Salty dogs...

We moved to Asheville in 1980 with three small children and a dream. Since no bank in its right mind would loan mortgage money to someone with just a dream, it took all the money from the sale of our Columbia house to purchase the old house we bought on Vineyard Place. The three hundred dollars we had left over bought groceries and the speaking engagement at Fort Jackson paid enough to keep us afloat for a month. Michael launched his dream of being a pastoral counselor in the mountains we loved working first in an office at a church, then at our home in a remodeled basement office.
Upstairs I stripped wallpaper and woodwork, patched plaster and sewed Roman shades, answered the phone and took messages for Michael, ran car pools and was a full time mother and remodeling laborer. Michael’s practice was full in two months and we never looked back. Our children grew. We carved out a place in church and our community at large. The dream became flesh, the call was answered, the gifts were given and life was very good.
Then Southern Seminary called wanting Michael to come help establish a department in Family Ministry. Southern Seminary was Michael’s alma mater, the place where professors had nurtured and challenged him academically and taught him how to do and be a pastoral counselor. It was an agonizing decision but we left for a six year period of time to live in Louisville, Kentucky where he led the Gheens Center for Family Ministry and was a professor giving back some of what had been given to him.
In 1990 after the Baptists went to hell in a handbasket as a denomination, we moved back home to Asheville and Michael resumed his practice as a pastoral counselor. Professors don’t make a whole lot of money so our nest egg was the money we made on our home in Kentucky. Once again no bank wanted to make us a mortgage loan without a regular paycheck so with a hefty down payment, we found an owner willing to finance us for a year until we could get a loan. Our oldest daughter headed off to college after one week in town.
So here we were again... a rented office, a daughter in college with tuition payments, two other children at home, a mortgage payment and nothing but a dream and a call. Twenty years later, the dream has become flesh. Michael is now the counselor for the second and third generations of families he has known since the early eighties. Countless weddings and funerals, preaching and teaching in churches all across our county, tending pastors who need a pastor, his call to be a pastor, first heard as a small boy, has been realized in ways he never dreamed. Now working only three days a week in the office, Michael’s dreams are taking a new shape as he moves into partial retirement... old and new gifts, old and new dreams.
In the gospel of Mark I read... “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.” Our lives and Michael’s responses to his calling have salted us with fire at times. It can be scary to launch out into the unknown with little money and many responsibilities. But the fiery salt has brought us new gifts, new ways to be children of God, new ways to be faithful to the One who called us into being. And if the translation in my annotated Bible is correct, having salt in ourselves refers to being true to our gifts and exercising them peacefully. Salty dog Christians... full of flavor that transforms all it touches...
Some days, Lord, I feel like Krazy Jane’s Mixed Up Salt. Help me remember where all my gifts came from. Lead me to the places where my gifts can be given. And when fiery salt rains down on my head, keep me true to you and to myself so that I might live peacefully. Amen.