Part 1: My Previous Life

Last summer, Robin and I packed our things, said goodbye to Moorpark, CA, and moved to Portland, OR.  It has been over a year since we moved… and I think I am finally ready to reflect on this journey.  There are many roadblocks in front of me as I embark in painting this picture of the last 14 months.  I want to paint a masterpiece, not that I think what we have been through is beautiful or interesting or even worth reading about, but I miss writing things that actually make sense.  This may seem like I am being deflating or negative, but really I am just being honest as I have never felt so tired than I do right now.  A new baby, a full time job, and a new city… but I am not out of this, and so I am attempting to breath life back into what I know is a year FULL of meaning.

I want to begin by reflecting back on how things used to be… before we moved to Portland.

My Old Life

(Mexico House Building Trip, 2006)

I was a Youth Pastor.  I worked for a Christian Church in Southern California as a Youth Pastor, guiding Jr. High and High School kids through life, trying to teach them about God, Jesus, Science, Philosophy, Serving, Sexuality, Friendship, etc.  There were about 15 kids in the Jr. High group and maybe 30 in the High School group.  I was really close to a handful of them.  My weeks started on Monday, staff meeting from 10-12, usually a lot of joking around, discussing what was going on in each of the small staff’s ministries, sharing plans for the upcoming weeks and months, and praying for each other, the congregation and the church in general.  Tuesday night was High School youth group, followed by Jr. High group on Thursday night.  Occasionally on Monday nights we had Feed My Sheep, an outreach through my church which fed meals and handed out groceries to local families who were struggeling financially.  Our youth groups would prepare and serve the meal once a month.  Monday afternoons, after going out to lunch with the staff (I loved Monday lunches) were spent preparing for bible study on Tuesday night, as was most if not all of Tuesday.  On Tuesday and Thursday, I’d usually roll into work around 10, letting myself sleep in (pre-Amalea days) because it usually was a late night.

High School Bible Study

High School bible study consisted of getting to know high school kids, some of which really were interested in this whole God thing, others who were just looking for something to do on a weeknight.  We hung out for the first half hour or so, and then we killed the lights and fired up the worship band.  I lead the band along with a group of High School kids, some of whom I taught to play during a summer music program, and we would jam through 5 or 6 songs… sometimes really nailing it and it was really energetic and awesome.  Other times it was quite the struggle to get through 6 songs – and it felt like a marathon.  After worship, we would gather on a group of couches and I would introduce a topic and we would begin to open up the mysteries of the universe… I would try and tie in relevant topics to make it interesting for the kids, but I was more interested in stretching their view of the world and of God and of their existence… so many times I would using RadioLab (a scientific podcast our of New York Public Radio, really amazing stuff) to blow their minds and get them questioning everything they knew and believed… from there we would dig into the mysteries of the Bible… of Jesus and his crazy message, and what it means to live differently than this crazy Southern Californian suburban society.

(Myself and Marty Milligan)

Some bible studies were really great… others were really draining and it was frustrating to hear over and over the drama of high school.

Jr. High

Wednesday’s were a day to rest and begin preparing for Thursday nights… Jr. High bible study.  Everyone would always say how crazy I was to work with Jr. Highers… sometimes I understood what they were saying – but most of the time I thought they were crazy.  Jr. High – being 11-13, is a fascinating age.  It’s a time of awkwardness, anxiety over really stupid things, discovering of your social life, your “coolness” or lack thereof, and your body (and others of course).  It’s this crazy, messed up, potentially really hard time for most kids… and I hated that – but it is what drove me to try and aliviate that for some kids if I could.  I loved being there for kids… when everyone else looked at them and saw a crazy, hyper, incoherent teenager – I saw a confused budding adult who was just trying to make sense of it all.  Sure, it got on my nerves when a 12 year old would interrupt me in the middle of every other sentence to tell me how I was wrong, or what they did last night, or how Family Guy really is the best show ever… but in the end, I loved it and I was just as fragmented as they were and I think I really connected with them because I could go from tangent to tangent and then bring it all home and make sense of it somehow.  And that is just what they needed… someone to make sense of it all… someone to tie together all the loose strings in their life and help them realize they are NOT crazy, and they ARE very special.

(Carly and Jonah)

Thursday nights were always insane.  We would play games, hang out and talk, and then try – and I really mean TRY – to have some sort of conversation or study about God and the bible, or just about life and all the questions they had about friendships, dating, sex, sexuality, etc.  Some nights the conversations were REALLY interesting. I was continuously blown away by the things these “teenagers” would bring up and were dealing with in their life.  I learned a lot from them… and to this day, I will take on anyone who says that Jr. Highers are a waste of time and are uneducatable (I know, that’s not a word).

The Weekends

I would usually take Fridays off… because Sundays were a work day.  So Friday and Saturday were days off.  This was actually quite AMAZING.  Especially before Amalea.  Robin was a teacher, which would mean Fridays I had the day all to myself.  I could sleep in, drive to the beach or go to the Gardens of the World, take a book and just get lost in thinking about life, the world, God, Religion, etc.  It was wonderful.

Sundays were church.  Sundays were draining… way more draining than any other day.  Usually I would go to both services… the first one I would sit in the main congregation, and the second one I would lead the kids (sometimes Jr. High, sometimes High School).  After church we would go to Toppers Pizza, a local pizza shop with an INCREDIBLE salad bar.  Sunday evenings were peaceful… sometimes we would have kids over for a barbecue, sometimes we would go out to eat, sometimes we would just do nothing.

Beyond the Weekly Grind

(New Orleans, 2006)

Other than that weekly grind, occasionally we would take mission trips or have weekend outings.  In the Spring we had yearly trips down to Mexico to build houses for a week, where we would camp out under the stars, take outdoor showers with 2 gallon water jugs, and sing songs around a camp fire.  In the Winter we would do a snow boarding trip up to Mammoth for a long weekend.  In the Summers, we either did week long camps (where we would do random things around Southern California) or we would take a mission trip.

(Clockwise from Top-Left: Peru 2008, Keyna 2006, Mexico 2006, New Orleans 2006)

In the time I was at the church, I had the opportunity to go to Ecuador, Chile, Kenya, New Orleans (to do Post-Katrina clean-up), and I even got to lead a trip to Peru in 2008.  There were also the annual Jr. High all-nighter – which is just like it sounds… a whole night of wacky/zany fun with super hyper sugar-high-horny teenagers… those were some long nights.  Let’s see… Broom-Ball was a big hit, Super Soccer Sunday, Joshua Tree camping weekends, retreats to the mountains… all sorts of stuff.

(Marty [left] and Me [right])

And that was my life… well, my work life at least.

Other Tid-Bits from Our Old Life

Robin and I owned a house in Moorpark on a super quiet street, two doors down from a small HOA community park.  We had a big tree in the backyard that provided some great shade in the summertime, a raised vegetable garden I built, and a fire-pit, which I also built in the back yard.  We had great neighbors (although we didn’t talk to them much) and I’ll always remember the walks Robin and I would take around the quiet (and I mean QUIET) neighborhood.

(House in Moorpark, CA)

I made 40k a year, as did Robin (roughly) – and my schedule was SUPER flexible.  When Amalea was born, I would stay home until Robin got home from teaching (around 1pm) and then I would go in and work.  I made every doctor appointment, and days when I was too tired to go in, I could study and work from home.  It was a tiring job – but it was also super peaceful and restful.  (I know that now… I did not think that then)

Well… that was then.  In my next installment, I plan on contrasting that with what life has been like for the last year and is like now.  I hope to make sense of the decision to move up here… to see how God has shaped me (and my family) and what is in store for the future.  I may add more to this post in my posts to come… as it is late and I am beyond tired right now.  Having two kids is SUPER hard on Robin, she is doing a great job keeping her head above the waves… and it’s not easy for me either.  Having a full-time job and trying to be present in the lives of my children and my wife is harder than I ever could have imagined… but it’s worth it.

To Be Continued…