The Future

Brian and I will be moving in approximately 90 days. We are packing only what we can fit into our Subaru, shipping the car across the country, and then heading out ourselves with our faithful puppy Peanut and misanthropic feline Anubis.
No, we do not have jobs. No, we do not have a place to live. But we do have a church, a partner, and a plan. We visited Church of the Annunciation in Milwaukie, Oregon when we were visiting Brian's family in April. When I came into the church I felt warm and many of my apprehension about moving to the other side of the country were softened. I knew that this ridiculous plan was a good one.
We, along with our friend Mylo, want to eventually have a farm (or manor as Mylo prefers to describe it) with a house and out buildings made of Cob. We want to live off of the land, and support ourselves by producing things. We want to extricate ourselves from consumer culture. We want to produce most of what we need in life. For those things we can't produce we want to barter first and buy second. We want to fund the buying by  producing, not by working for some business. Eventually, we want to produce enough to care for people we encounter who, through infirmity or ignorance, can not care for themselves.
We have always had this sort of idea in the back of our heads. We have always dreamed of a self-sufficient farm. But now we are done with dreaming, we are doing. Sure, we are starting with little steps, but we are acting and we are not allowing ourselves to fall into a complacent lifestyle of "one day" thinking. Our conversion is a big part of this decision.
There is a sense that by leaving Luther's Five Solas behind our lives must change. Just as leaving Sola Scriptura behind means relearning how to study Scripture and Theology; leaving Sola Fide changes how you make life choices. I am not saying that moving to a farm in Oregon and churning goat's milk somehow saves anyone. I am saying that when you understand that the eternal health of your soul is linked in a very real way to what you do on earth you start to think a little harder about the choices you make.
So off we go, to find a temporary house, some temporary jobs, and maybe even get some (permanent) Bachelor's Degrees from one of Oregon's fine, and fairly priced, universities. Oregonian culture does make our agrarian goals a little easier, but the main goal of our move is psychological. We are purging ourselves of all of those things we didn't realize we held. We are rejecting the Puritanical (and ultimately Unitarian) ideals so ingrained in East Coast thinking. We are rejecting the race to see how much can be gotten. We are rejecting the idea that punching a clock and pushing buttons in an effort to help others consume makes you productive. We are rejecting the idea that good and monetarily profitable are the same thing. Instead we are embracing the holistic ideals of the Eastern church and look forward (if that is how to say it) to seeing how much we can manage to live without while working to produce tangible, and good, things.
It may seem silly, but *MY* ultimate goal is to be able to sit in silence for extended periods of time without anxiety. I want to understand what it means to "be still and know that I am God."

Ramble

I apologize if this is meandering. I need to work this out.

We are going to lose our house. Our mortgage payment is a fraction of what rent would be, even in places I wouldn't be willing to live. Our property taxes are exactly the same each month as our mortgage payment. They went up over $200 a month this year, they may go up again next year.

A could very conceivably get a job that would still make the payment, but that doesn't cover what we are behind on. There is government funding to help with that, but they won't give it to us because our W-2s look awful. The only reason we've survived this long, was some help here and there from family, money from Dan whose rent payments are unofficial, and a job I got in December and had until April. None of this shows up on last years W-2 which is how they are judging our worthiness.

All those "help stop foreclosure" websites and organizations are for people who got mortgages for obscene interest rates from predatory lenders. We have a great rate. Our township is a predatory taxer and there is no help. We will never get another mortgage after what the last 2 years have done to our credit. (In an attempt to avoid hyperbole I suppose I should say we won't get a mortgage for 3-7 years.)

All of that is about money. I don't like money, I don't understand money, and I am bad with money. This is what it come down to. I love my little house. There is work that needs to be done on it, a lot of work, but it is my house. With my purple walls, my green bathroom, and my tiny kitchen. I want to finish the basement as a 4th bedroom and 2nd bathroom. I have plans for cabinets over the island with a wrack for stemware. My bedroom is the safest place in the world and no one can hurt me there. I DO NOT WANT TO LEAVE.

I'm not asking for a mansion. I'm asking for a way to keep my little row home, grumpy neighbor and all. I'm not asking for a hand-out. I am asking for a chance to work. I'm not asking for a 6-figure salary, but a 5-figure one would be nice.

I want a chance to succeed.

My dad told me this story about when he was in seminary. He had no shoes, his only pair got a hole in the sole. He couldn't afford a new pair of shoes appropriate for school, and for pulpit-fill. So he prayed for shoes.I'm pretty sure he was expecting a pair that fit at a 2nd hand store. Instead 3 pairs of new shows, just his size, came into his life from 3 different places. So I've prayed. I've had faith. Every application I've sent in, every interview either of us has had, I get EXCITED. I'm like a kid on Christmas. I figure out how the schedule would work, where the money would go first and how to stretch the pennies for the first 6 months so that we can make up for what we've missed.

Every application, every interview, goes wrong. And now it's passed, unless I get a miraculous job by mid-October we are done. There is no more deferment, there is no more stalling. I know miracles can happen, and I know miracles do happen, but how long do you hold your breathe for a miracle?

I don't know where I will be living in 2 months. I am scared out of my mind. Yet again the lectionary smacked my knuckles with a ruler. Matthew 6:24-34 "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

I believe, I really truly believe, I see the evidence of God's faithfulness in other people's lives every day. I see people who have a path laid out for them and as long as they walk that path everything comes together. But after years and years of looking and trying and failing, I thought, THIS TIME, I was on the right path. I thought that this time this path was right. Brian in seminary, me at DCPC, both committing to ministry with zeal and joy. So where do we go from here? Because nobody is calling me back. Because nobody is flying in at this final hour to whisk us out of the fire, at least not yet. So just like everything else in my life I am pessimistically idealistic. No matter how many times life proves to me that I will not win. No matter how sure I am I will never win. I'm always holding my breathe as the buzzer sounds. Maybe, just maybe, this time, I will have been wrong and good things will happen.

P.S. To save you all the trouble: Romans 8:28 "And we know that all things work together for good to those that are called according to his purpose." And to save me the trouble: Trust me, I was an English major, that verse is only comforting if you put the commas in the right places! Are we called according to his purpose, or is the good according to his purpose? And the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, so if our misery brings glory, then by definition it is good because it has accomplished our chief end. Just because God promises all things to work together for good, it does not mean that this situation will end well, nor does it mean that I won't be accidentally deported to Siberia with a sun-dress and a bible. Maybe I am meant to freeze and be buried in a snow-drift so that some future post-Christian Siberian can find it and rediscover the gospel. You see all things work together for good, but that doesn't mean I'm going to like it, or that I am not going to fail.

The Side Effect of Hope

Warning: Post contains references to female reproductive cycles.

I got my period today. Which is 86 days since the last time, which for me, without medication, is a really good sign. I have all my herbs and my thermometer and calendars. I didn't ovulate last cycle, but I hold high hopes for this month, I'm doing low-carb and I've been walking.
Last cycle I couldn't help myself and I counted. If I had conceived my due date would have been my birthday. I told myself, I promised myself, that I wouldn't do that again. How long did this resolution last you might ask? 8 hours. I was updating my calendar with information about my parents upcoming trip and I did it, I counted. Average first pregnancy count vs. "due date" count would have me giving birth on Mother's Day. I thought I was going to cry. I had this image in my head of holding a baby in my arms and nursing for the first time as the sun rises on Mother's Day morning.
Brian likes these images. He likes the way that my mind illustrates concepts and they make him smile. He fell in love with me while I described the scene I had in my head of watching my first child take his first steps. But I don't feel these images the same way. They aren't pleasant "maybe one day" things. They are tiny deaths. The baby that might have been born on my birthday was then a child I lost. And if I don't get pregnant this month I will lose that baby that I see in my arms on Mother's Day morning.
Every month, every week, every day I wake up with the image of the way the world should be and I am always disappointed. If I didn't see the world as it should be in such perfect clarity. I could be content. If my hope didn't come in Technicolor. If my dreams weren't like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel that alters itself to guarantee a happy ending. Because life doesn't have happy endings. Life has real endings. Life has bitter endings. Always bitter, if you're lucky bittersweet. If you're blessed bittersweet. If divinity intervenes on the behalf of mortality, then there is something that makes the bitter, not only palatable, but intoxicating and fabulous.
So I don't lose all hope, because hope is faith. To have hope is to believe that there is a higher power. There is no way to conceive of a world where anything good happens without a power that makes that good; because a glance at humanity proves that relationships, disease, incompetence, hatred, and ignorance untempered only kill us if we're lucky, otherwise they simply poison our spirits and make each moment unbearable. I let my hope, my faith, run like a film in my head and then when life disappoints I crash into that poisonous cesspool that is my mind. There are days that I can't get out of bed because the disappointment is so overwhelming. But I did it anyway, and I knew instantly what a mistake it was, and chances are I will do it again and again and again, because faith is hope. I have faith and so I embrace the insanity of hope. Like a fool I keep going back to that kernel of a dream that I can't let go of. I believe that it's coming right around the bend. If I believed it was years away I would know I don't have the stamina. If I believe that it's right around this next bend I can do it. I don't have two more years in me, but I can always handle two more weeks. Even if it's 52 times that I wait for 2 more weeks, it's better than wrapping my self around two more years. So at the end of those two week waits I find myself back in that pool of despair that shackles me to my bed. Then something happens that pulls me forward one more time.