It's Not The Years. It's the Miles.

I still owe my readers a follow-up to Disciple Making Movements (A Soft Critique), but since coming back to Austin in early August, time to write has been hard to come by.

We returned home from our annual pilgrimage to Montana to find ourselves in the midst of some high level staffing turmoil (and turnover) at Lazarus; the issues have been addressed, but the last few weeks have been busy, to say the least. Since today is Labor Day, and my first real breather in weeks, I thought I'd share some reflections from our summer.

Vacation felt a little off-kilter this year. We've been escaping to the Bighorn River in south-central Montana for nearly twenty years now. It started in the late 2000s, when we were planting our first church in Missoula.

Recognizing my workaholic tendencies, my mentor at the time told me I was required to take a full month off: "Go fishing," he said. "Get out of town with your family. It'll be good for you. And it will be good for your flock."

He was right, of course, and we've been building a sabbatical into our summers ever since. Back then, we had three kids in tow (ages 10-14). Some friends generously offered us the use of their summer cabin, and for the next dozen years or so, each July or August would find us plying the waters for trout.

Malachi built his first drift boat back in 2010, during his senior year in high school. He built his second (even better) a few years ago, and we got to fish together this summer. That's him holding that fat brown at the top of this post. Over the years, the Bighorn has become our family's river.

As I said, this summer felt different.

Perhaps it was because the water was low. The Bighorn River draws from the bottom of Yellowtail Reservoir, and this year it was surprisingly cold. That meant the dry fly hatches were late – I didn't see a single, solitary fish take a PMD until the last two days of our trip, and even then, it was only late in the afternoon. I caught just five fish on dries those two days, over a few hundred yards of river, and I had to work to catch them. It was a far cry from previous summers. Still, any trout taken on a dry fly is a fish well caught, and immensely satisfying.

A slow summer of fishing is still better than no summer of fishing.

Empty-nesters for over a decade now, Marilyn and I have continued making our summer escapes. For the past five or six years, we have been renting cabins on the Bighorn. There were a few summers where we fished over on the Missouri outside of Helena, but most of our kids (and grandkids) live in Billings, so we have found ourselves returning to this particular corner of Montana again and again. We know this river well now, with all its twists and turns as it cuts through the prairie on the Crow Indian Reservation just north of the Bighorn Mountains.

Renting cabins is expensive, but valuable: it has allowed us to experience both the river and the countryside (along with the accommodations) from a variety of vantage points. Even better, the solitude has given us the opportunity to know each other more deeply. I like to joke that after 35 years of marriage, we're finally starting to like each other. We have begun to figure out who we are, what we appreciate, and what we would want in a place of our own.

More significantly, we have found ourselves asking: Where do we see ourselves ten years from now?

I am 56. Marilyn is 59. We have poured all our resources into Lazarus and All Souls. We love where God has placed us. Still, it's becoming harder to imagine having the energy to continue to pursue these callings with the same amount of oomph as we near 70. Could we envision returning to Montana, perhaps just for the summers? Could we envision living on the Bighorn, in a cabin of our own?

We spent several weeks asking those questions, talking through our answers together, dreaming and taking notes: What would want in a place? What would we not want? It was a beautiful exercise in an idyllic setting.

In the midst of all this, Marilyn's father died.

Perhaps this is another reason why this particular vacation felt off-kilter. He had been declining for months; we had seen it coming, so we were not truly surprised. Still, death always feels unexpected when it finally arrives.

Marilyn's folks met in South America in the early 1960s. Her mother Peggy was serving as a single missionary; her father Marvin (a conscientious objector by virtue of his Mennonite upbringing) had been deployed to Uruguay to help rebuild roads after an earthquake. They married and spent more than a decade serving as missionaries in Chile.

Marilyn was their first child. Born in Ovalle in the Atacama Desert in 1966, she grew up as a "missionary kid" speaking Spanish as her native tongue. She greatly admired her dad. And her parents' faith played a major role in fostering Marilyn's spiritual identity. (Surviving a military coup in 1973 helped foster her faith too).

But Marilyn hasn't been close to her father in decades.

Like many religious people, Marvin could be a very critical person – critical of churches, critical of pastors, and especially critical of Presbyterians (who played guitars and started breweries). Marvin was critical of her, too. And often (whether he intended it or not), that criticism functioned as an instrument of control. When Marilyn refused to be controlled by her father's disapproval, they grew apart.

Six years ago, shortly before her mother died, Marilyn wrote a long letter to her parents, laying out her hurts, pain, and grief. She asked for honest conversation. Marvin never responded. And so they parted estranged.

The last time Marilyn saw him alive was at her mother's funeral in 2020. Marvin was 84 when he died this July. His final years were lonely and bitter.

She was not distraught at his passing.

Nevertheless, it fell on Marilyn and her sister to conduct the funeral. By all accounts, she did a wonderful job. Still, it was strange for both of us in the middle of our vacation – for me, to fish and read and think (by myself) in the beauty of Montana; for her, to travel and memorialize (by herself) someone who had been the source of much grief, and little consolation.

[Aside: What was I reading, you ask? Well in addition to last years' journals, I happened to be working my way through two books on my summer reading list – L.S. Dugdale's The Lost Art of Dying and Atul Gawande's Being Mortal. They were gifted to me by a good friend who works as a Palliative Care doctor here in Austin, right before we left on vacation.

I highly recommend both titles to anyone who might die someday. They are well written and brilliantly insightful. We spend so much of our lives fretting about about things which might never happen; we spend so little of our lives preparing for the one thing guaranteed to happen to all of us. Do yourself a favor and read these books; you can thank me later.]

So Marilyn's folks – the oldest among our parents – are both gone now. (And we are not that far behind them! "Teach us to number our days, O Lord..." – Ps 90).

My daughter Rebekah – the youngest of our children – turned 30 this last week.

It feels strange to think back on where we were in life when she was born: married for just over five years, my career in software had not yet taken off (Seattle); we had not even considered attending seminary (Philly); we hadn't even dreamt about planting a church for the unchurched (Missoula); we certainly didn't imagine we would end up in Texas, starting breweries and leading house churches (Austin).

That's a lot of water under all those bridges. It feels like four lifetimes. And yet we will have been here in Austin twelve years this November. We have spent more time in this one place than anywhere else. It feels surreal. And once again, it has us thinking about what comes next...

This summer, for the first time ever, we had all our grandkids together at once:

Grandkids have proven a great joy to us, but with our own kids scattered, who knows when we might all be together again. That said, it's not like we're alone either – if you follow along on Insta, you know we were joined by a new addition last week: Sundance Sally (pic below). When it comes to the next ten years, we're looking forward to this little lady being a part of it!

A few final thoughts and I'll be done:

1. Business is rough right now – we've faced some challenging times with Lazarus thus far: first, in the Fall of 2015, when I had all but despaired of ever finding a location to open a brewery in East Austin (I remember praying, "Lord, if you don't provide a location in the next two months, I think we're done..."); then again in the Spring of 2020, when COVID struck and business plummeted (I remember thinking, "Lord, this is terrible, and I never want to go through it again, but what a privilege to be here for our people and our patrons...".
   
   But this summer in Austin might be the most challenging we've seen yet (financially), and there are plenty of businesses that are struggling even more than we are. We're not at the point of layoffs yet, but it's not off the table. For those of you who pray, your prayers would be much appreciated.
2. I love being a bivocational, house church pastor – what an incredible privilege to work all week long (caring for 70 employees) and then to be able to preach and teach on Sundays (caring for 35 folks in All Souls). If you're curious what that looks like, we've been talking about How God Works over the past few weeks: (if you only listen to one, start with the last)
   1. Trouble, Turmoil, & Challenge (Psalm 39)
   2. The Economy of the Kingdom (Mt 25:14-30)
   3. Our Need for Covenantal Community (Gal 6:1-10)
3. Something incredible happened on the road back to Austin – we bought a piece of dirt on the Bighorn. It's a very long story, and very unexpected: as we prayed and talked and looked and pondered what the future might look like, we realized we'd really like to end up back in Montana. And we'd really like to own a place on the Bighorn. And we'd really like to build something ourselves. But in order for that to happen, we'd need to start by finding a piece of dirt. That's difficult on the reservation.
   
   But right next to the cabin where we were staying, there's a 5 acre parcel that hasn't been built on yet. It offers an incredible view of the Bighorn Mountains. It's just a ten minute walk to the river (with a private boat ramp!). And our realtor happened to know the agent that sold it a few years back. So we put out some feelers and one thing led to another – all this happened while we were driving! – they invited us to make an offer, we counted up all our pennies and did the absolute best we could, and they accepted it without countering, and Little Horn bank in Hardin underwrote the deal.
   
   We closed last Thursday. So now we own a little sliver of Montana. And, God willing, sometime in the next 3-5 years we hope that maybe we can build a little summer home to stay in, and maybe eventually retire to. Who knows if this will come to fruition. But we felt like God was saying "Do this! Go for it!" So here we are. And we'll see where he leads us.

With that, I thought you might like to see the view in case we ever get there (if you click that link it'll show you a panoramic video from the perspective of what just might someday be the deck of our cabin in the Last Best Place).

We'd love to have you visit. But first we've got to get there. And there's plenty of work to be done here first...

As always, thanks for reading, following along, and especially for praying.

Much love in Jesus,
Christian & Marilyn