I bought this bedroll for a specific backpacking trip long before I got married.\u00a0 I used it once or twice and just carted it around with each move since.\u00a0 Sometimes I get indecisive about throwing away something – could someone else use it?\u00a0 could I sell it?\u00a0\u00a0might I need it again in the next year and a half?\u00a0 is it something I could possibly use in Haiti down the road? This sort of Throw is easy because the obvious answer in each case is No.\u00a0 It’s not an expensive or valuable thing and it takes up space.\u00a0 It was sitting on a shelf in the garage, collecting dead crickets.\u00a0 It does bring back some fun memories if I pause long enough to reflect.\u00a0 I got it years ago for a youth group backpacking trip in the Smoky Mountains.\u00a0 I was a student as Asbury Seminary at the time – three hours south of my hometown of Shelbyville.\u00a0 My parents called me one September evening and said their pastor was going to be out of town over a\u00a0long weekend\u00a0late in October and wondered if I would be willing to preach in his place that Sunday he would be missing.\u00a0 I said I’d be willing, but then I asked, “Where is he going to be?”\u00a0 “Oh, he’s going on a backpacking trip to the Smokies with the youth of the church.” Out of my mouth came\u00a0one of those sentences that literally changes the course of your life, although you have absolutely no clue at the time:\u00a0 “Well, I’m willing to preach, but if he needed some help with chaperoning, I’d much rather go backpacking with them.”\u00a0 Turns out Rev. Alan did welcome some extra help.\u00a0 He had\u00a05 or 6\u00a0high school boys who were eager to spend their fall break in the Smokies.\u00a0 I had a couple of classes that were going to prevent me from\u00a0getting there in time to start\u00a0with them, but we worked out a plan for me to meet them\u00a0at a particular trailhead late in the afternoon of their second day. It was the last Friday of October when I pulled into the parking lot at the trailhead.\u00a0 I was about 30 minutes early and I was enjoying the sunshine as I waited for the group to appear.\u00a0 I was wondering who these guys were … I figured they would have been little kids when I was last a regular attender at the church (before leaving for college).\u00a0 Just minutes before I spotted my group, heavy clouds rolled in and the rain started.\u00a0 By the time I joined them and started down the hillside,\u00a0the shower\u00a0turned into a downpour and our\u00a0trail into a shallow stream!\u00a0 I was completely inexperienced at real backpacking and it took less than ten minutes to realize that I had been caught completely unprepared.\u00a0 One of the boys gave me a black trash bag to stuff my sleeping bag into since I had no waterproof bag with me.\u00a0 Also, I had exactly one pair of jeans with me – the soaking wet pair I was wearing!\u00a0 It was the end of October… in the mountains!\u00a0 (In the morning, I was not surprised to see the puddles were iced over!)\u00a0 In fact, that foam bedroll I had bought was about the only smart thing I had packed.\u00a0 That evening in the shelter definitely ranked\u00a0in the top ten most physically miserable experiences of my life.\u00a0 The shelter was a roof over three wooden walls and one chain-link fence.\u00a0 There was a fireplace and a series of bunks which were like wide shelves.\u00a0 All of the firewood was soggy.\u00a0 Fortunately, teenage boys can be very persistent when it comes to fire – it took them 90 minutes, but ultimately we had a fire at which to dry out our soggy shoes and to finally warm our bodies.\u00a0 The rest of the weekend was just as memorable – but in more positive ways.\u00a0 We watched a bear approach and then\u00a0push on the door of an outhouse – just 60 seconds after Rev. Alan had walked out of it.\u00a0 Luke literally had deer eating out of his hand one morning.\u00a0 And we laughed constantly about the meals the Reverend had packed – they all seemed to include beans of one type or another.\u00a0 When our hiking was over,\u00a0we piled into the church van and Rev. Alan drove me back to where my car was parked.\u00a0\u00a0Just before I was ready to hop out of the van,\u00a0the teens started talking about their youth group – the same youth group I had been a part of when I was a teenager.\u00a0 They said it was lame.\u00a0 They said there was no official youth pastor, just parent volunteers.\u00a0 One of them piped up, “Hey, you could be our youth pastor!”\u00a0 To my surprise, Rev. Alan twisted around in the driver’s seat, looked straight at me and said, “That would be a great idea.” And that’s how I ended up the youth pastor at Shelbyville First United Methodist Church.\u00a0 And that’s how I ended up driving back and forth to Shelbyville from seminary every weekend.\u00a0 And that’s why when I graduated it seemed a natural fit to remain youth pastor in Shelbyville part-time and pick up a part-time pastorate in nearby Marietta.\u00a0 And that’s where I was living (between Shelbyville and Columbus) when I got set up on a blind date with Melissa … and so on and so on.\u00a0 Lately I’ve found a knot sometimes forming in my stomach over exactly what the future holds as we prepare for Haiti.\u00a0 But God has been so good to me in the past and He has done such wonderful work “behind the scenes” through all the various twists and turns my life has taken.\u00a0 At this point in my life, how can I not have total faith in Him for whatever remains of my future?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I bought this bedroll for a specific backpacking trip long before I got married.\u00a0 I used it once or twice and just carted it around with each move since.\u00a0 Sometimes I get indecisive about throwing away something – could someone else use it?\u00a0 could I sell it?\u00a0\u00a0might I need it again in the next year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8368,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367\/revisions\/8368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}