Prologue

Any reflection upon the events of this past week would give the ponderer a keen view of the many threads that are now weaving through our lives.

It began last Tuesday at the doctor’s office when we heard the heartbeat of the baby. As we are moving they didn’t do the full work up, but did let us hear the heart. My first reaction was akin to disbelief. I just laid there stunned. I looked at the nurses face and saw a big smile. It hit me, “Oh yeah, this is really cool.” Aaron was outside like a dummy. He claimed that he didn’t hear the nurse call my name, so I went and got him and had the nurse do it all over again.

This news comes in the midst of our moving. In a few days we will take off for St. Louis moving half of our stuff. We’ll come back, Aaron will do his final farewell sermon here at St. John’s, we’ll pack a new trailer load and then be gone for good.

Aaron has one academic year left in his quest to become a pastor. He has an undergraduate degree and seminary is 4 years on top of that. We’re currently finishing up year 3. This year is alike an internship year working at a church -- they call it vicarage. Vicarage is now soon finished and we will be returning to the seminary in St. Louis.

In the next 2 days both of my part time jobs will be ending. Both of these jobs are as a hospital pharmacist, one here in Stuttgart and the other is in Pine Bluff. I approach these last days with mixed feelings. It will be hard to leave behind the people I’ve been working with and yet at the same time I’m excited to go back to one job at a familiar hospital. I’m going back to St. Mary’s Health Center where I’ve worked for 2 years, one of the years doing a pharmacy residency and the other year as a clinical pharmacist.

The heat has finally broken in the dog days of summer. We took our dog Maci outside and played with her for a bit while talking with one of the members of our church. When done talking we returned to the door shortly behind Maci who timidly howled to let her in. It was the first time we had heard her howl, and the howl was indeed timid, as if she was testing it out on us to see our response. We laughed and in we all went.

Perhaps our howl is timid as well. We howl for sadness in the things we leave behind and howl with excitement for the things that will come. In this transition the one sure thing is that our howl, either way, isn’t a strong guttural vocalization. We now exist in a state of flux, not sure what we are leaving behind, and not quite sure what comes next.

As we go forth, we’ll keep you updated…