Originally Published July 18, 2018
On our third date Michael informed me he would have to go to seminary. So I knew what I was getting into. Sort of. Michael's priestliness was pointed out to him about 18 years ago, by an influential priest while on a mission trip. He had moved to Columbia as his marriage suffered a crisis, and Michael found a church home there, though his family did not follow him to church. Raised as a PK (Priest's kid), Michael knew what the life of a priest was like, and he knew his family could not endure it. Hearing his priest name it and suggest it to him was comforting, because he felt it too, but in the end he knew it couldn't happen. Born in Union, SC, Michael was mostly raised in South Florida, where his dad accepted calls to churches for the bulk of his teenage years. Formative young days were spent riding bikes and fishing along the Indian River in Cocoa, bringing small treats home to his mom to fry up. The deal was, you catch it and clean it, and I'll cook it. I don't think they were exactly commercial fishermen, but they did what Florida kids of the 1970s did - rode bikes and fished.
At right, taken during their time in Charleston, SC. Michael is the youngest of the four, second from the left.
Michael remembers being the acolyte on call for all things church - funerals, weddings, regular church - duties he performed maybe not with liturgical gusto but rather with familial duty. He was like any PK, who rebelled against his dad's collar and struck out to become his own person.
Left, family portrait in Miami with young wives, late 1980s. Michael, second from the right, not yet married. Still skinny.
He set out to make money, make a family and create a legacy. But somewhere along that journey, as many of us discover, that may be your plan, but it's not God's plan. I'm not speaking in a Presbyterian predestination kind of way, but I do believe God has a plan for us, if we listen carefully and follow it. The problem is that sometimes we mistake our inner voice for the voice of God. Seems like an easy mistake to make, but when you take a step back and really listen, you'll know which one is which.
So as the years passed and it became clear Michael's marriage was not going to stand the test of time, God's direction for his life became clearer for him, as mine did for me. And, luckily, at the same time.
I had just finished several years of trying to direct my own life, and it was not going well. Isabel was fine, our home was fine, I had perfectly fine jobs, but something very personal and spiritual was not fine. And in a moment of clarity one day, I surrendered my life to God, in a very Baptist kind of way. Not at a revival, but driving down the road, I remember, and just being very sincere about it. I told God my idea of life was clearly not his for me, and I was going to let him show me the path from then on.
Two weeks later, I met Michael Cannon, who was in the throes of his own directional conversation with God.
With the announcement on our third date that he would have to go to seminary, I replied, "Okay, sounds good."
It was not a long conversation, nor was there any discussion involved. It's not that I didn't believe him, I sincerely did. It just seemed like it was the most right direction I had ever headed in.
As soon as we married we started the seminary timeline. We still had two kids at home and a business that needed attention. We wanted the kids to be in the right place and the business to be mature and sustainable to get us to seminary in good shape. We began the conversation with Isabel and her dad about where and when we would go, a discussion that lasted several years and was fraught with derision, understandably so. We endured a flood that actually made it easier to leave Michael's home of 21 years, and submitted to two years of discernment tests, pokes, prods and examinations.
Part of the conversation of going to seminary, though, was leaving seminary. We knew seminary was a fixed period of time, and we knew where it would be. After that, we didn't necessarily know where we would go. There were no guarantees.
"You know, Erika," Michael warned me, "it could be that we don't get to come back to South Carolina. We could go to Kansas."
I held my breath. I had only lived in South Carolina. My family, friends, memories and comfort were in South Carolina. Moving 5 hours to middle Tennessee was huge for me.
But I still felt a level of comfort I can't identify. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit, letting me know everything was going to be ok. Or maybe it was denial.
"That's fine if we go to Kansas," I said out loud. Then I clarified my position.
"I'll go anywhere - except Florida."
You know where this is going.
I don't know why I didn't want to go to Florida. Being a South Carolinian who went to Litchfield Beach every summer and Isle of Palms every spring and Charleston every once in a while, I never had much use for a state with two coasts. What did I need with that? And, a bunch of Yankees live there. Is there really such a thing as a Florida native? It just seems like a duplicative state to me.
So I put it out of my mind for a couple years.
At the end of our second year of seminary - they call it the middler year - I began to feel better about our geographical direction, because there were families who were actually from Kansas graduating and there were no jobs for them in Kansas, so they were relocating elsewhere. Shew. I felt sure I dodged a Diocesan bullet.
In December of our senior year, our Diocese informed us there were no jobs for Michael in South Carolina, and that we were free to look elsewhere. For a moment we were stunned, revealing that we really had thought we would go back to South Carolina. My heart raced and my palms tingled for a few minutes. I could feel the adrenaline of panic set in. I felt like a balloon cut loose from its tether. Like we had been let go to float off into the universe. I had never been without such direction. Isabel was graduating, being cut loose, too, and had the world in front of her as well. She was visiting colleges in North Carolina, Alabama and Washington.
So, just like any other college graduate, Michael began to look for a job. Luckily, the Episcopal church is fairly organized in how they help priests find jobs. Still, it takes daily diligence and lots of letters of introduction and resume forwarding.
In January, Michael came home and said:
"Erika, you're not going to believe this. There's a church opening. In Kansas."
We both burst out in laughter.
"You are kidding me," I said to him.
"Nope," he said. "Salina, Kansas."
I have actually been to Salina, Kansas. I have spent the night in Salina, Kansas. I used to have a mug from the truck stop that said Salina on it. It is the dividing point between the rolling green hills of East Kansas and the flat wheat dessert of West Kansas. It is in the Diocese of West Kansas, but if you look on a map, it's in the eastern third of the state. That's because there is nothing west of it. It is literally in the middle of the country in the middle of nowhere.
I don't want to offend anyone who loves Salina, Kansas, but the thought of living there made my mouth dry and my palms sweat.
"Should I call them?" he said.
What could I say? I had said, yes, I would go to Kansas.
"Yes," I said with effort through my cottonmouth. "But I'm not telling my mom."
The position was intriguing, but, in the end, not a fit. Thank you God, I said quietly.
As spring tried to roar into Sewanee, Michael continued talking to rectors and interviewing with vestries via Skype. Nothing seemed to be a fit. I had thought we would be so attractive: a spiritually mature couple with life experience and no encumbering children to complicate a move.
There we were, trying to fit our mold into God's plan for us. We thought we knew best.
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Jeremiah 29:11
Jeremiah was writing to those in exile in Babylon, where they were to be for 70 years. Later he goes on to say that the Lord will kill everyone who didn't listen and go into exile...so maybe we should heed God's direction.
And I know from my own life that if I let the Lord lead, he will lead me to pretty great pastures.
Michael heard of an opening in Fort Pierce, Florida. He remembered my codicil about going anywhere - but Florida.
"Should I apply?" he asked, rather timidly.
"Well, if you're going to take me to Florida it's got to be on a coast. After all there are two to choose from. Where is Fort Pierce?" I demanded to know. "And I've got to have a pool."
Michael and the rector at St. Andrew's Fort Pierce talked for five hours on the first day they started communicating. This is gonna be good, I knew. We visited Fort Pierce right after graduation, in the middle of several family crises, and the breeze of the ocean through the palm trees and visiting with the Florida native priest was exactly what I needed to assure me that Florida was where God wanted us to be, despite my best efforts to direct our lives.
The morning view from our balcony.
We have purchased a condo (also a place I said I'd never live in) right on the Indian River, on the banks of which Michael grew up riding his bike. We wake up every morning to the blazing sunrise, and a community pool makes keeping cool easy. Right next door to the church, Michael leaves at 8:28 and arrives at church at 8:30 each morning for work. There's a local bakery on the ground floor of the building, and a gelato store on the other side. I do have to drive inland to get vegetables, because you can't really grow veggies in salt water. The NPR channel based at Indian River State College plays all my favorite hits from the 70s and 80s, and from our balcony I can see what the amateur fisherman occasionally pull out of the river.
Right, Michael, bottom right, in his Indian River fishing days.
I'm so glad I let God pave this path for us, because I never envisioned or imagined living full time in a place so beautiful, tropical, luxurious and welcoming. Fort Pierce isn't a glamorous beach town like Vero Beach to our north or Boca Raton and Palm Beach to our south, and thank goodness. It's unspoiled old Florida - that will be besieged by snowbirds this winter, the Florida natives who live in the building tell me. Yes, I have already found kind and gracious Florida natives who have bashed all notions that everyone here is a Yankee. Thank you, God.
Michael and I in the ocean breeze. Taken on the Jetty, out in the Atlantic Ocean just off South Hutchinson Island.
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