TAHLEQUAH — At one time or another, most people look back over the path of their lives and see how each decision brought them to where they are today. And that ultimate destination is often not the one they planned.

Maybe, instead, it’s where God planned.

Moving from Memphis, their home for 30 years, wasn’t what Mike and Jan Condren had expected a decade ago to be doing at this time in their lives.

They raised their two children in Memphis, and he taught chemistry at Christian Brothers University. The children, Virginia and Matt, are grown, and the Condrens have a grandson, Shawn, 4. But when her own kids were 4 and 8, Condren continued to long for more in terms of theology.

Raised a Presbyterian in Ohio, she became disenchanted as a teenager with the church and attended Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., a Quaker school.

“Quakers place a great emphasis on a direct connection with God, with a strong spirituality,” Condren said. “I think that’s one of the gifts I bring to my ministry.”

Quakers also emphasize putting your beliefs into action, she added, and they practice simplicity in daily living.

A University of Indiana graduate with a degree in history and sociology, Condren received her master’s degree in Library Science at the University of Illinois. While working in the libraries at the College of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Ark., she met her husband.

“We loved our Presbyterian church in Memphis; it was a block from school, so they went there for the after-school program,” she said.

The dean of Memphis Seminary was in the same Sunday school class as Condren and got her interested in the Master of Arts in Religion degree. Though she was still identifying with her Quaker teachings that prohibit ordination, the dean told her, “You don’t need to know why; just come and we’ll figure it out.”

At the end of a year and especially in the Pastoral Care class, she knew God was calling her into ministry. Because she was working full time and raising a family, it took her eight years to complete the four-year course.

Her husband was tenured, and she served as interim pastor at several churches; did supply preaching; and was chaplain at a hospital for a time. When her husband retired in 2009, Condren was able to seek a call somewhere else. He has family in this area, so when the church here posted its need for a pastor in December, she applied.

By June, the job was hers.

“The congregation has been enormously welcoming to both of us,” she said. “The vision of the members during my installation and the effort some of them took was incredibly meaningful to me. I’ll never forget it.”

The Condrens are discovering why Tahlequah is a place many people love to call home.

“It’s a university town; that’s important to us as a family, and my husband is adjunct teaching here” she said. “There is a strong and proud history. I’m excited about getting to see the Cherokee National Holiday. And Tahlequah is small enough to be a ‘small town’ and has a strong cultural presence.”

Five years ago Saturday, “home” took on even more meaning to the Condrens when they thought they might lose their only daughter during Hurricane Katrina.

“I spent the day before watching CNN and talking her into leaving there and coming home,” Condren recalled. “At church the next day, she joked about being a Katrina refugee, but she was extraordinarily fortunate. She didn’t lose much, but she knew lots of people who did.”

After a month, their daughter returned home to her waitress job, and in January, Condren took the train to New Orleans.

“The further south I went, I couldn’t believe it. These people were already poor to begin with, and now they had nothing,” she said. “There were seas of blue tarps, mud lines on homes and charred remains where houses had burned and the flood put it out. The windows were all gone from Marriott where I got off the train. I stayed away from the 9th Ward; I didn’t think it was appropriate to go gawking.”

Upon leaving New Orleans, she felt numb.

“Hundreds of thousands were living in that, day after day after day. There were modular units with zip codes for those without an address,” Condren said. “After I left, it was hard to remember how I felt because the emotions are so hard to contain.”

Compassion carries on into her ministry, too.

“We’re living at a crux where things that were expected of us are not expected anymore and things that were true are not anymore, such as, our children will have a better life that we did,” she said.

Whether that is good or bad doesn’t matter.

“We have to figure out as Christians how to live in this world,” Condren said. “One of the tasks of pastors at this time is helping people figure out how to live in this very different world.

“If you look historically, we’re not the first to have to figure it out. It happens roughly every 500 years,” Condren said. “About 500 years ago, Martin Luther gave us the printing press; about 500 years before that, the monastic movement came into the Catholic church; about 500 years before that, Rome fell, and that took about 100 years. Jesus came 500 years before that, and the Babylonians exiled the Jews about 500 years before that.”

So it’s not just us, she said.

“This is not the first time the world has changed drastically,” Condren said. “In the gospels, Jesus says he doesn’t know when the world is going to end, so I try not to answer questions to which only God knows the answers. The point is to try to live in a way that if you knew the end of the world was coming tomorrow, you wouldn’t change your plans.”

Get involved

Coming up at First Presbyterian are a Rally Day, Sept. 12, with Dr. Darry Carlstone talking about his mission trip teaching physics in Malawi. Also, there’s a monthly community dinner the third Wednesday each month; the next one is Sept. 15 at 5 p.m. Members of the neighborhood and community at large invited to have dinner at no cost.