Full Circle

As life tends to do from time to time, it seems our church search is leading us back to the church where we started. And as God would have it, he used our children to lead us back to that location.

The truth is, we are looking for much more than a location in our worship time. We are looking for a real connection to God without the "playing church" scenario.

We are also looking for a place where our children will be able to learn about God among Christians that are interested in them as people and see them as people that can participate and give to the community, not just children to be entertained.

The tricky part is that we have come across some places that fit the bill, but didn't sit right. No words to explain, just didn't fit.

I hope and pray that our endless knot is complete so that we can stop the worry about location and begin the next journey that God has in store for us.

Is it over?

Have my blogging days come to an end? Since the purchase of my iPhone and infatuation with facebook, I have not been blogging and it seems that this makes no difference in the world around me. So this will most likely be the end to my blogging days.

Time Flies

April to November - 8 months and no way to express what has happened.  Vacations, school starting again, typical business.

God doesn't change.

Yet we become fickle, lazy, disenchanted...

Strategic abandonment is a concept I have heard about and I need to practice in my life.  Not the type of abandonment that leaves important jobs undone, but the type that gets life back in order and calms things down.

Sometimes I think that I was meant to live like a pioneer.  Challenges around every corner, but no doubt as to where you're going. 

moving on

my final performance of the year is over, spring has come (although you wouldn't know it by the snow falling outside) and i am feeling the joys of my new life without homework.  i finally feel like the house is maintainable and that work is somewhat under control.

there are still lots of questions.  where will our future church home be?  when will we plant our garden? will spring really come?  but one thing i know for sure is that God is good and that he is always with us wherever we go. 

so as i ponder the big questions - and the little ones - i will remember God's goodness and just keep moving on.

facebook adict

i have now become a facebook adict!  two weeks ago i joined facebook and spent the first week catching up with old college friends and just had a wonderful time.  while i am looking for balance in my life, hours on facebook may not make sense.  but it actually helped me to put some things in perspective.

week two of facebook helped me start finding high school friends and i think i have laughed more in the last two weeks than i have in months.  when i think about those times and the fun and the hard times it is interesting the choices that lasted and were important and those that didn't matter at all even though they felt important.

my best friend in high school was joyce nitz.  her mom always used to say "is it of eternal consequence?"  she said it often enough that it would make us mad, but here it is twenty years later and the same question totally applies!

a search for the important

the matrix to the left here makes me feel like the picture in my last post.  but the lovely advice of my friends has given me a focus...a search for the important.  

this has immediately helped my stress level at work go down because it helps me let go of the little things that don't matter and actually catch some of the little things that do.

with God's help i may find - or rather begin to remember -  some of the more important things.

worry

i am starting to reconsider myself.  i keep finding myself being worried about silly things or just feeling overwhelmed and stressed out.  this has caused me to wonder...

have i always been a worry wart?  and if so, does that mean i have been in complete denial about being worried?  and if that is true, does that mean that the happy-go-lucky view i have had of myself for all this time is completely off base and every personality profile i have ever done is completely wrong?

just writing this helps me see that this is completely ludicrous and that maybe the problem is that people that value fun and freedom become worried and stressed when they find themselves in a life of schedules and responsibility.  

only three months til summer and i can go back to my less structured and more spontaneous lifestyle.

Church Search Stage 1

after praying together, i decided that i was ready to branch out.  we had decided to start with the church that is the mother church for ours (Christ community church) and ended up with a surprise visit from the pastor of their partner church downtown (christian fellowship baptist church).

this pastor was really good and it felt healthy to experience something

new.  don't know if this is the best fit for us, but it was a start on what i am beginning to believe may be a long journey.  the girls stayed with us in the service, so they were definite

ly a distraction.  i am curious how if i would have viewed things differently if they had gone to class...anyway, it's a start and i am beginning to pray again and am growing closer to God through this process, so i believe it is the right course of action for us at this time.

i got an iphone!!!!

i am completely, totally and amazingly excited about my iphone.  almost to the point that it is now sucking out my brain power and taking away any desire to be a part of my regular life.  i will soon have to start setting the timer so that i don't find myself wasting entire days playing with my new toy!  oooooooh, it is so fun, though!!!!

i'm so proud of my husband!!!

as many of you know, papa frank is a wonderful, caring, and intelligent man.  he works his tail off to keep buses safe for kids every day.  for the last few years, he has had frustration with bus inspection because of all the hours they put in, just to get buses failed by a loose joint that wasn't loose, or an inside light that burned out during the morning route and a lot of other silly things that had nothing to do with safety.  this year, he was finally rewarded by earning a 93% with the youngest bus on the lot being a 1993 bus (i might be a year or two off on that date but you get the idea that they are old).  i can not express how proud i am of jason for all of his hard work and for never giving up even when he has been shot down many times.

way to go, my love!!!!!!! 93% is an awesome score and i am so proud of you!!!!!

Church Musings

it is 10 am on sunday morning and i am struggling with the concept of church.  jason has been working a lot of overtime and worked all day yesterday, so he is exhausted and in bed.  ari and jessi have been sick all week which has required me to stay home from work for four days and not go anywhere this weekend.  

when i heard the clock chime, i wished i was at church.  but even the thought of leaving the girls with jason and going by myself has it's own negative feelings.  so i am going to simply put my thoughts down here and let it go for now.

as a child this picture, although fancier than the churches i attended, was a lot of what i understood as church.  church was a building with big wooden benches (pews) where we would spend most of the day sunday singing songs, learning about God, and talking with other christians.  most of these memories are positive ones, except for the occasional choir rehearsal that seemed to take forever, but overall, i had friends there and felt like church was a happy place.  keyword... happy place

then i went to bible college.  the first weekend my roommate and i decided we were going to find a church to go to on sunday.  it was saturday night and we opened the phone book yellow pages to churches, thinking that we could easily find a baptist church (where i went as a child) or a bible church (where my roommate went as a child).  we became very shocked to find that the yellow pages in grand rapids, mi, devote several pages to churches and we were overwhelmed.  there were churches we had never even heard of.  over the course of the years we attended many churches.  some by recommendations of school friends and some by pure curiosity.  in the two years i went to that school, i never did find a church where i felt comfortable.  there was one church downtown that i liked, but i could only go there when i was able to get a ride and i never really felt invested completely.

then i went to college of the ozarks by branson, missouri and i went to the baptist church there in branson.  it was a pretty positive experience, but again, i was not invested.  then jason and i got married and he found a job as a youth pastor in nixa, missouri.  the youth group kids were great to work with, but the church felt like a giant obstacle to the faith.  i hit my limit when i realized that a girl i was working with at the ymca was sharing with me her attempts to find a church and the judgement she received everywhere she went.  i realized that i couldn't invite her to the church where jason and i were going because she would definitely be judged their too.

so then jason and i started attending a charismatic church for the first time.  we really enjoyed this and even got to the point where i joined the choir and was having fun, when we felt a tug to another church.  along this entire journey, jason and i always saw eye to eye and had very little difficulty making the church jumps together.  it was like we were totally in sync with where we should be.  this next church was probably the most fulfilling as far as the level of service that we found there.  we loved it and were there at least two if not four days a week.  that church hurt the most.  when we first came, many people told jason that they felt that God was calling him to be the youth pastor at their church.  they prayed over him and we had confirmations all around. yet, when it came time to hire someone, they hired another person.  a person that only stayed for a couple of years and then became a pastor elsewhere.  we just stopped going to church for a while and it wasn't long before we moved to kansas city, missouri.

it took us over a year to find a place that we thought was right for us.  and again, once we found it, we wanted to be there all the time.  we would even go on vacation and when we came back sunday evening, we would stop by the church to see people on the way home.  we had our first girls and felt all of the love and support and we really felt those wounds heal from the previous hurts.  and we learned that church is not a place, it is people.  God's people carrying his message of love everywhere.  we knew this in our hearts, but it was here that we were finally able to meet with other people that were trying to use the meetings with God's people as the fuel for what they do every day.  we never heard...come to church...we are important...it's friends sunday.  we heard, now let's apply the Word to monday morning. and it was refreshing and exciting.

then...as seems to be the trend.  troubles in the water overturned our vessel and we were again fighting to stay afloat.  we quit for a while, but this time we decided to go back and try again.

so after all the history, here i am at the struggle in my heart and mind.  jason and i are in a dry spell.  we blame circumstances (working on my master's degree, bus inspection, gone for the weekend) but we have not been to church as a family since october.  i have taken the girls by myself a couple of times, but we have not gone as a family.  and this is the first time in our marriage that jason and i do not sense the same direction.

i think that jason is ready to move on and i am not sure i am ready to let go.  at this point i am wondering what i am holding on to... a memory for what was and what i wish to be?  friends that i care about?  the excitement of attending a growing church that agrees with my ideologies and theology?  will worshiping in a different place mean that i will lose the connections with the special friends i have found?  i think that is my biggest fear, but when i look at it here in print it seems that i have already lost the weekly connections, yet i will still get together with the friends i have made and will always love them.

how do you know when to leave a church?  at what point is it time? and since it took us a year to find this one in the first place, how long will our family be unconnected to a community of believers?  will we ever find a place that fits us?  or is that not the point?  have we drifted so far that we need to mold ourselves back to the right place?  i know so many people of our generation that have just stopped going to church... are these the same reasons?  i know that i need to worship and meet with other christians and i long for my children to experience that consistent connectedness to a church body.  i just pray that we can find enough answers to these questions that we can all come together with the right church family and i hope it happens soon.

college grad

it is finally sinking in that my degree is complete and i now am free to enjoy my homework-free life.  when i signed up for the eighteen month program, i was thinking, "sure! i can handle four hours every tuesday eve." not really thinking about the ten hours (at least) of homework every week.  a minimum of fourteen hours a week is a lot different than four hours a week and i wasn't really ready for the chaos that it would bring to our home and lives.  thanks to the support of my loving husband and the understanding (mostly) of our little girls, we all survived and live to tell the tale.  the girls still occasionally ask if i will be going to college on tuesday night, but i think they are starting to get used to mommy being home and more available.  

my new goal is to lay off the goals for a while and enjoy the extra time with the fam. maybe i'll think about goals around easter...tune in, hee, hee

Back in Action!

i was so out of it that i actually did the last post on the wrong blog. it was supposed to post on my scottelementarymusic blog. an idiot, you say? no, just a crazy woman that was trying to finish her master's degree and get ready for a performance of over 80 students in a new theatrical location (where i had no control over the sound). it was so stressful that i ended up getting strep throat over thanksgiving (the week after all of this mess).

but that is all the past!!!!! hurray!

my final portfolio presentation was wednesday, dec 9 and i am currently free and clear! i can not express the ultimate joy it is to have my tuesday nights and approximately 10 hours a week back in my life. instead of sunday afternoon football and homework, i can now do sunday afternoon football and laundry. this sounds like a wimpy trade, but my family has been digging clothes out of laundry baskets for the last eighteen months. now they might have a chance of finding them in a drawer. and now the bonus!

kim frank, you just finished your master's degree in education. what are you going to do now? "i'm going to disneyworld!" jason, the girls, his parents, and his sister's family (joy, glenn, and timmy) are all going with us christmas morning and we will be coming back january second. we are all so excited...what a great way to end the year!

Red Ribbon Week

We have just completed red ribbon week festivities and are preparing for a short week with parent-teacher conferences. Special class teachers have a pretty booked schedule. We will try to meet with as many parents as possible. Be sure to let us know if you have any concerns. Tune in next week for the latest on third grade.

george w bush

i am sick and tired of people calling our president names like "lame duck" and such. he has become the butt of every joke and it pisses me off!

has he shown himself to be less than perfectly presidential? yes.
has he made decisions that we do not agree with? yes.
is he still the president of the best country and leader of the free world? yes, yes, yes!!!

last time i checked it took a majority of americans to vote in this president twice. we all voted him in for a reason. do we forget that if our president is truly an idiot then so is over half of the nation? if this is true then we better hang up our hats and join the socialists because we don't think our democracy worked correctly.

i will be the first to say our country is not in a perfect place, but i do believe that a big part of that problem is our fat baby whining and complaining, cnn, and how quickly we forget our own responsibility.

by the way, obama, biden and mccain have a lower approval rating as senators than george w. bush...and sarah palin has a higher rating than all of them put together.

so be done with it. he's gone in just a few short months and we may be wishing he was back before the end.

What is poverty? - Part I

terrible news about the finances of the u.s. has been all over the television today. the safety of the united states economy has become a questionable thing and i wonder what impact it will have on our society.

with all of the turmoil of this, the bombing in pakistan and the presidential election coming soon i had cause to think deeply about poverty in america. people on tv keep saying that we are losing the middle class in america and we keep heading towards a greater gap between the rich and those in poverty. this causes me to wonder. i once told my mom that i thought she grew up in poverty and she was offended. she said that she always had clothes to wear and food to eat. they weren't the richest people in town, but they had what they needed.

my family qualified for food stamps and just about every government assistance you can name. yet, i always had a place to live, clothes to wear and food to eat. i went to the movies, got christmas presents and really was able to do fun things that most kids do. in fact, sometimes i think i was able to do much more because of all the artistic events i was able to attend because my parents were involved with the productions.

so what is poverty? is it living without basic needs? is it a salary below $20.000 a year? in some ways doesn't american poverty look like middle class in other countries?

today i am just posing the questions...maybe i'll find some answers another day.

Fantasy Football

i now have my very first fantasy football team. it is a trivial persuit, but for some reason it makes me smile. i won my first game and can't wait to see what happens this week. i did put a lot of my team on seattle! gotta stay true to the home team! so i picked hasselback as qb and the seattle defense. they didn't do so great last week, but i'm hoping they will step it up this week. fun, fun, fun!

weekends

I should really look forward to weekends, but I am in a funk. During the week I am busy with the school where I work and the girls go to school, college homework and basically trying to keep the house from completely turning into a science experiment and keeping us fed. This is about all I can do during the week and I find it satisfying despite it being tiring.

The weekend is another story. I should be catching up on laundry and cleaning and homework, but my back hurts and all I feel like doing is sitting around and being lazy. It doesn't help that Ari woke up sick last night and that just sucks the life out of me.

Today is filled with finishing up my homework and watching football. I think the biggest frustration is that I missed church because Ari was sick and Jason has a toothache and can't hear in one ear. I think when I miss that time with other Christians that it just sets off the weekend and makes me look forward to going back to work.

i dig her

i am stealing my husband's cool morphed picture because the more i hear about this person, the more i think that john mccain kicked butt on his choice for vp. not because he picked a woman, although it doesn't hurt. mainly because i love the way she is totally against wasting money and seems to be a straight shooter (at least when aiming a caribou). my hopes are high.

Goodbye

A couple of nights ago I heard about a hacking job on the news. The hackers used a broadband connection and a laptop (as well as some pretty good decoding software) to hack into a department stores computer and stole 41,000 credit card numbers. The news report said that a lot of stores have good encryption, but do not have passwords to get into the encrypted data. So the hackers just had to decode the encryption and BAM! they had the info. They also said that there is no legal requirement for businesses to have any kind of particular protection on their computer files, so as a consumer, there is no way to know how protected your credit card information is when you make purchases at the store.

Here we have been spending all of this time studying and learning about what can be done online and here you could have your credit card number hacked without every touching a computer. All you have to do is make a purchase at a store and you could lose your identity to a thief.

Throughout this class I have also been a proponent of the idea that stealing has always been a problem. Yet, I will concede that in the past people were stealing what you had, while today they are stealing what you may not have. They are creating debt for you. I guess people could charge things in your name in the past, but when they did it was face to face instead of anonymously online.

The news report concluded that the best way to protect yourself was to get cash from the bank and make more purchases with cash instead of trusting businesses with your credit card information because banks were more secure with their passwords, firewalls, and encrypted data.

I think the bottom line is that we are always at risk with our finances and we can do some basic things to be careful, teach kids ethics and hope for the best. The other option is crawling under a rock until the computer age goes away (which is not going to happen). Because of this class I will be more careful with passwords and make more of an effort to work with kids on these issues, but I refuse to crawl under a rock.

Goodbye ethics class and classmates that have completed the program. Hope to see you around!