Scenes From Single Life

Setting: Four women live together in a house on the edge of a small city.

Scene I: The Hallway

The office door is open in the upstairs hallway, casting a rectangle of light into the dark hall. Keyboard tapping is audible, as the first young woman walks up the stairs. She stops in front of the open door to exclaim some news of the day to the occupant. In a few moments, the young woman sits down, and in the office doorway, another young woman, the keyboard-tapping one, leans out. A few minutes of animated conversation pass, and a third young woman joins the two. The orchestra's decrescendo leaves traces of a conversation, "...on NPR today," "...no, not next August, this August!" "...he actually did say that, I promise" before swelling again. Lights darken.

Scene II: The Kitchen

A young woman with a messy pony tail, dressed in professional clothing, enters the shared house. She is clearly withered from the day. She hangs up her coat laboriously, takes off her boots laboriously. Beyond, the light of the kitchen is visible, and laughter between two, now three people erupts from there. The messy-pony-tail woman perks up and joins the kitchen to make four. Pans fly on and off the stove, burners are turned on with a click. The sink is filled and emptied, filled and emptied with dishes: clattering into the sink, running water, steam from a hot pan searing parts of primary and secondary conversations. Two chairs are occupied by rotation at the table; one woman stands and moves about, another sits for a moment on the stair, another gets up to continue the heating of foodstuff; for a moment, all are holding dishes of supper, and seated in various comfortable poses. Then, one must go; two, three. The young woman with the messy pony tail is last at the sink, leaving dishes in the drying rack, hanging up the dishcloth, turning out the sink light with a smile.

Scene III: Cleaning House
A black and white cat is chasing an imaginary thing up and down the stairs. In the bathroom, a young woman in a ragged band t-shirt is spraying cleaner and wiping surfaces. The black and white cat bolts downstairs, scared by nothing, or something, perhaps. The cat's reception is met with no fanfare beyond a harsh eyelock from a young woman wielding a broom and dustpan, tending to the corners and frames of the downstairs.  

Onward travels the cat, into the kitchen, to find a third young woman who, rag and bucket in hand, is giggling to a voice on the radio. This woman appears neither to see nor hear the skiddish cat now skirting the edge of the basement door, descending with speed into its dark depths.

I Think This is Why I Haven't Been Writing

Re-Entry

I went through the pains of what I have heard missionaries call "re-entry" when I returned from my first short-term mission trip to Arizona at the age of 12. What was it? Everything was different; home wasn't home. As I re-entered my old world, I recognized that it, too, was new. Those losses had to be mourned.

I didn't experience it to any great degree when I returned from Honduras, nor upon my return from any other foreign country.

But I've found myself experiencing it this summer, those aches of loss, now I have moved out of the life I've known for the past three years. I haven't always phrased my work as a missionary assignment, though my availability to friends and family has been that of an ex-patriot. (Besides, why would I call myself a missionary? Our lives are ours to use how we will, and if you're a Christian, your life is yours to use how God wills. So we live out our mission. All Christians are also missionaries.)

Yet... aside from rarely being available to hang out, I've been surrounded by people of a different culture and language, and I've been a spiritual mentor. And I guess those are what I have always thought of as a missionary's callings.

Now that I'm living outside of the residence hall, here's what's been on my mind:
1. I have to cook. What is "to cook"?
2. I just did a lot of packing and downsizing: my classroom and my apartment were all placed or displaced in the house I now share with three other women. And most importantly, I don't miss any of those items. Maybe possessions are silly.
3. Is it time to move to another country in a few months? No.
4. Aren't all jobs supposed to be full of purpose? Or are some jobs editing copy, making coffee, and praying that God would receive glory in that? Yes.

When I Say "I'm a Teacher," I'm Just Getting Started

Lachelle encouraged me to look back over the day and look honestly at what I had done. Who knows? This kind of data may be too tedious for the average reader. But I found it interesting to take a minute-by-minute look at one of the busier days of this week. I recently read in an article that we only think we are busy because we see it as a symbol of status. We take pride in our busyness, as though it meant we are important. I am getting over that. I find less and less joy in too-busy-all-the-time girl, and more and more fulfillment in can-look-you-in-the-eye-and-listen girl. As I looked at this hourly, I found a few things to be true: 1.) people matter most. 2.) variety is a joy. 3.) class prep time matters,too, and even though people matter most, don't let people take that away from you!

6:30-8:30 am     Office shift: dealt with some sick kids; scrambled to schedule two doctor's appointments for two different students with two different problems

8:30-9:50 am     Prayer Action Team meeting in my apartment--so convenient!

9:50-10:22 am   Usually this is my preparatory time for class. It was instead taken up with talking about a truant student who caused a commotion near the gym.

10:27-12:14 pm     English 9 (winging it more than I like)

12:14 pm     Help RH student back into the dorm to find her glasses; run into lunch date friends I had nearly forgotten about; ask them to wait just a moment while I deal with glasses; forgot to check to make sure all sick kids had gone into school.

12:18-12:44 pm     Hang out with these two dears who had come to visit as many teachers as they could, and instead found that they were not allowed, and could only enjoy their lunches with a very distracted, overly-caffeinated teacher that neither of them had had officially.

12:48-1:31 pm     Academic Writing class (I have to skip out during the free write to do the copying that I didn't do in the morning or during lunch)

1:31-1:45 pm     Cover for another teacher who had to pop out for some brief thing.

1:45 pm     Call mechanic. Bill is less than half of my greatest fear. I will keep the car.

1:45-2:08 pm     Do odds and ends around classroom. (Each thing is small, but as a whole, they are the difference between teaching during class and just moving papers from bookshelf to desk to podium and back for 43 minutes.)

2:08 pm     In the school office, finding answers to attendance questions. On the phone, finding advisers to give rides to aforementioned students with nearly simultaneous doctor's appointments in different locations. It is decided that I will take one of the students... everything will work out.

2:10-2:30 pm     Blank space. I have no idea. I think I tried to find some food in my apartment. Unsure if I was successful.

2:30-4:30 pm     Trip to dentist to get student a root canal.

4:30-4:35 pm     Stop to get someone birthday present.

4:35-5 pm     Drive back. Stuck in traffic behind wreck. Realize I must hurry because of senior presentation night.

5-5:25 pm     Dinner at cafeteria. The hardest part of the evening, dealing with some relational struggles among staff... left early when Ben arrived so I could be anywhere else.

5:25-5:50 pm     Being present in dorm office.

5:50-7 pm     Finding food in apartment. Reading Anne of the Island.

7:15-8:30 pm     View two senior presentations. (These, in some form, are required for all seniors to graduate in Pennsylvania.)

8:30-9:50 pm     Grading notebooks in classroom.

10-10:35 pm     Saying goodnight to girls on my hall.

10:35-11:20 pm     Praying and listening in the lounge with one student and Lachelle.

11:20-11:30 pm     Talk with Lachelle about issues from the day.

11:30-12:30 pm     Blog, grade, Facebook, Hulu, YouTube, etc.

Hopes for Heaven

In "The Matrix," the computers created a paradise for people. But the people knew something was wrong. And many killed themselves, unable to reconcile the incongruity of their sense of inner wrongness with the rightness around them. I hear an insatiable crying out to be whole and holy.

We all cry for wholeness and holiness.

When people say heaven is going to be boring - oh, my - how deceiving such a picture can be: harps and separate clouds, and white robes. Please.

I would bet that heaven will have work: good, difficult, satisfying work. We will work together, never lonely no matter where we go. If we walk somewhere without a friend by our side, the trees themselves will be our companions, so intimate will be our connection to the world around us. We will have no fear, and no more darkness, for we know that the Lamb on the throne will be the light of the city. And when we have been tired out by our work, we will lie at the foot of pine trees, on beds of fragrant pine-needles, and take our fill of satisfying rest. And wake up again, as in the arms of a lover, attentive and quiet. And the day begins.

We will live in knowing (and every moment, knowing) where we belong and whose we are. And we will climb high mountains where the air does not thin. And we will dive to great depths where the pressure will not damage our brains, which will finally think clearly, and our eyes will finally see fully.

The difference - and it is too great not to be spoken! - is that our sense of inner wrongness: our shame, greed, pride, fear, moodiness, lust, will all be cleaned away. In its place will be a song of love to the One who gave everything he had. A song of love to the one who was shamed for love.