Well, so that title only makes sense if you were one of 8 people who worked with all day and all night and through the snow and sleet and hail of my emotions this summer in a local hospital. (For everyone else…)That right there was a topic sentence if ever there was one. Quite simply, I’m a different sort of dude these days because of an amazing summer which I can’t quite reproduce in any sort of narrative way at this point.

I spent a lot of time holding people’s hands this summer, and I realized the difference between that and when I needed someone to hold mine.

I spent a lot of time dealing with the distance between Sarah and I right now, and how miraculous it feels that the distance is simply clicks on the odometer, not emotional at all. I realized that’s not the same thing as it being OK that we’re apart, it’s not.

I spent a lot of time remembering what it’s like to truly have friends again, and not just people who are always in the same 4 places as you. I realized that it’s OK to still miss the people who are in those 4 places.

Mainly, I spent a lot of time remembering that I feel incredibly blessed to know in some sort of deep, in the bone kind of way that I’m doing what I’m called to do, doing what it is right for me to do, and doing what my gifts were meant for.

Also, I realized that I have left this space–and indeed, my writing in any way shape or form–by the wayside. I’m about to embark on my last year of Divinity School, I am about to move 1600 miles away, I am about to move a little closer towards the outward ordination of what has been an inside call already answered. That’s a lot. It all has to go somewhere. So why not here? Obviously, it can’t all come out here, what with the internet being available to all and whatnot, but I’d like to think that if you read this junk of mine through the years, you’re getting a better sense of who I am… which I hope would be beneficial to my living in the world.

I have a friend who is inspirational, and funny, and bold and honest all at the same time in the context of the web, which is astounding to me. Then, I read this: Making the clackity noise. Everyone already knows about my man-crush on Merlin Mann, but now I feel like I’ve moved to some sort of deeper, almost Air Supply-esque misty connection… Anyway, this piece honestly made me cry a little bit about the real need for people to tell their stories to each other, and hey, who doesn’t love scoring points by beating up on facebook? Ironic glasses almost come free when you do that.

All this to say the world seems to be pestering me to write. I wrote like a page and a half missive to my mother this morning out of sheer overflow of material. So, I hope I can keep inspired, because I think I want to know about myself in this particular span of time, and it would nice to be able to share that with my lurved ones while I do so.

Yet again, I’ve fallen off from the use of this blog for a while. The updated news:

•Sarah and I were married on June 8th. This was an amazing event that was fulfilling spiritually as well as emotionally. We spent a lot of time thinking about the way our faith traditions treat marriage, the sacramentality of the event itself, and who we see ourselves to be as a couple. Most moving part of the ceremony: Fr. Dzeiglewicz’s whispered hello to us as Sarah arrived at the end of the aisle. He basically said: “This moment has been ordained since each of your births. Your lives have been journeys leading to today… Enjoy.”

* We’re about to venture off to France for 2 weeks, and then England for a week for our belated honeymoon. I’m very nervous about sticking out. (I like to travel by trying to blend in and simply be “one of the locals.” I love knowing what other people’s daily lives are like.) However, since French is definitely not a comfortable language for me, I will have to rely on the kindness and patience of strangers for the time in France. Sarah is super excited about seeing everything and is laughingly dealing with my curmudgeon side. As my dad mentioned, until the second I actually arrive somewhere, I never want to go anywhere.

• In September, I start my tour of duty as a student pastor / intern at the First Congregational Church of Danbury. My supervisor is a super capable lady who has a lot of the same interests I do in terms of how congregations join in telling their own story, and join in the story of the surrounding community.

Anyway, I’m going to try and be better at using this blog: to document travels, internship reflections, to talk about music like I promised, and just to reflect more of my personal life, since trying to hold myself to ministry topics can sometimes be overwhelming during the academic year, and starts to feel just like another assignment.

I have completely dropped the ball on this site over my Christmas break.

Firstly, there was one of the most harrowing end of semester experiences ever. As it has been written in days of yore, I am phenomenally bad at being tested, and faced three very detail oriented exams. This alone put my brain in fear-crash mode, and then there were some hairy papers. (Most of which I’ve kind of hinted at here.) It was a lot to conquer, and yet I did, which feels good. Despite accomplishing some really nice thinking throughout this semester on theologies that can be very relevant to specific groups of people (I definitely found a neat way to look at young adult sexual identity issues), it was easy to feel like I might throw up my hands and scream “What does it all mean?!!!” Academic studies are great, but I felt a little isolated from the actual practice of ministry in the last month. Hopefully that will change, as I think I have finally gotten out of Hamlet-mode on taking “Introduction to Pastoral Care” next semester. I hope that thinking about how I’ll serve REAL PEOPLE on a daily basis will ground me a bit.

Nextly (take THAT English!), Sarah was back in town. Normally, that doesn’t equal total productivity failure, but considering the separation of the past semester, we ended up in lock down mode. Also, we have one of the more complex family structures imaginable, so a single day holiday takes us about 4 or so days to actually celebrate. Add to the normal holiday shenanigans the fact that my birthday is right after New Year’s, and essentially we’ve JUST stopped traveling the world telling people that we DO INDEED like them.

All this to say… stay tuned. And yes, I like you all, too.