Meridee’s Monday

Merridee’s Monday

1 CommentFebruary 21, 2011

Sunburn Edition

It’s been a fun six days here in South Florida. The condo that our friends are letting us use is splendid, although we aren’t in it very much. Like you, we’ve been sun starved for the past couple of months so the kids are soaking up all they can, their little faces turning different shades of pink and with freckles we didn’t know they had. We’ve made some new friends too, which has been an unexpected blessing. They are from Long Island and talk like people from Long Island are supposed to talk. They have three boys and the oldest two have been playing with Hutch at the pool in the afternoons. When they get thirsty they act all grown up and trot over to the bar and order Pina Coladas for themselves. Magically the drinks are served and they don’t even have to pay for them! (it goes right on to my tab, what a wonderful invention) Daniel, the Dad, is a cool Wall Street guy. He used to play Lacrosse in College but now he trades (whatever traders trade) all day in the city. Kira, the Mom, is trying to keep up with the boys. They leave tomorrow; I hope we see them again.
Jennifer is wearing 275-SPF sunscreen on her face so you might not even know she’s been here. I’m trying to get the most obnoxious tan I can get. I’m a third generation sun soaker, hence the Jeep. I feel better tan. When we’re seventy Jennifer is going to look like she’s fifty-five and I’m going to look like a ninety year old lizard. I’m counting on Jesus coming back before that.

I’m going bed, have a really great week!
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Florida, Meridee's Monday@10:49 pm

Merridees Monday

1 CommentFebruary 14, 2011

A Few Thoughts On Hope

Spring fever has hit Nashville. I’m sitting outside Starbucks enjoying the patio for the first time in three months and it feels good. I’m sure we’ll get another cold snap in the next week or so, but everybody can feel that Spring is officially on it’s way. I’ve been trying for over a week to write this devotional about Hope and with the help of the sun I finally know where to start.
Hope is hard to describe. You can’t see it, or touch it, or smell it. It doesn’t have a face or a name. Like Faith and Love, Hope’s effects are seen but Hope itself is not. It’s kind of like the wind or the smell of fresh pizza in the oven. It’s invisible but it is real for sure. Hope can be lost, given, felt, and received, but it can’t be viewed. So how do we describe something we can’t even see? It’s rough.
People are in better moods today because we’re remembering again what it feels like to be outside and warm. We’re remembering how our toes feel in flip-flops and what the ground looks like without snow. Spring isn’t here yet but just the knowledge that it is coming is giving us life today. That’s what Hope is; it’s the expectation of the thing just around the corner. It’s the knowledge that something better than this is coming.
I told Jennifer this morning that I’ve been having trouble figuring out how to write about and describe Hope. She asked me what Hope’s definition is. I told her is means “expectation”. She told me to look at Psalm 61…

5 Yes, my soul, find rest in God;  my hope (expectation) comes from him.  6 Truly he is my rock and my salvation;   He is my fortress, I will not be shaken.  7 My salvation and my honor depend on God;  He is my mighty rock, my refuge.  8 Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.

David knew that things we’re going to get better, that the good things of this life were only evidence of that which is to come, and that the hard things would pass away as well.
Today is a Springlike day, but it is still winter. Soon enough leaves will be on the trees and I’ll put the top down on my Jeep for good. Hope for Spring will turn to reality, and we’ll forget about the Winter altogether.
Hope is the thing that keeps us holding on for now. It’s what we live on until things are made complete. David knew that things weren’t always going to be so rough. He knew that the stresses of his anointing and his position would someday fade when he was able to just be with His Yahweh in Glory. God was his refuge on earth and that gave David enough to live on while he was here.

Give somebody Hope today. Let them know that they are not alone, that they will not be alone. Help them know that this is just a season, just winter, and that Spring is on the way. Live on Hope, live in Hope, give it away.

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Hope, Meridee's Monday, Spring Fever@12:52 pm

Merridee’s Monday

3 CommentsFebruary 7, 2011

I didn’t make it in to the bakery this morning. It’s twenty past nine and I’m still in my PJs. I decided to go ahead and write my letter to you from home. Jennifer is trying to get back into the groove of homeschool after being iced-in St Louis last week. I’ve not been sleeping well and had a long weekend leading music at Church so this week is getting of to a very slow start. Plus, it’s another freezing day outside and we’ve had it up to here with the winter. Hutch is saying that he is sad but doesn’t know why. Jennifer is trying to read the first lesson and Sadie-Claire keeps interrupting her. I’m trying to not get aggravated. I don’t know how she does this like she does. The kids just ate and they are already asking for a snack. I get annoyed and Jennifer tells me to chill.
I hope you guys have a great week. If you live in a warm spot pray for those of us less-fortunate souls who do not. Here’s a hello from us at the homeschool table…

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Homeschool, Kids, Meridee's Monday@12:21 pm

Meridee’s Monday

1 CommentJanuary 31, 2011

The beach is empty this morning. All of the lounge chairs are lined up perfectly, like a little army of furniture waiting for someone to attack from the water, but I’m the only one out here. January is busy season in South Florida but most of the vacationers are still asleep. I came down here to write about suffering and I now find myself in the most comfortable place on earth. It was Jennifer’s idea. She thought her trip to her family farm in St Louis this weekend with the kids would be a good time for me to go away on a writing retreat. Now I’m in the only place in the lower forty-eight not affected by the massive blizzard moving across the country and it all seems sort of silly. When I meet my family back in Nashville in a couple of days we’ll have lived completely different weeks and re-entry will likely be rough. Oh well, slap on some more Coppertone 4.

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: beach, Meridee's Monday, writing@12:19 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

Meridee’s Monday

1 CommentJanuary 10, 2011

It’s a cold morning here in Franklin and the bakery is unusually quiet for a Monday. The four inches of snow that fell last night seems to be keeping folks from venturing out. I like getting out it in, it gives me a chance to use my 4-wheel drive. Jennifer is back at the house with the kids, the homeschool semester starts today. As I left to go to “work” I felt sorry for her being cooped up. Homeschooling is hard and no one in our house is more selfless than she.

We moved this week, again. The process of mold removal at our house in Franklin continues to be at a stand still. When it became apparent in December that we’d be out at least six more months, we decided to move from the small second-floor apartment we leased in Cool Springs to a rental house a few miles east of Franklin. We’ve fallen in love with the house in just a few days. Even the dog is happier. I still wonder what God is doing in all of this.

It’s been an unusually long stretch from my last letter until now so I’d planned to use this time to catch you up with what’s been happening with our family, but I can’t seem to do it. It feels like an insult to those affected by bigger things to go on about the small details of my life, which, in light of what happened in Arizona over the weekend, seem insignificant. I’m actually only now getting the whole story. We can’t get the Comcast guy to come out and hook up our cable and Internet so we we’re a little late in getting the news. The whole thing has slapped me out of a state of numbness. Living in Middle Tennessee, specifically Nashville is a great privilege. Kind people are everywhere and it’s not uncommon to walk into a Starbucks at anytime during the day and find several people sitting around the shop reading their Bibles. Merridee’s is no different; it’s like the Christian bar, (where everybody knows you name, and they’re always glad you came). But living in a town like this can also shelter you from real world stuff, especially when the cable is out. Travel is usually the best antidote to cultural numbness. However, since November Jennifer and I and our family have been off the road. We spent Thanksgiving and all of December in the apartment and then went to St Louis to Jennifer’s family farm for an idyllic white Christmas. Living on top of each other in such a confined space and then spending the Holidays with extended family, all the while trying to figure out where we’d live for the next six months, got me looking inward. Then a guy opens fire on a random street corner in Tucson where people are gathering to get to know one another and I’m shocked back into the reality that things aren’t as they should be. All is not well and, until Jesus makes everything right everywhere, we’re going to live in this tension.

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Arizona, Meridee's Monday, Snow, Update@2:55 pm

Meridee’s Monday

3 CommentsOctober 4, 2010

Hello, I hope this finds you well and rested. I know I say that a lot but I mean it even more this week. Over the weekend Jennifer and I had the pleasure of leading the times of worship at a “Solitude Retreat” for some of the young adults from Fellowship. (I learned this weekend that they don’t really like being called “Young Adults” but they certainly aren’t old and they aren’t teenagers and some of them are married so they can’t be called “singles”. So I really don’t know what else to call them but Young Adults. Plus, I’d be extatic to be called a Young Adult. Jennifer and I (especially Jennifer) are forever beyond young adult. We are firmly planted in Middle Aged. So the Young Adults need to be happy with “Young Adult”) Anyways, it was great. The times of singing and corperate worship and reflection were powerful. During breaks between songs different people would stand and pray for the group or confess a sin or read a scripture passage over the group (about 125 in attendance). It was something I’d only been a part of in small snippets, never a whole weekend, and it was wonderful.

I’ve heard stories of how, in the early meetings of the first church, Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, led the meetings. To my knowledge, there wasn’t a senior pastor but instead it was a group of commoners waiting on God and His leading. I’m sure there were some facilitators at those meetings. I feel like I was one of them this weekend but nothing more. Even our teacher this weekend read mostly Bible or someone else’s words during His teaching times, which was refreshing. But the leader was Jesus, our High Priest.

It’s 230pm on Monday and I’m at the bakery for which this blog is named. As the day crawls on the Spirit of this weekend is fading and I miss it. I miss sitting in the meeting room with Jennifer falling asleep on my shoulder. I miss driving over to the campground with her in the Jeep, the two of us bundled under blankets with the top off and the heat on, drinking hot cocoa. Solitude and quiet time with God seems like it could be so heavy, but in actuality it’s very, very light. It’s simple and organic. Jesus’ yoke is easy, His burden light.

I hope you can find some quiet this week. Both actual quiet time and a quietness of your soul even during crazy times. If you blow it, join the club, of which I am a charter member.

Peace,
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Meridee's Monday, Retreat, Young Adults@3:58 pm

Merridees Monday

CommentSeptember 22, 2010

Good morning. I hope this letter finds you well and rested. (That would at least make one of us) It’s been over a month since my last blog post and I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to complete my thoughts right now but I’m at Merridee’s with Hutch for lunch and he’s consumed with the LEGO website so I figured I’d at least write to say hello. I also want to say thanks for your prayers over the past few weeks. The adjustment to apartment living has been rough but we’re making it work. There’s still been no forward motion in the mold removal from our house because of legal red tape, which as it turns out is a special reddish duct tape kind of stuff that is inpenetrable with out a lawyer. And even then, cutting through it takes time and patience and a special knife that only a few lawyers know how to use. (in God’s grace it seems like we have one of those) Meanwhile, Jennifer has begun homeshooling Hutch in our living room / dining room and I’m doing what I can to help out. I have to admit, she’s been amazing through this whole thing. She went to the trouble of decorating one whole wall of the apartment with a chalkboard and special artwork and neat school stuff so Hutch would have an inspiring environment to work in. I complained most of the time she was getting it ready because I couldn’t see the sense in spending the money for stuff that would be temporary. She was right though and I’m so proud of her. She doesn’t have time to read my blogs so she won’t know how I’m bragging to you about her but I just can’t believe how the Lord is using her in our kids’ lives.

Sadie-Claire will be three in November and she is plannning to begin dance class right away. She dances most of the time she is on her feet. She is consumed with shoes and sparkles. Hutch is in his third week of Hip Hop dance class so he is popping and locking every times he hears music. We are a family of constant motion and Jennifer and I are in a constant state of overwhelmed-ness. When the kids go to bed we usually sit together in a trance. Then we go to bed.

Living in our apartment does have an upside. We’re situated right in the middle of Cool Springs where all the good restaurants and stores are. We can ride our bikes to Borders and Starbucks and dozens of other places. McDougals Chicken is my new addiction. Not their chicken but their soda. Their ice is just a tad bigger than Sonic’s and their diet coke is really burny. Plus, they have free soft serve. When you combine the three everything is right with the world. I’m averaging two diet-coke-ice-floats a day.

This morning I was reading Jesus’ story about the two men who built houses, one on rock and one on sand. I noticed how the exact same weather came to both. I also looked up “house” in my Strongs and found that it can also mean “family” or “household”. I started to question where I’d built my (our) “house”. I’m praying we’ll stay anchored to God and each other during this and we’ll realize just how firm and dependable the rock really is.

I hope you have a great week full of revelations of God and His Greatness.

Peace and Rest,
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Family, Meridee's Monday@2:54 pm

Meridee’s Monday

CommentAugust 23, 2010

Fifteen years ago this week Jennifer and I left our homes and packed what little we owned into our cars and drove to Nashville to move into our apartment. It was the beginning of our lives together as “us”, out on our own. Tomorrow we will again drive to Tennessee and move a car’s worth of stuff into an apartment. The “us” includes two kids and a dog this time, but in some ways this feels much the same is it did in 1995.

Our house in Franklin still sits vacant as we await our mold settlement process to begin. Our consumer advocate is telling us to plan on at least six months of limbo. Numbers with a lot of zeros are being tossed around and it makes me nervous. In a way this is even more unsettling than our move to Africa. When we moved there we had a plan. We knew where we would be and for how long and how much it would cost. This is different. I haven’t the foggiest idea where we will be in six months or how much, if any, money we will have left. It’s easier to live life one day at a time when you sort-a know what to expect from each day.

Some of you know how we feel cause you’re walking the same season right now. We’ve read your stories as they have come in and have been really blessed by them. Shortly flowing this blog post will come the first edition of TRAVELERS IRL (in real life). The concept is still in the development stage but we are genuinely excited about connecting people who have our music in common with one another to share their lives.

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Faith, House, Meridee's Monday, Travels, Trust@11:39 am

Meridee’s Monday

11 CommentsAugust 5, 2010

I usually start thinking about my weekly letter over the weekend and then write my thoughts to you on Monday. This weekend was different though. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There’s plenty more to tell about our housing situation with the mold, etc. There’s FFH news to update you on. And there are things that the Lord taught me over the past week that I’d usually tell you about. But this week is different. Even with plenty of things to share, I can’t begin to write them. I’m just so SICK of talking about myself. This constant limbo of being forced to stay away from home and the rarity of the situation have made our situation the topic of conversation with almost everyone we know. We appreciate so much the thoughts and notes and prayers of our friends and family but the whole thing is, in a way, making me a little self-absorbed.

Here’s how I’d like you to help…

I’m looking for stories, your stories.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m imploring you to email me your stories of hurt, love, hate, life, and experience. Maybe it’s a story of redemption, or an account of how our God has put the pieces of your life back together. Maybe it’s your story of love and faith and perseverance. Maybe it’s about a friend of yours or a parent. It can be funny, serious, silly, or sad. It doesn’t matter, as long as it is true and honest. Jennifer and I will sort through (and pray through) your submissions and pick one each week to post on FFH.net and FFH Facebook. For now we’ll call the blog “Travelers IRL (in real life)”.

Six thousand (or so) web surfers hit our sites. By sharing all of our stories, not just the escapades of our family, we’ll all benefit from one another. This is the kind of community Jennifer and I hope to enable through our music. Let’s give it a try. Send your stories to us at ffh@me.com. All messages come right to my laptop and cell phone and nobody else. Don’t worry about perfect spelling or grammar. I’ll make sure to let you know if your submission is chosen for the weekly post and you’ll have a chance to make any changes.

Cool?

Hope so-
Have a great week-
Jeromy

Jeromy Deibler (FFH)

Categories: BlogPosted Under: Meridee's Monday, Stories, You@11:06 am