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Good Things #43: Being Told “No”

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I got the idea on the airplane to Chicago, reading Dubus’ Townie. He’d lived in a winter rental in a local beach community, and it dawned on me as I sailed through the sky:

Oh my gosh. I should buy a beach house.

If you know me – if you know my job and my life situation – you’re probably smiling and shaking your head, “There she goes again, too enthusiastic and a little bit crazy.” Because I teach at a Christian school. Because I’m only 25. Because FILL IN THE BLANK.

But really, I convinced myself (and my father, and my sister, and whoever else would listen to my rationale) that this was the way to do it. Buy a house that would help pay for itself. Get a roommate or two, rent it out for a month in the summer, and before you know it, you’ll own your home. I envisioned traipsing in the house after a long walk on the beach, me curled up reading in the sunlit evening, my sister (who, of course, would be buying the house with me) baking me delicious brownies, a glass of red wine in my hand.

I had it all planned out.

And when we found a three-bedroom house with a garden and brick walkways, an arbor, a loft (what?! are you kidding me? this is perfection.), and even a laundry chute, I let myself actually think it could happen.

I planned out a budget. I examined my finances and looked at my savings and promised myself “No more Starbucks!!!”.

I got a realtor, we got pre-approved for a mortgage, and then we looked into…flood insurance.

Ever heard of it? It’s this dreaded thing that, when you live in a small island community below sea level, threatens to destroy morale and your wallet.

The total was more than we would pay in taxes and it would only go up, my realtor said. It would be extremely hard to sell, and in one conversation the red wine I imagined sipping was dried up and my sister burned the brownies.

I got off the phone. I was at work when I called the realtor, and I was standing in the hot sun. My hair was on fire. I walked over to my friend who was eating lunch and told her what happened.

“I felt a lot of fear about it,” I said, “but usually my response to fear is ‘Get over it.'”

She laughed and gave me those eyes that mean: You’re psycho.

“Maybe this time it meant it wasn’t for me,” I finished, putting my head on the picnic table.

IMG_1562I am grateful when I’m told “no.” This has been a long time coming, and it’s not a lesson I want to keep learning. Excitement fills my body so fully I can feel my skin tingling and I’m sure This is it! whether it be buying a house, moving across the country, dating a great guy, or applying for my dream job.

This is it! my body says, but circumstances and Jesus say differently.

I don’t blame God for good and bad in my life, at least not all the time. Sometimes, I do think things “just happen” and God makes good out of those things, too. But there have definitely been times when I’ve felt Him say, “No, Catherine, not this time, not this job, not this person.”

This time, it was “not this house,” and I am grateful in some ways.

I won’t be saddled with a mortgage.

I won’t have to leave my new flock of chickens.

I won’t have a longer commute.

I won’t have to live off oatmeal and yogurt for the next fifteen years.

I can still buy a bottle of wine, and my mom makes more than decent brownies.

There’s no denying, though, that there was a little loft in my would-be-bedroom with a brown ladder. That the tiny window let in sunshine, and I would’ve sat there drinking tea and dreaming, tucked away where no one would find me unless they knew where to look.

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Dating in College?!

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“What’s dating like in college?”

My senior girls looked earnestly at me over their lunches. There’s no denying that having five guys in your year at school doesn’t play in your favor.

“Not so great,” I said, and regretted it immediately.

I scolded myself because I knew the door I’d just opened wouldn’t be closed easily. They wanted to know why – their eyes crestfallen, their hopes dashed by one sentence.

I prefaced everything with: “Well, you know things didn’t end well for me, so my opinions are skewed – I’m sure if I married someone I dated in college, I would have a very different view.”

But as I think about it now, hours later, I wonder if this is true. Because even if I had married someone I dated in college, that wouldn’t change the fact that the whole thing was quite awkward and oddly polarizing and much more work than I ever thought it should be.

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I told them I went to a small Christian college.

I told them I loved it there, but that there was a strange social construct around dating. That you don’t date, actually, but you have a boyfriend. That going on dates wasn’t really something you did. You either were in a relationship or you were starkly single.

That some girls could have guy friends, but lots couldn’t.

That I was never once asked out on a date, but somehow found myself “dating” two boys over my four years.

That there was pressure from people immediately.

That I didn’t know any better.

That there is such a thing as a good relationship. And a bad relationship. And somewhere in between.

That even though I praise God for sparing me from a terrible choice, it doesn’t change the fact that I had been wooed (or wooed myself) into thinking it was the right choice.

I told them all this over lunch, in the senior lounge, them leaning across the table.

They’ve been waiting four years to date, college beckoning to them, claiming to be full-to-bursting with attractive, single, emotionally mature young men.

And I said, “The thing is, girls, you’ve been waiting four years to date, but when you get to college, you realize they’re all the same boys.”

They’re all the same boys.

And yes, there are winners. There are awesome young men who know what they want and will treat you well.

But they’re just a few months removed from high school. Just like you.

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When I was sure I’d bruised their hopeful hearts forever, I tried to make things look less bleak. I told them about my dating experience since college – how I’ve been on dates and not felt pressured (Is he the one? Who cares?! I’m in my twenties and I’m figuring out who I am and who I want to be with! It’s a first date, darn it!). I told them it’s been a lot better, that I’ve filled my coffer with story after story – some good, some bad, most hilarious – and that even if their dating lives in college aren’t all they thought they would be, there’s hope.

I did not go into detail (trying to keep some boundaries), but I wish I could’ve told them how dating in college seems to be more about who you think you’re supposed to be instead of who you are. At least it was that way for me. I might have told them that I’m happier than ever, and regardless of what my future dating brings, I know I am a better person for giving it a try.

They’re sure to at least have good tales to tell me when they visit in the summer.

I should’ve told them to start a blog about it.

 

[Dating for Dummies photo: ZacVTA]

[Czech Couple photo: Ard Hesselink]

[Seville Couple photo: BMP]

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After the Burning [Guest Post]

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I’m honored to share Hannah’s story. I met Hannah when she started dating my childhood friend, David, and I even got to be part of their wedding last summer. I resonate with a lot of what Hannah has to say about expectations. You can read more of her writing at her blog, hannahlynnmell.com.

 

When David and I moved to Kansas last summer, I envisioned countless bright scenarios: making our first home together, establishing ourselves in a new arts community, gathering a circle of warm-hearted midwestern friends. We drove the moving truck cross country just three weeks after our July wedding, headed toward David’s first full-time teaching position and a shockingly inexpensive high rise apartment in downtown Wichita.

The low cost of living meant that I could piece together part-time work instead of looking for a full-time teaching job myself. The set-up offered precisely what I’d hoped for: ample time to write. I’d unleash volleys of cunning, heartfelt essays, utilize the glittering Interweb to network with likeminded creative-types, and watch my freelance career begin to unfold.

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You can smell the punch line, can’t you? We make our plans, and the good Lord chuckles. I love writing and revising essays; I don’t love submitting and resubmitting them. After ten minutes on Facebook or Twitter, I’ve had my fill of social networking for the week. It wasn’t that I spent the year in ardent pursuit of my dream but met with disappointment; my ardor dried up by the end of autumn.

Turns out I thrived on the bustle of teaching full-time. Waking early, putting on pretty clothes, riding my bike to school: my old routine suited me far more than staying in my pajamas and plunking away at a computer keyboard. When I found myself brooding at school, singing joyful songs with children snapped me out of it. In my new life I depended on afternoon voice lessons to buoy my spirit – and teaching students via Skype fell far short of teaching them in person.

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As autumn ended and winter set in, I grieved the loss of my Writing Career as though it had actually existed. I knew that I’d continue to write, but I unhanded the illusion that it would make me famous or even pay the bills. Okay, “unhanded” is a graceful but inaccurate verb. God had to pry the illusion from my sweaty, clutching fingers the way I’ve seen parents wrest dangerous objects from their toddlers.

Meanwhile, David’s teaching job dragged him through a disillusionment of his own. I don’t know which made me weep more: watching my husband struggle or letting go of the person I planned to become.

Fast forward to spring. Autumn and winter make a lot more sense when the world begins to blossom. Letting go of the person I planned to become? I’ve begun to recognize the loss as a gain.

Lines of burning grass create pattern on landscape at dusk

In the tall grass prairies of Kansas, spring is a time of burning. Native Americans started the tradition of setting fire to the old grass in order to instigate the rapid growth of new grass. Viktor Frankl wrote, “What is to give light must endure burning.” In prairie terms, we could slightly revise that: What is to give life must endure burning. As I survey the charred landscape of our time here in Kansas, I see fertile soil and green shoots. New dreams arise from the ashes of my surrender. David and I make plans to return to Massachusetts. I begin to outline a novel.

Catherine asked me to write about living the in-between. As she astutely observes, “We’re all there in one way or another.” David and I have experienced the in-between in full force this year, but I can’t remember a season of my life that didn’t feel like a transition. Like a baffled student, I return to the same lesson again and again. I’ll say it confidently now, with the windows open and the lilacs in blossom: the new life quickening within me will feed next year’s flames. When the grasses fade to yellow and the cold sets in, I’ll weep and question and eventually let go. I can’t tell you next year’s particulars, but I’m learning to love the pattern.

Hannah writes, Skypes voice lessons, and teaches yoga in Wichita, Kansas. She met Catherine through her husband David, one of Catherine’s childhood friends. Her blog lives at hannahlynnmell.com.

[Photo: James Nedresky at Flint Hills Images]

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Good Things #42

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1. heath-bar brownies

2. iced coffee with cream and just a little sugar

3. not wearing wool socks anymore

4. going to the gym with my sister and cousin…then topping it off with Starbucks

5. Sunday dinner with friends – barbecue chicken and steak, potato salad and ice cream sundaes

6. oranges

7. when one of my 8th graders brings surprise Lindt chocolates to class

8. the sun not fully setting even at 8:30PM

9. knitting the cutest sweater ever

10. singing “Set Me As a Seal” in preparation for my friend’s summertime wedding

[Is it bad that pretty much half of these things are food-related?]

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My Hands are Dying

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Today, I’m writing over at my dear friend Hannah’s blog, Breathe Deep. It’s a story that took a long time for me to be able to write, but it felt good to write it.

And for the first time in twenty-two years, she found a reason to plead for herself. Her blood, her gelatinous lungs breathing in and out. It was quick and suddenly she saw her hand – red and plump like Mickey Mouse’s – and she thought Oh my gosh, I am getting old. Look at these veins, and she hurriedly covered the purple spidery arm with a sweater.

You can only ignore for so long. The next morning the blood still pooled, the arm still hung heavy and without its customary strength, and she decided a doctor would know. If only to tell her nothing was wrong, go back to your little life of serving coffee and greasy eggs and feeling self-important. You are not so great as to be seriously ill. But that was a mistake because one place after the other, the ultrasound with its beat-beating and the reduction of her insides to a white-gray image from Mars. “Clot,” they said. 

It’s one of the those stories that had to start in the third person and grow more personal from there. To keep reading, head over here.

Come back Friday to read Hannah’s guest post about her own version of in-between living.

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Adulthood: Part 1

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[Was teaching English with this lady worth it? Yes, I’d say so.]

On April 6th, I wrote two checks: one to the federal government and one to the state government. I cursived boldly because I was angry. I whined to my father that it didn’t seem right to take so much money from someone who made so little. I dipped into my savings to cover the amount of money I owed my country in taxes.

Frustration comes quickly when it comes to money. I’ve been working hard over the past year to save as much as possible, partly because I knew I’d be paying for grad school, and partly because somewhere in my imagination I’d love to buy a little house in the future. Every pay check, I’d put a little away, and I’d been hoping not to touch it for years.

Well, I had to.

It’s the first year I’ve ever owed the government. I’m used to getting a good chunk back (thank you! forced savings!), but this time, because I worked as a contracted employee teaching English last summer, I was the one in the red. Yes, I was fully aware when I took the job that I was responsible for the taxes. What I’d been hoping was that somehow it would all cancel out…I grumbled as I took money out of my account, and I grumbled as I mailed the checks.

But that’s exactly what savings are for, right?

Don’t we have them for expenses we’re not anticipating?

These are the words I know my father was thinking but didn’t say. These are the words I used to coach myself down from my anger. (It’s not like the roads are all well-paved and pothole-free because I paid my taxes. My bug is getting DESTROYED out there.)

I will say I benefit greatly from the Library Reads campaign that’s been happening in my town. And from the stop signs and traffic lights, sidewalks and what-have-you. Yes, taxes are a necessity, I know this.

So shouldn’t I be grateful that I had the money to pay these taxes?  That I didn’t have to ask my parents to help their flummoxed daughter?

I feel this is the beginning of a lifelong balancing act between patriotism and my desire for autonomy.

Despite my half-joking prayers, God did not have my taxes miraculously paid for me. But he did enable me to save up to pay them myself.

So, I’m working on being grateful. Guess I’ll have to put off buying that luxury yacht another year.

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Good Things #41

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Music.
James Blunt came out with one song “You’re Beautiful” when I was in high school, and I haven’t heard much from him since. As the days get a little warmer, though, I pull out old cds (yes, cds), and I remembered really liking his album All the Lost Souls. I was listening to his voice in the car the other day and said, “This really reminds me of the ’70s.” Like I would know.

April vacation.
After my jaunt as a chaperone to Italy and Greece during February vacation, I’ve been lying low this week. Coffee dates with friends I haven’t seen in awhile, lunch by the water with my aunts and mom, grandma and sister. I’ve been reading some fiction, as well as Tim Keller’s The Reason for Marriage. (“Why are you reading that?!” my sister asked. Good question. Mostly because I’ve been running into people who don’t see any need for marriage, and it interests me.) I cleaned my room – sort of – and took the trash out of my car. A dentist appointment is the crowning moment of this vacation, and it will be done by 10:00 Wednesday morning.

Thank you very much.
On Saturday around one in the afternoon, I decided to check on the chicks. I can’t remember why I was compelled to do this – they have been eating a lot of food lately – but when I opened the henhouse door, the smell of burning wood wafted out. I walked closer, and sure enough the heat lamp was just a little too close to the wood chips in the chick’s home. It had gotten down to freezing the night before, so I’d lowered it to keep them warm. The shavings were browned and the smell was awful. I raised the lamp and thanked God for not letting it all set fire. The chicks looked at me gratefully and stuffed their beaks with the fresh mash I put in their feeder, thankful for a at least one more day to live.

Living by the ocean.
I write about this a lot. Nothing fills me with awe and fear like the ocean. It’s dark and deep and water always inspires me to write. We sat outside a little coffee shop along the river that leads to the ocean, and I thought how wonderful it is to live here. I know there are other geographical wonders like mountains and tropics and fjords, but the ocean’s the one for me.

And summer’s not so far.

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Maundy Thursday

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He spoke of the four cups of wine and their significance, how the Lord used four verbs of redemption in Exodus 6:6-7 when speaking about Israel:

I will bring you out…

I will rescue you…

I will redeem you…

I will take you…

Why is this night different from all other nights?

I wrote a letter to a college friend the other day, and faith came up, the strangeness of it, the constant shifting. I’ve changed more in the three years since college than I ever did when I was there, and my faith has been moving, too. I keep reminding myself that this isn’t something to be afraid of, that wrestling with doctrine and rightness of things and my own inconsistencies is exactly the way it should be.

It does scare me a little.

Why is this night different from all other nights?

God is not stagnant. Many of my friends are packing up and moving. God is not stagnant.

I am not moving house, but I am moving, constantly shaking things up, walking a new rabbit trail, searching and finding and searching again. I use new words to talk to God, but more than that, I find new ways to listen. I thank Him for the sun, and I thank Him for His unending forgiveness that I need daily.

God is not stagnant.

Why is this night different from all other nights?

There was a time last spring. I was in the throes of – I’m not sure what to call it – an emotional upheaval? A spiritual awakening? I’d just read Lauren Winner’s Still, and I wasn’t sure whether to be angry, sad, hopeful, or just realize its honesty. She wrote about the middle-place of faith, how sometimes we dwell in this space far longer than we anticipated. Throughout the whole book, her voice feels monotone, like her soul is weary with this middle-ness.

I sat in church, listening to my pastor’s words over the eucharist, and I was filled with fear.

My palms began to sweat. I stared at the communion table. It was the first time I realized what awe felt like.

The magnitude of what I was about to do, the bread and drink that would pass my lips, filled me with a visceral fear.

I have never had that same experience again, but I long for it.

The silence at the power of God.

The knowledge that He is so much more than I think He is, and thank God for that.

What makes this night different from all other nights?

To look forward to the feast of the Lord, when all is made new. To look forward to breaking bread with my Savior. To be shocked into wonder.

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Good Things #40

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Being friends with coworkers.
The other day I walked through the halls of my school and realized how strange it is that I get to work with people I like. I know so many people who dread going to work – if not because of the job itself, because of their coworkers. The other Latin teacher sang in College Choir with me, the 4th grade teacher is a partner-in-crime when it comes to people-watching, and I’ve made a handful of other friends over the past two years. I love that I can walk by a classroom and want to stop in and chat – and not worry that the teacher I’m talking with wants to kick me out (other than Mr. White…).

Birthday parties and college friends.
This past weekend, we had a birthday party. It was warm and beautiful Saturday, but by 7:30 it was too chilly to drive with the top down. The girls and I showed up a little late, but it didn’t matter; we dove into conversations about jobs, education, faith, parenting (WHAT?! how does this keep coming up?!), and what-have-you. We ate reese’s cheesecake, brownies with fluff, blondies, and birthday cake. It was on this night that we learned three friends are headed to California for grad school in the fall, and we wept on each other’s shoulders and promised to make this the Best Summer Ever.

Moving the chicks outside.
Thank goodness the weekend was nice enough for me to clean out the chicken house and move those pesky birds from my bedroom. It took over an hour to clean out what was a terribly long hard winter, but when it was done I stood victorious (if a little dirty). Dad and I built a little space for the eight chickies because there’s no way the hens would’ve adopted them without pecking their brains out (literally). So now when I go out, the red glow from the heat lamp greets me. My room needed a little TLC once they were gone, but now it’s back to normal. It’s nice not to have guests.

Music.
I have loved this man for years. His voice, his guitar, his aching heart. This new song is upbeat and lovely for summer. I told one of my students she was featured in Ray LaMontagne’s new song, and she freaked. Looks like I’m not the only one who loves him.

 

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My Life’s Sister Ship

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Do you ever wake up and wonder: How the heck did I get here?

As though it weren’t necessarily a series of steps, a string of choices, but rather a falling-into the life you seem to be living.

As though you have had no agency at all and have merely shown up to the party, hoping to get some free chips and maybe a half-decent conversation.

And it doesn’t seem to matter how many good things are in your life, how many moments are beautiful or poignant or meaningful, because still you wonder what if?

I try so hard not to live in a dream world, but that is exactly what I do. I’ve created so many different plot lines to this one little life that they’re hard to keep track of. As each experience ends, each door closes, I watch a plot line drop off like an untethered dory, drifting further and further away but somehow, no less dear.

IMG_0301Like the time I thought I would be a big-shot editor at a publishing house in Boston.

Or the time I thought I would marry a boy down the street and we would buy a house in my hometown and walk the kids to school every day.

Or the time I thought I would teach English in South America, discovering another culture all on my own and overcoming my fear of living far away.

Or the time I was sure I was supposed to move to Europe, maybe get my Master’s in Christianity and the Arts (this one’s still tantalizing, I have to admit), and get some challenging and amazing job that combined everything I loved into some sort of mythical dream.

Or the time I would get paid to write, and somehow the ideas would flow endlessly from me. It was always effortless, as though I were a pool of creativity, knowledge, and wisdom.

Or the time I would teach voice lessons from the comfort of my home. I would make music with friends, perform in operas, and live the life of an artist.

Or, if we go way back, the time when I thought I’d live on a farm with no electricity (yes, no electricity…or running water.).

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The first winter I was out of college, I discovered the Swedish poet, Tomas Transtromer. Winner of the Nobel Prize in 2011, he’s what I would call a winter poet: a little narrative, a touch of melancholy, along the lines of Seamus Heaney. The poem that made me buy the book was “The Blue House,” and some wouldn’t even call it a poem. Prose poem is the term, I suppose, since he doesn’t use line breaks, but it does the work.

It wasn’t until the last paragraph that I began to understand what was happening, what the point was of all this description of some imagined house. On and on he goes about joy and death, painting a house without brushes, a child who “too early abandoned the task of being a child.” It wasn’t until the last paragraph that I realized what Transtromer was really experiencing:

Both joy and sorrow swell in the magnifying glass of the dew. We don’t really know it, but we sense it: there is a sister ship to our life which takes a totally different route. While the sun burns behind the islands.

And there it was, the way I have felt my entire life — all the what-ifs and maybes and if-onlys rolled up into one simple sentence. There is a sister ship to our life which takes a totally different route. You can stand on the deck of your life’s ship and watch as the life you could have led sails away, perhaps less real but all the more provocative.

This path we take (or find ourselves on) is a string of choices. It’s also a matter of opportunities and missed opportunities. It’s luck and blessing and shoot that’s terrible. It’s the real-life route while we still sometimes cling to the ghosts of those other ships.

How many are there?

For me, quite a few, of varying possibility and varying audacity.

The ship I’m on is beautiful and challenging and surprising. But those ghost ships can stay even more magical and enticing for the very fact that they’re unknowable, beckoning to me from the horizon.

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