What are Tim and Susie doing now?

a note from the land of liminal space

“New life starts in the dark.” -Emily P. Freeman 

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot.”  -Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

Some people have been asking, “what are you up to now?” 

If you mean, what are we doing next vocationally, then I don’t have a crisp answer for you yet. On January 31, we said goodbye to the church we founded and pastored for 14+ years.

Here is what we are doing right now. We are making space for our grief, we are connecting with our safe people, we are paying attention to what brings us joy. We are recalibrating our bodies, letting our nervous systems return home. We are finding our ground again after the pain of an unwanted ending. We are coming home to ourselves after living on high alert for too long. We are also beginning to dream again about our work in God’s kingdom. Best of all, we are traveling together as a family! 

The first thing we did after our last day as pastors at Platt Park was hibernate “up north” at the lake  in Wisconsin. The kids did school remotely from there for three weeks. Over the next few months, we will travel together as a family to China and Japan. I (Susie) will fly to New York City with my siblings to celebrate my mom’s 80th birthday at the Neil Diamond musical on Broadway. Tim and I will travel with our cohort of pastors to the Kineo Center in Puerto Rico for a retreat. [https://www.thekineocenter.com/] I am excited about all this travel, and eager to gain some perspective from the other side of the globe. As we go on these adventures as a family, we are asking the Spirit to guide us as we rest and listen. Our writing here will likely reflect these wanderings of life and soul as we discern our next right thing. 

“Where are Tim and Susie now?” We are in liminal space. One thing has ended, and we don’t know exactly what is next yet. Although some dreams and plans are percolating! The pain and grief of losing a church we loved and wrapped our lives around is awful. We have been approached with several different “opportunities” to consider being pastors in a new congregation, but we are not ready for that yet. In this liminal space, we have left people and a place. We had imagined growing grey hair there. We imagined raising our kids there. We envisioned them coming home from college there. We had hoped to be the pastors of that place for decades still. We thought we would marry and bury people we have walked with for over two decades. We never imagined this. We wanted to find a way to remain. Yes, we wanted and needed a change, asked for a change, but we did not want to leave altogether. This goodbye, or as we’ve said, this “God be with you” ending, is going to take time. It’s going to require healing and forgiveness. That is a process. When we do say ‘yes’ to the next thing God has for us, we want to say it wholeheartedly, and with joy and freedom. We are getting there, just not fully there yet…but the winds of the Spirit are blowing…and I know something good is coming…there are now some days I can feel it.

Recently a wise pastor friend said, “God lives within you and the Spirit will show you.” I am resting in that, holding tight to those words whenever the night starts closing in on me. Despite the incredible pain of loss God is here, and we are taking time and space to name this pain as best we can as we move towards healing and wholeness. 

We are so grateful to have wonderful people walking alongside us at this time! What an incredible gift it is when we attune to one another. We all need people who we feel safe, seen, and secure among. We are in a cohort through the Kineo Center that has been amazing and has offered us a place to honestly name our pain and move beyond it towards hope and healing. What happened to us is out of our control, but how we respond is ours to choose. Our families have been amazing. Our kids have been wrapped in a big family hug as they are on their own journey with the grief of losing so much (their church, friends, neighbors, childhood home, and place of belonging.)  Aunt Ann baked with Lyla, and Aunt Debbie stayed up past midnight having a heart to heart with Lyla. Nana spoke Russell’s love language by putting him to work on odd jobs and taking him out to Culver’s. Russ also challenged our family to guess how many swings of the ax it would take him to chop through the ice on the frozen lake. (answer: 102!) The grandparent love, cousins love, aunts and uncles love, and let’s not forget the puppy cousins love has been a soothing balm to all of us. For all the times when family can feel like drama, or disappointing, or like an obligation - they are the ones we run home to when everything falls apart. We have such a solid home team. My gratitude to God for them brings tears to my eyes.

When we first moved into our new home in Littleton on December 14, just before Christmas, we left the decorated tree at the parsonage. We said through our anguish, “we are not having anyone over to this new house for at least a year!” That was the pain speaking and its promise lasted only a few days. Since then, our new home has been a revolving door of friends, bustling with love and life. Long time friends and family have filled our new home with donuts, pizza, and happy hours. Every weekend we have had people over to help us break in our new home.  These treasured friends are a little break from the pain of grief, a reminder that we are still loved, not alone, and will be okay. 

I am also very happy to report I (Susie) have a new friend! I feel seen and safe when I am with her, and she doesn’t need anything from me in terms of leadership, or opportunity, or employment, or housing! I am not her pastor or boss or landlord; we are just plain old friends, “useless” to each other’s goals. Useless but not worthless - a treasure of great value to me. There is a difference between relational connection and vulnerable friendship. Chuck DeGroat says, “Being relationally connected is not the same as being known. It may even be a very effective way of remaining hidden and invulnerable.” I am seeing ways in which this has been true of me. At times I have been so widely connected relationally, while remaining hidden. I thank God for the couple of safe friends who are helping my shy soul come out of hiding. 

Richar Rohr says, “In liminal space we sometimes need to not-do and not-perform according to our usual successful patterns.We actually need to fail and deliberately falter to understand something must die for something new to be born. We need to be silent instead of speaking, experience emptiness instead of fullness, anonymity instead of persona...In liminal space, we descend and intentionally do not come back out immediately.” -Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

This resonates with me, we are in liminal space. After 20+ years of ministry in urban Denver, we have stopped for a moment. We are not doing. We are not performing according to our usual patterns. Something has died, and we are sitting shiva for a bit. Intentionally, we are not coming back immediately. We need to heal, we need to forgive, we need this space and silence to hear the still small voice of God in our own hearts again. 

For me (Tim) the image I have been imagining is uprooted.  The big tree digging machine came, scooped down deep into the soil, lifted up our lives, and put us on a trailer to take somewhere else to be replanted.  It looks weird and strange for a tree to be driving down the highway on a trailer.  And it feels weird and strange to be uprooted in this way.  It hurts to leave behind some of the deep roots.  It feels uncertain where we will put down new roots - with so many questions:  will we like that place as much as the old place, what will the people be like, will we like the food, what will we do, and will we thrive there?  Yet, this replant feels hopeful and exciting.  

The Psalms begin with the image of a person who is like a tree planted by streams of water.  We are moving forward as a family trusting that God is doing the planting and will sufficiently water us!

So, in answer to your question, this is what we are up to. We are so incredibly grateful for your curiosity and care to read this update! Thank you for bearing witness to this part of our journey. We give thanks to God for you.