Jeromy Deibler

Meridee’s Monday

CommentJanuary 24, 2011

I’m getting late start this morning. Hutch was awake with the stomach flu last night so Jennifer was awake with him while he got sick, all seven times. She let me sleep through most of it so I tried to give her a couple hours this morning. The kids were loud though so she’s probably still pretty tired. I had a list of things to accomplish and was ready to hit the ground running when she got up and got going. (This weekend was restful but I’ve got a lot to do this week before we go out of town on Friday) Right before I was ready to head out the door, Sadie-Claire asked me to help her get dressed. She hung on to me like a tree frog as I carried her upstairs and when I laid her down on her bed she wouldn’t let go. We hugged for a while and in those seconds my heart changed. I didn’t want to go get things done anymore. I just wanted to stay and cuddle and hug and help Jennifer with the kids and spend another day in my PJs. I let Sadie pick out an outfit that probably doesn’t match and said goodbye to my peeps and headed out the door.

The life of an artist is unusual in so many ways. There are so few guidelines and boundaries and even fewer rules. This, what I’m doing right here, writing my blog, is “work”. Meetings and coffees and worship planning sessions are “work”. Rehearsals and writing sessions and recording session are all “work”. Even listening to music, for me, is sometimes required “work”. Tomorrow night, for “work”, I’ll play music on TV. To someone with a normal job this may seem completely unrealistic, but it’s been my life ever since I quit college eighteen years ago. In God’s kindness this has been the only “real” job I’ve ever had. But on days like today it is hard. If I had a boss or an office or a board meeting I’d have to go to work. But I don’t, so I battle with balance and what to do. When Jennifer and the kids are home doing things that seem so much more important like home-school or taking care of one another I feel silly leaving. But I have to.

I meet with seven guys on Wednesday mornings. They are all recently out of college and are beginning life as artists and professional musicians. They worry about money and motivation. Three of them are just married and they watch their wives go off to work and battle to find their normal while trying to play any gig to contribute. I tell them that they can’t look at life like other working guys, the ones who get a check every week. Those guys can go to the bank and deposit money for something they did or built or a service they provided that week. We can’t, it’s not our normal. We are like farmers. Our work comes in seasons and our income usually does to. We begin songs or play music as a farmer sows his seeds, and then we work the soil as we wait. Like the sower in the Bible, we spread seed on all kinds of soil. Some of it falls on the rocks or among weeds and we never see anything in return. Sometimes it falls on fertile soil and we get to see some returns, or in our case royalties. Either way we keep creating, playing gigs, writing songs, having coffee, spreading seed and working the soil. And hopefully, in God’s kindness, he lets us reap enough to keep planting. If not we get real jobs.

Jeromy Deibler

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Artists, Career, Family@2:35 pm

Meridee’s Monday

CommentJanuary 17, 2011

Good morning, Hutch and I hope this finds you well. We’re together at the bakery this morning. Jennifer let him come along with me to work on some home school lessons while I write. He’s promised me that if I let him play on the iPad for thirty minutes he will do his work afterwards without complaining. I’m not buying it. We decided to wear sweats and bedroom slippers this morning to be comfortable. It looks a little silly but there is strength in numbers. Hutch is a special little man in so many ways and I’m lucky to be his Daddy. He’s gloriously persistent, something he inherited from Jennifer. Her parents have told me stories of how Jennifer would beg them to do something so often and for so long that they would cave just to get her to stop. When Jennifer wanted to move to Oklahoma to be a cowgirl she asked them so often and so relentlessly that they actually considered it. Just now, when Hutch and I walked in the door, the smell of Merridee’s fresh baked cinnamon rolls filled Hutch’s nose and he immediately asked me for one. He’ll probably ask me thirty more times in the next fifteen minutes.

I meet with seven guys each Wednesday to talk and share our lives and pray. They are all artists and all about ten years younger than me. They would call me their mentor; I just consider them friends who are a few miles behind on the journey. Last week we began a book that guides us through a contemplative prayer time each day with a weekly Psalm and a few sacred readings. I told the guys last week that the contemplative life is probably what saved my faith through the event of the past five years and suggested that they try to establish a contemplative routine now that they can take with them wherever Yahweh leads. This weeks Psalm is PS 131…

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
My eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
Like a weaned child with its mother,
Like a weaned child is my soul within me
O Israel, hope in the Lord
From this time forth and forevermore.

How appropriate that the guys and I start this contemplative journey with a song about quieting our souls. As I read this I realize that much of life, most of life, is to high for me to comprehend. So much of what has happened to us has been a surprise. I didn’t see any of it coming, and if I had I would have probably avoided it. But I would have missed so much blessing, so much of God’s presence, so much of Jesus’ friendship. So today I try not to occupy myself with things to great and marvelous for me. I try to think about today, this morning, the next ten minutes, and enjoy it.

Gotta go buy a cinnamon roll. Take care,

Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Faith, Mentoring, Meridee's Monday@12:33 pm

Family

2 CommentsAugust 26, 2010

Friends, we’ve been talking this week about our families, specifically our grandparents. Our first Travelers IRL post was on the subject of honoring and cherishing our older generations and we’ve gotten several really neat responses. Here are a couple videos of my grandparents. One of the videos is my Ma Maw (Leah) showing us around the Lancaster (PA) Central Market. The other is a conversation Jennifer recorded of my Pa Paw and I a few weeks ago. Please forgive me, but I couldn’t bring myself to editing it.

Jeromy Deibler

Categories: Blog, Travelers IRLPosted Under: Family, Grandparents, Travelers IRL, Videos@11:04 am

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

Categories: BlogPosted 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

Categories: BlogPosted 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

Categories: BlogPosted 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

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Friends, Kids, Rueben Job@1:12 pm

Merridees 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

Categories: BlogPosted 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

Categories: BlogPosted 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

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Addison Road, RV Fire@1:48 pm