Stuck

I am stuck. I have never had this hard a time putting together a Bible study. I have a thousand thoughts and can't seem to put them together into one coherent thought. The retreat is Friday and it's Monday and I have two Bible studies to have done by then and I'm just praying. I even resorted to asking John for help, so he read my notebook-of-a-thousand-thoughts and said "this is good, you just need to put it together". WOW, THANK YOU! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Finished two weeks of the new job. Today I actually got a paycheck! I had to wait until I could find an accountant and then meet with the accountant and figure out the mess that was left to me and then she helped me set up my payroll with fica and all that junk and blah blah...my brain hurts. I am good at alot of things, but accounting is not one of them. I barely passed accounting in University with a "C", and now I'm supposed to figure out how to set up the accounting system at the BCM, JESUS HELP ME! Other than the accounting meltdowns, it's going pretty well. Although, that's not saying much since the entire first two weeks has been trying to figure out the accounting. It is pretty hard to get work done with the kids around, but I think that'll even out some when it's not new to them and they get in the habit of being there everyday.

I have developed some new habits over the last two weeks that I am thoroughly enjoying. I've been getting up at 6:00 to do my quiet time and then go for a walk. Come home, shower and get ready before everyone's up, it's great! Two hours in the morning all to myself. And, one of the best parts is that nap times are now mine to do with as I want. Nap time generally would come around and I would either use it for my quiet time or exercise and/or feel guilty about not exercising. Now I get them both done in the morning and I have two free hours! The first few days I kept snoozing and would screw up my timetable, but then I discovered THE trick. I set my coffee pot to auto-start at 6:00 and every day since then I always think about the coffee I smell and I can't snooze. It's worked every time. With all this "free" time you'd think I'd have my Bible studies done by now.

In other good news, we found a new home for Bonnie! In case you don't know who Bonnie is, she is John's Neapolitan Mastiff that has sadly lived in the backyard for the last year staring in our window watching her life pass her by. John thinks I hated her, I really didn't. What I hated was that I new she wanted to be inside with us and we couldn't let her, so I constantly felt sorry for her. We've tried to find her a new home and it's been incredibly hard, so John started specifically praying that God would just bring the person who wanted her to us. Saturday morning there was a Gideons breakfast at our church and one of the men said that he heard a big dog barking outside. John told him that it was his mastiff and, no lie, this man said "My wife and I've been wanting a mastiff, where did you get her?" He came over that morning and then came back with his wife later that night and took her home! And they want her for inside to be there housepet, which is exactly what Bonnie wants to be, so I'm really happy for her. And happy for me!

Anyway, I should stop procrastinating. Don't worry Bufkin, I'll have it ready by Friday!

Blogging in Bed

So, here I am again. Sitting in bed blogging. My husband is away, so I don't feel bad being on the internet in bed. Not that I get any "alone" time, I have a 3 year old next to me in bed that I am praying will go to sleep soon because she's driving me batty. Most of the time she's in her bed, sometimes I give in. I fully intend to move her to her own bed as soon as she's sleeping. We sleep in a California-king size bed, but for some reason when she sleeps with us I hug the edge of the bed all night long and wake up with a really sore neck.

I'm supposed to be working on a Bible study right now, but I'm a little stuck. Jessica asked me to do two of the Bible studies at the BSU ladies reunion retreat in two weeks, but it's not coming as well as I had hoped. I am not like my husband, things like this don't just "come to me". John could stand up tomorrow morning with no prep and make it look like he studied for weeks (not that he EVER does that, of course). I, on the other hand, have to spend weeks on one Bible study just to not make a fool of myself. I enjoy teaching, it's just harder this time for some reason. I'm working on Psalms 126 "When the LORD brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed." God-sized dreaming. Can't give away too much, of course, since some of you may be at the retreat. The problem is I am supposed to have two Bible studies, and I only have one. Although, this one subject may turn into two sessions, it all depends....

I started my new job this week. I am now the Administrative Assistant/Girl's Minister at the BCM. Yep, I work for my hubby. This week my parents came to keep the kids so we could have a few days to get things together so that next week we can start bringing the kids to work with us. It's going to be really interesting seeing how much work I can get done with the kids with me, but I'm excited about it. The first few days were rough. His former secretary had been there for 20 years, and it's really hard to sit at someone else's desk and try to figure out what they did and how they did it. I'm just hoping to figure it out before a bill that I didn't know existed is late or a church shows up for something I didn't know about. Pray for us, this could be the tip of something great. This is something I've been praying about for a long time and I'm really hoping to be a big help to John. Someone to encourage him and keep him organized and on task. I'm excited about being in ministry again as well. Not that I wasn't in full-time ministry as a mom and pastor's wife, but hey. Validation comes through a pay check, right? (I say sarcastically).

Oh, and today my two year old son farted on purpose just to make Sadie laugh. Now I know he has passed from baby to TOTAL boy.

Dreaming of the changes to come...

Gasp, go ahead. I know it's been since August since I graced these pages with my unimaginably inspiring writing (your-laugh-here). I've felt like blogging lately, I don't know why I haven't in a while. Maybe it has something to do with our life being out-of-control CRAZY (said with a sing-song voice and rolling my eyes). But, life seems to be settling down into some form of managed chaos, if there is such a thing, and so I blog.

Part of the reason I haven't been sharing my thoughts and life experiences with you for a while is because I honestly didn't know what to say. Those closest to me know that life hasn't been easy the last 6 months and it's hard to share things with people when you don't even know how to put them together in your head to form complete sentences.

About six months ago John's boss decided we should take a break from doing the church and BCM together. John had been going through a.... rough patch. I don't know what else to call it, maybe complete spiritual, physical and mental melt-down? I don't know. He was undoubtedly far from God, and I say this with his full knowledge, don't worry. He had not been doing well in most areas of life and it was showing up at home and at work. The Boss had seen this so he told John to "phase out" the church and concentrate on the BCM.

Now, just in case you didn't know, John is pastoring a church part-time as well as BCM ministry. When we decided to stay on full-time at the church we moved here and live in the parsonage. That was last January, The Boss decided to tell us to leave in July. Quick quiz, how many times have the Schaffner's moved in the last 2 1/2 years?............ 4. This would make 5 times and I wasn't going for it. I had a very large, very loud, SCREAMING fit melt-down for the whole weekend after our dinner with The Boss. We had just starting making friends here, getting to really know our church, and to top it all off we needed to live here because we weren't sure we could live somewhere else without me getting a job, and then what was I to do with the kids and yada yada.

After two days of being the bitchiest, unhappiest wife possible, I got a call. A woman I had only known for a short while called to ask me for help. She is a single mom with three boys who had just moved to our area and then her husband left her there. They were about to be kicked out of their house and had no where to go and she needed $300.00 to pay her rent. I was literally paying our bills when she called and had just been thinking we were going to have nothing extra this month. But God did some slapping-Amy-around at that moment and I gave her our grocery money. I am not a giver. I mean, we give a lot of what we can, but I am not necessarily the "give all, God will provide type" I hate to say it, but it's true. We do it pretty often, but it's usually with a lot of faithless fear in my heart. But God made it very clear to me that 1. there are people with FAR greater problems than I have and 2. He WILL provide. I spent the rest of the afternoon repenting and then apologized to my husband. I was being completely selfish.

That Monday John ran into a pastor friend he had not seen in a while who off-handedly mentioned that he was about to move out of his house. John only asked details to be polite, but then the man told him that they were living there free because an older couple used this house to minister to families in ministry. John was stunned that this just fell into his lap, we both were. The only problem was he didn't know when he was moving, it depended on when they found a home to buy where they were moving to. So, we put off finding a place to rent until we heard for sure from him. And we prayed, and we prayed. At the same time we were really questioning if we were in the right place to start with. Life has been VERY difficult since we moved back from Canada and we have often felt like we "missed it", we weren't supposed to leave.

Then a church from Alabama started calling John. Actually they had started calling before this ever happened and even though John had repeatedly told him we weren't interested they kept calling. So, we actually started listening. The search team came down and took us to lunch, the people were incredible, the job was cookie-cutter perfect for my husband, and we were waiting for the next step. And we waited, and waited. Now we know we have to move and we don't know where we're going and we don't know when, and it was getting frustrating.

6 months passes. God does a RADICAL change in my husband. He is not the same man now he was 6 months ago. I mean night and day. I mean I was worried for my marriage it was so bad and now I can't even imagine that person anymore. Even so, the six months is very hard, can't make friends, can't put down roots, can't even hang the dang pictures on the wall (the ones I still haven't hung since Canada). Have NO IDEA where our life is headed or what the next steps are. God brought us to our knees, we had nowhere else to go. Reminded of a good-old "Shoeless" song lyric "I'm at the end of myself, and I'm weary, I'm fed up, I'm fat and I'm dry". Perfect description of 6 months of my life.

About three weeks ago Alabama finally called. The finance committee has decided they cannot call a college minister yet, they are also without a lead pastor and have to focus on that first. Thank you God! At this point I didn't care what the answer was, I was just dying for an answer. The next day John was going to have lunch with The Boss again. John and I had already decided to ask him to reconsider. In the six months of God changing John's heart we had developed a love for the church and we really wanted to stay. It was going to be hard, but he was going to ask. Before John could bring it up at lunch, The Boss mentions that if we want to stay at the church it's okay with him. Thank you God! In two days we had all the answers we needed!

Now we know we're here and we're here to stay. We want to stay, and I can say that truthfully for the first time in 2 1/2 years. God has given both of us renewed desire to minister at the BCM and at the church. So now I'm dreaming of all the things that can happen when people actually plant themselves somewhere with the intention of ministering for the long haul. And it's amazing the ministry that has opened up to us at the BCM and at the church in the last month.

I know this was long. But, I felt like if I was going to begin blogging again you needed to know where I'm coming from. I was always thinking I would blog again when I finally knew something, when I had the answers to my questions. God has faithfully provided those answers and now...... WE BLOG! There are other really exciting changes coming in my life very soon. I can't share now, but stay tuned, in a few days I'll have more news for you!

And yesterday I bought a frame for our new family picture......and hung it on the wall!