A New Beginning

I miss writing. I used to blog quite often and one day, out of the blue, I stopped. In fact, that day I stopped writing pretty much all together. My journals died out, my xanga site essentially shut down, and even emails and letters suffered. Perhaps it was that school has been using up all of my writing energy. Another possibility is that with life being so hectic lately I have found other outlets for my creativity. Finding new ways to love my wife daily certainly uses up some of my creativity reserves in the most wonderful way possible. Regardless of the reason I have decided this evening that the writing needs to start up again, that the levies of my mind need to open way for the flood of words that have been held up within.

I suppose a brief update on my life is in order for the many of you that have been victims of my poor communication habits. Just over three months ago I had the great privilege of marrying my best friend of 9 years. Allie is an English teacher at the high school where we met... pretty crazy huh? She is halfway through her first year teaching and has already been chosen as the Rookie Teacher of the Year at her high school. That puts her in the running within the county to become the county's rookie teacher which comes not just with bragging rights but also a cash prize. Last week she started taking night classes at NC A&T to get a Masters Degree in Education (she got her undergrad last year from UNC in English). She is also pretty deeply involved with the NC WMU, helping them plan and run a conference next month among other things.

For almost two years now I have been attending Liberty University completely online. Assuming this semester I don't do anything stupid I should graduate with a degree in Religion. I love my classes, love what I get to study which is probably why I have been held over by writing papers and not blogging for the last year. For those of you who don't know, when I started college at NC State in 2003 I was planning on being an engineer. I enjoyed that so much that I flunked out of the school and was asked to leave. By comparison, last week I got an email informing me that I was on the Deans List last semester and assuming my grades stay as they have been, when I graduate in May I should do so higher than a 3.5 GPA which means I will graduate with honors. If that doesn't happen that's fine but it is amazing the difference it makes when you love what you do.

When I finish school in May I plan to plow right ahead and begin grad school in the summer. For those of you who don't know, I will be attending seminary as I plan to become a pastor and someday start a church. My plan is to get into Liberty's seminary and continue to take classes online as they have worked out for me very well thus far. I have been occasionally working as a substitute teacher, though not nearly as often as I should. I have tried to find jobs at churches but seem to be unqualified for what they're looking for. I would love to spend some time working with youth but most churches won't consider you if you don't play at least one instrument as they want youth leaders to double as music leaders. Being married I think that last summer was my last doing the camp thing, for a while anyway.

One of the things that I'm sure will be spoken about often is that I am currently planning on starting a church. Specifically, I feel very strongly that despite my protests and desire to wait for preparedness that God is calling me to start a church sooner rather than later. Through personal prayer, the encouragement of my wife, through meeting a few new friends who also feel called to start a church, and other various factors, I feel that God wants us to trust in Him and not on ourselves, and to go ahead and start a church. I have always said that I don't want to start one until after I graduate seminary so I can feel more prepared... God always reminds me that I don't need to be prepared; He's prepared enough for the both of us. A major motivation for starting this blog is because I know with that in my future I will have a lot to get out. I have already begun the process... what I can always use is more prayer, and I would greatly appreciate yours.

I will leave with the update for tonight. Already I feel questions and discussions on theological issues and various Christian behavior bubbling to the surface but I will suppress them for now. If you have any interest in checking out my old blog please feel free to do so. I spent 2+ years writing fairly regularly so there is a lot of pretty good stuff over there. I just like the layout of blogger better and they make it easier to use my pretentious domain name. I thought it would be easier for everyone to remember that way. Anyway, the old blog can be found at http://xanga.com/cfspam

May Christ's grace always be with you,
~Seth