The cliche is true. The years just keep going by fast. Maybe it is because we are packing more and more life into the same 365 days. Whatever it is, 2019 went by quickly.
Let me expand a little bit on the title of this post. We began 2019 as a newly minted family of six having just welcomed a new baby (and our first girl) in November of 2018. That change from five to six brought the challenges of once again adapting to life with a new baby. Thankfully, Gemma proved to be that elusive baby that, up to that point, we had only heard about. SHE SLEPT! None of our kids slept through the night until they were weaned but little Gemma was sleeping like a champ shortly after we brought her home. That meant more sleep and less crankiness for everyone who shared a room with her during her first few months of life.
In all the busyness of my work and school detailed below, Laura has done the tireless and often thankless work of running our home. Beyond the work of raising four children, she is homeschooling our oldest two and continuing to plug away on her writing. 2019 saw her reach a huge milestone in her writing career as one of her short stories was published in a physical book! You can go to Amazon right now and buy a copy of this book so that someday you can say you own the first book where L.G. McCary was published! Also, if you want to keep up with Laura and her writing journey the best ways to do that are to follow her author page on Facebook and go to her website and subscribe to her email newsletter. She will be publishing her annual winter short story soon and you won’t want to miss it!
In 2019, one of the things I’ve been most thankful for has been my work in my unit. I have been extremely blessed with supportive leadership and a wonderful team of people to work with. The year started with a rainy and muddy field exercise, then another exercise in Indiana in April, then a couple of months in Kentucky supporting Cadet Summer Training, and then a fall packed with classes and activities. I’ve pushed myself this year to expand the reach of the Unit Ministry Team beyond the typical areas the Chaplain usually operates and to develop classes and mentoring opportunities for leaders in the unit. This played out in a professional development event at Johnson Space Center and a four-session moral leadership class based on David Brooks' book, The Road to Character. I come to the end of 2019 as excited as I’ve ever been about unit ministry and looking forward to what the next 18 months in the unit will bring.
2019 also brought a very big first for our family and for me personally. For the first time in my life, I’m living in a house owned by my family. Everywhere I’ve lived since childhood has been in a home owned by someone else. Whether that was in houses on the farm owned by my Grandparents, a parsonage, an apartment, or military housing, I went 35 years before I could say I was living in a home my immediate family owned. In the middle of my being gone to Kentucky, Laura went househunting and found a home that we subsequently bought and she moved us into (can you say rockstar?). So this Christmas we are spending our holiday in a home that we own. This little postage stamp size lot in Texas isn’t much, but it is ours. We know that the Army won’t let us stay here long and really put down roots, but it gives us hope for the day when we finally can find a place to settle in longterm.
Another big happening in 2019 was starting a doctoral program through Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. There were a couple years of fits and starts where I applied and was accepted to programs at Gateway and Liberty before settling on this program. I’ve now completed one seminar and started a second as I work toward a D.MIN in Worldview and Apologetics. I’m thankful this was the program that I settled on. I have already learned so much that is directly relevant to my day to day work and that has started giving me more philosophical, theological, and intellectual tools to engage the things I see every day.
Now what about the soul-searching and healing? Since coming to Texas in 2018, it has become clear to our family that we have a lot of unresolved trauma related to childhood experiences and especially my pastoral tenure in Kansas. This clearly affected Laura and me but we’ve also now really started to see how it has affected our children. These are scars that we have carried for years and issues that have always bubbled under the surface but the constant stress of military life, the changes in outlook that come with parenting, and the opportunity to reflect that comes with time and distance, all came together to help us realize that there was some stuff in our lives that we needed to sort out. I won’t spill it all on a blog, but you can ask Laura or myself and we will gladly share more about it with you in person. The bottom line is that we realized that sometimes the helpers have to ask for help. I share that not to air laundry but hopefully to encourage some of you that it is okay if you need help. Being a Christian does not exempt you from trauma or give you magical tools to make trauma disappear. However, being a Christian does give you a community and resources within that community to help you process and walk through trauma. That’s what we’ve spent a lot of 2019 doing: processing and walking through past trauma and, hopefully, moving toward healing.
We are looking forward to 2020 and wish you all the best this coming year!
