Remembering Todd

February 16, 2023 Crystal Rowe

I’ve heard it said that sometimes God sends people into our lives for a specific season of our lives. Todd was my friend in one of the hardest seasons of mine. The Droegmillers moved to Griffin when I was seven or eight years old. I have this vague memory of their first Sunday at church. I had never seen a family full of redheads before. Well, except for Mr. Pete and Todd. Although there were a few kids older than me at St. John, Sally, Melissa and I were the only three around the same age. When Todd came, he turned our triangle into a square.

I wish I had specific memories to share about our childhood together, but the truth is they are really all just a blur. The best thing about Todd was that he was always there. Always at worship on Sunday. Always at church camp. At all-state events. At Happening. Always with me at LYO. Todd was always there. Always willing to lend a helping hand.

We went through Confirmation together, wrestling with questions like: How do we really know God is real? Why does Jesus even matter? And the one that made a lasting impact on all of us: What does it mean to be saved by faith through grace?

Todd was a consistent presence in my life, especially in our teen years. When I struggled to put words around the many emotions I felt, Todd was there to make me laugh. He taught me that there are good men in the world. Men that are honest and kind. Men that believe God walks beside us in the good and the bad. When my parents got a divorce, he walked beside me through the hurt and the pain, and also the joy that I felt over beginning a new phase of life.

I hadn’t seen Todd since I was seventeen years old. Now I’m forty-two. You can do the math on how long ago that was. It’s far too many years than I care to admit. My family moved away from Griffin my senior year of high school, and he went off to college. It was a time without cell phones or social media. A time when it wasn’t as easy to keep in touch. He grew up and lived his life, and I grew up and lived mine.

I never have considered him my “best” friend. But Todd was one of those people who held space for me when life felt too hard to bear. Todd’s constant presence, his joy, and his love of life taught me more about God than I ever realized—until now.

When my friend Kate texted me with the news, my heart sank. No, it can’t be true, I thought. Someone has to be playing a cruel joke. Todd and I had connected over social media in the last several years. He worked in Boston occasionally and we promised to find a way to get together the next time he was here. Next time will never happen; we’ll have to meet up in heaven instead.

I can’t imagine a world without Todd in it. We may not have been close, but he made a lasting impact on my life. Time and again, he showed me glimpses of Jesus. There will forever be a Todd-shaped piece in my heart. As Ally Condie once said, “Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.”

To his family — Marilyn, Pete, Scott, Tami, and Keri — I wish I could be there to hug your necks. I wish I could whisper in your ear the promise of resurrection in the midst of pain the way you whispered in mine on my Confirmation day. As you grieve today and in the days, weeks, months and years to come, may you remember the vast impact Todd made in the world—far more vast than any of us will truly ever know.

To Harper and Aubrey—Your Daddy was a special person in this world. I know you will miss him every day of your life. Lean into those who love you. Let them help you carry your grief. I pray God sends you a constant friend the way God sent me Todd so many years ago.

Todd, I imagine you are in heaven looking down on us, wondering if you can play with the lights in a way that makes us all laugh. I bet you’re singing your favorite songs at the top of your lungs—you know, Backstreet Boys and Indigo Girls, and whatever else you listened to as you got old. I’d hope you’ve asked God all those hard questions we never had answers to, like why some people die young. Maybe you’re a little early to the party, but in some ways, you’re the lucky one—you get to experience just how good the Kingdom of God really is.

May you rest in peace my dear friend. You will be deeply missed.

Until we meet again,
Crystal

I fly to Georgia today to celebrate this life that ended too soon. I struggled over whether or not to go—I hadn’t seen Todd in more than twenty years. But Todd was someone who played an integral part of my faith life as a child, and in the end, I couldn’t imagine not being there to celebrate his joining the saints in Heaven. Before I made the decision to go, I wrote this post as a way to process my grief over losing a childhood friend and also to honor Todd’s life.

I’m not sure there are any words that fully express how awesome Todd was, but you can read a little more about him here. I know his family would appreciate any prayers you say on their behalf.

A Letter Written to my Beloved Church Community

October 4, 2021 Crystal Rowe

I recently served as part of the Transition Team and Call Committee for our congregation. The Council President asked me if I would be willing to write the Summer Letter to our congregation. Although I have played around with pieces of this letter for the last several months, it feels like the letter as written deserves a home here, on Soul Munchies. It has been edited ever so slightly to protect the privacy of those people I individually named in the letter.

Dearest brothers and sisters in Christ,

As I write this, rain gushes down the side of my house just outside our living room. It sounds like a waterfall flowing down my window. Because it’s been so wet the last few weeks, we didn’t clean our gutters before this latest round of heavy rain. There’s no room for the water to flow. The water cascades onto our rhododendron bush just outside the window where a robin built a nest and laid three eggs earlier this spring. Every time we stepped outside the house, mama robin would screech and flit away. It’s possible we were as scared by her as she was by us. One day, we noticed she was gone. And so were her eggs. This discovery prompted quite a discussion at our dinner table that day. We watched the nest closely and never saw any babies, nor did we find any remaining eggshells. We began to wonder: do robins move their eggs when they feel threatened? Where is their new home? How could we have better protected this mama and her babies in their most vulnerable days? I can’t help but ask myself how we could have been a better family to this nest of robins.

Since moving to Massachusetts five years ago, there have been many times I felt like this mama robin. I’ve wondered if we brought our babies to the right place, far from family in Georgia. When we moved from Atlanta, David and I agreed if we found a church community to call home, we could make life in Massachusetts work. When we found St Paul, we found the family we so desperately need to thrive here. You have become our parents, our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins too. You are the most welcoming congregation we have ever been a part of.

Over the last six months, our congregation has embarked on an incredible journey together. One where we walked through memories during our Online History Event, listened to honest opinions through the Congregational Assessment Tool (CAT), and dreamed for the future in writing our Ministry Site Profile (MSP). Because of the pandemic, our Transition Trail was completely virtual, and you stepped up and participated as fully as you would have in person.

Time and time again we heard that St Paul Cape Ann is a family, deeply committed to loving one another and the greater community. I have been blown away by the way this community loves and supports one another and I am truly grateful to call you my church family.

Within the last few months, we also said goodbye to Pastor Luther Ziegler, who did a wonderful job of pastoring us through our transition journey. We said farewell to our Director of Family Ministry, as she stepped into a caregiving role with her family. We secured Pastor Elyse as our summer interim to provide continuity in worship. We tiptoed cautiously and excitedly, back to in-person worship, following safety guidelines far longer than required, to ensure that each one among us feels safe and welcome in this place.

Thank you for all your hard work through our transition journey.

I’d especially like to thank all of those who served on the Transition Team and the Ministry Site Profile Writing Team. A special thanks to our consultant who gently guided us through a process that felt overwhelming at first. With her leadership, we found it to be manageable and spirit-filled. And thank you to those willing to serve as part of the Call Committee during this next stage of our transition.

Our transition is not over, but I know God is at work preparing someone to be our next pastor. Please continue to keep the Call Process in your prayers. Pray that God sends wisdom and discernment to our Call Committee and to any prospective candidates. Pray for peace to all of us as we wait patiently to see what God is up to in this place. We are a congregation full of dreams and I can’t wait to see where God takes us next.

In Christ’s Hope,

Crystal Rowe

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash.

When Home is Where You Are

April 29, 2021 Crystal Rowe

I park on the street by the newest coffee shop in town and step out of my car, reminiscing about the house we tried to buy a few years ago just down the street. I notice the owner of the shop on the sidewalk talking to another customer. I hear him say he doesn’t want to compete with the Amazons of the world; he wants to be celebrated for what he is. He stops his conversation to say hello and offers me an elbow bump, telling me I’m looking especially fabulous today. That green of your shirt is so beautiful he says, and I say thanks, today just felt like a green day. I think to myself, “He is my people” and I open the door, catching a whiff of cardamom as I walk in.

The minute I enter, I’m reminded of my favorite coffee shop back in my beloved Grant Park. I would walk there a couple of times a week pushing the girls in our bright blue double Bumbleride stroller, treating myself to a coffee before taking them to the zoo to play for a few hours. I miss that neighborhood every single day now that we live in Massachusetts, but this new coffee shop reminds me that places like this exist everywhere. I just have to be on the lookout.

I order a cardamom bun and a latte, and add a loaf of focaccia at the last minute, thinking it will be a good surprise for lunch after I’ve picked the girls up from their pottery class.

My hands full with the goodies I’ve purchased, I head back outside and see the owner walking back towards the shop. He stops me to say hi again and asks how I’m doing on this beautiful day. The way he asks the question feels genuine, like if I wanted to tell him about really crappy things in my life, he would sit with me and listen for however long it took. I don’t, because in this moment, all is mostly right in my world. Just the fact that this stranger is genuinely interested in my answer makes me feel a little more at home. He asks what my plans are for the day and I tell him I’m not quite sure; my kids are in a pottery class, and I’m not usually alone. “Oh how fun!” he exclaims, “So you have some chill time. Go! Enjoy your chill.”

I’m smiling from ear to ear as I unlock the doors to my grey minivan and climb inside. It’s not often that I get time by myself, and this morning’s encounter feels like a gift. I drive down the street and see the ocean in front of me. The sky is bright blue dotted with cottony white clouds. This view will never get old, I think to myself, and I continue my drive home.

I walk in the door and put the cardamom bun in the microwave before grabbing a notebook and a pen. “I’m going to the ocean!” I call out to my husband who is working downstairs. I share a bite of cardamom bun with him before I walk out the door and climb back in my grey minivan. As I back down the driveway, I open the sunroof and let the brisk air fill my lungs.

It takes six minutes to drive back to the ocean. I lived without the ocean for so long, but I can’t imagine a life without it now. I sit on the sand and watch the waves lap gently along the shore. I can feel the cool wind upon my neck and my troubles disappear into the water like tiny grains of sand. In these rare moments of solitude on the beach, I find myself praying prayers of gratitude that God always shows up in this place.

I woke at 2:30 this morning, tossing and turning like a boat on rough ocean waves. The wind roared outside my bedroom window and as I lay there unsettled, my thoughts went to my Mom. It was November when I last saw her and my heart aches at the thought. It’s always in the middle of the night that I wake up thinking of my family. Three in the morning seems like the best time to wonder if we should do what it takes to move back home to be closer to my family.

It’s always when I’m lying in complete darkness in the early morning hours, unable to fall back asleep, that I cry out to God wanting him to make a way for me to go home. It hasn’t happened in a while, but the last year has made me miss my family more than ever. It’s been a year of solitude, a year of sacrifice, a year of feeling alone. It’s been a year that could have been filled with so much more happiness if we had just been within driving distance of these dear people of mine.

But just now, God has answered my prayers in a most unexpected way. An encounter with a new coffee shop owner who genuinely cares about his customers. The ability to drop my children off at a pottery class and catch a few moments of solitude on the beach. In the kind eyes of the coffee shop owner and the gentle lapping of the waves, God whispers to me, “Crystal, you are already home.”

Wake Up And Dream

March 14, 2021 Crystal Rowe

Photo by Ricardo Esquivel from Pexels. — *Photo by* *Ricardo Esquivel* *from* *Pexels*.

It’s been over a year since my book club last met.

I was sitting on my friend’s couch in her living room. The lamps were on, offering a glowing dim light that made me feel relaxed and at home. There was a candle burning in the corner, and her husband and kids were nestled safely upstairs, leaving us ladies all alone. There was wine on the coffee table, surrounded by snacks. A plate of cheese and crackers, a small chocolate cake, homemade bread. Evidence of time well spent. Forks clinked against the plates as we began to chatter about our days.

Five women sat around the room. The youngest, barely thirty, was sitting on the couch with me, just to my right. My neighbor sat in the chair to my left. She helped convince me this group should be a thing. My midwife of sorts—she helped me birth this group that’s become so precious to me.

Next to her sat our host, who’s really more like a sister to me. She was my very first friend in Massachusetts. She helped me visualize this group, helped me dream it, helped conceive it. She named it and claimed it and is my partner in all this. Across the room sat a middle-age woman whose children are all grown. She gives me a glimpse of what life might look like ten years from now. We were missing our oldest member. I missed her voice that night—having just turned seventy, she has a perspective the rest of us don’t, and I always learn something new from what she has to share.

This is my book club—The Woebegone Literary Society. There are a few other people that pop in here and there, but if I had to define a core group, this would be it. I had big dreams for this group. Dreams that it would become more than just a book club. Dreams that it would become a family. We met every month for only a year. And if I could go back to that last gathering in February 2020, I would never let it end.

I can remember it as if it were only yesterday. We were discussing Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger and I still don’t know if I liked it or not. The book, that is. I was sitting in my favorite spot on my friend’s leather couch, right next to the lamp. My legs were curled up in a crosslegged position and I was slouched back—my chiropractor would have been appalled. We talked about what it must have been like to be the main character: this young kid who felt bullied. What it must have felt like to feel as though you were being robbed. How it must have felt for there to be no other choice but to kill the bully. Or maybe he did have a choice—did he choose the right one?

We talked about how they ran, how they sought an escape. We talked about what it meant to go after the ones we love. We tiptoed around harder conversations about our world, touching on politics, but not really digging in. In that moment, I longed for more. I wanted to talk about how impossible some decisions feel. I wanted to talk about how we respond to fear, and how sometimes we make a decision that turns out to be wrong, but in the moment feels exactly right. I wanted to know the impossible decisions each one of us had faced, but no one seemed ready to go down that path. Our friendships were still too new, I think, to really dig in to the ways we’ve felt stuck or wanted to escape. Or maybe we weren’t ready to be honest with ourselves. Public introspection can be incredibly hard, especially in a room of book-loving introverts. I wanted to talk about forgiveness and social justice and the prison system, and all the problems of the world—but there was just not enough time.

We ate food. We drank wine. At the end of the night, our host made tea. As I sat in that room I felt like my dream was starting to take root. I looked at each face around me and felt deep gratitude that we had all been brought together—with all of our differences.

It’s not that we had long meaningful discussions. Sometimes we did, but we rarely strayed from the questions on our page to talk about the challenges we were facing in our own lives. But we were on that path. After a year of reading together, sharing snacks together, drinking wine and tea together, we were becoming more than just a book club.

We were becoming friends.

Years ago I read The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble and this dream was first imagined in my mind. One day, I thought, I will have a book club like this. A book club made up of women from different places, with differing perspectives. Women of all ages, who start out talking about books, but end up being so much more.

A group of women that walk together through the hard times. A place to go where there are no walls—a safe space to say whatever is on your mind. A place where you feel free to disagree. Without any fear that they will kick you out. Women who help you be a better woman. Women who help you be a better friend.

The pandemic ruined my book club dream. We haven’t met in a year and now my worries aren’t “how do we pick a book?” but instead “how do we pick up where we left off?”

How do we get back to that point where we all feel comfortable being ourselves? Has our time apart changed all that?

I contemplated trying to host a gathering in the summer, back when the infection rates were low, but I just didn’t have the mental energy for that. I was afraid of planning anything, for fear that it would be cancelled. I held so much disappointment for so many months that hibernation felt like the only right choice. I ignored my desire to see them. Because let’s face it, by summer, I really could care less about a book. It was the group of people that I missed. I read books and wondered what they might think, then buried my sorrow and moved on, giving thanks that we were all healthy and alive, and knowing that one day we would meet again.

By summer, it had been months since I saw anyone outside my house. With all of our trips canceled, all our plans on hold, I was doing a lot of reading. And although I longed to talk about the books I had been digging into, I mostly just longed for conversation about anything at all. I longed for the chance to sit around and share snacks with these women I had been growing to love. I longed to talk about what we had been doing and how we were spending our time. I knew Zoom was an option, but I had shunned off technology. If I couldn’t be with them in person, I didn’t want to be with them at all. Zoom always left me feeling half empty. It was a stark reminder of all that I was missing; of all we couldn’t have. The whole point of book club is to gather together. The book is a tool—an avenue towards conversation. A way to get people to open up about what they are thinking. I just couldn’t bring myself to try that on a screen.

Late in February, I decided Covid would hold us captive no longer. I’ve gone more than a year without my Woebies. Without this group of women that were making my dream a reality. Without this group of women that had become my friends.

And that year has been far too long.

I invited them to an outdoor gathering on a Saturday afternoon in late May. Surely by then it will be nice enough to sit outside. We can talk about a book, and how life has been over the last fifteen months, and maybe pick up where we left off. It feels like a brave thing to do. Inside all I feel is fear.

What if they don’t miss Book Club the way I do? What if they don’t miss me? What if they aren’t ready yet? The fear of having to cancel isn’t really in my mind this time. By now we’re pretty good at outdoor gatherings, and not even a little rain can keep me from putting on rain gear and getting outside to see my people. So unless there’s a deluge, Book Club will happen. But will it feel the same? Or will it feel like our first meeting? A little shy, a little timid, a little unsure?

After a year of burying my head in the sand, I’m starting to wake up and dream a little once again.