Jeromy Deibler

Merridee’s Monday

4 CommentsJuly 12, 2010

Oh how I wish I were sitting at the bakery this morning. I miss Merridee’s, and the smell of cinnamon rolls, and the people behind the counter who know my name. This is the third week in a row that I’m writing from McDonald’s in Hillsboro, MO. The smell of Egg McMuffins and Hash-Pucks is not nearly as inviting. We should get are first results from the extensive mold testing that was done in our house later on this week. Hopefully that will provide us with some insight into the severity of the mold in our house and give us some idea of when we might be able to go home.

The kids are having a great time at the farm and being able to stay here for these few weeks is a blessing, but it’s still a strain. We’ve put our lives on indefinite hold. All of our plans for this summer have been thwarted. We know that God is good and He knows the future and there’s a reason He didn’t stop this from happening. We know that this will ultimately work out for our best and God’s best and our family’s best. Nevertheless, we are a little depressed about the whole thing. It’s all quite unsettling, especially the waiting for results we have no control over.

Last night before bed Jennifer did a timeline of what our lives have been like since the fall of 2005. There’s been joy, hope, sorrow, suffering, birth, death, peace, and pain, and a move to Africa and back. Through it all we’ve only been permitted to see just a few feet in front of us on the path. God completely shut the blinds to the distant view. It’s been hard but good. And I know this time away from our home will prove to be the same. I just don’t get it right now. We seemed to be in such a good groove at home. I seem to so easily forget that this journey with Jesus is a path through the wilderness and a good groove isn’t always best. Jennifer and I pray for God to take our family on an adventure. We ask him to not let us get stuck in “normal”. We have to believe this is part of the answer.

Hope your week is an adventure too –
Peace and rest,
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Life, Meridee's Monday, Reflection@11:15 am

What Do You Want To Hear?

4 CommentsJune 4, 2010

Jennifer wants to be more engaged online but is curious what you guys want to hear. Leave some ideas in the comments and we’ll make it fun.

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Blogging, Interact, Jennifer@8:45 pm

Meridee’s Monday

CommentMarch 29, 2010

Merridee’s Mondays
2010 03 20

I feel like a bit of a traitor this morning. I’m down the street from Merridee’s at Starbucks. Merridee’s doesn’t have oatmeal so I came down here but I didn’t end up ordering any. Jake, the manager here goes to church with us at Fellowship. He and his family are moving to Guam to serve orphans as soon as their house sells. They haven’t put it on the market yet but probably won’t need to. Just recently they met someone who wants to move to their exact area into a house exactly like theirs. They will probably sell to her and be able to forgo the whole realtor process. It’s just like God to drop something out of the sky like that.

Ok, I’m back at Merridee’s. I ended up ordering oatmeal from Starbucks and bringing it down here. There’s a girl studying calculus beside me. I tell her it looks hard and she agrees and explains that it’s college math she’s taking in high school. She says she wishes she wouldn’t have taken the course. She’d rather be hanging out with her friends. I don’t blame here. Staying “ahead of the game” is way overrated.

I just ran into Mark Stuart from Audio Adrenaline having coffee with Marty Magehee from 4Him. Mark’s foundation fully funds two orphanages in Haiti and he’s in the process of adopting two children from there as well. He and I met last year about the situation in Zimbabwe and haven’t gotten together since. Mark was in Haiti at the time of the earthquake and has been there for a total of three months since. One of the orphanages is intact, the other will need to be completely rebuilt but the kids are all safe. One teacher, who was home at the time, was killed. Mark’s involvement in Haiti, in something bigger than himself, bigger than his career, make’s me jealous. Stuff like that makes us live outside of ourselves and I want that again. It’s scary but there’s nothing better.

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Coffee, Haiti, Oatmeal, Small Town@12:42 pm

So This Is What It Feels Like

CommentMarch 26, 2010

So This Is What It Feels Like
2010.03.26

In 2005 my friend Mike gave me a book called “A Guide To Prayer For All God’s People” written, in part, by Rueben Job. It has been my Bible companion ever since, through Africa, kids, MS, everything. Turns out that Rueben now lives here in Tennessee, fifteen minutes from my house, so this morning I went to visit him.

When I arrive, Rueben meets me at the door to his complex and leads me to the elevator and down the hall to he and Beverly’s third floor apartment. I walk into the room and the smell of cookies baking makes my shoulders relax. I realize right away that I am stepping out of normal Nashville-time and into something much more sacred. Rueben is welcoming and gentle just like I though he would be. His eighty-two year old heart is week so he talks slow and hushed, which seems to make the atmosphere even more Holy. My friend Mike is there too and he and I settle into recliners and Rueben and Beverly serve us cookies and coffee to dip them in. The space is warm and uncluttered and it reminds me of home. When I was a kid I spent most of my time with my grandparents, Amos and Leah, Maw Maw and Paw Paw as we call them. We lived in Lancaster Pennsylvania and like so many families there Amos and Leah grew up Amish. Just after they married and just before they had kids Maw Maw and Paw Paw left the Amish tradition and turned Mennonite. They left the Mennonite tradition shortly thereafter opting for hairstyles and chrome bumpers and movies. They stayed close to family though and I grew up visiting lots of Amish relatives with them. I loved those visits. Even without electricity and telephones, Amish lives are interesting. Conversations at Amish houses are long and involved, not just words in passing, and the jokes are sarcastic and perfectly timed. We usually made our visits during lunch and I would inevitably fall into a carb-induced coma on the sofa afterward. I loved falling asleep to the sound of my grandparents and aunts and uncles talking. It was so safe. That’s what this morning was like. I even mentioned before we left how I felt like I could sleep hoping that Rueben would say, “Stay and rest a while,” but he didn’t take the bait.

Last night our friends Missy and Anthony came over to talk about their upcoming wedding ceremony. Jennifer and I sort of feel like we had some hand in their getting together so we thought we should be in the wedding. Hutch and Sadie-Claire had to go to bed without much attention from us since we were visiting with our friends and I later told Jennifer how missing bedtime made me feel guilty. She told me not to worry and how she used to love falling asleep to the sound of the grown ups talking. Then I remembered that I loved it too. Then this morning happened and now I’m wondering what the Lord is up to. I’m meeting with Rueben again in two weeks to find out.

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Family, Friends, Kids, Rueben Job@1:12 pm

Meridees Monday

CommentMarch 22, 2010

Merridee’s is slow this morning. Must be the weather. After a week of spring warmth we’re back to clouds and cold, at least for a day or so. I reluctantly put the top back on my Jeep this morning but let the windows off in case the weatherman was wrong. I just had some coffee with an old friend that I go to church with. It’s hard to believe that I’m old enough to say “old friend”. Cameron, my brother-in-law, is with me this morning. He and Shantel, Jennifer’s sister, and their three kids are in town from St Louis to attend the birth of our newest nephew. Jannell, Jennifer’s other sister, the pregnant one, is scheduled for a c-section tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday). Cameron has brought his PC into an entirely MAC environment and has thrown off the entire ecosystem of Merridee’s. Fortunately there is another guy sitting between us and nobody can tell Cameron is with me. I offered to let him put an Apple sticker on his laptop this morning so he wouldn’t draw attention to himself but he refused.

This morning I read about rest in my prayer book. It was good and I was going to write to you about it. Then I found this poem and thought it said things better than anything I could say. I put my little diddy after the poem if you still feel like reading it.

LIGHTENING THE LOAD

The first thing we have to do
is to notice  that we’ve loaded down this camel 
with so much baggage 
we’ll never get through the desert alive. 
Something has to go.

Then we can begin to dump
the thousand things 
we’ve brought along 
until even the camel has to go 
and we’re walking barefoot 
on the desert sand.

There’s no telling what will happen then. 
But I’ve heard that someone, 
walking in this way, 
has seen a burning bush.

– Francis Dorff, O. Praem.

The scripture for the day was from James 1, the verse about sin being conceived and then growing up into death. My busyness outside of God’s plan, and ignoring Sabbath principles, may be conceived in what seems like innocence, and may even be admired as a strong work ethic. But, if it is born out of vanity and selfish motives, and this work “succeeds”, eventually it grows up to be bigger than life, spinning out of control, consuming me. And when it is fully-grown, and I have given myself over to this pattern of work and I can’t escape it, something in me dies.

On that note-
Rest and blessings,
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Jeromy, Meridee's Monday@12:50 pm

Meridee’s Monday

1 CommentMarch 15, 2010

Good morning, how are you? Rested I hope. I’m at Starbucks in Green Hills today instead of Merridee’s. I had to drop Hutch off at school so I came over here because it’s closer. The atmosphere here is definitely different from that of the bakery. The customers seem more serious and into their laptops and their work. There are a couple of guys reading the paper and talking, and another couple having an awkward tea, but otherwise the climate is a little more private. I’m sharing an outlet with the guy across the table and we are not making conversation. The workers are happy though. They always seem to be in good moods. Maybe because they are getting paid to be at the coffee shop and the rest of us are paying to be here. Maybe it’s because they have health insurance.

“Grande, non-fat, one-pump, with-whip, mocha” the server says happily.

The guy sharing the outlet with me just walked off to the bathroom and left his laptop open on the table. It’s commonplace here, I do it all the time. My friends in Africa would never think of doing something so silly. When Matt was here from Zimbabwe I left my car unlocked while we went into a restaurant and he questioned me. “I never lock my doors,” I said. I told him that I leave my house for hours with the garage door raised and nobody ever bothers my stuff. He was amazed. He couldn’t get past his cultural conditioning of homes with tall concrete walls around them and security guards at public places.

If you listen to talk radio, especially “conservative” talk radio, America seems like a place of conspiracy and secret agendas; a place where things are slipping away into degradation and hopelessness and chaos. But here at the coffee shop, in the real world, things seem more pleasant. I realize that good and evil are at work everywhere and that there are surely things going on that I can’t see. But this is still a wonderful, charmed place and our generation is enjoying the benefits of the hard labor and struggle of our grandfathers on our behalf. So why the heck is everybody so serious? We’re meant to enjoy this freedom, Christians especially. We have the most profound freedom of all. And that eternal freedom was bought with blood and sweat and hot tears. To live or act like a slave, in any aspect, is to dishonor the sacrifice that was paid to free us.

“Tall, white-mocha, cappuccino, double-blended, no-whip”…

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Africa, Culture, Starbucks@11:54 am

Meridee’s Monday

2 CommentsMarch 8, 2010

My letter comes to you a little late today because I needed to spend the first part of my morning watching after my Nephew Joshua while Jannell had her weekly pregnancy visit. Jennifer was planning to meet up with Jannell , who is two weeks away from having Joshua’s little brother, but Hutch isn’t feeling well so she needed to keep him quarantined at home. At 2:30am this morning Hutch woke up with a tummy-ache and ran into our bedroom to tell us he felt like he was going to throw up. He was right. I was awakened to the sound and smell of Hutch’s dinner splattering onto our bed and him crying in the dark. Jennifer got him cleaned up and we changed the sheets, all the while trying not to throw up ourselves. It was a fitting end to our week…

On Friday evening, after what had been a very tiring and stressful seven days for several reasons, Jennifer and I and the kids met our new friends, the Harpers, at Mellow Mushroom for supper. Mellow Mushroom is Hutch’s favorite pizza place but he decided to eat salad and yogurt instead. We should have known something was fishy. When we got home we got a text message from Ryan Simmons of the band Addison Road. They are borrowing our RV/Bus for their tour with Sanctus Real. It worked out really well, or so we thought, since we’re off the road until Easter and don’t currently need it. Ryan’s text was short but informative…

“Call me. 911. RV engulfed in flames.”

I smiled when I saw the text knowing that it was a joke. The guys had been having some minor mechanical issues earlier in the week and we’d been joking about how that always seems to happens to them. Ryan did a really good job of keeping the prank going when I called him, acting somber and trying to convince me that the text was true. I hung up and called Brandon, their driver, just to be sure it was, in fact, a joke. Brandon went along with the prank as well so I did too, but I did get a bit nervous. A minute or two later I received an email from Ryan with this picture attached…

I texted back…

“Ok, so you were NOT JOKING, call me.”

The band was not on the bus when the fire started. The driver was in Kingman Arizona on his way to meet up with them in Las Vegas when he heard the smoke detector in the back bedroom ringing. He couldn’t see or smell smoke when he looked back but pulled over anyway. Once outside he noticed flames and sparks shooting from the engine compartment and immediately he and a stranger that had pulled over behind him tried to put the flames out with fire extinguishers. They couldn’t contain it and after a few minutes they had to abandon it for fear that the fire was going to spread to the fuel lines and explode. They had called the fire department but by the time they arrived they could only contain the blaze. A few hours later only a shell remained and the towing service took over the clean up. The fire was so hot that the rims melted into the highway and it took the wrecker service extra effort to get the Bus free.

The band is understandably shaken but they are continuing on the tour one show at a time. They are traveling in a caravan of rented SUVs for now until they get a plan sorted out. All of their merchandise (CDs, shirts, etc.) burned in the trailer they were towing but their instruments and gear were already at the concert venue so they are intact.

Jennifer and I are beginning the process of filing an insurance report and hoping to get a fair settlement. Even though we’d not owned this RV for a long time we still have many memories in it from last year’s travels and that’s a bit of a bummer, especially for our kids.

I’ve got to get going but I’ll be in touch-
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Addison Road, RV Fire@1:48 pm

Mid-Week Wandering

6 CommentsMarch 3, 2010

It’s just the kids and me tonight. Jennifer is out with her sister Jannell for a special night alone before her baby comes. Jannell and Brian are expecting their second son in two years this month and instead of a shower Jennifer decided to take Jannell away for some quiet time. It’s been anything but quiet here. I took the kids to Toys R Us for something to do and they tried to loose me. They needed me for check-out though, so I got them back. Sadie-Claire skipped her nap and rode her scooter around the living room most of the afternoon and we watched the new Lego movie. We had freezer pizza and ice cream for dinner and now Hutch is begging me to play Legos with him.

I got a call tonight from Addison Road’s bus driver tonight. They are borrowing our bus for their tour while we are home for a while. Strangely enough, the call came right after I downloaded their album from iTunes. I didn’t realize that Jennifer’s favorite song (Hope Now) was theirs. We’ve been trying to figure out who recorded the song for a few weeks, catching only bits and pieces of it on the radio, where they never announce who the artist is that performs the song. I got chills as I downloaded the song. Then their driver called to ask me how to get the bus generator started and the chills went away. Addison Road’s has had as many problems with the bus in one week as we’ve had over the past year. Figures.

Hutch needs to get to bed so I’m gonna go. A lot went on this week that I need to tell you about but I need to get past it a bit before I can collect the thoughts. Remind me if I forget. Talk to you Monday if not sooner –

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Addison Road, Bus, Travel@10:30 pm

Meridee’s Monday

7 CommentsMarch 1, 2010

Good Morning, I hope this finds you well. I’m on my way to Merridee’s but decided to stop at the car wash to have Jennifer’s car cleaned. We have so many bikes and toys and pieces of gear in our garage that the car won’t fit so it sits outside in the elements all winter ruining the paint. My kids think the inside is a trashcan so the interior is a mess as well. I’d normally clean it myself but this seemed like a job for professionals. I actually enjoy washing cars. It makes me feel like a teenager again. I used to work as a lot-boy at my Dad’s car dealership when I was a kid. It was my first and last real job. I would catch a ride with him to work in the morning and spend all day in the sun washing and polishing the new cars and listening to music on my Walkman. With my first paycheck I asked Dad to take me to Service Merchandise to buy a $50 Sony headset radio, the model with the radio built right into the headphones. I spent seven hours a day listening to the best mix of 90s music getting a suntan. After work I’d jump in the pool to get clean and refreshed. I didn’t shower much in the summer. I always felt like the chlorine was enough to bleach away anything I’d picked up. Jennifer makes the kids shower after a long swim to get the chlorine off of their bodies. I will never understand this line of thinking. Last spring I installed a “shower” on our back patio so we could just rinse off in our bathing suits before we went inside. Jennifer doesn’t like when I call it a shower because it’s really a garden hose that’s run around the house, under the garage door, and connected to the hot water in the garage sink. On the shower end is a hose extender (the one you use to water hanging plants) that’s bracketed to the rain gutter. It works though, and it’s lovely on a cool night under the stars. I’m sure the neighbors think so.

I had a meeting about you this week. It was with Brody and Randy, the guys that take care of our Internet sites. As usual it was an education. As I’ve mentioned before, Jennifer and I picked the worst possible time to move to Africa as far as technology is concerned. While we were away (Fall 2006- Spring 2007) things moved on right past us and we had to come home and relearn how people connect. We’re getting there but still need help. Turns out that my Mom isn’t the only one who reads these posts. Brody says that I should send him everything that I’ve been writing – record reviews, songs, devotionals, stuff about the kids, anything – and he will post it. Merridee’s Mondays will still be my official weekly blog, but there will be stuff coming mid-week as well. Here’s the deal though… For this to work we need to be able to communicate. So send me your thoughts and comments and I’ll write you back. And, as I promised before, I won’t use this as a forum for personal gain, trying to sell you stuff.

So here’s how this will work for the time being. Merridee’s Mondays (written from my favorite bakery in Franklin) will be my normal Monday blog. “Hey Mom” posts will be stuff during the week that I’d normally tell Mom that you might like to know as well; stuff about the kids and our friends, etc. Everything else will come as a special report. I still haven’t figured out a clever name for them yet.

Talk soon-
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Blogging, Car Wash, Communicating, Meridee's Monday@1:00 pm

Meridee’s Monday

CommentFebruary 22, 2010

A strange phenomenon happened in Franklin this weekend. Starting at about 11:00am on Friday a strange yellow orb appeared in the sky and stayed there until about supper time. It appeared again on Saturday and Sunday and lasted until about evening each day. Those of us who spend a lot of time outside vaguely remembered seeing this foreign light at times before, but most of us had forgotten it’s existence. The orb was bright and made everything yellow. Some of us even put on tinted glasses to soften it’s effect on our eyes. The orb also made the air dry and warm and pleople like me drove around in it with our roofs off and tops down. Our kids played in the street in flip-flops and we napped on the porch in the afternoons. The orb made everything better and everyone seemed to be enjoying it.

But today things are back to normal. The sky is grey and damp and people are huddled inside the coffee shops warming their hands around mugs full of lattes and americanos. But the memory of the strange orb-in-the-sky and it’s effect still linger in our hearts. We hope it comes back soon.

Jeromy Deibler

Category: Posted Under: Sunny, Weather, Winter@11:32 am