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.