Here's Hoping

"In order to create, we have to stand in the space between what we see and what we hope for." - Julie Burstein, 4 Lessons in Creativity

Hope is a tricky thing.

When I was waiting for Mike to fall in love with me, I remember a sermon about Hannah, the mother of Samuel. One time when she prayed, Eli the priest saw her and thought she was drunk. He said, "How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine."

"Not so, my lord," Hannah replied. "I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord." (1 Samuel 1:14-15)

I was also a woman who was deeply troubled. I had fallen in love with Mike, but month after month had gone by with no sign of reciprocation. When I heard Hannah's story, I realized that hope is the hardest place to be. It's like sitting on a fence. If your hope is fulfilled, you can come down on one side of the fence, and if you give up hope, you can come down on the other. But living in hope is a precarious balance.

I am thinking of hope and longing now as I look to my post-graduate future. I am a stay-at-home mom right now, but I long to be involved in ministry, in the leadership and shaping of a church. However, the two roles seem mutually exclusive. I like spending time with my baby boy, and I don't want to relinquish him to daycare. Ministry is a demanding 24-7 job that doesn't have space for nursing a baby every four hours, establishing a daily eating and sleeping routine, and being flexible to change that routine every few months for a growing baby.

Yet I long to be part of a community of Christians where we are trying to understand what it means to be the church in our space and time. I long to learn about the Bible alongside others. I want to work with Mike to involve people in ministry and help them do more than they ever thought possible. I want to see God transform and heal broken lives.

Julie Burstein's words struck me. I lived in the space between what I saw and what I hoped for when I was in love with Mike, and it was heartbreaking. She classifies that space as "loss." That's what I felt then and it is what I am feeling now. Then it was the loss of love; now it is the loss of my dreams for my post-graduation life. However, she also identifies loss as a necessary component of creativity. Out of the struggle to see both what is and what could be comes art. Not just the art we see in museums, but the art of creating anything new and original.

My blog may reflect some angst, but I have hope that the angst I feel now will result in a work of art in the years to come as I find creative and original ways to engage in ministry. One of the benefits of getting older is being able to look back on a variety of circumstances in which God has worked creatively and miraculously in my life when all I felt was loss. This may be another season of loss, hope, and art.

I can't put this little guy in daycare!

In Which I Am Angry Again

"Asking for help is a lot harder than giving it." - What to Expect: Pregnancy and Parenting Every Step of the Way

On Sunday, I got mad again. My pastor said the following in his sermon:

"It's really striking how often today the Holy Spirit is calling people to quit things especially when you find so few 'quit' verses in the Bible! And yet, God's program in America appears to be that he wants his people to take lots of time off, to quit serving folks once they have a child, to quit extending themselves. That usually means taking a year, two years, three years--taking a decade."

He also said:

"Are you a person who can be counted on by others, that when you say you're going to do something, it's money in the bank?"

What? You don't know me! Are you judging me? Are you telling me that I'm putting words in God's mouth? Are you labeling me a quitter without even giving me a chance to defend myself?

Because the thing is, I am trying really hard not to quit. But how can we keep volunteering for things and then backing out at the last minute--when our baby gets sick or just decides he doesn't like the nursery, when my husband loses the ability to hear due to an ear infection, or when the baby suddenly decides he needs to go to bed an hour earlier? Our word isn't very much like money in the bank unless that bank is a piggy with structural damage!

So what? We have to choose between being quitters or being unreliable?

As I was ranting and raving to my husband about pastors and sermons and quitters and blah, blah, blah, I told him that all I really wanted was a place where I can volunteer in a role that actually matches my gifts and that has some flexibility.

Suddenly, all my frustration landed on a single point. I want to be part of a community where people serve according to their gifts, their availability, their passions, their calling, etc. Not everyone is an eye. Not everyone is a nose. Some people work part-time or stay home. Others work seventy hours a week. Some people have babies, and some people want babies. Some people have grandkids who they spend a lot of time with, and some people desperately miss their grandkids who live far away. Some people love meeting new people, and some people love completing tasks. People are unique and not simply interchangeable.

Sometimes I feel like Charlie Chaplin.

Our church appears very polished every week. In a church our size, it's easy to think that the whole thing is a big machine and all the volunteers are perfectly machined cogs. My life with a husband and kid with ongoing health issues (relatively minor but still inconvenient) doesn't seem to quite be the right shape to fit the machine.

As much as I may want to blame my church for its machine-like appearance, however, it was the daily newsletter from WhatToExpect.com that stopped me in my tracks. A healthy community is made up of people who are willing to ask for help, and as the newsletter writer so astutely observed, it is easier to give help than to ask for it. I don't want to admit that I can't do something or that something is hard for me. I don't want people to think I'm unreliable.

The reality is that every cog is a little oddly-shaped. Every person has some quirk or difficulty they bring to their job. Every person who plays an instrument, hands me a bulletin, watches my kid in the nursery, and even just sits in the congregation is just as fragile as I am, one germ or crisis away from failing in their role.

Maybe my response to this sermon should not be to defend my ironclad reasons for quitting but to realize that I may need to ask for help sometimes, and that's okay. Maybe I need to take a step back and realize that when I only do things that I am totally confident will succeed, I miss out on a chance to demonstrate vulnerability and to receive help. As long as no one ever fails, failure seems terrifying, or at the very least potentially embarrassing. But if I want to be part of a community where it's okay to fail, maybe I need to start by being willing to fail myself.

This baby isn't afraid of failing! He's having the time of his life failing at crawling!

Dreaming of Puzzles

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." - Goethe,
quoted by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Habit 3 (of the 7) is "Put first things first." To be honest, I read Stephen Covey's book quite a few years ago, so I don't remember every detail, but one principle that has stuck with me is this chart:

Covey describes a few scenarios based on this chart. Some people spend their time doing what is urgent, but not important: responding immediately to every request made of them without regard for their significance in the big picture. Others spend their lives alternating between the important/urgent quadrant and the not important/not urgent quadrant. They are constantly putting out fires, solving big problems, responding to emergencies--until they crash. Then they stare at their computer mindlessly until another big problem comes along.

A highly effective person spends their time in the important/not urgent quadrant. According to Covey, most of the big problems and crises start in that quadrant but don't get attention early enough to prevent them from escalating. When your spouse starts yelling at you for not spending enough time with the family, the problem is urgent. The way to fix this is not to clear your schedule for the evening and then wait until your spouse gets angry again. Instead, make spending time with your family a priority so your spouse doesn't have to yell.

That example highlights another aspect of Covey's philosophy. Too often we feel forced to choose between two alternatives, neither of which are what we want. As the quotation by Goethe above suggests, it is up to us to decide what matters most and pursue that. Maybe if you spend more time with your family, your boss will be angry that you are neglecting your job. You feel stuck between an angry boss and an angry spouse. The answer is not to try to figure out how to appease both parties. Rather, it is up to you to decide what you want and to pursue that. Covey says that you are always saying "no" to things in your life. If it's not to the urgent things, demanding your immediate attention, then it is probably to the more fundamentally important things that are easier to let slide.

Stephen Covey tells the story of a mall that was descending into bankruptcy after business after business pulled out. A businessman purchased the mall, and rather than dealing with the impending financial disaster, he began walking around talking to store owners. As he built relationships with them, things began to turn around. The store owners felt heard and valued. The owner made good decisions for the mall based on the store owners' suggestions. By focusing on the important work of building relationships, rather than the urgent financial crisis, he was able to prevent financial ruin.

Source: Google Images

I decided to write on this topic because I had a dream last night that I was trying to climb carpet stairs while wearing rollerblades. I was thinking this morning about how my dreams sometimes reveal to me things that I'm worried about or are bigger problems in my life than I realized. (Apparently I have some residual anxiety about rollerblading.) A few years ago, I was really stressed at work. I had a dream that I was walking around my job, and every time someone wanted me to do something, they handed me a puzzle piece. My cupped hands began to overflow with puzzle pieces. I sat down at my desk and looked at the puzzle pieces overflowing my hands, and I felt completely overwhelmed. As I looked at them, I realized that mixed in with the pieces that represented tasks was a map of the United States. By taking the time to complete that puzzle, I could remove the unimportant pieces and focus on what mattered. So I began building the puzzle. I woke up somewhere around Iowa. (I don't think my subconscious had a very good map of the United States to work with.) From that point on, I began to take ownership of my priorities, doing what I felt was most important and would make me most effective at doing my job, rather than rushing around from one person's demands to the next.

Sometimes the most important thing to do is not the most obvious. It might not be the most urgent, and there may be people who are disappointed by your choice of how to spend your time. But by spending your time pursuing what is important and not being drawn into the trap of constantly responding to the urgent, you can avoid burnout, live according to your own priorities and values, and achieve bigger goals.

I often apply this principle with Amos. Sometimes I have a lot of things that I want to get done in a day. But by spending time with Amos when he is awake and happy, not only do I get to enjoy having a super cute baby (a good priority by itself), but I also end up with a happier baby who is less fussy while he is awake and takes better naps when it's time to sleep. Taking the time to interact with him and play with him may be hard when there are dishes in the sink, laundry in baskets, and an unwritten blog, but it results in a happier baby and a happier mommy.

Sometimes it is hard for me to identify my priorities and keep them in front of me, especially during this season of relative inactivity. The image that comes to my mind is that of a boat at sea on a completely calm day. The sails hang limp, and the boat doesn't move. Time well spent on those days can make the ship more capable of withstanding future storms. I hope that this time as a stay at home mom can help me learn to spend my time wisely and effectively so that when I am surrounded by more urgent concerns, I will have the presence of mind to remember what is important and make that my focus.

This is the face of a baby with a highly effective mom.

Heroes and Saints

"There is a significant difference between the kind of story that is told about heroes and the kind of story that is told about saints. The hero always makes a decisive intervention at a moment when things are looking like they could all go badly wrong. The hero steps up and makes everything turn out right. In other words, the hero is always the center of the story. By contrast, the saint is not necessarily a crucial character. The saint may be almost invisible, easily missed, quickly forgotten. The hero's story is always about the hero. The saint is always at the periphery of a story that is really about God." - Samuel Wells

My pastor is in the midst of a seventy-two week series on Judges. Our church is not for wimps! (He also makes us memorize scripture every week as a congregation, but that's another story.)

As I've been reading the book of Judges for the past four and a half months (yes four and a half months...and we just finished Chapter 10 this past week), I have been struck by the minor characters. Most people have heard of Gideon, Deborah, and Sampson. But those are only a few of the saviors of Israel. Some of the others are judges mentioned by name: Othniel, Shamgar, Tola, and Jair, for example. Some are even more obscure, such as Jael who killed the commander of an enemy army by hammering a tent peg through his head. Some are not even named.

Judges 9 tells the story of Abimelek, one of the sons of Gideon. He murdered his seventy brothers and became the leader of the town of Shechem. When a man named Gaal earned the confidence of the people of Shechem to stand against Abimelek,  Abimelek massacred not only Gaal and his army but the entire city of Shechem by burning down the tower in which they had taken refuge. (It seems crazy to kill every person in the city you lead, but Abimelek seemed a little crazy.)

Abimelek then moved on to the town of Thebez, for no apparent reason. The citizens of Thebez also took refuge in a tower. But this time the fire plan did not work out so well. As he approached the tower to set fire to it, a woman dropped a millstone on his head and cracked his skull (Judges 9:53).

Oh, the drama!

I can just imagine the people of Thebez all rushing into the tower in a panic and then running around inside saying, "Ah! Abimelek! He's going to kill us! We're all going to die. Ah! Ack!" Meanwhile this woman looks out the window at this crazy man running towards them, eyes the millstone, and then lets it fly. Suddenly all the people hear the crash and look at each other for a split second before they rush past the woman to look out the window. They look down just in time to see Abimelek ask his armor-bearer to finish him off so it can't be said that he was killed by a woman.

In the meantime, the woman has probably gathered her things and headed back downstairs to return to her life. That is probably why her name isn't recorded in the biblical account. She seems like someone who just quietly got things done.

I've given a lot of thought to what it means to be successful: as a Christian, in ministry, on behalf of the kingdom of God. And while there are a few Gideons in the world, a lot of times they end up with crazy kids who go on killing sprees. (Maybe that isn't super common, but there are some crazy preacher's kids.) What are more common, though, are anonymous people who accomplish God's purposes through spontaneous acts in the moment that just seem like the right thing to do.

I don't know who this is, but she seems saintly.

That woman was probably a hero in Thebez, but the writer of Judges doesn't even give her name because as Samuel Wells observed, hero stories are about the hero, but saint stories are about God. Verse 53 reads, "Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelek had done..." This is a story about God's justice enacted against a wicked man, not a story about an awesome woman.

The world and even the church pressures its leaders to be famous, to be successful, to be impressive. We spend a lot of time in my denomination tossing around names--who knows whom, who worked with whom, who studied under whom. But the story of the saints is one of anonymity. It is not about who knows whom, but about who knows God. Making it into God's story by the name of "a woman" is a great place for a saint to be.

Beating the Air

"I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air." - Paul

Every time I go to my gym, I think about what is true of my gym that I wish were also true of my church.

Unity of focus

Image source: www.kettlebell.net

A variety of my people come to my gym. They are all ages and in all different stages of life. I talked to a lady yesterday who was coming to a different class because her kids just started school. I worked with a lady today who looked to be in her late fifties. There are "meatheads" and chubby guys. There are natural athletes and people who trip over their feet. Some people come straight after work still wearing ties and dress shoes. Others come from the fire station or their landscaping company. But when we get ready to start a workout, we're all the same. A little bit excited, a little bit nervous. Trying to do better this time than last.

The way my gym is set up, we all do the same workout, which means that all of these people walk in different and walk out the same. We're all wiped out. We all feel like we did something impossible today, and we will do something impossible again tomorrow. We have all chosen to pursue this, and that unites us. Differences fade away as the sweat starts to run.

Comraderie
I'm relatively new, so I don't know all of the terminology and movements yet. I also struggle to keep going through a whole workout. Sometimes I feel like everyone else is strong and confident. But then someone shows me how to do something or tells me to keep up the hard work. Because as one person told me, "We've all been there."

Everyone knows what it is to look around at a room full of strangers and wonder if all of these people think you're a huge wimp--if they even see you at all. Everyone knows what it is to look at the workout and have no idea what that combination of words means. Everyone knows what it is to think that you can't possibly do this.

What a new person doesn't realize is that all the strange faces looking back at them love this gym and want them to love it too. They want that person to feel welcome and comfortable. They want to help, encourage, and support them until they are confident and strong and can pass their expertise on to another new person.

Language
The language my gym uses is a bit esoteric. Acronyms like AMRAP, WOD, and PR are tossed around without definition. Cleans, jerks, thrusters, and snatches are a regular part of workouts. The words aren't meant to exclude people. They are just shortcuts. Because most people don't have preconceived ideas about their meaning, the gym gets to define them. When someone in my gym uses these words, I know exactly what they're saying because I've encountered them firsthand. We don't tell stories about doing a clean from two years ago; we do cleans together today.

Participatory
The gym owner is a great coach. As we work, he is constantly scanning the room looking for someone who could use some tips about their form, some words of encouragement, or some challenge to work harder. The coach doesn't stand in front of the room and do the workout for us while we all watch. The coach puts us to work, and we walk away feeling stronger and smarter. We've overcome a difficult physical challenge and learned how to more effectively face that challenge next time.

The Church
I wish the church was more like this. I wish that new people were welcomed and encouraged. I wish that words were experienced and defined, not tossed around without consideration for newcomers. I wish that we all changed clothes when we walked in the door in a way that broke down barriers between different people. I wish that everyone got to participate.

Remember these t-shirts from the 90s?

The crazy thing about my gym is that people pay a good amount of money to go there and get beat up. I had ibuprofen with my breakfast this morning. Churches, on the other hand, can't get people to come for free.

I wish I knew more about what Paul had in mind when he compared himself to an athlete. I love the feeling of meeting a difficult challenge head on. I love knowing that every ache and pain I feel is making me stronger and healthier. I think Christianity should be challenging. It should include meeting and overcoming obstacles, resulting in
a sense of strength and preparation for the next obstacle.

Maybe it's just because we attend a large church, but what I feel like instead is that most of the people in our congregation spend Sunday mornings watching someone else work out, hearing about their accomplishments and victories.

I am not the first one to see similarities between being an athlete and being a Christian. However, I wonder if the church has lost the focus that Paul had. How many Christians are running aimlessly? How many Christians go to church on Sunday because that's what you do on Sunday? How many Christians have a long list of rights and wrongs that protect them from dealing with the complexities of life? How many Christians live in a comfortable bubble that pushes out ambiguity? How many Christians are beating the air?

All Shall Be Well

"A good theologian...is a person who is close to people, who has a creative imagination and the gift of listening, who shows a commitment to hard work, who accepts the risk of making a mistake, who is a person of self-renewal: a person dedicated to overcoming routine and considering theology as an ongoing task and a responsibility rather than a job to be done." - Clemens Sedmak

  
Church
I almost quit my church yesterday. I know. Typical, right? Another young adult leaving the church.

Image source: www.snagajob.com

The thing is, I've really tried. I lead a small group. We welcome new people whenever they visit. I introduce myself to people I don't know every week. I even served as an intern on staff for eight months. I write sermon discussion questions for sermon-based small groups. I've played keyboard and bass on the worship team. I've been on the prayer team. I've greeted people at the welcome desk. I've registered kids for Bible School.

And that's just at this church. That doesn't even take into account my previous church experience. I've served on a church board. I've preached. I've taught every level of Sunday School class. I've led Bible studies. I've even led the music for children's church (and I can't sing!)

In short, I've done it all. And my husband's list is even longer and more impressive.

But on Sunday mornings, we get up and go to church. We sit in our seats and listen to a sermon and some music. No one talks to us. I look around the room and see some familiar faces, but none who know my name. Our pastor preaches about how powerfully God spoke to him at a recent conference. He said that he was feeling lost, like just another face in the crowd when in the midst of three thousand people, someone said, "I have a message for people here from Kansas."

I understood what he felt like. Invisible. Unknown. Alone in a sea of people. But no one had something to say to me. My baby was sick, so we retrieved him from the nursery and took him home. I left as alone as I came.

My pastor and his wife were supposed to have lunch with us, but they had to cancel at the last minute. We've been trying to schedule a time to have a meal with them since March, but they are pretty busy.

My pastor also said, "Young adults, you have been given the privilege of standing on the shoulders of those who came before you. Pursue relationships with mentors. Listen to the wisdom of your elders."

I don't think that we are the first who have found our elders too busy with the work of church to make time to build enough of a relationship with us to impact our lives in a meaningful way.

I am thirty now. I'm tired of waiting. I have experience. I have a master's degree. I even have some positions of leadership and influence in the church. But none of those are enough for us to have someone to talk to on Sunday morning. And they are definitely not enough for us to help shape the vision of the church.

Motherhood

Image source: goodreads.com

I have just begun reading Clemens Sedmak's book, Doing Local Theology: A Guide for Artisans of a New Humanity. His primary premise is that theology should be done locally, by the people and for the people. Theology is not something that scholars sit around and think up. It is also not something that has to be re-invented every few years. The best theology comes from a combination of learning how to serve God in one's context while also listening to the wisest teachers from our day and the past.

My previous post about "the new domesticity" reflected the daily frustration I feel in not being able to be part of something where I feel I can contribute productively. I long to think and talk and write about things that matter, for people who can benefit from my contribution.

In a conversation with my husband, one of my professors acknowledged the validity of this frustration. He said that raising a child is important, but so is doing theology. When my husband told me that, I was overcome by emotion. Finally, someone admitted that devoting all my time to raising a child might not be enough.

Theology
"Our deepest wound is that we do not want to be healed."

Sedmak goes on to quote Erich Fromm's theory that we do not want to be liberated because we fear responsibility.

While I think this is a life-changing idea, I realized this weekend that I don't want to be liberated because I fear not being given responsibility. As long as I spend my energy on self-pity, I don't have to wonder what else I should be doing.

Sedmak's words made me wonder, what should I be pursuing? What is my local theology?

I might as well be a sixteen-year-old boy.

I realized that there are lots of people who live as outsiders. Outside the workforce. Outside the church. Outside traditional roles in society. Outside any sort of power structure. Maybe my location for doing theology is on the outside.

I'm still tempted to quit my church, but maybe being on the outside isn't such a bad place to be.

"We all have our cross to carry. We do theology because people suffer. Doing theology is a way to attend to the wounds of our time. ... We all do theology as wounded healers, as people in need of healing and comfort, and as people who can share the life-giving strength of our wounds."

My theology tells me that I can't quit my church any more than I can quit being a mother. But what I can do is theology. I can make meaning for myself and others. I can walk alongside my mom friends as we try to make sense of our lives apart from the roles that used to define us. I can walk with my young adult friends as we try to find places to serve meaningfully in churches dictated by fifty-year-olds. I can walk alongside women with giftings and callings to ministry who find church leaders less than enthusiastic about their leadership.

And I can hope, along with Julian of Norwich, that "all shall be well, that all manner of things shall be well."

The New Domesticity

"You can call it a movement or you can say, 'I've got way too much free time on my hands.'" - Stephen Colbert to Emily Matchar, author of Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity

My thoughts aren't fully formed on this topic because I am very much in the throes of the "new domesticity" and not an objective researcher as I assume author Emily Matchar to be, but I couldn't let Stephen Colbert's interview go by completely without comment.

Emily makes an interesting point. Women are choosing to stay home and engage in a variety of more traditional domestic practices for a wide range of reasons. She cites tree-hugging hippies in the Portlandia
genre who pickle everything to Mormon housewives in Utah who are selling homemade scarves on Etsy, all dropping out of more traditional careers to pursue domestic life.

There is an incredible urban farm in Kansas City, which also hosts a weekly farm market called Badseed Market. The face of the farm, Brooke Salvaggio, is an inspiration to me. She sends out a weekly newsletter, writes articles for local publications, sits on panel discussions about local food and other topics, hosts frequent classes, and has a two-year-old--in addition to being a full-time farmer. She is wonderfully passionate about vegetables and enthusiastic about sharing her passion with everyone she can.

So I know these women exist--the women who are wholeheartedly embracing a "new domesticity." However, I find myself identifying much more with Stephen Colbert's comment. I halfheartedly garden, have not found the courage to attempt canning, cook when I feel like it and buy pizza the rest of the time, and still haven't figured out how to thread the sewing machine. We don't have any plans to start raising chickens. I haven't found any craft-based source of income.

I have a few mom friends, and I think most of them are similar. Daycare isn't really an attractive option for our kids. It's expensive and not always of very good quality. We miss working, but we're happy to have kids and be able to take care of them. What we don't have, though, is any overarching philosophy that has led us to withdraw from more traditional careers. We aren't homesteaders or farmers. We don't sit and knit all day. We mostly just try to keep from going crazy while we're stuck at home with kids all day every day. What we have is a lot of time on our hands.

I have no idea what conclusions Emily Matchar comes to in her book. I do wonder, though, if we have lost our way a bit.

Many developing countries raise their children in communities and multi-family households, not behind their fences and closed doors. The French have an extensive government-funded childcare program, in which a majority of French children participate. I don't know how other cultures raise their children, but in the women who find themselves in the midst of the "new domesticity," I hear an underlying plea for something different than the 2.5 kid, white-picket fence families that Americans have pursued for so long.

The thing is, we don't really need to can. Again, as Stephen Colbert pointed out, food in cans is just about the cheapest thing you can buy. My husband recently sewed a laundry bag for me. It cost more to buy the pieces than the completed laundry bags in the store (which, unfortunately, were not very washable). My garden is producing more tomatoes than I know what to do with while I have a jar of salsa sitting in the refrigerator.

My feeling is that the skills, creativity, innovation, and passion of a significant number of women are being wasted in an economy where children are something of an inconvenience that only un-ambitious women pursue, employees are a commodity being bought and sold rather than raised up, and passion about vegetables makes a business meeting really awkward. Staying at home with children is a convenient way to quietly withdraw from a culture where one doesn't quite fit in.

Maybe I'm unique in feeling this way, but most of the stay-at-home moms I know are smart, talented, educated, passionate, and generally people I would want on my team. They are also often lonely, uncertain, and isolated.

In my wildest dreams, organizations work towards a goal of producing something of value and quality to better people's lives. They employ talented people who can help achieve that goal. People work together to help each other participate in the organizations they feel most passionate about by trading childcare, transportation, or even housing. Maybe someone's organization of choice is a local food canning company or maybe it's an insurance company that wants to provide excellent insurance coverage and customer service. Maybe it's a school in an un-accredited school district or a community house providing food and other resources to those in need. Regardless, I wish the talents and passions of those who have dropped out of the work force could be used in a way that benefits everyone.

I should probably move to Portland.

Fixed Points in Time

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's actually more like a big ball of wibbly, wobbly, time-y wimey stuff." - Dr. Who

I was talking to a friend last night who informed me that Dr. Who had resolved her angst about making big decisions in life. According to Dr. Who (according to her), there are fixed points in time that don't change. Instead of seeing time as a linear progression from one decision to the next, she understands that some things are just meant to be. She shared the story of how she came to her position as a linguistics professor in an obscure Mayan language. It all started when she picked a language class that happened to work with her schedule. When she heard the professor start speaking in Kaqchikel on that first day, she knew that her life had changed.

Because she picked a class that fit her schedule.

Another friend shared her story. As she was walking to the office to hand in her student teaching application, she passed a friend in the hallway and asked her what school she should request. Her friend suggested her own alma mater, so she wrote that on the form. She's now in her seventh year as a teacher at that school and can't imagine working at any other school.

Because she listened to a passing friend in the hallway.

I tried to think of a moment in my life like that, and all I could think of was the day I pulled into Kansas City and Mike was there to give me the keys to the house in which I would be staying. I was afraid my friends would think I was lame if my story of destiny was about a guy. But as the night went on, I realized it was bigger than that.

When I decided to go to seminary, I was going for an education with the expectation that I would only be in Kansas City for a few years before moving on to a more permanent assignment. I connected with a roommate through a mutual friend, and we chose a house at the suggestion of an admissions employee.

It was that house that changed my destiny.

First look at the house (and my future husband)

Turning thirty has made me reflective, and I realized last night that I could not ask for more. I am married to the man of my dreams. I have a beautiful baby boy. I graduated with honors from a masters program. I've gotten to know some really incredible people and get to spend the occasional evening talking about destiny with people who are old enough to actually have some perspective on what that means. I even still get to play ultimate frisbee every week.

These two guys are pretty awesome.

All of those things are in my life now because I happened to move into a house. A house where I met my husband when he gave me the keys. A house where I found a community that supported and encouraged me through grad school. A house where the IT guy invited me to a church that, though now closed, has been the source of some of my closest friends in Kansas City. A house filled with other students who made every gathering a party.

Five of the original eight--does this look like a party or what?

We were celebrating my friend's birthday last night, and she said that she doesn't always do something for her birthday, but she is in a really good place this year and wanted to celebrate that with some of the friends who have helped make that happen. Her gratitude reminded me of my gratitude for the friends who have come into my life over the past few years. I don't know how things would have been different had I not chosen to live in that house, but as Dr. Who so wisely suggested (via my friend), maybe we don't need to worry so much about making the exact right decision in every situation. Maybe some things are just meant to be.

All these babies are part of my life now too!