Two and Done

We're two and done. Our son and daughter are now a Mister to a Missus and a Missus to a Mister respectively. We recently returned home from our son's wedding last weekend. For me it was a ten day road trip which accommodated my opportunity to officiate a wedding for dear friends. Never have I put so many miles on a rental car. Hertz must love me. Alaska Airlines will likely send me a holiday card.

It was fun to "get out" again and practice my aggressive urban driving skills. It was wonderful to reconnect with friends and family and Soteria Church. It was a joy to be "Dad" instead of wedding officiant, and to have a front row seat. My wife looked like a queen. My daughter and I cried as we watched my wife and son cry happy tears while they danced. My children are blissfully happy. My son-in-law and daughter-in-law are evidences of God's grace. We're now blessed to be step-grandparents to two handsome little men.

And now it's back to normal, though normal has not been normal for us this year.

It's been more than confusing to relocate to Alaska and begin the work of planting a new church in Juneau...all the while lovingly distracted by our summer wedding schedule. I've never spent so much money in my life while being functionally unemployed. I've never before been married to someone employed by a university. And now we have no impending events on the calendar.

Well, we are having some neighbors over for dinner this weekend. We are planning a short trip to Sitka in September. We do have friends with boats we're hoping will invite us along for a cruise on local waters, and friends with airplanes we hope will invite us along for island landings. We do intend to enjoy as much of the summer as this Alaskan summer allows. We do have places in mind yet to be kayaked. I do have a few pounds to shed.

And I'm excited for, motivated toward, and now no longer distracted from continuing the work of making friends, opening our home often, gathering people and forming a church of gospel communities on mission.

And I hope normal is never normal again, impending events or not.

Round Two

A strange and wonderful year for we Rydman's it continues to be. Daughter Kaycie married Ben Hajduk last month, we moved far away to Alaska, Deb took a job running Career Services at the University of Alaska Southeast, I'm making friends and planting a church, and now we're prepping for wedding number two. Son Steve will be marrying his true love, Sarah Smits on July 21.

I'm learning that marrying off your daughter is different than marrying off your son. With the daughter the thought is, "Will this guy handle his role well? Will he always remember how precious she is?" With the son, it's more like, "Is he ready? Have I prepared him well enough? Will this guy handle his role well?" With the daughter's wedding it was, "Do I need to apologize to anyone involved in the wedding?" With the son it might be, "Do I need to apologize to my future daughter-in-law?" (I'm fairly certain I will not need to come with a quiver full of apologies. Steve is a great guy and will make a great husband!)

For my daughter's wedding ceremony I knew I had a specific and vital role: walk my little girl down the aisle, make sure everyone enjoyed the reception...and write checks. A lot of checks. For my son's wedding ceremony I sense my role will be not to block the camera's view of my wife. 


A son becoming a married man somehow and inevitably reflects on his father. Being increasingly mindful of my own shortcomings, my own misdirected motivations and my own innate selfishness as a husband I know that my son will experience similar self-awareness through his own fails over time. 


But this is true; marriage is the closest earth-side view we have into the heart of God. Marriage is where grace can be and must be most tangibly evident, most lived out. Marriage is the venue in which God's covenant love for His own children is most immediately exemplified. Marriage is the vehicle by which God insures (forces) my ongoing sanctification. It is primarily through my marriage that God refines me.


And this is also true; I married UP, way up, way out of my league. My wife is a living, breathing repository of gracious responses and incredible patience. And Steve knows the same is waiting for him in Sarah. May he never forget this reality. And may this reality point him and all who witness their marriage vows to our God Who loves us irrespective of what we think our merit to be, in spite of our merit, and solely out of His great grace.


Someone once said, "Marriage is like handcuffs." If that's true, then tighten mine up. My son already agrees.

Politics and the Heresy of Nationalism

July 4th's downtown parade allowed Deb and me to experience our first Juneau "locals only" event, save for the square dancers from Spokane that came by cruise ship to participate. It was fun and instructive to see who lives here, who greets each other, and who applauds every entry in the parade, corny or otherwise. We're certainly not yet long-timers, but we're feeling more and more like locals.

I was taken by the overt expressions of nationalism. As with any Independence Day parade we saw lots of flags, lots of red white and blue, lots of trucks and some farm equipment. Alaska has been a parcel of America for fewer years than I've been alive. For Alaskans statehood may not have been so much about connection as it was about recognition and validation, (not to mention avoiding the scourge of taxation without representation.) But here there is a twist, perhaps shared only be Hawai'i (and Caribbean nations who find themselves partial-Americans not necessarily by choice.) Alaskans consider themselves Alaskans first, and U.S. citizens second. Even when traveling south the term "getting out" is often replaced with "I'm going down to the States."

People here quickly associate Christianity with political beliefs, and political beliefs (like religion) are polarizing. But it is in "nationalism" where the polarities get confused. It is too easy to fall into siding with Cleon Skousen's The Naked Capitalist when he wrote that the American experiment was the culmination of God's long-term plan for humanity. Whatever party in control of the Executive branch proclaims their elected leader to be a messianic figure to deliver hope and change and lead America to the promised land, while the out of office party takes an apocalyptic view of the President as villain on whom to blame the betrayal of the Founding Fathers and their Constitution. The polemics of nationalism, and anyone claiming America's destiny as "the New Israel" have made my job here just that much more challenging. Nationalism as individual and civic pride is fine and great. Nationalism as doctrine is heresy, as history repeatedly proves.

We Bible-believing, Jesus-adoring, Holy Spirit directed citizens are marginalized here in Juneau, sometimes because of our political leanings, and more often because of what people assume to be our political leanings. We are often accused of lumping our nationalism in with our citizenship in the Kingdom of God. And sometimes our critics are absolutely right. Claiming my own status as a "voting independent" doesn't seem to help.

It remains a challenge for any church-planter, me included to boldly proclaim the polarizing truth of the gospel while distancing the gospel message from a political polemic. I'm not un-American. The Olympics are coming up, and I know who to pull for, even in team handball. It's just that I don't think my earthly citizenship is the biggest deal of deals.