First off, let me apologize.... I have REALLY failed at keeping this blog updated since the school semester has begun. I am SO sorry for that. I know that many of you have been keeping us in your prayers and I can't thank you enough for that. Therefore, please forgive me for not giving you more specifics on what's going on here.
As many of you know, Zac started seminary classes at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina in August. He's LOVING his classes and doing really well in school. I'm so proud of him. I'm also taking a class on the Old Testament and I've enjoyed it so much. As great as seminary has been, it complicates our work in DC. From Sunday-Wednesday, we live in North Carolina, and from Thursday- Saturday we live in Downtown DC.
Our friends in North Carolina are WONDERFUL and we are so blessed to walk life with people who care about what we do.We get a lot of similar questions about our work.
"How do you work with so many cultures when you don't speak the languages?"
"How is everything going???"
" Do you enjoy your work?"
"Aren't you tired?"
All of those questions are answered rather quickly. However, there's one question that makes us both either sigh or laugh depending on the day.
"What's it like living in two cities?"
*SIGH*
I'll be honest. It's not easy.
There was one week in particular that I looked at Zac and said, "I feel like I'm living a double life."
From Sunday to Wednesday, our life is filled with all things Church and Seminary and Baptist. We are part of an incredibly solid gospel centered church. We are part of a small group that studies the Bible weekly. We live in Seminary housing. Currently, all of our friends are seminary students, church members, or other Christians. Zac takes classes and reads and reads and reads. :) I work at a coffee shop on campus so that I don't get bored. We live in the Bible belt where there is a church on every corner and morality is valued. We live in a predominantly caucasian small seminary town where people greet each other when they pass each other and live in community with one another. There's lots of families with kids running around. Walk into any coffee shop or restaurant and you are likely to find a group of seminary students studying, praying together, or discussing something about Christianity or the Baptist denomination. I get my sweet tea and Chick Fil A anywhere and at anytime that I want... ;) Southern hospitality, southern accents, and southern living reigns in North Carolina.
Then on Thursday morning, we load up the car, pick up a Starbucks, and switch lives.
We drive the 4-6 hours (depending on traffic) and park our car at a metro station in Franconia/Springfield, Virginia. We grab our luggage and backpacks and ride on a subway for 45 minutes to get to our house in downtown D.C. We get off the subway and walk another 2 blocks to a townhouse that the SBCV has so GRACIOUSLY let us stay in. We have a great bedroom that overlooks the street and we hear sirens go down that street every other hour or so. Well, we used to hear them... now I don't think we do. We have a kitchen here but it's hard to keep groceries in two places so when we are in DC, we tend to eat out most of the time. This is easy to do because we can get pretty much any kind of food we want within 10 minute walk of us. (Except for Chick fil A... ) On our way to dinner, we pass really nice restaurants, taxis, buses, gay bars, dance clubs, gentleman's clubs, Hooters, and lots and lots of homeless people. There's a severe lack of Jesus. Morality is all relative and up to each individual to determine for themselves here. Homosexuality is open, accepted, and blatant. The only nuclear families that we see are usually tourists. ( O the tourists... that's another blog ;) DC locals tend to despise tourists.) Most of the churches we do pass are not overly large or they have a reputation for being unhealthy. We are almost always the racial minority in DC. Because of what we do, its pretty normal for us to be the only 2 white people in a room and we're pretty used to it. In fact, I think we love it. ;) It's very common for Zac to use his French to communicate with a server or friend that we've met here. We hear all kinds of languages on the street. (In our CAPITAL CITY, let that sink in for a second...) However, as a general rule, people don't interact with each other or even make eye contact for that matter. Everyone is in a hurry and busy with their own thing. It's a city of people who work VERY VERY hard and sometimes you can feel that tension in the air around rush hour as you race people to catch a subway. Walk into a coffee shop here and you'll overhear business deals and political discussions or just see people working quietly on their laptops. Here in DC, as Christian missionaries, we stick out a little where we hang out, but we're used to it. ;)
Side note:
Sometimes I wonder if this is how Jesus felt to an extent though. I'm sure there were plenty of moments when He stuck out in a community.
We love what we do in D.C., but the switching back and forth between two very different cultures every 3-4 days can wear on us. We love both places for different reasons and we feel at home and safe in both places. I thank God for that, because I really think he's uniquely built Zac and I to be flexible people who can operate well in both cultures. Therefore, I guess that is how you can pray for us in this season. Pray that our hearts remain encouraged and persevere and we operate in both spaces. In one we grow and build a community of friends that we love, and in another ministry that we love continues to press on.
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