In the morning I met up with a mission friend, Alainna, in Pleasant Grove for a play date at a park. It was beautiful weather and it was wonderful to catch up.<\/p>\n
Then I came home, put Clarissa down for a nap, and read\u00a0 A New Constellation<\/em>. Right after I read the sweetest email from Linda Hoffman Kimball, my old seminary teacher. She co-founded MWEG and Segullah, and she reached out to me because of some of my Exponent FB posts. Her email detailed her own faith journey, which felt more similar to mine than any I have encountered so far. The thing about faith journeys is that everyone’s looks different. When you are in the center of your faith, it’s kind of fun to know you all believe the same basic things together. A journey feels pretty lonely sometimes, and even when other people are on the journey at the same time, theirs often looks so different than mine.<\/p>\n That was not the case with Linda’s, which just was so resonant. I cried through her email and then sobbed through the poem she sent me. I’ll paste it at the end.<\/p>\n In the evening I picked up Alainna again and we drove to meet our friend Jen for dinner in Draper. We talked for three hours about our faith journeys. It was so wonderful to connect with each of them. I love them. I read them Linda’s poem over dinner. Here it is:<\/p>\n A Missive from the Field March 2019 In the morning I met up with a mission friend, Alainna, in Pleasant Grove for a play date at a park. It was beautiful weather and it was wonderful to catch up. Then I came home, put Clarissa down for a nap, and read\u00a0 A New Constellation. Right after I read the sweetest email from … Continue reading help from friends<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17441,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17440\/revisions\/17441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLinda Hoffman Kimball
\nI came here because God was pretty emphatic
\nthat I should join this crowd.
\nLead me on, Lord. Take my hand.
\nThey seemed as kind and good as the congregation
\nI already loved with its choir robes, Fellowship Hour
\nand Old Rugged Cross.
\nI came to their new font humming \u201cJesus Loves Me, This I know\u201d \u2013
\nThe song which had nourished me for years like Mother\u2019s milk.
\nNo one else here knew the words.
\nDecades later this new place is still strange.
\nI find God cloaked in odd attire.
\nI don\u2019t know why they dress Him up in
\nThese unbecoming disguises \u2013
\nGrumpy as a grandpa if He doesn\u2019t get His way,
\nFussy about particulars, preoccupied with shoulders, roles and restrictions.
\nGod knows what I\u2019m going through.
\nWe keep in very close touch,
\nAnd we\u2019re patient with each other for the most part.
\nA sense of humor goes a long way for both of us.
\nI still see Him in action often here, selfless and gushing with grace,
\nAlthough I think they might call it something else.
\nI haven\u2019t adopted the accent.
\nGod is apparently just fine with who I am.
\nWe\u2019re still lovingly cheek to jowl (metaphorically speaking.
\nThese folks take everything so LITERALLY!)
\nBut I do long for my old spiritual home cooking and spices.
\nThese folks, nice as they are, don\u2019t quite know what to make of me.
\nI check in regularly, making sure I\u2019m still where God wants me.
\n\u201cYep,\u201d God says. \u201cYou\u2019re good\u2026.
\nor as this crowd might say \u2018Carry on.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"