Eeny, meeny, miny, mo

As it turns out, one other part of this transitional time is the upcoming departure of my roommate, who is leaving for the greener pastures of his girlfriend's home. I admit this was quite the stressor for me, as I tried to imagine how on earth I was going to find a new housemate remotely from another state, to which I would not return until 3 weeks before the potential move-in.

I finally got off my duff last weekend and began the search process (nothing like some good procrastination to make everything better!). In addition to dispersing the notice among my friends, I also tried the tactic that worked for me last time I was entering school: using the campus housing office to find possible candidates. One of the delightful advantages of this from last time - besides finding my best roomie ever, who was darn hard to replace when she left - is that having a roommate who's in the same school with me meant that we had instant common ground, and could provide some mutual support and information exchange as we both moved through the program. It was not just helpful; it was great to have a buddy exploring that new territory with me.

The campus housing post was fruitful; I've now spoken with two interested folks. One male, one female; one a law student, the other in the business school; both were good conversations about the house and neighborhood and rooming habits and communication, etc., etc. The twist: both are coming from out of town, and there won't be any chance to meet either of them before I need to make a decision (for my sanity as well as theirs). How do I choose between two folks I've only spoken to via phone and email?

The last time I did a search, for my current roommate, it was a multi-interview process where I felt like I got a pretty good sense of who he was and was able to share my concerns and expectations. I was particularly paranoid and cautious because the woman before him turned out to be so awful, when she had seemed so nice upon meeting her. Excepting college, I've never roomed with someone I didn't at least get to meet face-to-face; while both of the folks seem cool, I still feel very nervous.

I think this is going to be yet another of those trust-in-the-Lord for guidance situations, because I don't have any way to do all the things that would make me feel "secure" in this decision (even if that security is an illusion). I'm having a lot of those this summer; but the good part of that is that I keep re-learning that when I leave things in His hands, they do get taken care of, quite well. I'm going to give this some meditation, and pray for clear hearing ... I'd appreciate your prayers as well, plus any practical tips for out-of-town roommate assessment!

Time for the good stuff

Well, I'm 2-1/2 weeks into my 6-week Virginia vacation, and the most descriptive term for it is: awesome! Other excellent terms: fun; relaxing; sun-filled; sneezy. (Yeah, that last one is a little weird, but my right nostril is having an allergy fit. Yes, just one nostril.)

My nephew and I haven't quite had a specific schedule, but we've been good about getting out of the house - to the pool; on a very interesting suburban public transit excursion; on errands. He'll also go out and play at a friend's house or at the park, so even if I have to be inside taking care of some business, he's still out and about. We have a limit of about 30-60 minutes of Xbox a day; we're working on cutting down the TV time. (It's tough; we both love TV! Although I think I've had enough cartoons ... at least I'd rather watch the live action teeny-bop shows, if I have to choose among the kid offerings.) Often, when we're in, we do play board games, which are a family favorite pastime; he's beaten me at Payday more times than I like to admit.

I've been shopping, cooking dinner, doing laundry, cleaning up the kitchen, minding the young'uns. It's encouraging, in that I actually don't mind some of the activities that could be a part of housewife-hood and parenthood ... well, the parenting of a well-behaved, fairly independent 10-year-old. (They pop out like that, right?) I even manage to get in occasional periods of personal productivity, like taking care of bills or roommate searching or school-related stuff, or working on the little research project I have going this summer, or working out, or planning wedding things for my sister. I need to work a little more on my discipline in getting up and getting dressed at a reasonable hour (= before 11AM or noon), but overall, I feel like I'm not exceptionally, embarassingly lazy.

The best part of all this is just being here, being chilled out, and getting to make time for all of this. I feel very un-stressed, which is such a lovely change from where I was, and I continue to feel happy and contented. Finances are tight, but not worrisome, and at least I'm earning my room and board by being a useful household and child caretaker. Getting to spend this amount of time with my nephew rocks, because even at close range and constant company, he remains the best boy ever: sweet-natured, funny, loving, smart, goofy, adorable. I don't get to spend as much time with my sister because she does have to do this crazy thing called work; but when she is here, we hang out and have fun. It's great to watch the two of them together, because they so completely love each other. My sister is a great mom, and I am so proud of her for that.

I know I'll have to get ready for more work and less play as September approaches. But I also hope I can take some of this peace back with me, and remember to make time for the best part of my life, which is spending it with people I love. There's nothing like just being able to bewith your friends and family at home; not even necessarily doing anything, but just being together. Good times, yo.

Random observation

OK, so I'm not fit by any stretch of the imagination, as both my ever-present belly and my consistently low cardiovascular endurance demonstrate. But I also feel like I'm a reasonably active person; I get around to many places by walking, and I have to go up that darn hill to my house every single day. Not to mention, while other very fit people are doing that with only 120-160 pounds on them, I'm carrying 200+ with me all the time.

I've always wondered: why doesn't the simple act of hauling myself around count for more towards my fitness? I mean, I'm not slouching around on a couch or in a car all the time; I walk, I take stairs, I still have to run for that bus or train and I can usually make it. I can walk 2-3 miles on a whim when I decide it's a nice day and I want the fresh air ... I feel like I should be much more fit than I appear.

Mind you, I'm also firmly convinced that I'm a very muscular person - it's just hidden under a mostly opaque layer of fat. I swear, if you took away my belly, my abs are like a rock. :-)

Match

I just watched a screening of a very good movie, (500) Days of Summer, which I highly recommend seeing. It's a relationships movie, and a surprisingly accurate one - sometimes painfully so. I saw the ghosts of my own dating history in more than one scene.

[Please note: I will try to write the following without giving away too much plot, but if you're one of those people who absolutely hates even the hint of spoilers and might want to see this movie, don't keep reading. But do go see it - it's good!]

It's funny: I loved the movie, but I also kind of hated it for that accuracy, and at the end I felt sad. I suppose it wasn't a movie that helped along my desire to believe in happy endings, the way I want my romantic comedies to do (but I also at the same time hate them for giving me hopes that are never matched by reality). I didn't want to be reminded of my relationship misfires, and to wonder even now if I'm in another one but I just haven't had that moment of realization yet. There is a message intertwined in the movie about how right it is when you know you found the one ... but I think I'd feel much better about that message if I was already sitting in that place of certainty.

I couldn't help but think of all the men I've dated in my life, most of whom have found life partners - ironically, those are the ones who squashed my heart like a pancake. It's not that I wished them evil, or an eternity without finding happiness in love (at least, not after I sufficiently recovered from the heartbreak); but I certainly didn't want them to find it before me. It seems unfair somehow that they should go so quickly - sometimes directly - from my misery to their destined mate, while I am still left wondering.

It also kind of made me want to have a "future" conversation with my boyfriend, which I had just gotten comfortable with the idea of not having for a while. If we already know that we have major differences in some of the things we believe and want, should I cut my losses before I get even more invested than I already am? Can I still manage to get out without getting hurt? Our relationship seems so good right now, and has always felt open and honest and comfortable and peaceful and consistently enjoyable and pretty matched in caring - not like my others - but I am a) historically prone to ignoring big red flashing signals that say "Turn back from this relationship!" and b) used to having the rug pulled out from under me just when I think a relationship is making good progress.

I think I've been pretty cautious this time, and I don't think I have my rose-colored glasses on; but that doesn't mean I'm not still waiting to find out exactly how and when this will end. While I try not t be such a downer in my daily interactions, I feel somewhere in the back of my mind that the best I can hope for I that the end doesn't totally suck, and that I get over it fast. Much like one of the characters in the movie, I am pretty sure that this soulmates/true love/find your life partner nonsense is a big pile of stinky poopy. I do have friends whose marriages seem to suggest otherwise ... but I think I am not destined to share their happy fate.

Gee whiz - from my description, you'd think this was a terribly depressing movie! It's not, though ... it's very cute and funny and smart and you should absolutely go see it; despite my mournful reflections, I truly enjoyed the film. And my dire prophecies probably have much more to do with fear of the past than any particular prediction of future behavior. While I don't know how long my boyfriend and I will be together, I am thoroughly thankful for the wonderful time that we've had so far, and I plan to enjoy all the good times that remain for us. I do hope that one day I can let go of that bad history, that it will lose its power to rise up, remind me, and run me over all over again.

Cheers! ;-)

Solving poverty

This may be an incredibly naïve - not to mention completely unoriginal - post; I'm putting that right out front, in the hopes that I'll get a pass if this turns out to be pure nonsense.

I'm at my second conference in 3 weeks, as my high-travel post-employment period draws to a close and my schedule-free period begins. I'm listening to the panelists and responders in a fabulous presentation on community food systems and environmental justice, which is a topic that has grown increasingly near to my heart over the past couple years. And as I've been attending all these sessions at these two conferences about improving cities and designing communities and engaging all stakeholders, this recurring question of addressing poverty and its affects seems to lurk just below the surface of many discussions.

I mentioned tongue-in-cheek in a previous post that, following my rant against and intellectual non-producer class, I had also come up with a simple solution to poverty. This was only half in jest; as I was sitting in sessions later that day, I really started thinking about what poverty is and how we define it. We typically define it by income - but as with pretty much everything about money, that measurement is merely a proxy for the real issue at hand. To wit, I asked a friend: if you lived in the US and made only $15,000/year but you had secure access to safe, healthy, good quality housing, food, health care and education, are you actually poor? I'd argue not; poverty is not about any specific amount of wealth you have, but about whether your available resources allow you to reliably meet your basic needs.

Well, duh. Who would argue with that? But while we might all agree on that basic definition of poverty, I think we generally put our resources and efforts in the wrong place. The error starts with money, actually; we've forgotten that money is a proxy for real things, not a real thing itself. So we focus on solving poverty through "wealth creation": giving people ways to earn money to buy their basic needs. We think this is a much better long term alternative than just giving people food, housing, etc., directly ... and I'd agree with the idea that we don't want people to be dependent on others to get their basic needs and unable to be more self-sufficient.

Except: the phrase is "Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime," not "Teach a man to work a job that gets him money to buy fish and he eats for a lifetime." The fallacy is that having money to purchase the goods we need makes us independent; but it actually makes us totally dependent on a production and distribution system for basic goods that most of us don't understand and aren't involved in except at the very end stages. Not to mention that we are also dependent on the vagaries of the employment market to provide our income, over which we also have very little control.

I think a real solution to poverty and dependency would take out the money proxy and the middle man's profit that raises the barrier to goods, as much as could possibly be done. My solution to poverty has three pretty simple stages:

1) Provide basic necessities to those who lack them, immediately. Rent all the high-quality housing on the market for everyone currently defined as poor. Hire doctors, rent space to increase clinic capacity and buy equipent and supplies to provide free care for their medical needs. Buy all the food we can from local and organic farmers and distribute it for free to those who need it. Get everyone clothes and shoes appropriate for the climate they live in. Do all necessary school repairs for immediate health and safety, hire a huge number of the best teachers we can find and purchase all the up-to-date materials they need to teach the best classes to the poorest students. And don't tell me we lack the money to do it; we can always find money for whatever we decide is important enough to fund. We just dropped uncountable billions on the most asinine bailouts of the most irresponsible companies in the world; we could feed, house, heal and educate everyone in the country if we actually wanted to.

2) Once folks are initially settled into their homes, having regular healthy meals, receiving medical care and basic education, now we can start skills building, teaching people how to meet these basic needs for themselves: how to grow food; build; keep healthy and treat the sick; make clothes, furniture, and other household goods and tools; and how to share knowledge and civic responsibility with others in their community. I absolutely agree that it's critical to establish a level of independence and self-sufficiency where people can do as much as they can for themselves. I also agree with another principle behind "welfare-to-work" efforts: the time where you can depend on others to keep providing for you should be limited, and extended only in rare circumstances. Let's use 2 years as a time frame to start with, although it might not be the right one; during that time, after basic needs are initially met, anyone receiving services has to be actively participating in training toward being able to provide those services for themselves and others. Over the two years, they should move from being service provider trainees to the highly competent leaders and organizers of these services for their community. They should be building the new homes, schools, shops, clinics or hospitals, and governing and knowledge-transfer systems that they will need for themselves; and the outside helpers who were initially needed to provide those services will increasingly release responsibility and involvement to the people themselves.

3) In order to move from the emergency systems that were initially established to opportunities for ongoing self- and community-sufficiency, people need access to space and initial materials to build from. It's the 40 acres and a mule principle, which we're still paying for not properly implementing at the time: you can't just set someone loose from a position of systemic oppression, not give them some resources that can generate their future, and expect them not to end up back in a system of oppression in the near future. I actaully think the more difficult part of this process won't be the material goods, but rather the space question. Our conception of land and property ownership and its conncetion to status make us loath to consider giving it to others without making them pay for it, to say nothing of yielding up what we've already laid claim to. Land control and exclusion have been key tools for those who are in power (or want to be) to maintain dominance over another person or group. Sharing and/or giving back use, rights and control over land is a critical component of addressing poverty in the US and abroad, and without recognizing and responding to that, we will never solve the problem.

4) Almost finally, there has to be the flexibility to determine the kinds of exchange systems that people want to establish related to meeting their basic needs. Beyond a fairly basic level, it's highly likely that any one person or family will need help from other members of their community in continuing to meet basic needs. (None of us are actually self-sufficient, even the most wealthy.) There should be a variety of accepted and easily facilitated ways to exchange between communities members - and preference should be placed on those systems that don't require money. Money not only represents distance between people and the goods or services they consume, but also between people themselves; it's a way to make exchange possible between people who don't know or trust each other enough to exchanges goods and services directly. We should encourage communities to form relationships that allow exchanges of trust with one another; this is true social capital, the stuff we're always trying to create in our communities.

5) Really finally, while a traditional capitalist market for manufacture and exchange may arise and thrive for non-essential/luxury goods, certain things must be protected from the vagaries of markets and ensured for our citizens at all times. This sounds like total blasphemy to our capitalist ears, but we already do this with one important aspect of essential citizen services - public education. We've made a societal commitment to providing public schools for every child no matter where they live or how rich they are, rather than leaving that up to someone's ability to generate a certain level of income. (Mind you, we've tied quality to income through the way that we fund and maintain said schools ... but at least part of the system was trying to head in the right direction.) What's odd is that we seem completely unwilling to provide that same universal assurance of access for other services even more essential, and without which it's unreasonably difficult to take advantage of public education: we recognize a right to education that must be protected, but not to housing, food, clothing or medical care. How do we expect a homeless, hungry, naked and sick person to get through schooling or training well?

I call this solution simple, and I think it is. It's tempting to say that we're going to need a huge new bureaucracy to manage all of this; but I'd argue that we have plenty of existing bureaucracy that can not only be used, but also simplified to focus on easily and quickly meeting these goals. The problem may not be so much complicated as just plain difficult, because of the radical change in our priorities and will to achieve them that all of the above assumes. (Yes, I'm back to radicalism again.)

At any rate, I've been writing this post all day, and missing pieces of conference sessions, so it's time to close out. I'll be thinking about this some more ... People may call me crazy, and hypocritical because my life doesn't look like this yet - but I still think there's a gem of truth here to be dug out and shared, and that it's important to shake it free.

The Plan

(No, not the Cylon plan to destroy the human race ... for that, you'll have to wait for the upcoming BSG movie!!)

Things are quickly settling down as to where I'll be and what I'll be doing in the coming months; this period of my life is quite exciting and fun, as it combines the peace and enjoyment of resting and waiting to see what God puts into place with the surprise of discovering exactly what those next pieces will be. It's like Christmas presents: I know what I put on my wish list, but I never know what gifts I've gotten until the day comes and the package is opened.

Gift #1: I got into grad school! Full time in the Master in Public Administration program at Suffolk University. I found out just a day or two before I went down to see my family in DC/VA, after anxiously watching the mail for weeks.

Gift #2: I got money for grad school! About half of my tuition is covered by a grant/employment fellowship, which totally rocks and makes school quite feasible. I'll still have to take out some loans, but not nearly what I was afraid I might have to do. I'm also going to see if I can try to get another on campus job a few hours a week (ideally, in some way related to what I'm studying) or, alternatively, a little outside job (again, hopefully related to my field, but not so involved that it distracts from my studies) to help with the bills. But the bottom line (no pun intended) is that I should be able to stay in Boston and in my current apartment for the fall.

Gift #3: I still get to spend time in VA with my family! Killing two birds with one stone, I'm going to help my sister out by watching my nephew in July and August (eliminating day care costs and allowing her to work an extra job during those months), and I help myself out by subletting my place so I don't have to worry about paying rent and utilities out of my limited cash reserve for that same period. In a special bonus benefit, I get to be near my other sister while I'm helping her with the wedding planning, and I'll get to see my parents and youngest sister all throughout the summer. So, if you know anyone looking for a July and August sublet, drop me a line! :-)

All in all, it's been a delight to keep seeing what happens next, and to do it in a different way than my normal angsty, trying to figure out how to make everything work, trying to create the options for myself kind of way. I have the blessed luxury of resting - not being lazy or inattentive, but being content in where I am at the moment and knowing that when the next step comes, it will be clear to me and I'll be ready and able to take action. There are still some things that I get nervous about at times - will I find the right sub-letter? do I have enough money to get all the way to September? will I have enough time to get back to Boston and settle in before school? will my relationship with my boyfriend change because of the time apart? - but I'm doing pretty well at turning those worries back over when they pop up. And I remain very, very happy; there's no doubt in my mind that I left my job at the right time, and everything I've done since then has been wonderful time with family, friends and new people I meet. My mom's still a bit concerned for me, but I think she's getting used to my new-found free-time status.

*****

Speaking of free time status, I realized after two weeks of a rather variable waking-dressing-leaving the house routine, I have to give myself a bit more structure. For June, I'd like to make sure I get up, take an exercise walk around the neighborhood, fix myself breakfast and shower and dress before 11AM. For July and August, a friend just inspired me to plan some regular weekly activities for me and my nephew. Not necessarily getting up at the same time every day, but having a day where we go walking or biking around the neighborhood; a day where we go to the library; a day when we go visit my parents at their apartment (and take advantage of the pool in their complex); a day when we go into DC for activities at the museums or other cool places. Hopefully, it will keep us both from watching the Disney Channel and playing Xbox all day ... Although there's sure to be some of that, too!

What to do?

So, I just finished up this conference of young urban leaders from around the country, who are all doing pretty good things. As usual, I started holding forth in a conversation about the radical restructuring of our society; and a fellow Vanguard quite reasonably asked how much I was doing some of these radical things in my own life. I made some response about works in progress and the need for a community to exchange with, blah blah blah. The honest answer is that my life is still not particularly radical ... But I appreciate the question, because it prompted me to reflect more on this new radically just and sustainable lifestyle I keep talking about, and whether or not I'm really moving toward it.

There have been some changes, albeit pretty incremental (darn those incrementalist for being right! at least this time). I pay more attention to my energy use, waste disposal, and the source of my food (often) and clothes (much less often). My Lent resolution helped me get back into tithing, and realizing that I have abundant resources I can give to others. But I live mostly the same: same nice house and neighborhood (no sharing the lot of the poor by living among them), frequent spending of my disposable income on non-necessities (no curbing my expenses to give away even more), lots of accumulated possessions (no large-scale disposition of stuff to simplify my life). I'm a big one for insisting that making radical change is just a matter of firm decision; but apparently it's a decision I have no small amount of trouble making.

This is a frustratingly slow process that often makes me feel quite hypocritical. If there's anything that this recent experience with my faith and job has taught me, it's that the Lord will change my heart and give me the grace to make the right choice at the right time; I suppose I'm just eagerly awaiting the period where he starts to strip me of some of these cultural and material encumbrances. Wait, maybe I don't exactly mean eager ...

*****

This is sort of related to the above, but also not. I've always thought that my real vocation should be philosopher more than anything else; I want to be able to think and talk and write about things and encourage others to think about them, too and put them into practice. It's kind of why I want to go back to grad school, for the freedom to think more.

But as I was also railing in the above-mentioned conversation about people who generate intellectual "products" but no useful goods or services to meet the basic needs of themselves or others (i.e., dependent on a producer class so I can be an intellectual leader whose needs are provided for in exchange for my beneficent wisdom and rule), I decided I'd better start learning to produce some things. So I'll see if I can use this free time to become a philosopher-maker (as opposed to philosopher-king).

In another bit of randomly inspired goal-setting, here's what I'd love to do by the end of the summer:

1) Learn to cook. I can prepare some very basic meals, but I lack a general understanding of how to cook meat well (especially poultry) or how to season anything with some modicum of deliberateness. I'd like to feel like if you dropped me in a kitchen with a random assortment of common meats, vegetables and spices, I could create something passably tasty.
2) Learn to make something with my hands. My first thoughts are learning to sew or knit ... I feel like I lack a basic level of self-sufficiency with not being able to sew properly. I also feel like I could make cool, useful things for myself or other people if I could knit.

*****

My last set of revelations for the day, besides a simple solution to poverty, had to do with the need to get really civically involved in my city. I need to know and have talked to my alderman; I need to start attending some of these public meetings and keeping myself informed; I need to subscribe to my local paper. I was also railing at a different point during the day about how we aren't active enough as citizens and we don't acknowledge our responsibility to be consistently engaged in our own governance. Again, if I'm to avoid being a total hypocrite, it's about time I did some more of that active citizenship myself.

Everything I learned about leaving, I learned from Scrubs

Last week was the Scrubs season - possibly series - finale, with lead actor Zach Braff doing his last episode. It was a pretty emotional little moment for me, because I absolutely love Scrubs, and if it doesn't come back for another season, I'll be really sad. Even if it does come back, it will definitely be different, and it'll be interesting to see how they re-form the show with a new dynamic. The finale included at the end little outtakes from the final shooting, and clips of the season wrap moments for various actors. I unashamedly admit that I teared up, particularly at the one with Judy Reyes (who oddly, I saw just a week later in an episode of Castle, where she was a totally different kind of character ... nice contrast).

When I woke up in the morning, I discovered I was still agitated with the emotions from the previous night. Yes, some of it was for the show it self (I do seriously love it), but the rest had to do with the resonance the show had for my own personal situation, and some things I had to resolve about leaving a place where I've invested a lot of my time, evergy and self.

[SPOLIER WARNING: If you haven't watched the Scrubs finale and don't want to know what happens until you do, don't keep reading.]

As J.D. prepares for his last day at Sacred Heart, he is looking forward to a day that will appropriately mark the end of 8 years of learning, growing and contributing in this place. The experiences he went through, both personal and professional, were so significant to him, and he wants someone to sum these years up in their actions that day (as he usually does in his voiceovers). There are funny bits about his friend Turk starting off with a big farewell gesture and trying to maintain that intesity throughout the day ... but for the most part, the J.D.'s final day at Sacred Heart is disappointingly normal. Except for one or two small (but touching) moments with close friends, no one really remarks on what is happening; there's no party, no sendoff, no occasion created to show how much he was loved and respected. (There are some other funny bits on this point, about sendoffs for other folks who are going on maternity leave or week-long trips.) J.D. does manage to engineer a final tribute speech from his gruff mentor (and his long-desired hug), but in the end, he has to make his own quiet peace with leaving.

My agitation of the morning after was my own realization that my final days were likely to be much like J.D.'s - largely quiet, unmarked, a business as usual for the rest of the world. No one from my organization was going to fete me or shower me with flowers, tributes and awards; there would be no giant announcement lamenting my departure; and I was going to walk out of the office without ceremony, to go on to the rest of my evening and my life. I was a little bitter that morning, because I thought that someone ought to honor me, gosh darn it; but as my sister reminded me, I had to be at peace with the choice that I had made, and not dependent on others to validate my time here.

She was right, although I hated to hear it at the time and thought she was being very unsympathetic. :-) But my decision to leave my job wasn't a power play to get people to recognize me, or a way to say a giant screw-you to the people I worked with, or with the intention of watching the organization crumble in my absence. I'm leaving because I reached a moment when it was clear that my time at the organization was done, and even though it seems strange to leave a secure job in an uncertain economy without another prospect lined up right away, I feel very confident and at peace that this way the absolute right decision. I feel like God was preparing the way all this time; it was kind of fascinating to me how on Easter Sunday I finally felt reconciled with him, and then that Tuesday I had a meeting where it became clear that it was time to go. At first, I said, "Wait, you take me from all that joy to this crappy day?" But it was actually perfect timing ... I'd been going through this conversation with myself and my board about leaving for months, since almost a year ago, and agonizing and trying to figure out alternate solutions and line up other possibilities. It never seemed to work out where I could feel comfortable leaving; but when this day came in April and I came out of that meeting, the decision was so clear that it was hardly a decision at all, just the obvious thing I was supposed to do next.

Since then, I haven't really had any doubts, and I've been almost unbelievably happy. I don't know if I've gotten into grad school; I don't know if I'm going to have income to be able to stay in Boston through the summer, let alone beyond that; I might have to make a major move back to Virginia to be with my family. But none of that troubles or worries me; in fact, the only times I felt agita during this whole process was when people tried to suggest that maybe I should stay on a couple more months (which raised a horrible twisting feeling inside), and when I wasn't quite letting go of a project that I've been working on and felt a real investment in (kept me tossing and turning over the past weekend, until I realized that all that tossing and turning was a sign that I was taking a wrong approach, and I realized that God would either make a way for me to continue to be involved that felt absolutely right, or He wouldn't and I wasn't meant to keep being involved). Spiritually, God restored my relationship with Him so that I could have complete faith in what He is doing during this time; and financially, God gave me some extra cushion that I would usually never have, which allows me to spend the next few weeks without worry.

And that's that. I don't yet know what He's doing with me or where He plans for me to be, and tomorrow is my last day at my job - but I can't wait to see what the days after tomorrow will bring. I'll keep you all posted ... withouth this whole distracting "work" thing, I have much more time ot spend online. ;-)

God's Victories

This past Sunday at church, a young woman getting baptized gave a beautiful testimony about her coming to faith in Christ. As she spoke, she mentioned not only the joy of discovering and abiding in Him, but also the struggles that she had in her journey. There were times when she truly felt the devil was reaching out to try and draw her away from the new life that God was giving her; but she triumphantly hailed her presence at the baptismal ceremony that day as "one of God's victories."

It seems the best way to describe my journey over the past several weeks - and years - as well. The period of confusion, doubt, dismay, distrust and rebellion that I've gone through over the past two years took me to a place where I came the closest I think I ever have to wondering about the very existence of God. I certainly wasn't convinced of His beneficence, at least toward me; I was pretty sure He was actively ignoring my needs and pleas, and possibly trying to see how much He could throw at me before I just gave up and killed myself. And those weeks where I decided to go back to church for Lent ... yikes. That was awful.

Right up until the end. Somehow, when we got to Palm Sunday and that last Holy Week, something shifted. I honestly can't describe what: I don't know that I had a giant revelation, or that something I hadn't heard or understood before became especially clear, or that I heard a voice telling me everything would be OK. But starting with Palm Sunday, I was able to hear praise songs without bitterness and anger, and I was able to listen to Scripture and find that there was something good in it for me. Going to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services felt like part of my own walk that I was taking out of darkness and into what was promised after, and when Easter cam at home with my family, I was able to sing again with a sincere and joyful heart.

I could propose a bunch of different theories: God wanted me to have a deeper understanding of suffering as Christ experienced it. I needed to confront all that bitterness and disappointment by going back to church instead of ignoring it. I had some faith lesson that I had to finally work through to get to the right answer. I guess if an explanation, a "reason" is needed to help this make sense to someone, I can pick one of those. By my simpler answer is that God healed my spirit, by His grace, in a way that I don't really understand but am incredibly thankful for. I don't know exactly why I can trust Him again, but I know that I can, and that knowledge gives me incredible joy and peace.

So much joy and peace that I can leave my job at the end of this week and feel very confident about the future. There's a teaser ending for you, huh? :-)