Oh my, how the last few years have been a whirlwind. It’s been a few years since I have written and a lot has happened. I went back to work part-time in 2019 and have just went back to work full-time this July. I’ve been working at a local urgent care in the evenings/weekends over the last 2 years and have decided to keep that job as a casual position (8 hours a month) as I have transitioned to my daytime position. It’s been so nice to have everyone on a similar work/school schedule.
My eldest son is in 4th grade this year, my younger son started Kindergarten, and the youngest, my daughter, started Pre-K for 3 year olds. They are all in the same school just a few miles down the road from us. This school year has been a slightly rough this second week, as my 4th grader, who is a lefty is having to write cursive like a right handed person but with his left. This has caused much frustration and I’ve reached out to his teacher to see about how we can modify some of his hand writing assignments to better accommodate his left-handedness. Not to mention my daughter has been crying this week when I drop her off early at the school gym but she’s always so cheerful after she’s in her classroom. The middle one, however, has had no complaints about kindergarten so far….except the day he was tired and didn’t want to go….and the “fluffy ball” I got called about that he swallowed at the beginning of nap time. Hopefully that will be the last thing he swallows this year, as last year he swallowed a small rock from the playground (which his teacher thought he aspirated on. He didn’t) and he got a small rock stuck in his ear that I had to take him to the Ear Nose & Throat (ENT) office to get out because there was no way I was getting that thing out with the tools I had available at the urgent care. Plus at the ENT office it was so painless and quick because they had all the long thin tools and giant magnifying glass necessary to remove the thing!
We moved to a larger house last year, from our little 1200 sq ft home to a slightly larger 1800 sq ft home. I’ve loved the extra space. You would not believe how much 600 sq ft makes a difference. Last year was full of removing carpet, painting every room, putting in a new master bedroom closet system and tiling the whole house (outside of the Kitchen). Even the stairs are tiled and they are beautiful. My husband did a wonderful job. The stairs are gorgeous and really catch your eye as you enter the house. I love our closet system compared to what we had. And the colors we chose are so much better than the builder beige that the whole entire house was painted in. Next we are getting our roof replaced. We have had quite a few hail storms this year, not to mention a few times near 100mph winds, and a lot of intermittent heavy rain this spring/summer season. Our insurance adjuster told us we have the worse roof he’s seen this season so far. So I’m super thankful it’s not leaking and that they are paying to replace it. Soon it’ll be like we have a whole new house. New paint inside and out, new roof, new gutters, new tile floors, etc…
Next we are saving for a new van (new to us), because the used van we bought just prior to the youngest being born is slowly dying. Thankfully it’s still working and we are hoping to have all the cash for it prior to buying. Not having any debt for my education has really been beneficial for us, as it allowed me to take my time to get back into the workforce full time, while we had really young ones at home. If we had to pay loans for my masters degree, there would have been no way I could’ve stayed home for as long with my younger two as I have. One of the reasons I’m back to work full time now is because I convinced my husband we needed a larger home due to our kids growing up. I don’t regret it. Don’t get me wrong, our first house was great even up to the time we sold. We were there for 9 years. My husband even went through short time of buyers remorse since we were so close to paying it off, but our new neighborhood is much nicer, safer, and the house fits our needs better. Also, since I have a good income potential as an APRN, I think if we stay on track, we’ll be able to pay off this house in 2 years (that’s the goal anyway…that was the goal with the first one too, lol). When we sold our first house, we had enough equity in that one that we were able to put a 50% down payment on our current home. We also chose a 15 year mortgage over a 30 year one, which in the long run is saving us a ton on interest payments, even though the monthly payment is slightly higher.
In 2021, my husband and I left our church of 10 years. He had wanted to leave for a few years up to that point but I just wasn’t ready yet. Neither of us were growing in our faith or knowledge of the Bible or of the Lord. We started to notice the church was very works based and not very Gospel centered. When the old Pastor stepped down and the new one took over it was all about “finding your purpose” and “do this, do that, don’t do this or that,”…. Be apart of this ministry and be apart of that ministry and “look at what so and so is doing, we should all be doing stuff that that.” “if you’re not being fed it’s your own fault” kind of thing. Don’t get me wrong, Faith without works is dead. And we most certainly show our faith by our works. But we do not “work” to earn our way into heaven, nor do we get a better reward by the things that we do here on earth. We are saved only by the grace of God, not by our works so that no one can boast. If the Apostle Paul’s works were like filthy rags, what makes me think that anything I do on this earth is going to help me attain a better position in heaven? Not to mention some of the beliefs that the lay people would share about God that were not biblical during small group discussions and the leadership of the group would never correct it. So we left. We went to multiple churches over the course of a few years until we finally found one we were willing to become members of.
Easter Sunday of 2023, we walked into our new church OBC and haven’t looked back since. I’m not saying it has been an easy transition for me. For my husband it has been easier… for me… it’s been a little slower to adjust but I too have grown to really enjoying being here. It was just really really different from any church I had been apart of. Actually the last few years have been a huge adjustment doctrinally ( a doctrine is a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a Church). I grew up in a Charismatic church… very Armenian … a very strong emphasis on the”Holy Spirit” and the work of the Spirit. And now I’m in a very non- Charismatic church… very cessationist (meaning the gift of prophecy, speaking in tongues, and the gift of healing is over and was only meant for a time for a specific reason, this is not to say that God doesn’t and can’t heal people today, just that the scale and the way in which the Apostles did this slowly faded as the Gospel spread and the Church grew[see 1 Tim 5:23 for an example of this]), very Calvinist…. very Reformed. Which I happen to find extremely ironic.
My first exposure to Reformed Theology was almost 20 years ago as a young adult entering college (Yikes, it’s been that long already!)… A private Christian Reformed College in Northwest Iowa. I never heard of the words Reformed Church, the reformation, Calvin, Luther, Armenian, etc… until 2006/2007. My intro to Theology class was a like a bucket of ice cold water throw at me and I was left defensive, stubborn, resistant, and somewhat relieved to finally have an official name for some of the beliefs (AKA Doctrines) I held to and were taught passively but never had a term for. Looking back, I know that I was on the Armenian side and Calvin… well lets just say I didn’t care for him and his TULIP. It didn’t make sense to me and at that point I didn’t put in the effort to truly understand it either.
Fast forward to last year, my husband picked up the book Strange Fire by John MacArthur, read it first and then encouraged me to read it. It took me a while a the beginning. I really did NOT want to read that book…mostly because I was afraid of what I might find in it. I found the book utterly terrifying. Reading the facts about the start of the Charismatic movement; learning that what I had been raised to believe was biblical and a continuation of what the early church did (such as speaking in tongues and prophecy); learning about the people who started the movement and it’s history of exploitation was completely devastating. I thought I was raised with the truth, only to be confronted with the facts that it was indeed not Truth. It was rough. And to top it off as I was reading this book all sorts of things came out about Mike Bickle and the International House of Prayer in KC and his so called “prophet” friend. The book had warned about such things in the Charismatic church! It had warned about how the Charismatic movement has been fraught with sexual immorality since the beginning in the early half of the 1900s and how leaders have not been held accountable for the willful negligence of God’s law and willingly and knowingly living in sin without any true repentance. The crazy thing is this book was written a good 10 years ago before the Bickle scandal and had mentioned many other past scandals from other prominent leaders as well. It has all left a bad taste in my mouth. Especially when I look at the reformed church and see leaders like J. Gresham Machen, Samuel Rutherford, Lloyd-Jones, R.C. Sproul, D.A. Carson and others who have lived lives with integrity over the years.
Any way, now we are in a Reformed Church that believes in Believer’s Baptism (not infant baptism), that teaches the Bible by going verse by verse through the text (expository preaching), which helps believers learn more on how to read the Bible and what it is actually saying in it’s context. The lead Pastor has a Doctorate in theology and the rest of the Pastoral staff currently have a Masters in Theology and/or are working on their Doctorate. Which I have found to be important to me. Because just as I wouldn’t go to someone who has a degree in media to treat my child’s food allergies, and I’m not going to someone trained in cosmetology to fix my car, I certainly am not going to sit under a pastor who has no formal training in reading and interpreting the Word of God. As one who is married to someone from a different culture, there is just too much that can be misinterpreted if you don’t have a good understanding of the culture in which you are interacting with or the nuances of the language. This takes time and training. For instance, I told my sister-in-law, who has a good grasp of English, that I had enough muscle already, I just wanted to slim down and tone up. To which she replied, “well that involves building more muscle!” She understood the words, but she missed my point. How much more, when you’re dealing with a book that spans thousands of years of history, written to a cultural group that is very different from my American culture?
In short, these changes are going to inform my writing more and more. Now that all the kiddos are off to school, and my new full time job has been found to be more flexible than anticipated, my goal is to write more frequently about what I’m learning and thinking about….. Did I tell you that we may be moving back to my husband’s home country in a few years? No? Well, stay tuned because this last year has been a roller coaster ride and Italy may be in our future. dun. dun. dun. dunnnn.
The Ruby Blossom 