2021: the expanse

When I logged in and saw that my last post was in March, I freaked out a little bit.

I guess it’s been a while since I published anything here, huh?

There are posts I’ve begun these past few months and never finished. Posts about homeschooling. Posts about ministry. Posts about the politics of maternity leave or vaccinations.

There are posts I’ve dreamt up in my head, rehearsed in the shower or on a long drive. I’ve even recorded a few on a voice memo on my phone, thinking I could transcribe the best of my thoughts at a later time, when I felt like writing it all out.

But I don’t feel like writing. Not really. I simply don’t care as much about my own opinions as I did a year ago.

Possibly related–
For the first half of 2021, I forced myself into a literature fast.

Even though I’d recently accumulated a good dozen nonfiction books I was eager to read, I decided I’d read only fiction for at least six months. It was an effort to extract my mind a from the world of problems and solutions and embed it more deeply in human experience.

What resulted from this experiment was a sense of ideological ambivalence that I’ve rarely experienced in my life before. I’m maybe taking myself and the world a little less seriously these days. Or at least feeling a little less responsibility to have a strong opinion about it as I go about my business.

So, what’s new in my life?

In 2020, even in the midst of a pandemic, our family life remained fairly stable and unchanged. My husband kept working. We were already homeschooling. We stayed healthy. Etc.

2021, on the other hand, has brought our family a lot of changes.

First, in June, my husband resigned from his pastor position at a local church. There was no scandal or anything like that. It just didn’t work out.

We invested more than three years in a hard place. We wanted it to succeed. We fought hard. But, we lost. The church didn’t really want us and disagreed about what it needed. So we walked away.

To most of the people who watched it all happen, his resignation was not a surprise. Maybe it wasn’t even a surprise to us. But it was still hard and confusing and there’s probably more I’ll say about that at some point.

Then, a month ago, my husband resigned from his “day job.”

After 13 years working at a nonprofit affordable housing ministry, he’s now working for himself full-time. This is very exciting for our family. It’s something we’ve discussed on and off for a few years and finally felt it was the right time. But, as he’s the sole provider for our family, this is also a huge transition and a significant step of faith for all of us.

These big occupational and vocational changes have been upsetting. I don’t mean they make me angry or depressed or “upset” in the colloquial sense, but that they have rattled me a little bit. Shaken me up. Made me question where we should be and what we should be doing.

Maybe my husband’s work is only the tip of the iceberg.
Maybe it’s time for everything to change.

In some ways, here in 2021, our future as a family feels like a vast expanse of opportunity. We could go anywhere from here. But, the things I’m longing for most seem the most elusive–quiet and peaceful spaces, work I can be proud of, a slower pace, and the comforts of community.

Lately, when I feel like chasing a rabbit hole, I’ve been doing some research into my family history.

I’m tracing the roots of my family tree into old, distant places like Bohemia, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the West Midlands. I’m looking for photos and searching property and census records, scanning immigration and military records, and searching through Holocaust victim records (what?) to find out who I really am.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m suddenly interested in my ancestry. So much of our life is in transition that I’m feeling untethered.

I want to know where I belong.
I want to know who my people are.

Who are my people?

Theres’s probably a season of every person’s life when they start to ask these questions–whence have I come and to where shall I go?

And, even more so, what am I supposed to be doing along the journey?

Maybe there’s something about my 40th year that makes the questions more poignant. At this stage in life, it doesn’t seem to too late to make a change. But I get the sense the tipping point is approaching and the urgency is rising.

When I think about a new season for me and for my family, I think about buying a farm or a defunct Bible camp or a historic estate in the middle of nowhere, as if a few acres and some honeybees will give me the space I need to find “my work” and as if getting a dog will cure my children’s loneliness.

Dogs are easier than friends, I think.
And keeping honeybees could be more fruitful than songwriting.

But the thought of digging up roots, starting over again, building something from nothing, is terrifying. And I don’t want to do it.

I don’t want to have to walk away and move on to find a new place. I wanted this to be my place. I wanted to find my people here.

But I haven’t found them yet.

I’m very distracted these days. I try to focus on the task at hand. I try to be present with my kids, with my husband, with my friends. But my mind is somewhere else, trying to peek around the corner, into the expanse, to see what comes next.

I still can’t see it.

I wonder if I’ll ever get to write a book. Release a new album. Go back to school. Hike that big, long trail.

I wonder who my friends are. Whether people want me around. Who I could call at 4am if I needed them.

I wonder whether my kids are learning enough. Whether they’ll resent the way we’re raising them. If they’ll remember me at my best or at my worst.

I wonder if I’ll ever be any good at being married.

The whole point of this post, I guess, is to say I don’t really have anything important to say right now.

And to say that, yes, I’m still here. But I’m busy with a new family business. And I’m distracted by life’s biggest questions. And, while I do have opinions to share and stories to tell, I’d rather offer them in real time, in real life, with real people.

I’m just trying to quiet my heart, keep my head down, and walk faithfully in one direction until I’m pointed elsewhere.