For the Sake of the Low-Paying Ministries

"And Peter said, 'Lo, we have left our homes and followed you...'" (Lk 18:28)

This passage always reminds me how hard it was to move from our dear house in Sanborn. I really really loved that house. It was old; the first part built in 1889. The top floor added later by someone who didn't realize you had to put walls on top of other walls. It was all higgeldy-piggeldy. Many things about it were thus homemade and suited our humble lifestyle. The dining room had a lovely little built-in cupboard with glass doors and drawers underneath for the tablecloths. We had a parlor with a stone fireplace that the Realtor called "rubble." "I love her very rubble!" I responded (Ps 102:14). Denny built a big set of shelves in the living room (using the wood from our old waterbed!), and together we re-decorated every room. I still long for that green and white hallway wallpaper with birds on it. But Denny insisted we sell because the kids were grown and we both had low-paying ministry jobs in the faraway city, and we couldn't keep pounding two cars down those highways.

We had filled the house with family hand-me-downs that turned out to be antiques, and many pieces had to be sold for the move to a smaller place in the city. Of our huge "Lincoln bed," Denny said, "Someone came home from the Civil War and threw himself down on that bed without even taking his boots off, and he slept and slept." So many cups of tea had been drunk around Grandma's walnut square table with ornate wrought-iron legs. Denny said he truly appreciated the beauty of the work when he beheld it from underneath as he loaded it onto the antique dealer's truck. A very old--we thought junky--cherry dresser from the country place brought $500.00. We felt guilty not giving all proceeds to the poor; but we felt we were giving up much for the sake of the low-paying ministries.

It actually felt sacrificial to sell the house where our kids had grown up and furniture we had inherited from prosperous forebears. I processed the trauma in dreams of a broad gushing river with our worldly goods tossing in white water as they were carried away. I dreamed of sneaking in behind the birdy wallpaper to get next to the plaster itself. Over time, I could dream that I was seeing the house from the outside, from the intersection of the Old Littleton Road with Rte. 111. The psyches adjusted to the loss of friends, house, and goods.

I can't say we lived happily ever after, at least right away. Denny and I would drive out to Sanborn on weekends from the hot dirty city ; and even he would say, as we walked our dog Abner through the rolling green orchards or enjoyed the breezes of the town beach, "I'm homesick; we made a mistake." But of course one "who puts hand to the plough and then looks back is unfit for the Kingdom..." We had to quit looking back and move on.

We moved on to St. James's in Cambridge, and found dear close brothers and sisters. That is where my Psalms meditations began, with the priest requesting writings for the Sunday bulletin. Denny and I both served in strenuous, full fruitful ministries with addicts, Denny at the methadone clinic, and I in several modalities from detox to outpatient to 28-day WomensHope. We buried dear black-and-white Abner and later moved on with "Miss Gray" Daisy to Happy Valley, whose beautiful Grace saints surrounded us tenderly when Denny was dying. If not for leaving those houses and goods behind, Denny and I would never have received "a hundredfold now in this age--houses, brothers and sisters...and fields with persecutions..." (Mk 10:30)

Now I've moved again. Denny has died, and so has Daisy, and I have another house, in No. Carolina; and another dog, who is Sassy; and new Christian brothers and sisters; and grandsons across the street; and a hope for further (low-paying) Psalms ministry. I see from the way things worked out so far that I can claim that hundredfold passage as a promise "in this age, and in the age to come eternal life."