#1 The Adventures Begin (Again)!

Yesterday I accepted a call to become minister of the Word at Kanawha Christian Reformed Church. This seems like as a good a point as any to start a new blog, so here goes:

It has been a little more than two months since I graduated from seminary. In that time the most remarkable thing has happened. I've started to feel more like myself than I have in years. While I was in seminary, I turned much less frequently to some of the habits and hobbies that had defined me throughout high school and college. Part of that was busyness. Part of that was spending more of my free time with my wife. Tess and I got married about a month before I started seminary, so naturally I had to set aside some of my individual pursuits to make sure I was paying enough attention to Tess. Finally, to be fair, I did pick up a few different habits. Wanting a quick and easy read that would be a huge change-of-pace from seminary reading, I started reading comic collections more often in seminary than before.

But in the past couple months I've had more free time. Especially during my seven-and-a-half weeks in Iowa I've started doing some of the things I love more regularly. I've been running consistently--if not all that intensely. I've been playing guitar at least a couple of times each week. And, in addition to some comics, I've been reading some non-illustrated books at my own pace. I've read How God Became King and all of The Chronicles of Narnia. I just started rereading Once a Runner, and I've been slowly working through some Ante-Nicene Fathers. (I do like theology pretty well, I just like to read it in small doses.)

Overall it's been wonderful. I didn't feel like I wasn't myself during seminary, but now that I've graduated, I do think that I had part of myself somewhat buried during those three years. It's nice to feel like I have all of myself again. It's good to restart some old adventures while embarking on some new ones. Up, up, and away!

Grace and peace,
BMH