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say the words in my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts Be acceptable in your sight. Lord Iraq and our Redeemer Amen! The summer of 2009 after tearful goodbyes to the first congregation I ever

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served matt and I began the exciting journey towards his seminary experience. We were moving to Princeton, New Jersey, where he'd spent his high school years so he could study to be a presbyterian pastor. I

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was feeling nervous but excited to support my husband on this adventure. The day of the move, I got uncomfortable when I saw the size of the truck . It seemed short, but that assured me it

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was the right size and the movers assured me it was the right size and they started to pack it incredibly tightly to tracing our bookcases and sofas in a way that was impressive enough to calm me down.

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A couple hours later, the movers went upstairs. They almost immediately came downstairs again looking a little pale and said, your truck is too small. When they made their confident predictions, they didn't realize that

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there was still furniture upstairs. This is about 3 30 in the afternoon. We had an hour and a half before you halls closed and we live 20 minutes from the closest one, we frantically started to

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call. Every U haul in town was about that time I noticed our dog wasn't anywhere to be seen . I went through the house and found him happily eating a bag of chocolate chips out of the garbage

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bag we had stupidly left open on the floor of the kitchen. Chocolate of course, is poisonous to dogs. Neighbors came by to hug us and wish us well and instead of a sweet goodbye, I

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begged them for hydrogen peroxide so we could make the dog expel the chocolate somehow, matt returned with a bigger truck and I walked the dog up and down the sidewalk, waiting for him to take care of

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business While the movers frantically loaded the new truck, adrenaline carried us through. Besides one incident with a smoking engine, we made it to Princeton, okay . And all was well until I saw our seminary

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apartment. It had a certain smell, black mold as it turns out and it was really small. As the movers moved my overstuffed red microfiber couch and loveseat into the apartment. The Chunky furniture took over

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three rooms, what was supposed to be a living room in the dining room and a kitchen was just covered in these couches. Ironically, we could have left the couches in Virginia and used the original truck

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. That's when reality hit me. We had left a four year old condo near Virginia's beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains near parishioners and neighbors. I loved to move to New Jersey to a moldy tiny apartment where I

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knew no one besides my in laws and one former seminary classmates. I left the apartment and had a good dramatic cry while walking the seminary sidewalks. A PhD student who lived there lived there something like six

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years, looked at me knowingly and said it gets better. He may have also recommended a local ice cream shop. New beginnings are hard as we move through thresholds and the new realities are poor brains have

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to absorb all this new information. Get used to new smells and sights without the comfort of support structures we've built for ourselves. The Israelites go before us to our journey to the unknown moses has led them

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through the crashing waters in the red Sea. They've seen miracles they never could have imagined as they escaped from their oppressors. Miriam and the women of Israel celebrate their victory with a rousing song and dance.

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They've been liberated. They're filled with adrenaline and hope . But then reality hits. After the euphoria of escaped through the waters comes the reality of their new lives. Their new lives involved walking a lot of

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walking and walking not through city streets where they might buy a nice lunch from a vendor, but walking through the wilderness. The wilderness was a place where gods were not supposed to be able to enact their

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power, literally godforsaken. They're alone. Suddenly, waters turn from the source of their liberation to a mockery of nourishment. They're thirsty, but they cannot drink from rancid pools. Do you know how many

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verses it takes to move from? Miriam's joyful exultation to the people beginning to bitterly complain. Takes three verses, Takes three verses to go from thrilled joy to utter misery and with misery comes the murmuring.

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By the beginning of the 16th chapter of Exodus Moses . People are saying they would've rather died in Egypt rather than have come on this trip. The euphoria is over and the whining has begun in earnest.

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The euphoria is over, isn't it? For those of you who are brand new, who dreamed of starting seminary for months or years. Suddenly the reality of learning new languages and being far from home and

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having sacrificed jobs and sometimes nice houses might be starting to sink in. You may be wondering if you belong, if you're smart enough, but they're starting school in the middle of a pandemic was really the

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best choice for the rest of us. Well, we're not doing so hot either. There are four emotional stages after a major disaster like a pandemic. The first is the heroic stage where health care workers

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leapt into action. People donated their N- 95 masks . We'll cheerfully if nervously took to our homes for the first two or three weeks without the crisis would last. We cheered first responders and healthcare workers every

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night at seven. There is a rush of crisis in a sense that we could rise to the occasion . We're past that now or even past the second stage. The honeymoon stage, We've made the sour

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dough, cleaned the house, set up our home office, embraced the sweatpants, adopted a house plant , adopted a puppy, supported our kids in online school. It was great. But now we have

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done all the things it's possible to do inside. I think we are firmly in the third stage. The disillusionment phase. We can't believe it has been six months. Even our sweat pants are feeling a

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little tight. If we live alone, the solitude has entered deep into our bones. We live with others. The togetherness, it's right on our nerves . Some of the house plants haven't made it.

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The puppy is peeing everywhere, embarking constantly. No one seems to be in charge. There doesn't seem to be a plan to get this virus under control . We're cranky. We're more than cranky. Were

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unnerved and a little frightened for some of us. The line to get flu shots last week was the most exciting social event we've had in six months. We joined with the Israelites murmuring that this wilderness is

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the worst on top of all that. The way we burn and work and teach at the seminary has radically changed. We've all learned office 365 and teams in my campus and my learning and they are wonderful

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and we are grateful. But we are also tired . We've forgotten where we filed things and we're wondering if what we can teach can reach through wires and data plans and sink into students. And we wonder

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if we're alone in our feelings of being lost in our rooms. Reading the hundreds of pages we've been assigned. We may even be a little whiny. And all of this is normal. New beginnings are

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hard. Pandemics are harder. The good news is that God doesn't give up on the winners. God does not yell at the Israelites for whining in this passage. Instead, God begins to transform the Israelites

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understanding of who God is, through showing them that no wilderness is God forsaken. That this God is powerful enough to enact his will in the wilderness and God's will is to make sure that Israelites have clean

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water, care for God's people. And then when moses, people are so exhausted and sad they want to die. God says in the very next first , I am going to rain bread from heaven for

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you. God doesn't give the Israelites what they want , but God gives them what they need for this next step of their arduous journey. God knew how worn down and scared the Israelites were and God knows

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how worn down and scared we are. God will not give up on us. God wants to give us the nourishment. We need the most painful parts of the pandemic for churchgoers is the lack of rituals

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to help us feel that nourishment from God. Pastors long to feel the waters of baptism between their fingers . Christians, long for the Eucharist couples in love , long for big marriage ceremonies. That expected families

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grieve, the ability to mourn in person. We have not sung in harmony, we've not eaten a donut while drinking bad church coffee. We've not fidgeted in the pew. Mana wasn't the comfort food.

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Israel was used to either mana didn't replicate their favorite foods or their favorite religious traditions. Man, it was a gift for particular time and place, man . It was a gift to get the Israelites through

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the wilderness. So what mana does God have for us in this time and place? I imagine we're all experiencing this time differently for me that mana has come on morning walks while I listened to the daily

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office, an episcopal expression of morning prayer for me that mana has come in stolen conversations on front porches or in phone calls. Those interjections into the loneliness that remind me that I am part of a larger

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community for me. The manor has come through online yoga classes and brief moments in which I feel safe enough to rest and let go. These are the gifts that have sustained me well these and those miniature

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cakes from frost in that we've ordered for every birthday and anniversary and celebration in the last six months. If you think about it, you can really get a celebration in about monthly. This man won't be

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necessary forever, but not because we're going back to the way things were. Israel did not return to normal after wandering in the desert. God used the time for them to build religious and legal structures that

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shape the community for thousands of years. God created something new in them in the wilderness and God will create something new in us. If you're a first year student feeling broken down, know that it is

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normal that it is part of the process. Ask for help. Yes, but don't despair. God is building something new in you and it's going to feel uncomfortable after that painful moved to New Jersey.

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It took me another six months to get used to the terrible apartment in New Jersey. Direct communication style feels a lot like yelling, but God helped us build a life there. New Jersey pizza was our

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mana. It was the first time we had lived in the same city as my in laws which built a lifetime friendship we still enjoy now that we live half a mile apart. Matt built his identity of

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himself as a pastor there. Our son was born during that time. God helped us construct a new beginning as a clergy family. The 4th and final stage of emotional response to disaster his reconstruction. We

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may have a while to go before we get there . The disillusionment phase can last a long time. Apparently, Reconstruction typically doesn't happen until about a year after the disaster began. We'll rebuild our churches,

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the seminary, our society and hopefully they won't look exactly like they did before. Hopefully they'll be marked with more compassion, more creativity, more justice for good or for ill. They'll probably also be marked

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with more zoom meetings. God doesn't stop giving us giving us water and Mana. God sticks with us through however long we need to live in the wilderness . God leads us through difficult times and then helps

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us build a new life that better reflects the kingdom of God. 2020 has been a hard year, but God will give us water and Mana to make it through. God's not done with us yet.