LtD: The Hardest Year

Dear Debbie,

A lot of things have changed in the last year, and I don't know where to begin. For some reason the knowledge that if I went back and sat in my chair in the office you wouldn't be on the other side of the desk from me seems like the most dramatic change. Is your new job treating you well? Is it strange to be in different places and talking to different people regularly, and most importantly - have you been able to let the particular stresses of work at Geneva go? These are questions that I ask of you because I know I'll be changing jobs in the next few years and part of me is wondering how I'll ever let this place and these people go. I can complain all day, but working here makes me feel needed and like I'm a part of something, and it's hard to imagine that I could find that anywhere else. If you have, maybe there's hope for me.

It has been a long year in my world.

In October one of my residents died by suicide, taking her own life in my hall. Once upon a time that was a thing I couldn't imagine ever saying because it would be too horrible to contemplate; now I look at that sentence and think "that seems too simple, will people really understand how serious it was?" It's amazing how life can change your expectations and perspective. For weeks - even months - all I could think about was, what should I be doing? and what have I forgotten to do? and who have I failed to help today? Even now, six months later, I often do or think things that would have seemed absurd pre-October.

Other things contributed to this year being difficult, of course. We had to replace two RAs on our ResLife staff, although my hall staff stayed the same. Our Director of Student Activities changed positions at the University and so I became the interim SAC Advisor for the last half of the semester. Back in PA my newest niece was born, my parents faced serious health issues, and [it's hard to be away from my favorite sister who makes me laugh and talks about deep things and is beautiful and single and a total catch]*. I'm pretty involved in my church, and have activities there three evenings a week, and worship team early on Sunday, so Friday and Saturday night were my only evenings 'off'...unless I was on call and had to be awake and on campus for rounds. It got to the point where I had to force myself off campus for two hours on Thursday morning to maintain some sanity.

On paper it doesn't seem as extreme as it did walking through it. Most of the time I felt like a pinball being batted from one corner to another, reacting and supporting and doing stuff without the time or will to stop and think about whether I was doing stuff the best way, or even whether I was doing important stuff in the first place. Just a few months ago I might have been tempted to describe it as the worst year of my life. It has been a year of sorrow and tears, and late nights, and impossible conversations, and failures, and asking for forgiveness, and fear. I have always considered myself brave, and this year I came to know fear intimately.

I can't call it the worst year, however, because it has also been a year of grace. I now know more of the perfect love that casts out fear, and that works all things - even the deeply wrong things - together for good. Love isn't a fuzzy, happy feeling, and it isn't easy. Love clings to faith, and when faith seems disappointed, clings to hope. Day to day, sometimes minute to minute, I had nothing but the tiniest ray of hope that God has a plan for redemption. I will never see the whole picture, but I have had the joy of seeing people I love overcome difficulties and come out on the other side stronger. God's love is perfect, and each day it casts out just a little bit more fear until I can honestly say that this has been the hardest year, but I've made it through.

This is a letter that I started several months ago. It has been hard to find time and space to assemble my thoughts. But I need to write about this, and I had to start somewhere; hopefully more will follow.

Until then,
Ceci

*edited by request of said sister. You wish you knew what it said before, hmm?

The tipping point

I'm done. That's it. No more.

How many times have I said that in the last sixteen months? To be honest, there are days when I said it five or six times and yet kept moving forward. My experience as an RD has been stressful, tiring, emotionally exhausting, and is starting to consume my entire life. It's not terribly surprising to me that I moved three hundred miles away from all of my friends and family and promptly became a workaholic, but I thought I was making strides toward balance when I got involved in an awesome church and found a local music scene that interests me.

In a 1/1 a few weeks ago I told a RA that residence life sets us up to be the most insecure people on campus, and since then I have been gradually discovering how true the statement was. When I am on campus, whether I am performing job-related functions or not, I am "on the clock" in the sense that my behavior must remain professional and supportive lest I estrange someone I need to speak with tomorrow. But that was the challenge I expected; every RD has to deal with this living-where-you-work challenge. And so we become engaged in communities and activities off campus to remind us that we have purpose and value outside of living clean lives, saying the right things, and answering the on-call phone at 3am.

The tipping point of my stress was when I realized that although I have events that take me off campus, that I look forward to and spend time preparing for, most of those events melt into yet another performance expectation. What I choose to do is an expression of who I am, but instead of being natural it often feels like I am trying to prove who I am so that people will accept me and care about me. I had a terrible moment the other week when I realized that although there are several people with whom I have genuine friendships in Fort Wayne, my brain snidely reminds me that my primary relationship with most of them is based on what I do rather than who I am.

I could blame this state of affairs on many things, and I have. But last week I came to a breaking point for the umpteenth time since taking this job; I took an honest look at my life and realized that I keep allowing myself to play the victim. I don't have time to relax and I blame it on everyone else because they want to talk at midnight when I would rather be reading or watching Friends...and it's so very easy to just say, "I'm done. That's it. No more." and still not change a thing. And so I got fed up with myself and decided to change a thing.

I've started getting up in the morning. I like mornings, I just don't like the tired that usually accompanies them after late nights and feeling depressed because someone stole my "me" time yet again. But I'm done being a victim of my sleep schedule and my job, so I started getting up and seeing the morning magic hour and making a cup of coffee and reading things that are interesting to me and my Bible and writing in my journal. Do you know how much better I feel? Everything isn't fixed, and insecurity is, as always, lurking around most corners, but now I have some time each day to gain perspective and make myself fit for service.

Because I'm done. That's it. No more. God didn't give me this opportunity so that I could feel sorry for myself.


Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

4.18.14

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

About 18 months ago I started a spiritual practice of meditating for a few minutes (anywhere from 5-15, depending on the day) while praying The Jesus Prayer in time with my breathing. I recommend it to anyone, really, for a few reasons: 1) The practice of paying attention to one's breath is an excellent way to manage stress and improve concentration, 2) Beginning one's day by praying for, pleading for, and remembering God's mercy reminds one of one's place in the world, and 3) Combining breath with prayer develops a pattern of unconscious prayer - one is able to pray without ceasing without being totally aware of the prayer.

And that's good, because sometimes words fail you and all you can do is breathe.

I don't know if it's because of Holy Week, or because I'm coming to the end of my fast, or because we're nearing the end of the semester, but this week felt like an uphill battle. I wrote a 'summary' of Monday thru Thursday in my journal that took up a full page; I won't bore you with the details. By Tuesday night, however, I had noticed a pattern - I would tell myself, "___ is almost over; I'm so glad I can go to ___ and not really exert any energy." I would go to ___ and promptly be thrown into a situation that demanded my best effort and every bit of energy I didn't have.

What was amazing was that in the midst of the chaos and at the end of each day I didn't feel defeated. I also didn't feel exhilarated, like I had accomplished something. In the midst of the chaos and the silence I only had time and energy for one thought.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

Breathe in. Breath out. Try to think of a prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on them.

Embrace the silence. Focus on responding. Realize that it is God working through me, that he is right there in the silence and the noise. He doesn't put me in trying circumstances to show me that I can handle them, but to show me that it is always he who handles them. He knows what needs to be done, and he is working tirelessly, and he brings me with him like my dad letting me ride along to Home Depot - not because he needs my help, but because he wants me to be involved.

Last Friday when I finished reading The Way of the Heart I started a new book, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership by Ruth Haley Barton. At the end of the each chapter she includes an exercise; last week it was a time of meditation, to listen for the thing that your soul wants to say to God and has not found the words to express. I prayed that God would show me why I am here - physically, in Fort Wayne, so far from the things I hoped for when I started job searching - and what it is he wants from me while I am here. I forgot the prayer until I sat down on Thursday to look at my journal. It wasn't an easy answer, but I feel that this week has been an answer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Have Mercy

4.11.14

Last year I remember discussing with Jimmy and Nate whether Nouwen books 'count' for the 52x52 challenge because they're usually less than 100 pages long. I picked this book up because it seemed appropriate to my Lenten fast and, admittedly, because I thought it might be a quick read. Turns out, it is one of the hardest books I have read in a long time. Three chapters with an introduction and a conclusion should not be difficult to get through, but I found myself reading sections a second or third time, letting the words sink in and worrying them over in my mind until I could place a finger on what was challenging me.

In The Way of the Heart, Nouwen provides an introduction to the thoughts of the Desert Fathers and explains the call they heard to go into the desert as three commands: Flee. Be Silent. And Pray. He discusses the practices that transformed them, and that could transform us, if we let them, in those three terms - solitude, silence, and prayer. The Fathers, he says, were looking for a new martyrdom that would help them to separate themselves from the sinking ship of society so that when they ministered to others they could do so with God's heart instead of simply perpetuating the twisted values of the World.

It was a difficult read not because of large words (because Nouwen really doesn't use large words or heavy explanations), but because I recognize the truth of what Nouwen is saying and want to embrace it, but I struggle with integrating it into my life. As an RD it really is easy to get swept up into busyness, wordyness, and distraction of campus culture and imagine that the fate of the world depends on my efforts. I easily forget that only God can really change people, and that if I am not near to him I will be less fit to draw others near to him.

Here is an excerpt from the conclusion that I copied to my journal because it describes the contrast between the way I am now and the way I want to be:

"The temptation is to go mad with those who are made and to go around yelling and screaming, telling everyone where to go, what to do, and how to behave. The temptation is to become so involved in the agonies and ecstasies of the last days that we will drown together with those we are trying to save.

"...When we have been remodeled into living witnesses of Christ through solitude, silence, and prayer, we will not longer have to worry about whether we are saying the right thing or making the right gesture, because then Christ will make his presence known even when we are not aware of it." 

4.8.14

This week the craving hit me... for meat. Any meat. All meat. Seriously. I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier, but I'm glad it didn't because I don't think I could make it more than two weeks after this. Desperately craving steak, to be completely honest.

That would be a nice birthday meal, wouldn't it? Ribs and fries, with a milkshake... and again with the craving.

3.30.14

So it's a feast day again, and I may surprise you by saying that I don't particularly like the fact that there are feast days.

Why, you ask? It took me a while to come around to the answer, because at face value it makes sense that when you choose to deprive yourself of something and you find out that on every seventh day you get a break from the deprivation, you would thoroughly enjoy the seventh day. And, well, that's the point of the Sabbath anyway - like I wrote a few years ago, every Sunday is a day of remembrance of that day on which the sinless man who had been beaten, humiliated, and murdered was raised from the dead. It's kind of a big deal, and definitely a reason for celebration and feasting.

I must conclude that the problem isn't with the the principle of feasting, it's in my approach to fasting.

I have a fascination with doing difficult things - a complicated word problem, dragging myself out of bed at dawn for a day of hard labor, stress hikes, the all-night study session - because of the personal satisfaction I feel at the end of it. Additionally, I have a strange enjoyment of the deprivation itself, the experience of "mind over matter" as I flex my muscles of self-denial. Put those things together and you have a temperament always up for a challenge and willing to make sacrifices to accomplish something. Put that way, I sound like a pretty great person, don't I? So what's wrong with the picture?

I find that I resent the upcoming weekly breaks in the fast because they remind me that fast isn't about me at all, nor about how much I can handle or how good a person I'll be when I have "gone without" for a few weeks. In fact, I anticipate that each Sunday will feel like resetting of all of the endurance I have built up over the previous six days and Monday begins just a little more miserable than Saturday. Ultimately the posture of fasting shouldn't be about facing down a challenge or proving one's will-power, it should be a posture of mourning over one's weakness, submission to God, and soberly rejoicing in his grace.

I can say that, but I don't completely understand it. Mourning, submission, and sobriety are not popular postures and they appear rarely in my life. I can only hope that the contrast of fasting with feasting will teach me to comprehend them better.

3.24.14

And today... I started complaining. Not about what I can't have, but about what I do have. Believe it or not, I'm okay with not having meat, but I am SO TIRED OF: spinach, cottage cheese, applesauce, chick peas, peanut butter, green peppers, cucumbers,etc. All the healthy things. The plenty, the fresh, the things that are made available to me even though I don't work for them... I'm complaining about them.

If I'm ever tempted to judge Israel for complaining to Moses about their food, I'll remember this. It's been less than three weeks, and they had 40 years.