Packing Up, Looking Back

The movers come in 5 days to load up most of my worldly possessions onto a truck and drive all my stuff 200 miles away to what is, in my mind at least, almost the middle of nowhere. My living room is slowly filling up with boxes and dissembled furniture. Me, my golden retriever Gus, my snowboard Ole Blue, my Xterra, my guitars, and a whole bunch of less useful things will soon find ourselves in a town of 300 people surrounded by hay fields and miles upon miles of the flat High Plains of southeast Colorado. I’m excited that my life is dangerously close to starting a completely new chapter. I’m scared out of my wits that the nearest grocery store will be 20 minutes of highway from my new house.

I’m a new pastor in the United Methodist Church. In my church, pastors are appointed by a bishop to serve churches for a few years, and then appointed somewhere else when it’s time. My bishop is in charge of the geographic area known as the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference, which covers all of Colorado, all of Utah, and most of Wyoming. She can send me, and every other pastor, anywhere within that huge spread of plains and mountains. I’m being sent to lead and serve and pastor the churches in Wiley and McClave, Colorado. These are two tiny, tiny farming communities that are both basically a school with a few houses around it. These new surroundings are going to be a bit of my shock for me, but also be very, very familiar. In essence, the church is sending me back to where I’m from.

I grew up in Lamar, the only sizeable town in the area that is 12 miles from Wiley and 20 miles from McClave. My mom’s family has been in that area for four generations, and shows no signs of leaving anytime soon. I’m related to most everyone in some way or through some marriage or third cousin. I met with the churches’ leadership in April. The first person that met me at the door was my great-aunt Peaches. She was there with some variety of cousin and my chemistry teacher from freshman year of high school.

I’ve been away for 10 years. I soon as I graduated high school, I left. The longest I’ve been there since has been 3 weeks over Christmas break one year of college. I’ve spent the last 3 years in east Denver, very much enjoying urban life as I’ve finished seminary, ran my own business, and worked square office jobs in the federal government. Going backwards from Denver, I’ve lived in Boston, Baghdad, D.C., and Boulder. I like city living. I like everything being close and most everything always being open. I like having cable and a fast internet connection. I really like going to Rockies games on short notice and walking to the bars in my neighborhood. I especially love being a 90 minute drive from snowboarding at A-Basin and Winter Park. I love, love, love the diversity of the city.

It’s scary to think that soon, really really soon, everything I’m used to will be far away. But this whole thing isn’t about me. I have faith in a God that is orchestrating and scheming the salvation and redemption of the entire universe. I want to be part of God’s plot to make the world whole. I feel assured in my heart that McClave and Wiley is where I need to be, at least for now. I know that bigger things are at work in this. Bigger things that involve me, my church, the people of southeast Colorado, and a history that goes back to the mid-19th century. God is moving. I just have to keep up.

In this moment, that means packing up more boxes.