I love my wife. I love my kids. And I love the call the Lord has on my life to proclaim His word in the context of the local church.
Seriously, I feel like I’m getting away with something. I am one of the richest people I know, and I’m grateful for it. Time with my wife nourishes me in ways time with no one else on this earth can. Time with my children brings to me a sweet mix of untold joy and sober reverence when I think of who they are and who I hope they become. Hours spent at my work reminds me again and again how precious and rare it is to be a man who is blessed to work at something I love.
As it happens right now, my work has called me away from my wife and kids, geographically, for a season. One of the weird struggles I didn’t anticipate is the work of navigating how to explain why I am here apart from my family, without it sounding like a full-on plea for sympathy, or worse, a complaint.
My wife and kids are not with me because we’re trying to sell our house
(in Olathe Kansas– great price, new furnace, awesome tree fort in the back yard… I digress), and unlike most of you, Dear Esteemed Rabbit Room Faithful, my family cannot manage two mortgages. Finding free temporary housing for one dude (many thanks, Osengas) is a different deal than finding free housing for a brood of six (plus a dog).
Anyway, when I meet someone new (which is about a dozen times a day) the standard points of introduction usually get covered: Where are you from? Are you married? Kids? Where do you live now? Where are you working now? These are unavoidable points of context, and rightly so. How can you find me on a map without this information? How can I find you?
But I’ve gotta tell you when I come to the place where I explain my family situation right now, I’ve covered a pretty impressive range of emotions to go with it. I’ve wept over it, shrugged it off, grimaced, laughed, drifted off into thoughts of those sweet people and how much I love them to the extent that I’ve half-forgotten what we were talking about.
But I’m not looking for pity. And I’m not complaining either. God knows I’m not complaining. I know Team Ramsey is in a season of transition that will eventually reach its end. I know sometime in the relatively near future we’ll all be here, our stuff set up in some house in some neighborhood with a zip code beginning with the numbers 37.
And I know that until then, I have a wife who is so on board with this move– so strong, encouraging, and eager to dive into this new community– that I can’t believe my luck. And I know many women here in this new city honestly expressing their desire to know her better– which will enrich their lives beyond their wildest imaginations! (Yes, that’s an exclamation point. Consider this a master class on where to use them.)
Still, though I am not complaining about the distance, neither am I unaffected. I was talking with a friend the other day about this– a friend who is no stranger to similar seasons of separation– and he put to words something I was so thankful to hear: “When I’m with her and my kids,” he said, “the worst parts of me are diminished and the best parts are elevated.”
Amen, friend. And thanks for that.
My wife and kids bring out the best in me, and they have a subduing effect on those parts of me I wish weren’t woven into the fabric of who I am.
The truth is that the version of me people are getting to know now is only part of the picture. It isn’t false, just incomplete like the picture above. And that is an important part of my context right now. Here’s what I really look like:
Why am I telling you this? Because this season of transition is showing me parts of the depth of my own story I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. When I explain the distance, the house for sale, the transition from one place to another and all that goes with it– when I tell you about my weaknesses and strengths and how my family lifts me up, in the end this not a complaint.
Its a love story. A true one.