Sunday, June 26, 2011

Jess: As promised, here is the wedding homily.

And here is my lovely matron of honor speech:

I’ve known Karin for literally my entire life.  From the start, Mom and I had a special connection. We've had our ups and downs

My relationship with Chris began many years later. Now, when my mom was younger, my Uncle Neil kindly met one of her dates at the door…cracking his bullwhip. Considering that Uncle Neil is six feet tall and pretty intimidating, it is amazing Mom ever introduced him to a boyfriend again. The fact that Chris was more nervous about meeting Josiah and me than my uncle is a testament not only to how much my mom loves her children, but to how much Chris cared about her and her family even early in their relationship.

I have truly enjoyed watching the relationship between Mom and Chris unfold. Their love for one another shines through in all that they do. I know that this relationship is a strong one, built on trust, love, and a clear devotion to making each other happy. From the notes Chris leaves around the house to Mom’s ridiculous excitement as this day approached, it is clear to all of us that they are truly meant to be together. They have committed not only to each other, but to joining together as a family. Even though we just met this weekend, I felt like I already knew Chris’ children through all the stories Mom had shared about them and their lives; I’m sure that feeling is mutual. Mom and Chris know that this relationship is about more than just them, and that will only make it stronger.

Mom and Chris were there to celebrate when Wes and I got married, and I am so grateful to be able to share in their wedding today. So, to thank you for all you have done for us, we compiled a list of some marriage advice based on our 18 long months of marriage:

-    Always keep an extra blanket on the bed for when one of you inevitably steals the other.
-    Don’t be afraid of what other people think of you. Some of the best, funniest times Wes and I have had were when we acted like complete idiots in front of complete strangers.
-    It’s all right to spend time together doing nothing, or doing different things in the same room. You don’t have to talk to be connected.
-    Always take time to eat at the table instead of in front of the TV—at least once a month or so.
-    Don’t forget to go on dates. Just because you’re married and live together doesn’t mean you should always stay at home.
-    Surprise each other. Just the other day, Wes bought me flowers just because he hadn’t in awhile. It made me smile and made my day.
-    Remember that marriage is a partnership, and should be treated as such.
-    And remember, just like with Wii Bowling, it’s not about who comes in first, but about the fun you have playing.

I can’t wait to see what the years bring for you two, and I wish you all the best on your wedding day and in your married life together.

To Chris and Karin

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Going to the Chapel!

Jess: This past weekend was my mom’s wedding, so most of our week has been consumed with the planning and festivities. I headed out to Ohio on Tuesday night, where my mom and her best friend forever, Linda, picked me up from the airport. I quickly filled Mom in on all the stuff that had happened that day (I had a summer job interview, we’re in an interesting financial situation for school in the fall, etc., etc.). By the time we got to the house to see my Aunt Colleen, it was well after 11, and we all started heading to bed. Then, as is typical when we get together after some time apart, Mom and I spent forever talking and didn’t get to bed till waaaaay later.

Wednesday, we went exploring the national park area around Ohio. Despite my general hatred for all things Ohian, I have to admit that the national parks are really awesome. Also, Ohio is the birthplace of more presidents than any other state. And there ends the list of good things about Ohio—unless you count temporary things, like certain people who live there.

Anyway, Wednesday was just a fun, relaxing day for us four girls; we had a picnic, we walked around, we talked, and I found out that my mom’s friend is much cooler than my mom is. :-D Then we had to go pick up Chris, Mom’s fiancĂ©e, from the airport. Now, the Cleveland airport is all of 30 minutes from the house, but Mom insisted that we leave an hour early because of rush hour traffic. She’s clearly crazy, but at least we got to spend some time listening to good country music and talking some more. Then we got Chris and headed back to Hudson for dinner at Yours Truly, which just so happens to be one of my favorite restaurants. We had some awesome food, and once we were almost done, Chris’ son Storm, daughter-in-law Gabrielle and granddaughter Alaina came to spend time with me. So we let them eat while we got acquainted. Two-year-old Alaina and I were fast friends, and she spent the rest of the weekend asking for “Jess-E-ca.” Kids love me. What can I say?

Thursday was the bachelorette party day. Being the awesome daughter/matron of honor that I am, I booked a spa day for the four ladies. We all had pedicures and massages, and AC and Mom had manicures—Mom’s first mani and pedi. It was awesomely relaxing and we had—you guessed it—more girl time. Then we had dinner at the Winking Lizard, another pretty awesome Ohio restaurant, and had a good time with a bunch of Mom’s friends from church, work, etc. Wes finally decided to show up that night, and Mom’s house started to get pretty crowded. For those of you who are counting at home, we’re now up to four people in Mom’s two bedroom townhouse.

Friday was a pretty chill day, with us meeting the rest of Chris’ kids, Courtney, Ryland, and Ryland’s husband Marc. We basically spent the day hanging out, and then came the rehearsal. Since I can now see that this blog is getting pretty long, I’m going to let Wes take over. We’ll make sure to post the wedding sermon/matron of honor toast in an upcoming blog.

Wes: By finally decided to show up, she means that I drove the 7 ½ hours from our house to Hudson by myself while she was out partying it up and getting massages. Jerk.

I occupied my time on the road by listening to a wonderful book on tape (and for anyone born in the new millennium, that’s an anachronism for audiobook). It was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Very engaging, and it kept my attention the entire drive. Here’s the problem, though. The book was 10 hours long. The trip was 7 ½. So when I got to Hudson, I had about 2 ½ hours left. Luckily, the house was empty, so I did a little dance, jumped into the lazy boy, and went to town on those last few chapters. Great book. In fact, I’ll go ahead and say it. Highlight of the weekend. There.

Friday started my “work” part of the working vacation. I don’t really remember what we did up to the rehearsal, but that is where I took charge anyways, so let’s jump there. First, I put on my new bright yellow shirt, so everyone would know where to look. It was a good move. I commanded attention. It might have been that people were staring and pointing and laughing, but I had their attention. I was a little nervous about this, seeing as it was my first wedding to officiate, but everyone was great, everyone listened to me, and before I knew it, we were donesky and on our way to Marcelita’s for margaritas and fajitas. (Side note: I’ve come to notice that there are a lot of words on Mexican restaurant menus that end in “itas”…).  Hanging out with Jess and Josiah and everyone at the dinner was a lot fun, and teaming up to bother their mom was a great way to kill time.

Saturday’s festivities were over before I knew it. The wedding went off without a hitch. I had a lot of fun with the homily (which is posted on my blog) and a great time joking and laughing with Karin and Chris at the altar. One of my favorite parts of the service was when Chris answered a question by saying, “As I heard someone else say at his wedding, ‘Oh yes!’” It made me laugh and reminded me of when I said that and made everyone laugh. The reception was a lot of fun as well, and this DJ was easily the best of any wedding I’ve been to. He not only did a great job with the music, but he kept the bride and groom’s glasses full and even helped bus tables when there wasn’t anything else going on. I was very impressed. The only thing I didn’t like was he didn’t play “What is Love” after I requested it. No “Night at the Roxbury” for us…

Sunday was great. Jess did a wonderful time with the children’s sermon at her old church. I enjoyed the service up until the last song when they completely butchered “Mighty to Save.” Now, I realize that I am spoiled by having been a member at a church where Mark Swayze leads worship, but that does not give other people the right to speed through a song that is not meant to be played double-time. I really missed UUMC… The present opening party was fun until Kelly Smith had to go and say mean things to me. It was just not nice…

Our ride home was fun. We stopped at a roadhouse diner to eat and had really good steak and “4-gun chili.” Whatever that means. And now we’re home. And life goes back to normal. It was a great time, though, and I was blessed to be able to be a part of the ceremony and festivities.

Well, thanks for journeying with us from NJ to OH and back to NJ! Tune in next week for a discourse on Vatican II and dinosaurs!

You stay classy, World Wide Web!


Love,
Jess and Wes

Monday, June 13, 2011

You've Got a Friend in Me

Jess: As our good friends Josh, Sarah, Ben, Kate, and Kelly prepare to move away and leave us youngin's to fend for ourselves at the seminary, Wes and I decided it was time to talk about friends. We've really been thinking about how different our post-college relationships are from the ones that we made at TLU. 

After practically living with our friends at TLU over our four years there, moving up here seemed like moving into a void. Our friends were in Texas, and we had no idea how to make new friends up here. Even though we lived in the seminary housing, surrounded by other seminary students, we had a hard time joining the community. This was partially due to moving mid-year, me working 20 minutes away at odd hours of the day, and just general exhaustion from our whirlwind Christmas, wedding, honeymoon, cross-country trip month. 

As I worked at Starbucks, I started to make some friends. One of them, Jessica, happened to be a fellow seminary wife from California. Our mutual climate woes, seminary experiences, and Starbucks life made us fast friends, and we hung out from time to time outside of work. She and her husband moved to Iowa last June, though, and although we've kept in contact, that's not quite the same as having friends here. I had other friends from work, but anyone who is friends with their coworkers knows how difficult it is to have both a professional and a social relationship with people--I generally had to choose between the two. I still have some great friends from Sbux, but I've lost contact with most of them in the months since I quit. 

Meanwhile, we started regularly attending Prince of Peace, a Lutheran church in nearby Princeton Junction. Our seminary acquaintance, Josh, happened to be one of the interns there, and we started attending Theology on Tap, a Sunday night Bible study with a few people from the church. This is where some of our best NJ friendships have formed. We see these people almost every week, and when we're not having Bible studies, we have parties and get togethers at each other's houses, and just have a good time.

Not long after we started attending this study, we started to hang out with Josh and Sarah outside of school time. All of a sudden, we had friends who wanted to have us over for dinner, play awesome games and just hang out. We've had dinner together almost every month, even after we moved far, far away and now we have to drive to see each other instead of just yelling out of our living room window. Josh and Sarah have been great supporters of our ministry, jobs, school work, etc. They've definitely become an integral part of our lives up here in NJ, and I don't know what we're going to do without them.

All this rambling to say that Wes and I have had to completely rethink our method of making friends. No longer can we count on dinners in Hein, chapel services, class together, etc. to help us make awesome friends. We've had to go outside of our little bubble, invite people over, meet up for dinner or coffee, find common interests, and actually work on building our relationships. And on top of all of that, we have this whole marriage thing to contend with. We have very few single friends up here. Wes has single friends and I have single friends, but we as a couple have very few. It seems so much easier for us to make couple friends as a couple, and work on retaining our individual relationships from Texas. This last year and a half has taught us what it means to be independent adults building friendships. 

On a completely different note, I've started a new blog about a project I'm doing this summer. Here you go: http://jesusified.blogspot.com/





Wes: So I like reading blogs. We have a lot of good friends who have a lot of worthwhile things to say, and I like to stay up-to-date on it all. One of blogs that I read is by my pastor's wife, Kim Barnett. Although I've only gotten to hang out with Kim a couple times, I feel like I've gotten to know her well by journeying through life with her in her blog. She and Ryan just got back from a three-month mission excursion in Rwanda, and they were both great at sharing on a regular basis what was going on in their lives while over there. In her blog a few weeks' ago, she made the comment that every married couple should spend three months in a foreign country where neither speak the language because it helps you grow closer together as a couple and learn to depend on each other. 


I would add to her statement that moving to another state where you don't know anyone to attend a seminary where everyone is smarter than you can do that same thing. Jess and I were flung into a world that, though it seemed so similar on the surface to life at TLU, was completely different than anything we'd known before. There was no safety net for us to fall on. We were by ourselves. And coming in at the semester as we did, there weren't even other couples who were dealing with the same thing we were. Everyone had their group, and we struggled with fitting in to any of them. 


I didn't realize until we moved up here how much I depended on my friends and my community for love and support. I didn't realize how much I fed off of and relied upon the interactions with friends and family until those interactions were cut off. It was hard. 


Now don't get me wrong. The people at the seminary, at Starbucks, and at Crosswicks and Ellisdale have been wonderful! We've had a great time and met some amazing people. But the setting, the atmosphere, and the environment are so different than anything I've dealt with before. Most of the people at seminary, with the exception of a handful (and most of them are leaving today or within a month), are fellow students, classmates, and our relationships don't get much deeper than that. Since I'm a pastor now, I've also had to learn the definition of what a  church friend is. I can be close to my parishioners, but some lines cannot and should not be crossed with them. 


I guess what we're saying is that being an adult can kinda suck. We've lucked out in that we've made some connections up here with some amazing people, but friendship takes a lot more work than it does when you not only have class every week with someone but you also live in the same building, eat at the same places, etc... I understand why my parents cherished the time they could spend with their friends while I took it for granted.


So, for our friends in Texas, New Jersey, and everywhere else on God's green earth, we love you and we thank God for the blessing of having you in our lives. And for everyone in the Princeton/Bordentown area (or really anywhere in New Jersey. Let's face it. This state is tiny!), we have are currently accepting applications for friendship. Resumes must be sent with a cover letter and three non-relative references. 




You stay classy, World Wide Web!




Jess and Wes

Monday, June 6, 2011

Patios and Podiums

Jess: Those of you who avidly follow our Facebook accounts probably already know, but Wes and I--along with the fantastic help of some great friends--built a patio this weekend. You may recall from almost a year ago that our backyard was overgrown with not maintained flower gardens and weedy grass:


Well, since it got warm enough to do anything outside, Wes and I have been working to eradicate the terrible lawn problem. When the grass started growing again and we discovered that a large chunk of the lawn was dandelions and other assorted weeds, we sprayed the whole thing with weed killer. Then we did it a couple more times. Now the problem is that we have giant holes in our grass. Our wonderful friends Robert and Lindsey, sufferers of the same fate, described in detail how we can fix this problem over the course of the next year. Luckily for us, between the holly tree, the well and the relative lack of weeds, the front yard almost looks good now.

As for the backyard, we had another solution: cover most of it up, then worry about the last little bit in the fall. So we had our neighbor come over and dig us a nice 10 foot square hole, we ordered a half ton of sand and two tons of rocks, we loaded up 49 patio blocks in our new car (which apparently has amazing suspension), and we called up some friends. Six hours, four new patio blocks, and a lot of hard work later, we have this:
















So we spent Memorial Day weekend first building this backyard oasis, and then enjoying it. We had a nice little party on Memorial Day, where we played bocce ball and washers, grilled up some BBQ chicken, and hung out in our fun new backyard. Now it's time to tackle the ivy (which is hopefully not poisonous), the weeds that are attacking my flower beds, and the random plants that are threatening to eat our air conditioner. :-D

Wes: After working tirelessly all weekend on the yard, patio, and fire pit stuff (big shout out and major props to Josh, Sarah, Robert, and Lindsey for their help!), I spent this last week at the Annual Conference of the Greater New Jersey Conference of the United Methodist Church. From Wednesday morning through Saturday late afternoon, over 1200 delegates, comprised of both clergy and lay members of the churches in this area, met to talk about the future of the church and to handle the numerous business issues that were presented by different groups and individuals. This was a voting year, meaning that we had to vote on delegates that would represent our churches and conference at the jurisdictional and general conference levels. I’ve always been intrigued by the voting process, because it is build around the faith the that Holy Spirit will move through the votes of individuals to pick the people that God needs at the other conferences, not the individuals that we want at them. This means that politicking was not allowed. It was very interesting to see the process work and see how the votes would change not because of people making speeches and promises, but because of prayerful discernment about who should go.

I must admit to all of our faithful readers, though, that the politics of the church really get to me at times. When we in the church get to arguing and debating over issues, it makes me sad. So many times this Annual Conference (and the many others I’ve been to), I just wanted to stand up and ask if this was really what Jesus wanted the church to be spending its time doing?! The biggest issue of this conference was the fact that our venue—the King of Prussia Convention Center—is putting in a casino that will inhabit the room above our conference meeting area. The way people were talking about it, you would think that they were afraid that they were going to catch some contagious disease from the “sinners” coming there to gamble. They were talking about breaking contract with the venue, something that would cost the conference hundreds of thousands of dollars, and finding another place to meet within the conference. The funny thing about this, though, is that the only other place that really has enough space and is not too pricey is in Atlantic City, the Vegas of the East Coast! They were talking about picketing the casino entrance, handing out pamphlets to the gamblers, even setting up an in-house protest.

Is this what Christ would have done? Or would he have fellowshipped with the “sinners” that we seem so quick to condemn? How about finding a way to minister to and with the people there without making them feel like we are the holy giving handouts to the wretched?

On a very different note, our keynote speaker for the week was amazing. Mike Slaughter, pastor at Ginghamsburg Church in Dayton, Ohio, really brought it. He was unafraid to call our church leadership—even all the way up to the bishops—out and challenge them to take some time evaluating the way we do “church” to see if it really is effective and life-giving in the world today. I was really moved by his sermons, and I went a little twitter-crazy during them. The first night, I tweeted 74 quotes by him in the span of about an hour, which resulted in facebook disconnecting the twitter app from my profile because I had done too much in too little amount of time. Pretty funny.

The most moving thing that he said, and I could have sworn he was speaking straight to me, was when he said that we in the church—especially clergy—should never vote “no” to something that Jesus would have voted “yes” to. If there is a ministry possibility for you or your church to engage in, don’t let hesitancies, budget constrictions, or lack or resources keep you from doing it. Trust that Jesus will work through it no matter what, and don’t be afraid about the result, because if you are working to bring glory to the Kingdom and show love to God’s people, you can’t fail.

Overall, I’d say it was a great conference. We definitely are a broken people, and a broken people cannot be a perfect institution, but we are striving to do the work of Christ, and I am still proud to call myself a Christian and a member of the United Methodist Church.

Well, that’s all from us. Check in next time for a theological discourse on the economical Trinity.

You stay classy, World Wide Web!


Love,
Jess and Wes