catapult magazine

I never imagined

by Nina Bartelt Lanctot

Now to God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to God’s power that is at work within us, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.

Ephesians 3:20-21

I never imagined that “home” would be mid-west, that the flat horizon of cornfields and soybeans would settle my soul at every homecoming.

I never imagined that I would not miss the East Coast, those first eighteen years on the fringe of Philadelphia, corned beef, coleslaw on rye at Stanley Green’s.

I never imagined I would meet my husband in Grand Rapids, our college household called fondly “Lyon Street Institute for the Strangely Gifted.”

I never imagined being ana-baptized in the Elkhart River, and later become a Mennonite woman pastor, never having known that either was an option.

I never imagined having three kids grow up in south-central Elkhart, by the community garden, later to tell us that they had wanted to be black kids.

I never imagined my husband’s desire to move to the country since his boyhood upbringing in down river, metro, Detroit City.

I never imagined owning four acres, or God telling me, as I stewed about it, “It’s okay, Nina.  I own the whole universe.”

I never imagined being “geographically challenged” for twelve years, here in the country, or being a rural pastor who delights in barns and their stories.

I never imagined kids stretching my heartstrings by living in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Hollywood, Hungary and Cambodia, and then inviting.

I never imagined that my closest church friends would live sometimes twenty or thirty miles off, and those very same friends would work continents away.

I never imagined these 60 years living, turning into a verified mid-west Michigan Democrat in Republican Indiana, Costa Rica or DR Congo.

I never imagined the Body of Christ, Mennonite, World, Brethren and Sistern, urban, rural, 100 mile, imagining.

I cannot imagine what comes next.