Althought few people are aware of it, I am a native of Colorado; when asked, I usually say that I grew up in Seattle, a city gracious enough to allow a "foreigner" to come of age amidst the trees, bay, and panoramic vistas of the Olympics and Mt. Ranier. Seized by a form of late adolescent lunacy, I left the Pacific Northwest and began my college education at a small school in a corner of the country that shall be nameless...no trees, no bay, no mountains, and people talked funny, too! In spite of the culture shock, I did get one good thing out of the place...my husband, a transplanted native of Tennessee. We married much younger than I would want my children to and spent the next 21 years as a military family. We traveled a lot, met wonderful people, and had some terrific experiences. We also had three kids--there are 32 months between the David and Michael, and six minutes between Michael and Andrew.
If you ask what I do, the simple answer is that I go to church. I didn't plan to become a minister. After the kids started school, I decided to take a couple of seminary classes, hoping to become a really well informed member of the community of committed pew warmers. But along the way, a couple of churches offered me jobs. As I worked among the people, I had this strange feeling that I had come home, that I had found my place and my calling. So I continued to go to school, and to go and go and go to school.... And here I am. Now, between research and study, I sometimes get to face the people instead of facing the minister!
Someone asked me awhile back if I could briefly sum up my life story. If I had to put it into words, it would be the words of a song sung to the tune of Danny Boy: "Amazing grace will always be my song of praise...." In the immortal words of the apostle Paul, "...I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
