To Renew, Press One
The Sawyer County Record called to say goodbye, and I wasn't as ready as I thought.
We sold our house. It was a bit of a whirlwind. Multiple offers. Listed on Wednesday night, a signed offer by Friday night. In the world of real estate, that’s the best-case scenario. In the world of the human heart, it’s a lot to process in forty-eight hours.
In so many ways, life is in a “good” season.
I’m settling into my new role as the pastor of Eau Claire Wesleyan Church, and Julie and I love what is happening here. The kids are growing—graduation on the horizon for Chase, it’s fun being close to Miles, and Jack is finding his stride at his new school. We have an apartment that is comfortable and meets our needs. Even the Michigan Wolverines are having an epic year on the basketball court! There is goodness, progress, and so much positive all around us.
That’s why yesterday caught me completely off guard.
The phone rang with a number I didn’t recognize. It was a recorded call from the Sawyer County Record, letting me know our subscription to the newspaper was ending. The automated voice on the other end gave me standard, sterile options: Press one to renew; to allow your subscription to lapse, do nothing.
Julie and I had just talked about this a few days prior. We agreed that since we were moving from Hayward, we didn’t need the local paper anymore. It was a practical, logical decision. So, I hung up the phone.
And immediately, my eyes filled with tears.
Maybe it was the finality of an automated recording telling me a chapter was over. Maybe it was the realization that we really are moving away from a place we love, and the “links” continue being cut one by one.
I found myself thinking of those quiet moments each week spent unfolding the paper—the ritual of looking for pictures of the boys and their latest exploits in the community. I remembered the times Julie and I would point at a headline and ask, “Oh, did you know about this?”
There’s something about a small-town newspaper that keeps you woven into the fabric of a community, and letting that subscription lapse felt like pulling out a stitch that had been part of what held us in place.
We often try to force ourselves into a binary choice—to be either “happy” about the new chapter or “sad” about the old one. We think that if we are grieving, we must be ungrateful, or if we are celebrating, we must be forgetting.
But this is the strange complexity of being human: we can be perfectly satisfied and even excited about our “now” while still deeply grieving our “then.”
I’m learning moment by moment that God meets us right in the midst of that tension. He is the God of the new beginning here in Eau Claire, and He is the God of the memories in Hayward.
Today, I’m okay with tears and gratitude sitting at the same table.
If you’re currently standing in a “good” season but find yourself blinking back tears over something small and seemingly insignificant, don’t rush to fix it. You aren’t divided; you’re just human, and I am learning that being human means having a heart big enough for both.