(from Michelle)
1. You met your husband, Jon, online. How do people react to this, or do you not normally mention it? What are some lessons you have learned from this?
People are usually pretty shocked because I guess neither of us seem like the kind of people who would date online. I don’t usually mention it unless people ask because it is so shocking and completely unbelievable — I mean, Jon and I apparently seem like high school sweethearts or something.
As far as lessons learned, there’s the thought that you shouldn’t judge by outward appearances and that people can be very different on the inside than they are on the outside. I think if I’d known Jon in real life, I might not have even considered dating him because we are so different externally. I am VERY introverted and he is the king of extroversion. We have different senses of humor and even though I frequently steal his clothes (I’m into baggy stuff), we have different sense of fashion. However, we got to know each others’ hearts before we met and that pretty much overruled everything else. You can learn to work with personality differences if both parties are willing to be flexible and clothes don’t make the man. Jon has learned to give me my space and I’ve learned to let him be who he is — though he restrains himself more than he did previously.
2. What attracts you to ordained ministry?
That’s a really good question because I wonder why I’m so attracted to it at times. I mean, you deal with grieving, neurotic, messy people on a daily basis who expect you to have the answers to all their problems and who think that you only have maybe a 6 hour work week (basically the time you spend in worship on Sunday), which means that you have it easier than the rest. (Reality: a 60-70 hour work week is normal.) In addition, you have to have as much (if not more) education than most medical professionals do just to field questions about the faith and to answer them in a somewhat orthodox fashion and the salary is maybe 1/5 of what most doctors make, meaning that those weddings and funerals are what pay for groceries.
The reason that I’m so undeniably attracted to it is that in the midst of all the sickness and the grieving and the insanity, God is there and I (as the ordained-person-to-be) am the one that gets to help people find Him. In doing that, I learn more and more about God and His will on earth, which simply amazes me at times. Our God is a really awesome, amazing, loving, merciful, and just God and my quest for ordained ministry is all about helping people to discover this.
Oh yeah… there’s also that heavenly 2×4 that keeps smacking me in the head every time I decide to get my Ph.D in Church History or to go to law school instead of returning to seminary.
3. What would you say is the purpose of your blog? What is one major thing you have learned from blogging?
The purpose of my blog is to work out the things in my life and to try to figure out where my faith intersects. My life is really strange these days as I’m looking at a very unknown situation in my future (moving to Jon’s first call) and as I’m trying to live here even though I know I could be gone in two months. It also is the place where I can vent my opinions on the state of the world and have the closest thing possible to free speech.
The most important thing I’ve learned is how blogging can really connect you with others. When I’ve been facing really hard things, I’ve always had people encouraging me and giving me mucho support. This has really meant the world to me because I have almost no peer group here in Newark. (Our church is wonderful, but there really aren’t people my age who really understand what kind of life Jon and I have there. My Bible Studies both are 99% people who are old enough to be my parents.) I like being able to say “I’m really having a hard time” and have people respond with prayer. (Granted, I’ve done a fair share of intercessing for others as well.) It’s amazing how community can develop on such a virtual medium.
4. Where did you get your cats from? Why did you chose to name them the names you have given them?
We adopted our boys from All Creatures Animal Hospital in Granville on August 14, 2002. There had been a “free kittens” ad in the paper and we called to see if they still had any. Their names (Finian and Cullen) are Irish because they are red tabbies (and I’m Irish — our next two will have Scandinavian names because Jon is part Swedish) and come from figures I worked with in the research process for my senior seminar paper/thesis.
5. If you could go anywhere in the world, money being no object, where would you go and why? And, what would you do there?
I can’t nail it down to just one place. I’d probably go back to Ireland and study at Trinity College in Dublin because that has always been a dream of mine (which will maybe be a sabbatical in later years) and then I’d head to Egypt and Syria and Turkey to study Islam and Arabic. (I have a very strange fascination with Islam.) From there, I’d go to Greece and Russia and study Eastern Orthodoxy. In between, I’d travel all over Europe and then head to Asia and visit India, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. I’d finish off by heading to Australia and New Zealand.
(if anyone else wants to interview me, I’m open to this)
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The Interview Meme
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying “interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions ?? each person’s will be different.
3. You will update your journal or blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions
