Returning Home

We just spent a week in California at a campus ministry conference and having a bit of a vacation. It was a great week of connecting with new friends and old.

In San Diego, we boarded the train for San Juan Capistrano...but not before we (apparently) put our future children's lives at risk. This is the sign that greets visitors to the train station:

After the conference, we went to the happiest place on earth for the first time in our lives. I got to meet the Mouse:

Then we headed to Santa Barbara to meet up with two old friends from two different eras of my life. And we stayed in an amazing bed and breakfast:

After a week of traveling, we headed home to snow (although the weather isn't too bad).

And we discovered shortly after arriving home that a student at my school had died that morning. So now I am planning a memorial service and trying to walk with a grieving community. It's in moments like these, when nothing makes sense and people are hurt and confused and clinging to each other, that I realize the profound purpose in what I do. I don't have many answers. And I've never planned a memorial service before. I don't have the skills or the wisdom of people who have been pastors for many years. I don't pretend to have the right words. But in the midst of my own inadequacy, I have a deep sense that I am where I am supposed to be. And that in my own brokenness, God will work through me.

And so this weekend will be spent planning a memorial service, writing a message for that service, and spending time with students. And with a very real awareness that I am deeply dependant on God for all what I am and all that I do.