Time heals all...

Time is a strange thing. Time can go fast or slow, time is eternal. Time makes us age, time can tear people apart, and it can draw them together. The smallest amounts of time can have incredible effects on our lives. One second can mean the difference between life and death. And of course there's that addage, 'Time heals all wounds." But, is it healing that time is doing. or is it simply there to teach us to understand different parts of our life in different lights?

I find it fascinating to look at my past...what little of it is there in the last 23 years of my life. It doesn't seem like a long period of time, comparatively, but so much has happened in those 23 years. Maybe these ruminations come out of me having just had a birthday, or maybe they simply come from the myriad changes that have taken place in my life in the last 6 months...well, last year or so. Either way, I just think it is amazing how lucky, how crazy, how unbelievable things have been.

A year ago I was just a couple months into my senior year of college, working on my senior thesis, woking at a job I loved, and generally happy. I was just beginning to look for a job, and well, I got the chance of a lifetime - a shot at trying for a full time job at the church I'd been working at for the past year. It seemed too good to be true...and I was terrified, and ecstatic at the same time. So, I applied...and I waited. Then I interviewed, and I waited. So many things were going through my mind as I talked to friends and staff about what was going on...and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether or not I was really capable of fulfilling the job duties should I be given the chance. So, I spent lots of time going over all the different scenarios that could result from whatever the verdict was. And then all of the sudden the waiting was over...I was at a camp reunion when the phone call came. I got a message, and the tone voice on the other end of the line was enough...and the phone call that followed was one of the hardest I've ever had. I didn't get the job. I didn't know what to feel - part of me was surprised, part of me wasn't, part of me was fine, part of me was not.

Again, I spent a lot of time thinking - and waiting. Waiting to go back to work, waiting to talk to my coworkers about what had happened, and even waiting to talk to some friends about another potential job now that I hadn't gotten this one. And, more than anything else...waiting to see how I would react when I worked under the person who had gotten the job that I'd been trying for.

I'd like to think that I got over things fairly quickly, and even moved on a couple months later as I met the new employee, and even applied for another job. I really did handle things a lot better than I had expected to, and I think in part, maybe that was what happened as I forced myself to cope - I think sometimes our pretending becomes reality when we realize we are capable of carrying ourselves the way we want to - and even capable of doing things genuinely. I began to understand that I really did believe that things happened the way they did for a reason, and I jumped into my other job search. In the meantime, I had finished my senior thesis, I had fought back and forth with a friend who was a self mutilator, and I was really starting to understand that my college career was coming to a close.

This second job search was a strange one - I'd heard about the opening from my brother first - he'd heard it announced at chapel one morning where he was going to school. I sort of heard it and forgot about it...tucked it away as I was waiting to hear on other options. Then, a month or a month and a half later, I found it again, this time posted on a job website. Also, about two days before, my mom had asked me if I'd applied for it. So, on a whim, I applied, sent in my resume, and waited. Basically in my mind, this job was an indicator...if I got it, that meant I wasn't supposed to take a job I'd been offered at home, if I didn't get it, I was supposed to pursue that job. But the waiting this time around was a lot different...a few days later, I got a call from one of the pastors, asking me if I had any questions, and telling me that someone would be calling me for a phone interview in a couple of days. Then I had the phone interview, a week later I had a first interview, a week and a half after that I had a second interview, and a week after that, I got a call offering me the job. I was sitting listening to a jazz concert, took the phone call, went back, and didn't say anything to any of the people I was with. I was kind of in shock. 5 weeks before I had applied...and now potentially had a job...two months before graduation. I told my best friend in the car on the way home...and over the course of the next week or so, the rest of the people I worked with at my current church found out the news too.

The response startled me...an incredible amount of excitement the day after...and I was still trying to decide at that point. But standing in my senior pastor's office, with all the other pastors and half the staff, seeing their excitement, I knew at that moment, though I didn't understand it, that I knew I needed to take the job. I didn't necessarily know why, and the thought of leaving this family scared me, but I knew it was what I needed to do. So I called the church back that afternoon, a full day before I said I would, and accepted the position.

The two months that followed were a blur as I talked to my new staff for the first few times, finished up my last few classes, and tried as hard as I could to suck up every bit of insight and information from those around me in hopes that I would be better prepared for my new job.

Leaving that church was one of the hardest things I've done...I had truly found a family and some kindred spirits there. But, those same things that made it so hard to leave also prepared me for what was to come--not so much because I knew what I was doing, but because I knew I had all of them standing behind me.

Now fast forward five months. I've been working and living in my new community...for better or for worse...and mostly for better. I love my new job, even though it's constantly filled with challenges. Any time I think I've got a handle on things, I get thrown for a loop, but honestly, I don't think I'd have it any other way.

But, as I mentioned earlier, much earlier, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. I had a chance for the first time to visit my college home a couple weeks ago, and got a chance to sit and talk to a good pastor friend of mine at the church I left, and had a discussion with him that made me think even more, but on a totally different tangent. A few days before I'd come to visit, I was talking to another friend from there, and was asked if I was ready to come back yet. My answer surprised even me - no. Yes, I miss everyone like crazy...but, even if I was given a shot at that job again, right now, I wouldn't take it. I couldn't. I have a connection here - several of them, actually, though I don't understand all of them. And, just tonight, I came to another realization. Though there are days that in my head I think I should want to come back, I know in my heart and soul that I don't. I miss my family there...but I belong here. Which leads me to the end of my convo with my former pastor - he followed my musings by answering with, 'you know what--I think that's a calling. I think you've found a calling there, and that's why you feel this way.' I was shocked, honored, amazed...all of the above. Partly because I feel like that is something I've been searching for for so long, and didn't find until I stopped looking so hard for it, partly because I think it's scary for me to have a calling and not feel like I have everything I need to fulfill it, but mostly because it made perfect sense.

It may seem I've gone a long way off my original point, but actually, I've finally arrived at it. Being able to have the feeling of being called makes my perspective change on so many things. It makes me understand how I can be content here even when I don't feel like I should be. It makes me understand why I need to go through difficulties here. It makes me understand period. It made me see in a new light. The old wounds are still there...I can remember them, I can even feel them sometimes when I think about them. But, I see them differently now. I understand why they had to hurt, and I understand why I had to undergo them in the first place. And I've got some wicked scar stories to tell too. :)