Back in July, I quit my (hopefully) last secretary job ever. I wasn't sure how long my break from the working world would be, but Jason and I decided that we would look at this time as a new season whose duration was unknown rather than a little break between jobs that crush my soul. In order to make this work, Jason took a few extra jobs on campus (totaling about 30 hours a week in addition to his 25 hours a week as a youth pastor and being a full time student and full time super husband). We also moved into a one bedroom apartment.
I decided that I wanted this time to be productive. So I designed a little schedule for myself including exactly what I wanted my days to look like:
7:50 Rise and Shine
8:00 Devotions
8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Quick Apartment Clean-up
9:30 Music Hour (playing guitar, singing, writing, recording, learn new instruments)
10:30 Non-Fiction Reading (spiritual formation, books about art and culture)
11:30 Just for Fun Reading (fiction and blogs)
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Time for Creating
4:00 Write on my Blog
5:00 Make Dinner
6:00 Eat Dinner
Rest of the Night: Free Time, Hang out with Jason, Small Groups, etc.
My schedule was loosely based on a day at Delanco Camp, because that is where I've always felt closest to God and consequently where I've always felt like the best version of myself. I wanted to plan my days to rediscover this "best me" that I've felt so isolated from the past few years. I wanted to rediscover my passions, my gifts, my identity, and to discern what God had for me in the next stage of life once Jason graduates from seminary. I arranged my days with all of my favorite things, hoping that in doing everything I loved, I would be able to see what area God was smiling over and therefore be able to know what direction I should pursue (music, crafting, further schooling, writing, etc.).
Somewhere in the midst of all this planning, Jason and I talked about wanting to have children and that maybe now would be a good time to do that. I don't really know this happened, but those conversations always occured in isolation from the rest of our planning (moving into a smaller apartment, me quitting my job, all of these things I wanted to do to reclaim my identity, all of the extra work Jason was taking on, etc.). It seems like having a baby was just this whole other realm of discussion because we didn't take any of those other things into account when talking about what it would mean for me to be pregnant.
But then I did get pregnant. And suddenly, my entire existence became all about supporting the little life growing inside of me. I spent my first 20 weeks of pregnancy lying on my bathroom floor trying to figure out what to eat next in order to keep the nausea at bay. Jason spent those long weeks (in addition to all of the extra work and school stuff) taking care of me and doing all of the house work. I have no idea how he kept his head above water. In addition to the fact that he is simply amazing, I think it has something to do with the fact that doing a ton of extra work and caring for a physically needy wife was still a much lighter burden than having a miserable wife who he couldn't do anything to help.
I've made it past (what I hope to be) the worst of the pregnancy sickness. I am now 7 months into pregnancy. I'm also 7 months into voluntary unemployment. And for all of my planning and scheming and designing my perfect schedule, I have not followed that schedule one single day in those seven months...
I was reflecting about this in spiritual direction. I said how I felt content and connected to God, but that I also felt like I hadn't used this time as well as I could have because I hadn't stuck to my plan. I hadn't done anything I wanted to do or discovered anything I anticipated discovering. I had no clearer sense about God's direction for my life or who He wanted me to be. I had made no progress in my skills as a crafter or my development as a songwriter and artist or my academic and intellectual desires.
Now I could make all sorts of excuses about how I haven't been physically up to doing my schedule, about how I want to do devotions when I wake up but if I don't eat something first I feel sick, about how I don't have a good space to be creative, about how difficult it is for me to ignore Jason's presence and just pursue my own plans for the day...
But here is the reality: If I really wanted to follow my schedule, if I really wanted to do all of those things that I claim to love and value so much, if those things really were so central to my identity, I would figure out a way to make it work. It wouldn't matter how I felt or what kind of space I was living in or what Jason's plans were. The fact of the matter is that we make time for the things that are actually important to us.
So my spiritual director asked me, "If that's true, what has this time actually looked like for you? Despite not sticking to your schedule, where has God been smiling in your life?"
And looking back over these past 7 months, here are the things that I have discovered:
1) For all of my complaining about wanting to pursue my passions and being thwarted by stupid jobs over the past three years, what I really needed and most deeply desired was rest. Time to regain a handle on a reality that included a loving God who is on my side and has good plans for me, time to rest without expectations of myself that were impossible to meet, time to recover physically from a honeymoon that nearly killed me and a lifestyle that tried to finish me off. I just wanted to rest. And I've done a lot of that. Nearly guilt-free, which is pretty miraculous. That rest has made me a much more sane and loving person than I was before. And even if that's all it has accomplished, I think that's worth it.
2) I have the most amazing and caring and supportive husband in the whole wide world. This is something I didn't know before. When I was working, things were difficult between Jason and me. I resented him for getting to pursue his passions while I slaved away at jobs that I hated. I felt used and betrayed and forgotten. I still loved him, and I knew he loved me. But it was hard. Over the past seven months, I've rediscovered what it's like to be loved unconditionally, to be taken care of, to be valued just for who I am without any expectations. And that has been more life-giving than I can communicate. Now Jason and I pray together and read the Bible together and have actual real conversations like we used to when we were dating. We spend substantive time together really enjoying each other's company. And I can say now that I don't only love my husband...I really like him, and I really like being married to him.
3) I have a deep need for community. This is something I knew about myself. I knew it was lacking from my prior life. And my mom even warned me when I shared my perfect little schedule with her that it was lacking time with other people. And despite feeling sick and not being very proactive, I have spent a lot time deepening relationships and forming new relationships over the past 7 months. I've gotten to spend time with some really wonderful women who live in my building. It's been so life-giving to have peers again, to be able to talk about things like marriage and kids and work and life goals with women who also have husbands in seminary and who are also terrified of what that means for their future lives. For the first time since getting married, I have a community of friends who don't live forever away, people I can run into accidentally and have a conversation with and see face to face on a regular basis and actually know what's going on in their lives. I didn't realize how much I missed this until I had it again, and it's been like taking that first breath after you realize you've been holding your breath for no good reason.
4) Despite not sticking to my schedule, I have actually made a lot over the past seven months. I've finished some overdue projects and presents. I've learned a few new skills. I've followed through on a few really good ideas. And I've started new projects that I'm really excited about. I haven't started up my etsy store or done any of my own shows or figured out my brand or kept up with my crafting blog or made any sort of big business decisions. But I have continued to create. And that is exciting to me. Because I feel like that says that whatever else is going on, creating is something that is important to me and that I will make time for, even if it isn't as structured or deeply existential as I would like it to be.
So here's pay off one: I don't feel like I'm any closer to discovering a life path or even a direction. But the reality is that what's coming next is this: I'm going to have a baby. And it's interesting that God has been smiling in my life in all sorts of places that are preparing me for that. He's restoring my physical health and giving me the rest I need to grow a baby. He's restoring my relationship with Him. He's restoring my marriage. And He's giving me gifts of community and creativity that restore some of my key values so that when this baby comes, I'll have something more to give him than simple sustenance.
And pay off number two: God can give me exactly what I need even apart from the little structures I create for Him to communicate to me. I figured that because I had failed to follow through with my plans for myself, I had missed out on discovering God's plans for me. It seems silly to say it like that. But it's like I had wanted to get everything quiet so that I could hear God and instead He wanted me to see Him. And I was seeing Him, but He was harder to recognize through my sense of sight because I was expecting Him to come another way with another message.
And for the grand finale: As soon as I came to those revelations in spiritual direction, my mind immediately jumped to this, "And then, once I see where God IS speaking to me, then I can create NEW structures that take that into account and will be more effective in aiding our communication." And then I had to tell that little voice to calm down, take a deep breath, and not miss the entire point, which is this: God will reach me how He wants to reach me. No matter how much I tweak my little life, He is going to do things that I don't expect. And seeing Him is not a matter of perfecting my world; it's a matter of knowing that it's His world.
Well, that was forever long. I figure a year of silence justifies a way-too-long-rambling post. Nevertheless, gold stars and check plusses for those who persevered to the end, and a hope that you see where God is smiling in your life, too.
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