How Grad School Ruined My Life…

The final assignment is finished.  It’s ready.  But I’m not.  I just can’t hit “post reply.”

Let me begin by making it very clear that this title is painfully misleading.  I could just as easily write a post about how grad school saved my life, because in a lot of ways, it did.  It took me fifteen years after high school graduation to earn my BSM, because I choose to do life in a different order than what is generally considered normal.  I got married first, had a family first.  I have always loved the role in which I raise my kids.  They are the center of my world, for better or worse, whether it's good or right or sometimes over the top.  People who know me well know that I am generally a pretty nice person, but if you mess with my kids, I turn into something crazy.  I mean, I don't even recognize myself!

By the time I walked across the stage at Indiana Wesleyan University and grasped the all consuming piece of paper that finally proved I knew a lot about something as opposed to just a little bit about everything; I was exhausted.  And five little faces, ranging in age from two to eleven, stared back at me with a certain sense of relief, because Mommy was finally finished with school.  I didn't have the heart to tell them I was going back on Monday. 

I had spent the summer deciding what I wanted to do next with my life.  I had been accepted into multiple graduate programs.  Did I want to stick with business or organizational leadership?  Did I want to dive into something different altogether?  Did I have what it took to do graduate level coursework at all?  I finally decided on a theology degree at Northwest Nazarene University.  That place has been calling to me since I was eighteen and lived on the corner of the school property for about six weeks in a house that no longer exists.  It was time to throw my hat in the ring.  Just two years, though.  I was going to blow in, be awesome, and blow out, with another framed diploma to hang on my wall.

Honestly, I thought I was pretty great.  I was also cynical and jaded, mad at the world and certainly mad at the church.  I started that first course wondering just how many people I could tick off in eight weeks.  It took me about three days to realize I was in over my head and the entire first semester just to figure out how to keep up.  But, I have always liked a challenge.  This one rocked my expectations… pretty much all of them…

I was not going to be friends with anyone in my cohort.  I think they figured out early on that I was volatile and broken in about a million pieces.  Try spending two years with people like that, who want to be friends, discussing the deepest issues of spiritual formation, and just see how that not being friends thing works out for you.  I held out until October, I think…

In 2014, sitting in my four year old’s room at bedtime, after an incredibly awesome birthday party for my middle child who had just turned “double digits,” I watched the tape delayed version of my graduation from NNU, went to bed, myself, and woke up early the next morning to preach my first sermon.  I loved it.  Over the next couple of months, I carefully considered my next move.  Would I really take a year off, as planned?  Should I make an attempt at law school?  Maybe it was time to pursue doctoral work, back in the field of organizational leadership.  I could have chosen any of it, but that sermon set me on a path from which I couldn’t turn back.  Scratch that.  I still believe in free will, so we all know I could have turned back, but I knew I wouldn’t.

Sometime later, I received what was probably a form letter to all M.A. graduates of NNU, encouraging me to come back to complete the M.Div.  Before I knew it, I had enrolled in “just one class” for the upcoming fall term.  I think I told Phil about this a few days before the school year began, primarily because I needed his books.  I would have kept it a secret, entirely, except my returning cohort friends were all like, “What the heck are you doing here?”  I guess I should have used a pseudonym…

Well, “one more class” turned to two… and then three… and then fourteen…

The truth is; I found myself at NNU.  I feel more like who I was always created to be when I am there (on campus, for sure, but even online).  I’d move there, with hardly a backwards glance, if I could find a job.  And in a matter of moments, I am going to make one final click on this keyboard, and I am no longer going to be a student at NNU.  Excuse me while I cry just a little bit longer.  It’s something of an identity crisis.

I don’t know what’s next, but here are some things I do know…

I am called to ministry.  There is no denying it, no escaping it, I’m not even trying.

I am good with people.  I never would have guessed this to be true, but it is.  I also need more community than I thought possible.  Go figure.

I am passionate about education.  That’s always been the case.  I’m never going to stop learning, and I’m never going to stop teaching.  I am, however, slightly terrified about what that may or may not look like in the coming years.  I have big dreams, but they’re a little bit scary to pursue.

I’m a good writer and a good editor, even though this particular post reads something like a grocery list.

I still love being a mom more than anything in the world, and finding out who I am has not hindered that in any way but has, instead, helped me to raise kids who are stronger than I ever imagined they could be.

Something will happen tomorrow… and the next day… and the day after that…

I kind of stink at endings, but I’m good at beginnings, and they always follow, so it will be OK. 

L.

And So It's A New Year...

I have made no resolutions.  However... 

Our family has just a few more Sacred Days left, and that time will be followed by Epiphany, which, for me, will begin with some Soul Care Days that I desperately need.  Mostly, I need them desperately because all of the Soul Care Days I took, last year, were saturated with crisis management, and I think I can get away for a few days, now, without that kind of distraction.  When those days draw to a close, I will jump back into school (mine and the kids') with both feet.  I cannot think of a better way to enter into Ordinary Time.

I need an ordinary year, really.  I know that's the sort of thing that most people don't wish for, but it sounds amazing to me.  More than anything, I need to reset the rhythms of my life and to spend my time on the people and things that are central to being the person I was created to be in view of the redemptive work to which God calls us to join in.

This morning, I read a post by Derek Webb that struck a chord with me in so many ways.  What resonated the most were his thoughts on personal liturgy.  He wrote that there are, "things that I don't necessarily or always believe, but I show up to recite again and again in hopes of believing them... so I'll go on reciting and adding to my liturgy in hopes of believing the words, because I wish to.  More than ever, I wish to."  This has caused me to think deeply about some words found in Scripture, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief" (Mark 9:24, NIV).

So often, I find myself in this place where belief and unbelief seem to be at war within me.  I'm not sure the very best plan is to "fake it 'til I make it," but sometimes things do become truth to us if we say them enough times.  And so I will...

L. 

Happy New Year:

We rang in the New Year with 4 straight minutes of kissing...
Someone was bound to grab the camera...  Thanks, Grace...
Caleb said, "I don't know how you breathe!"
Grace replied, "I think they give each other mouth to mouth..."
Excelling At Awkward Since 1979:

I'm Learning Some Things About Myself...

In some ways, I hate that.  I feel like I should know myself pretty well at this stage in the game.  But, whatever.  If you have followed my FB posts or even these blog posts over the past few months, you have probably noticed that there have been a lot of violent ups and downs.  If you've been privileged (and I use that word tongue in cheek) enough to also have more personal interactions with me, you might even be worried.  Don't be.  Really.  I mean, sometimes I'm actually not OK, but I will be.  I channel my emotions into writing.  For the most part, as soon as it's written I can move on.  But I do have to write it.  Whatever it is.  Much of the time I also need an audience lately, but not always.  If you saw the things I write and don't share, you'd really be worried.  Here's what I'm learning, today...     

1.  I am never happy unless I am helping someone.  This seems like it should fall under the category of "positive qualities to possess".  Sometimes it does.  Actually, much of the time it does.  But let's go back to the word, "never".  It would appear that I need people in my life who are in perpetual crisis in order to be happy, in order to feel as if I am doing something useful and redemptive in the world.  On days where everyone I know is feeling fine, I'm in trouble!  And I shouldn't be.  I should really like those days, because I love those people!      

2.  People are afraid to call me on the carpet.  I have been living a particular story over the past few months that has leaked its way out in bits and pieces to trusted friends and mentors, over time.  I honestly can't remember who knows which pieces of the story, exactly, but I'm pretty sure no one knows it all.  It's an ugly story, and, no, I'm not going to share it here where anyone in the world could potentially read it.  Apparently, though, I scare people.  I mean, if someone else shared this story, about themselves, with me, I would kick their butt.  Maybe this is why I scare people.  I'm not as tough as you think (and that's hard to write).  I need people in my life who are willing to kick my butt (but only when I deserve it, please).

3.  I broke the mold, and I don't care.  But it still hurts when people are mean.  Which, I guess, means I do care... at least, sort of.  'Nough said...

This is kind of random.  I need to go help somebody now.

L.

End Game...

Funny when you realize the dream wasn't ever really the dream...

What do you want?  What will make you happy? 

These are questions that have been bouncing around in my heart for quite some time now.  Sometimes it's my husband asking, because he is this legitimately amazing person who would actually move heaven and earth to purchase, do, be, make happen whatever it is that I want, if it is within his power to do so, and sometimes even if it's not.  I'm not sure how many dads look at their future sons-in-law and say, "Good luck with this one," but mine did.  I am high maintenance... apparently...

But more often than not, these questions have been internal.  I have been asking them myself.  And I haven't been able to come up with very good answers, if I'm honest, which I try to be.  But there is a common theme.  Over and over and over again, I have said that what I want, what would make me happy, is stability.  And I really believed it.  But then I lived through the past 19 months...

In October of 2013, I was thrilled to be going "home".  After a 12 year journey that took us through 5 states, 9 houses, 6 churches, and more heartbreak than I ever thought I could live through, we were finally going to have that "moment" when you realize that God really loves you and has set aside this particular second in history just for you, to show you how everything has worked together for good, how it was all necessary to bring you to the specific place for which you were born.  Breathe in, breathe out, the trouble is over, the years that the locusts ate are finished, you can stop wandering around in the desert, because this is why you were created.  You... have... arrived.

It was the dream.  This was everything I ever wanted... in 1997.

Here we were moving into a little house just yards away from the first home we ever owned, from the house we walked away from in 2001 to begin this adventure.  That house long since burned to the ground, but this one is eerily similar to such a point that I sometimes forget the dining room, laundry room, and master bedroom are not the ones from the original house.  This is what our lives would have looked like if we'd lived in the same house all these years...

Here we were taking a staff position at a church that is small, but not too small, that has a calendar with no space for another event, that has blended worship and canned music and a youth group and children's programming for the kids.  This is what our lives would have looked like if we had landed the elusive youth pastorate at a desirable church all those years ago and just hung on...

If Phil had become a course of study guy, trading an extensive education for ordination the quick and easy way, never questioning, never learning new things...

If I had avoided school altogether, settling in with the homesteading families and living under the umbrella of submission, never really seeking the call God had for my life... 

If the kids had embraced the safety of mediocrity instead of flourishing in their spiritual formation and talents, missing out on the beauty of nonconformity...

We could have done it, too.  We could have been those people.  But we never would have been us.  And chances are pretty good we wouldn't have known you.  Yes, you, particularly if you are one of the hundreds upon hundreds of people we met because of the choices we made over those 12 years.  What a loss... for us... for you... for the world... for the Kingdom...

What I wanted at 17 is not what I want at 35.  Let me be clear.  I don't want this.  I don't want this, but I am so thankful that God allowed us to experience it, because I might have spent my entire life wishing for something I didn't want if these months hadn't played out like they have.  I don't want this, and I know now that it's not what we were created for.  I don't want this, I was wrong, and it's OK.

May I return, briefly, to these haunting words that have changed my life forever?  "A cloud of missed possibilities envelops every beginning: it is always this beginning, this universe, and not some other. Decision lacks innocence. Around its narrations gather histories of grievance: what possibilities were excluded?" (Keller, 2003, 160).  Oh, friends, there are possibilities that were excluded, but I am less and less convinced that histories of grievance are worth grieving, for had we made different decisions, had we chosen a different beginning, a different universe, we would be grieving you.  We would be grieving us.

I don't have to wonder anymore.  I have seen things in the past few months that most people never get to see.  Sometimes I feel a little bit like I am in The Twilight Zone, or maybe I'm George Bailey, because I honestly believe I have been given the opportunity to see what life would have looked like if we'd made different choices.  There are still moments of letting go that are difficult, but overall I know we did what was right.  There's no staying here, though.  Turn page, time for another adventure...

L.