Thank You for the Warm Welcome

I was encouraged by your responses to my first post, and came away from reading them realizing anew what a precious gift the Lord has given me in the way that Sarah and I relate to one another. She is more than a daughter, she is also my dear friend. We share many interests outside the realm of the mother-daughter relationship for which I feel blessed.

Paul encouraged me to write a short bio by way of introduction. It is a difficult task to put myself into words on a page, and I infinitely prefer talking face to face. Nevertheless, I will attempt to "speak."

I was a preacher's kid for 13 years of my life. My dad was an independent, fundamental Baptist--but I'm not convinced that it was a good fit for him, and I know it wasn't for me--the God in a Box they offered me was dismally inadequate.

After high school, I got a degree in Bible, and moved to Denver to work in a Christian publishing house. After a year, I moved back to PA to work in a Christian school. Three years later I married my husband--we had dated in our high school years, but had a disagreement which we resolved seven years later. :) He was already the business manager for a mission in Portugal, and he carried me off to Lusitania for 11 years--where, incidentally, our three children were born. In 1990 we came back to the states and in 1999 we moved to Florida in search of spiritual food.

Eventually, we found it in a liturgical church in Ocala in 2006. I went through a long period of cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile the fact that I found the Lord, spiritual food, community, and real believers in a place "so far from home" in a manner of speaking. I imagined my father turning over in his grave, but soon realized that he now knows better.

Still, it has been both a joyful, and reluctant journey. Sometimes it's hard to still the voices in one's head who are saying all of the things one has heard about liturgical churches in the course of a lifetime. Yet, my spirit rejoices in discovering that God does not reside in someone's little box, but also in community and in the liturgy. My beloved Lord ministers to the whole of me in this church, and He bubbles and overflows into the rest of my life.

And He has given me employment that complements what He is doing in our church. I am an apprentice teacher at Ambleside School of Ocala http://www.amblesideocala.com/
There is room to breathe at Ambleside, and the full complement of the gifts and abilities which He has given to me to use for His glory are useful there.

Susan Price