Magma, Lava, and an Open Door

So another year has slipped by since my last post on this blog.  It's crazy how much has happened since then.  Obviously, the most exciting and important development has been my son, Judah.  He is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.  Becoming a mom--becoming his mom--has been such a challenging, rewarding, growing, frustrating, stretching, freeing, wonderful experience.  I just love him to bits.  There are pictures splattered here and there on my other blog if you want to take a peek.

Being a mom has saved me from such a huge majority of my existential despair surrounding what I want to be what I grow up.  I'm a mom.  And that is a wonderful thing.  And for the moment, that is enough.  I thoroughly enjoy taking care of Judah and knowing every moment of the day what I should be doing in order to accomplish that high goal.  I don't have to worry about "Where is my life going?"  "What did I do wrong to stray so far from the right path?"  "How am I ever going to get back on the right path?"  Blah blah blah.  Now, my life is the path, and I am living it.  Finally.

I'm reading a book right now entitled Live Your Calling: A Practical Guide to Finding and Fulfilling Your Mission in Life.  I highly recommend it.  It has all sorts of evaluations and advice and general goodness.  If you're floundering at all on the subject of purpose, I strongly encourage you to read it.

Now maybe you're thinking, "I thought you were all satisfied being a mom.  What's with the self help book?"  Well, I am satisfied being a mom.  But at the moment, I am back working as a secretary covering my last job's replacement's maternity leave.  And now you're thinking, "Are you crazy?!?  You were miserable in that job."  And yes.  I was.  But this is temporary and part-time, and I felt like God was telling me to do it.  So there you have it.  Being back at this job has reminded me of the dormant but still very much real desire to do something.  Not that being a mom isn't doing something.  Because like I said, I am so satisfied and content with life right now.  (It's unfamiliar territory in my realm of adulthood.)  But there is this distant spot of darkness when Judah (and whatever other littles come along) are in school, and I will be left to do who knows what.  So I am reading this book.

Somewhere in the first chapter, it quotes Ephesians 2:10, which reads, "For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."  Do you know what that means?!?  It means that God made me with particular good works in mind.  He had it all planned out from the beginning what I would do with my life, and that plan takes into account who He made me to be.  That means that I have not irreversibly, irrevocably, irredeemably screwed up my life plan!!  I'm walking in it!!  So that is very good news.  I often think about how I chose the wrong major in college and every vocational decision since then has lead me down a path of miserable wrongness.  But that's a lie.  And I can claim the truth now that God will lead me where He wants me to go.  And I have a whole lot of life in front of me in which to do the good work that He has planned.  Huzzah!

So I've still been thinking that I'd like to go back to school.  But I didn't really know for what.  It just seemed like I probably needed a little more education in order to pursue a vocation that I would find satisfying.  And the other day, it came to me.  It was like a volcano.  The magma warming just below the surface...the smoke rising...a slow rumbling in the ground...and all of a sudden...BOOM!  Just like that, the bright warmth of an idea erupted into a decision.  And the decision is this:

I am going to art school.

I don't know why it took me so long to consider this as an option.  Ask me at any point in my life what the three most important things were, and I would have said, "worship, love, and creativity."  Obviously.  I have always wanted to create.  And I desperately want to be an artist.  In some form or another.  I'm sure it's who I already am...in my magma.  But I want to learn the skills that send my artistic lava flowing freely all over my little world.  I could go back to school for spiritual formation, but I know the books I'd have to read, the disciplines I would have to master, the resources I would have to consult.  I have competence enough there that I could do it all more or less independently.  But to be an artist--a real artist--there are skills I just cannot teach myself, materials and tools I don't have access to, critique I cannot offer myself.  And I want it.  I want it all.  I want creativity to be the atmosphere I breathe.  I want to call myself an artist and really believe it.

So there you have it.  Satisfaction and contentment just in time for a new vision.  But I think this was the perfect time for me to have this little eruption.  In Live Your Calling, the author talks about how your primary calling is to be in relationship with God.  And then you have secondary callings including life roles like daughter, mother, sister, friend.  And then your vocation is only a subset of those secondary callings.  And to hear that was so giddily freeing.  To know that I have most of my life figured out, that things like vocation and location are only contexts in which to live out my primary calling and my lifelong roles...it was like laboring and struggling to push open a door only to realize that I had to pull it open instead, and with just a simple reversal in my approach, it swings easily open on its hinges.  And now all I have to do, it walk through.

My next steps at the moment are to finish up working at my old job, which will be completed in the middle of March, just in time for me to have a week or two of prep and making for Judah's first birthday.  And then, I'm going to look into what I need to do to put together a portfolio and start a class or two on a very part-time basis.  And then...well, we'll see when I get there.

So all that is very exciting to me, and that's where my little heart has been in the recent days.  I don't know if I will be updating this blog more regularly or if it will continue to be my annual cardiological check-up.  But either way, thanks for checking up with me.