God Bringing Something Out of Nothing - Part 1

A bishop once came to visit us at our seminary. he opened with, “I want you all to write a timeline of your lives: the good, the bad, the ugly. Next, tell me the redemtion story in the low points. If you can’t, that’s ok. It means you’re still grieving. You need healing, and that is where God is at work.” The Bible is full of people’s low points and how God redeemed them.

Here is a recent one from our life and how we got here to this new place and this new work.

Part 1

After almost 4 years of serving at Church of the Holy Cross down in the Charleston, SC area we found ourselves going through serious transition.  The church was going through some major restructuring, and we worked to help pastor the people, who we dearly love, through this big change.  It marked a transition for us personally as well.  Our original role there was ending, and through the wise counsel of others we realized that we needed to pray about where God wanted to use us next.  Were we to stay and take on a new role, or was it time for us to move on?  As we prayed and talked it through, Kate and I both felt that staying and taking on a new role was not where God was calling us.  We would be sad to leave the people we loved in Charleston, but our long-term passion to begin an arts-based ministry kept surfacing.  This vision was born back in the mid 2000s when we lived on Long Island, NY.  That was where we saw ourselves starting this new ministry, but we didn’t have any idea as to how we would make that work.

Still, in prayer a verse kept coming to mind: “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left” (Isaiah 30:21).  So, we began investigating what it would mean for us to move back north.  We knew we wanted to be on the North Shore of Long Island, but we didn’t know where exactly.  The options were many as it is a very long island.  Wanting our two elementary school aged girls to make the best transition possible, school districts became our focus.  They loved their school in Charleston, so wherever we went had to live up to a high standard.  We set our eyes on Stony Brook.  We had some family connections on Kate’s side with The Stony Brook School (a Christian prep school).  Her brother and cousins had all graduated from there and her aunt and uncle had been on the board of directors.  We thought it was as good a place as any to settle down.  We would have some Christian fellowship with the school faculty and being in the middle of the island, it would give us easy access to the city and airports and still be relatively close to my parents and my sister, Alexis’, family out on the North Fork of the island.

We weren’t sure how we could afford any of it, but again we felt the Lord saying, “This is the way, walk in it.”  While praying and preparing for this transition, we were in the midst of another huge and heartbreaking change.  Kate’s dad, Peter, was dying of glioblastoma (an incurable brain tumor).  Being close to him and Kate’s mom, Sandra, in Charleston was a big motivator for us moving down there 4 years prior.  Peter had suffered a massive stroke just weeks after our youngest, Skylar, was born in 2014.  Thankfully, he fully recovered, but we had a sense that the time with him was short.  We wanted our girls to have time with their “Poppop” while they still could.  

Peter and Sandra

Peter was a well-known Anglican minister.  He and Sandra had started multiple ministries over the years that had touched thousands of lives.  In fact, even after his stroke, and in his 80s, he was still working away on their latest endeavor, the Anglican Leadership Institute.  Then in the spring of 2019 he was diagnosed with glioblastoma.  It was devastating news.  We were so grateful to be there with him and Sandra.  That last year, though painful, was also one of the sweetest that I can remember with Peter.  To walk with them to the end of this life was a true honor.  He died May 30th, 2020.  We miss him so.  Peter had always been a huge support for us, encouraging us to step out into where God was calling us.  In fact, it was during his memorial service at St. Michael’s Church in Charleston that we got the name for our ministry to be.  Peter and Sandra had used the dandelion as a symbol in the early days of FOCUS (a ministry to private schools in New England).  We loved the death and resurrection imagery.  It seemed like the right fit to honor him as we embarked on our new call.  

There have been many times in recent months when I have wished we could talk to him about all we feel called to do.  And yet, even in his absence he has continued to encourage us.  We found out at the end of June that he bequeathed to us some money that he stipulated in his will must be saved or used towards the purchase of a house.  By God’s grace through Peter’s generosity we had our down-payment for a house on Long Island!  Now we just needed to find a house.  Kate’s family planned to spread Peter’s ashes at the FOCUS Study Center on Martha’s Vineyard at the end of July.  With all of the travel restrictions thanks to Covid-19 we figured we better make the most of the trip and tag on a visit to Long Island to look for homes and a new base of operations for Dandelion Ministries after our time on the Vineyard.  My sister and brother-in-law, Alexis and Marco, would host us at their house in Cutchogue on the North Fork.  

Orient Point Lighthouse

Last summer was a summer of goodbyes.  We said goodbye to Holy Cross, where on our last Sunday worshipping outside in the parking lot in the heavy Charleston heat, standing six feet apart, many of our beloved congregation members and church leadership stretched out their hands to pray for us and send us off into the unknown.  The next week we flew to the Vineyard to meet up with Kate’s family and lay Peter’s ashes to rest.  The little service at the outdoor chapel at FOCUS where he had preached and taught so many times was sacred.  It felt like Peter was passing the baton to us.  His leg of the race had finished, but ours in many ways was just beginning.  We had been in ministry for 18 years already, but this felt like the beginning of what we really wanted to do.  As is usually the case, there was an unexpected twist.  Right when we were trying to fly out from Martha’s Vineyard, Tropical Storm Isaias was making it’s way up the coast, scheduled to hit Long Island and the Vineyard right about when our initial flight was supposed to take off.  Thankfully, the night before I had realized that our family was not going to survive the rerouted flight plan American Airlines (boo! hiss!) had sprung on us a week earlier, turning a 40 min flight from the Vineyard to JFK into an eight-hour ordeal with a connection in DC.  I wasn’t even thinking about the tropical storm when I called Delta (yay!) to get a new flight.  I was so glad I did.  The next day our Delta flight was the last to leave Martha’s Vineyard for 3 days thanks to Isaias.  Our original American flight later in the day never took off.  In the midst of the storm we would begin our search for a new home.

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