Today I spoke to both the 8:00 and 10:15 services at Hope.
Below is what I said:
I came to Hope, four years ago, Easter Sunday. I had been looking for a church my entire adult life and the second I walked into this building, I knew I had found a home. Five months later I began the discernment process for becoming a priest and the day after that I was confirmed here at Hope. I became a postulant for Holy Orders. I was taking a seminary class at night and teaching middle school during the day.
I was the happiest I had ever been in my life. I had a purpose to my life and then I lost it all.
Where do you find purpose when it takes all your energy to walk the ten feet from the recliner to the kitchen or to the bathroom? When fevers send you to the emergency room? When pain wakes you up at night? When joints are so swollen you cannot move them? When vertigo stops you from driving and makes even the shortest trips in the car, the worst roller coaster ride of your life?
It would take years for a diagnosis.
Mixed Connective Tissue Disease with Lupus-like symptoms.
I went on medical leave from work.
I stopped seminary.
I felt like I had lost everything that mattered to me. I had no purpose.
But then last summer a friend of mine texted me about a photographer named Mark Hirsch who spent every day, for a year, taking a picture of a tree on his property.
And so I decided to do something similar. I needed a reason, every morning, to get out of the house.
And I made Hope that reason. I made God that reason.
I decided to come here, to the church, every day, for as long as I could, and take pictures and post them online and write about them.
It was difficult. I came here on days I was dizzy and on days when I was sick. I came here in the bitter cold and the driving rain. But each day, I came because each day I found God waiting for me here.
He was here in the silence and the stillness. He was in the waiting anticipation of the osprey. He was in the brightly colored coat of the cardinal, standing proud high in the trees. He was in the lonely leaves floating in the water. He was in the dewdrops clinging to the flower petals.
And even after I passed one hundred days in a row of coming here, I couldn’t stop.
I couldn’t help myself. Because when I am here every morning, usually at sunrise, I am here to be with God. I am here to pray. I am here to listen. I am here to marvel at that smallest things that God has created, the smallest things that are so beautiful and went so unnoticed for most of my life.
Today is sixth months to the day since I first started my daily journey here. One hundred eighty-three days of Hope.
The challenge is still ongoing. Coming here has made me stronger. It’s increased my faith. It has restored my faith. And it’s a story I have longed to share with you.
Below is what I said:
I came to Hope, four years ago, Easter Sunday. I had been looking for a church my entire adult life and the second I walked into this building, I knew I had found a home. Five months later I began the discernment process for becoming a priest and the day after that I was confirmed here at Hope. I became a postulant for Holy Orders. I was taking a seminary class at night and teaching middle school during the day.
I was the happiest I had ever been in my life. I had a purpose to my life and then I lost it all.
Where do you find purpose when it takes all your energy to walk the ten feet from the recliner to the kitchen or to the bathroom? When fevers send you to the emergency room? When pain wakes you up at night? When joints are so swollen you cannot move them? When vertigo stops you from driving and makes even the shortest trips in the car, the worst roller coaster ride of your life?
It would take years for a diagnosis.
Mixed Connective Tissue Disease with Lupus-like symptoms.
I went on medical leave from work.
I stopped seminary.
I felt like I had lost everything that mattered to me. I had no purpose.
But then last summer a friend of mine texted me about a photographer named Mark Hirsch who spent every day, for a year, taking a picture of a tree on his property.
And so I decided to do something similar. I needed a reason, every morning, to get out of the house.
And I made Hope that reason. I made God that reason.
I decided to come here, to the church, every day, for as long as I could, and take pictures and post them online and write about them.
It was difficult. I came here on days I was dizzy and on days when I was sick. I came here in the bitter cold and the driving rain. But each day, I came because each day I found God waiting for me here.
He was here in the silence and the stillness. He was in the waiting anticipation of the osprey. He was in the brightly colored coat of the cardinal, standing proud high in the trees. He was in the lonely leaves floating in the water. He was in the dewdrops clinging to the flower petals.
And even after I passed one hundred days in a row of coming here, I couldn’t stop.
I couldn’t help myself. Because when I am here every morning, usually at sunrise, I am here to be with God. I am here to pray. I am here to listen. I am here to marvel at that smallest things that God has created, the smallest things that are so beautiful and went so unnoticed for most of my life.
Today is sixth months to the day since I first started my daily journey here. One hundred eighty-three days of Hope.
The challenge is still ongoing. Coming here has made me stronger. It’s increased my faith. It has restored my faith. And it’s a story I have longed to share with you.
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