Down on the Floor
So life after college is fun. If your idea of fun is intense pressure to know where you're going, why, and what your salary will be.
I can assure you I would be having a life crisis right now if I didn't have grad school plans for the fall. But since I do, I feel like I'm in the eye of a hurricane: in the thick of the storm without feeling its effects.
If I were looking for a full time, adult job right now, I would be lost and very likely I'd still be babysitting 30 hours/week instead. The part-time job of caring for children every day is challenging, but it feels less than purposeful. I may be perfectly happy with it for now, but I didn't go to a private university for four years to earn a religion degree to clean up after multiple kids under the age of 6. There's too much debt involved for one, not to mention all the knowledge of ethical paradigms I'm not using. You feel me?
The truth is I want to be needed. And not just needed for food, rules, nap time, and diaper changes; needed for the skills and knowledge I've worked for and the person I have become in the process.
It's an issue of fulfillment, of filling a deep need, of fitting into place and working hard. It's an issue of needing to wake up every day and realize I'm the perfect person for the job, and everything I've done up to now has prepared me for it. It's an issue of doing something with my days that makes me come alive, breathe deep, and lose track of time. Vocation. Deep gladness and deep need meeting.
I hope it's not too much to ask. And I know finding this work, for me, will take a Master's degree and a few more winding-road years. I know it's not my fault I'm not there yet. But it presses in on me now that society says my incubation time is over.
When I think about my job now, during this weird post-grad summer, I think about what it's supposed to be teaching me. Because I know it's so temporary, yet for now it's all I do. I spend the better part of every day with kids who mostly can't use complete sentences yet. Sometimes I try to explain to them postmodernism or soteriology, but they just want to know if it's lunch time. Still, it's important to me to find purpose here, and so I lean into what the Spirit may be teaching me.
I think He is mostly teaching me that everything I experience is from the hand of God (accept it with palms up), and that usually joy is really super simple. He is teaching me that there is something more my heart longs for, like Russia and ethics and theology and ministry, but that I need to be the kind of person that is content pushing kids on swings for hours. That there is more to see, more to be done, more to learn, and farther to travel, but first I must learn to BE the person who will go. And that can happen here, in Nashville, Tennessee, in the serving of tired babies and screaming toddlers. In the serving of the littlest ones. In using simple words and washing the bottles, staying patient in the chaos and loving the unloveable. I want to see every day as a gift, every kid's next breath a miracle, every smile my reward. It might take a whole summer of kids to learn how. It might take letting go of Russia for a little bit, letting go of working in hospitals and churches, and just getting down on the floor.
After all, it's always been in the going down that we find Him.
I can assure you I would be having a life crisis right now if I didn't have grad school plans for the fall. But since I do, I feel like I'm in the eye of a hurricane: in the thick of the storm without feeling its effects.
If I were looking for a full time, adult job right now, I would be lost and very likely I'd still be babysitting 30 hours/week instead. The part-time job of caring for children every day is challenging, but it feels less than purposeful. I may be perfectly happy with it for now, but I didn't go to a private university for four years to earn a religion degree to clean up after multiple kids under the age of 6. There's too much debt involved for one, not to mention all the knowledge of ethical paradigms I'm not using. You feel me?
The truth is I want to be needed. And not just needed for food, rules, nap time, and diaper changes; needed for the skills and knowledge I've worked for and the person I have become in the process.
It's an issue of fulfillment, of filling a deep need, of fitting into place and working hard. It's an issue of needing to wake up every day and realize I'm the perfect person for the job, and everything I've done up to now has prepared me for it. It's an issue of doing something with my days that makes me come alive, breathe deep, and lose track of time. Vocation. Deep gladness and deep need meeting.
I hope it's not too much to ask. And I know finding this work, for me, will take a Master's degree and a few more winding-road years. I know it's not my fault I'm not there yet. But it presses in on me now that society says my incubation time is over.
When I think about my job now, during this weird post-grad summer, I think about what it's supposed to be teaching me. Because I know it's so temporary, yet for now it's all I do. I spend the better part of every day with kids who mostly can't use complete sentences yet. Sometimes I try to explain to them postmodernism or soteriology, but they just want to know if it's lunch time. Still, it's important to me to find purpose here, and so I lean into what the Spirit may be teaching me.
I think He is mostly teaching me that everything I experience is from the hand of God (accept it with palms up), and that usually joy is really super simple. He is teaching me that there is something more my heart longs for, like Russia and ethics and theology and ministry, but that I need to be the kind of person that is content pushing kids on swings for hours. That there is more to see, more to be done, more to learn, and farther to travel, but first I must learn to BE the person who will go. And that can happen here, in Nashville, Tennessee, in the serving of tired babies and screaming toddlers. In the serving of the littlest ones. In using simple words and washing the bottles, staying patient in the chaos and loving the unloveable. I want to see every day as a gift, every kid's next breath a miracle, every smile my reward. It might take a whole summer of kids to learn how. It might take letting go of Russia for a little bit, letting go of working in hospitals and churches, and just getting down on the floor.
After all, it's always been in the going down that we find Him.
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