small church we served. Ultimately, we believed that this was God’s way of providing for us and lifting a part of the financial burden for the church. We had no way of knowing that this one class in microeconomics would be the gateway to a very different type of ministry.

 

Since then, he has been given opportunity after opportunity to progress in higher education. It led to his full-time employment. Another conversation took place between us where we decided, once again, if we moved to full-time in the secular world we would be forever changing our local church involvement. We knew we needed him to take the job. We didn’t know why. About 6 years ago, his position opened an opportunity for me in higher ed. We have been fortunate to be trained, exposed and stretched in this field and have amassed a depth and breadth of knowledge because of that training in records (registrar) and student services.

 

So – God Smacked.

 

I don’t really know the real meaning of this phrase. So I may be using it inappropriately. But – who cares!

 

What I do know is that I was comfortably riding along on this 25 year history, making plans for our retirement, when God reached out his hand and .. you got it … smacked me!  And I mean smacked me “right upside the head”!

 

No worries – it was a Love Smack! (Now – I know you are all humming…)

This is not to say that I was not following Jesus, asking Him to guide my heart, my direction. I was. But I was expecting His answer to be a mild guiding.

 

In a matter of about 20 days, our lives have been turned upside down. We are spinning. We are excited. We are blessed. We are humbled. We are … I have no idea what we are!

 

Without all the details, we will be leaving our Kansas home, as we celebrate our 35th anniversary, to relocate in Ohio. We will return to Ashland, our Alma Mater, where we met, were married, and had our first child. To Ashland University, where we will begin a ministry at the school. Not the kind of ministry you might think. This ministry will be in student records. In the Registrar world. This experience has been so ordained by God that as we tell the story out loud it sounds more like a fairy tale – that this is all too good to be true – that we are buying snake oil. But we know it is true and God led.

 

We know that God has his hand in this – literally “upside my head”- and we are going to have the opportunity to join a group of folks who are walking the walk. In this world. At a University. So that others can see them follow Jesus.

 

We are still working on the details, and many of them are quite unclear, but we know that this love smack has awakened our spirit to where God wants us to be and once we are there I know we will have opportunities to join Him in the work of Ashland University. He has been preparing us for this day since that first microeconomics class.

 

So, pay attention to your life. Watch where God is and where He is drawing you. It doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else. It doesn’t even need to make sense to you. You listen to God. You follow Jesus. You cling to the Spirit. The rest will be made clear when it needs to be. And every so often, let God give you a love smack.