Did I ever mention that the church here in Dodge City had a former pastor who walked on water? Usually we are glad to serve in a church that speaks highly of their former pastors. It means that they are capable of loving.
(Always a good thing to look for in a church.) The problem here is the degree of elevation. And the former pastor's wife. The one who not only sang special music, but accompanied herself on the piano, and taught piano lessons, and raised 4 immaculate children
(in that tiny immaculate parsonage) and her own vegetables, and worked full time as a nurse
(the one job it is acceptable for a pastor's wife to hold). Once she made a berry cobbler out of NOTHING!!! in a cabin in the woods.
(This may or may not have been the same trip where she was 9 and a half months pregnant, and shot and packed out her own bull elk.)
Have I also mentioned that I do not play the piano, can't carry a tune, don't cook 6 months of the year, learned all of my pie baking skills from my mom, and for all my talk of fishing, have only ever caught one fish that I didn't mean to catch and had to throw back?
Not that I am uncomfortable with who I am. Just that I am a little concerned with my legacy. You know, my place in Dodge City history. So in a misguided attempt to make an impression I decided to paint the church doors. I connived the head trustee into giving me the can of paint that he had in his truck to paint the doors. The can of white paint. To paint the white doors. The previously, from the beginning of time itself, white doors. (Did I mention I am on a first name basis with the paint tinter at the Dodge City Building Center?) Because I know that color decisions have power to split even a church capable of great love, I carefully considered the color choice. That is to say I considered every color except white. And I pretty much decided on orange. A warm welcoming color that speaks to the subconsiousness of passersby and says, "Hey, look at these doors. I think you might like go to church here." And when I mentioned it to a few people and was met by less then enthusiastic responses I changed my mind picked up paint chips from the DCBC and involved at least one elder, one complete stranger, and several church ladies in the decision process. (Did I mention that all the paint chips were in the orange family?)
I even connived two church ladies into having the paint tinted. The final color choice was a warm
terra cotta color called
shocking hot. I had a little girl and an older man help with the painting. Because if this was going to be the hill I died on, I didn't want to go alone. And the doors looked absolutely horrible. Shockingly
orange. Streaked and globby. And then someone spilled the gallon of shocking hot paint in the parking lot. And I wished with all my heart I knew how to make a berry cobbler.
But after several coats, some intense involvement by some very patient church ladiesand men, and more hours than I care to recount, the doors were back up in time to welcome church members and a few passersby on Sunday morning.
And years from now when they ask 'who ever' picked 'that color' for the front doors of the church, my name will surely come up.
And I will be known as the shocking hot pastor's wife.
Remember when we divided the garden into 16 squares?
And we carefully selected and planted the crops?
And we watered them from the rain barrel?
And we went away for a week and the garden still grew?
of the sweet peppers,
and the hot peppers,
and the marigolds,
and the pumpkins (which, yes, are growing on the neighbor's side of the fence),
and the carrots,
and the onions (both of them) which, okay, may be less than awe-inspiring.
