Time for a change

To Blogger:

It's not you, it's me. I just need a change.  If you need to return any of my stuff, I'm staying at mikeloretto.tumblr.com.

Don't cry, baby.  It's been real.

Mike

Two years ago, pt 3: On Being Ignored

I'm looking back at some writing I did two years ago.  For the full explanation, see this entry.

By the third day we were away, I remember wanting to write something a little lighter.  Our dog, Bristow, not the most introverted creature ever, provided the material.

Two years ago, pt 2: On Dürer Darling

I'm looking back at some writing I did two years ago.  For the full explanation, see yesterday's blog.

I wrote this poem the second day we were gone.  A friend of mine from college, Steph, was working on her portfolio for her master's in creative writing and had sent me a section of her poetry for feedback.  It was inspiring to spend some time with her work, particularly one of her poems, called "Dürer Darling". When I started free-writing that morning, I reflected not so much on the poem itself, but on the experience of reading it.

Reaching

Two years ago, like this year, I was leading music for a church and breathing a sigh of relief to be past the craziness of Christmas events. In late December of '07 it was a different church than late December of '09, and it was certainly a MUCH different era of my life. I was at one of my lowest points ever and preparing to spend the whole month of January away from job and home. The church had graciously agreed to give me that time to try to get emotionally healthier and to build into my marriage.

Easter 2009

If anyone has tried to keep up with me by only looking at this blog periodically, I feel for you... things have changed quickly over the last few years in the life of Mike, and I've not tended to write here, well, ever. I've Facebook-ed and Twitter-ed the sometimes pithy, sometimes intentionally mysterious, sometimes mundane short little burststo which we are all prone these days. But today, sitting in church, I had the urge to write here.

The next four days I'll be working (well, training) 7 am to 3 pm at Starbucks, and it's crazy how nice it feels to be able to look ahead at a schedule and responsibilities. Since April my days, for the most part, have been fairly unstructured, with plenty of things to be done (like FINDING A FREAKING JOB!) but no specific times I have to do them. Even if this job won't bring in nearly enough money, I think it will be really good for my mental health. And I get to drink free coffee, which is awesome...

But for now, I also have to get myself back on a normal schedule if I'm going to actually drag my butt out of bed to be there at 7, so off to bed I go.

One month later...

Well, a month has passed, and I've not been good so far about writing. I find that I have had so many conflicting and confusing emotions about this whole process that I've tended to avoid writing, as writing involves thinking and feeling, which seems like a dangerous proposition at times. But I want to be a thinker, a feeler, a writer... and I want to heal, which for me will involve gritting my teeth and being all of those things.

Some snapshots of my first month home... job searching... a 32-mile 4th of July bike ride with my parents... late night walks to Collins Park or to my old elementary school to sit and think... job searching... playing tennis (and getting ready for a tournament later this month - I signed up for it to make me get out and play in preparation)... reconnecting with old high school friends - Luke, Doug, Brett, Shannon, and others who just hadn't been a part of my life for quite a while... going out to bars with said high school friends and getting to know the part of Topeka that I never did growing up... job searching... lining up two coffeehouse gigs at the Classic Bean (Aug. 29 and Oct. 17, if you're interested)... trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to play to fill 3 45-minute sets at those gigs... job searching... getting hired at Starbucks (I start tomorrow) and realizing just how little that's going to pay... hence, more job searching... working out details of the divorce with Sarah... driving to Lawrence and/or Kansas City to see good friends who live in those areas... job searching...

I'm torn between the deep ache of incredible loss and the somewhat dim but dawning excitement of new beginnings. As I wrote a month ago, I need to figure out who I am post-marriage, post-(for now)-church ministry... and that's going to be quite a long process, I'm finding. And it may involve some trips down identity-finding trails that lead nowhere or to hurtful places. But I feel like I'm having more honest (if less frequent) conversations with God about the whole thing, and that feels good. It's so weird when you realize that even though you were never really trying to be dishonest with God or yourself or others... you were. So here's to discovering honest living, in all of it's messiness.

Starting again

In 24 hours I'm leaving California and starting over. At 28, I find myself moving back in with my parents, looking for a job, and with not much to my name. Pretty much like I was when I moved home after college. And yet not at all like when I moved home after college - then I was 22 and had very little to complain about in my life and everything to look forward to. At 28, I'm coming home as my 4-year marriage is ending and my first full-time ministry job has ended because of it. I'm coming home wounded and broken and more aware than I've ever been of my weakness and my sin.

So I'm starting over. I'm starting over in life, and I'm asking God to show me who I am as He sees me... apart from the roles I've had as a "pastor" and as a "husband"... who am I? One thing I know I need to be about is writing, so I'm also starting over (for the umpteenth time) on this blog, and committing to being regular with it. So for now I've got 24 more hours of wrapping up my life here, spending last time with the people who've been my support system and surrogate family out here, then I've got 3 days of driving (thankfully with one of those friends). I'm starting over.

Had a good talk with my friend Scott Parr this morning, and it solidified for me something that God is trying to remind me of: that He is regularly speaking to me through life, through people, through scripture...

Not a new idea for me, but I think over the past few years, I've felt just confused enough about life and just hurt enough by its events to feel a bit abandoned by God and to stop believing in practicality that He's going to break into my world with any regularity. Notice how I said that - "my world"... I think He's reminding me that it's not my world, it's His. I've been so stressed and disappointed by the way life is going in "my world" that I've been fairly unable or unwilling to listen to what God might be telling me about His world through it all.

Ok, I have a tendency to make blanket statements like that... I haven't been completely shut off from listening to God's voice for the last few years, but I think the majority of my time has been spent letting my mind be constantly thinking, thinking, thinking about the here and now, and I've had a big drought of devoting time to stopping and listening. Not writing much is a symptom of that. Bouts w/ mild depression and such things are, at least partially, symptoms of that. We're made to pay attention to what God is saying to us on a daily basis.

Because here's the thing I'm in the beginning stages of remembering - the things God says to us are absolutely, unequivocally life-giving. God is in the business of leading us into abundant life - not necessarily comfort, happiness, "success"... abundant life, which I think includes an inner peace that knows inner worth bestowed by God's mercy, even when comfort, happiness, and success don't seem anywhere within reach.

God's words... I think it's easy as a pastor, whose "business" is God's words, to lose the sense of awe and wonder that's appropriate for the fact that the God of the universe speaks to me intimately. But in this moment, I'm wanting to lay down all the things I tend to use to fill up my time and my thoughts, because I'm getting little tastes again of what it's like when God breathes new life and hope into "my world." It's making me hungry, and I want to get hungrier and hungrier.

something new

OK, I'm tired of coming to visit my old blog periodically and seeing the same post at the top for the last 2+ years.

I just reread every post in preparation for sharing my life story at our pastoral staff meeting tomorrow at my new church, in my new town (Pleasant Hill) in my new state (California). Well, actually those things aren't all that new anymore, but a lot happens in two and a half years... what can I say?

I'm struck by how much I like a lot of things about the (at least nominally) creative and reflective person who wrote all this stuff a few years ago... oh, he was way too self-involved and made a lot of the same mistakes over and over again, and knew nothing about wine and acted like he did (living near Napa Valley has taught me a lot more, but I still act like I know more than I do)... but anyway, at least that guy was stopping periodically to reflect on what was going on, to try to listen to what God was saying in the midst of it, to try to verbalize it in a way that might possibly resonate with someone who cared to read it. I like that he was reading some good books, listening to some good music, and then trying to write some words and some notes and rhythms of his own that might contribute to... well, something.

I won't beat myself up for not blogging over this last chunk of time. The last 3 years have been very full, and have been very different from and much more painful than the 24 or so that came before, and I'm still deep in the process of learning how to healthily live in the midst of that. I'm not sure if blogging will be much a part of that healthy process, as I still find that the best place to take some of my deepest thoughts (after God) should be Sarah, and I also find that more and more of the things I might want to process are not necessarily wise to post for all to see. But at the same time, I like many of the things that blogging meant for me a few years ago. I want to start reflecting on the craziness of the world I live in a little more again, to be a little (or a lot) better at listening to God in the midst of it, and to see if I still have anything to say that might be useful to random people in the blogosphere.

So who knows? I may write again tomorrow, or I may let this post sit at the top of the screen for another few months. Who knows? But as I sit here thinking about it, up late because I'm being forced by this silly task of telling my story to my friends and coworkers to reflect a little more deeply into how I'm feeling about my life's arc so far... as I think about that, and how I'm not quite as happy right now (for a few different reasons) with how that life's going as I have been in the past... well, maybe this is something I need to commit to doing. Let's see how it goes.