Transitions

Our whole family is in major transition this summer. I was the first to make a move as I began as Pastor of Grace Mennonite Church on March 15 and moved from Berne, Indiana to Pandora, Ohio. It wasn’t until June 13 that I was joined by my wife Dianne and daughter Julia. (I wrote about the move in an earlier blog.) They stayed in Berne until Julia’s graduation from high school on June 7. It certainly was good to have them here as it was getting pretty lonely in the parsonage.

On our trip to Colorado in July, we said good-bye to our son Phil and his wife Mary as they continued west to Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno, California. Here they will both be pursuing degrees: Phil, a Masters of Divinity and Mary, a Masters in Counseling. They just had their one year anniversary of married life and had been living in Goshen, Indiana where they are both graduates of Goshen College.

Julia is presently on a missions trip to Nicaragua. She is having a great experience living in a different culture and learning Spanish. We look forward to having here back home in Pandora for a little over a week before we take her off to college at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Here she plans to major in peace building and development. At this point we will truly be “empty nesters” for the first time in our lives.

Ryan, our oldest son, is also making a transition. He will be leaving his work at Swiss Village, a retirement center in Berne, Indiana, to join a new Mennonite Voluntary Service unit in Madison, Wisconsin. Now, instead of all living in Indiana, we will be spread to four states and separated by many miles. Of course, we are grateful for email and cell phones, but it certainly won’t be the same as having everyone around the supper table.

If any of you have some hints or advice on dealing with family transitions and empty nesting, I would be glad to hear them. This is all new territory for me in my journey of life and I don’t claim to have it all figured out. I take confidence in the fact that my whole family from California to Virginia, from Wisconsin to Ohio is in the loving care of our Creator.