Life Goals

In a junior high Family and Consumer Science class, we were each given a piece of paper with questions dealing with what we would like to do when we grew up. We were supposed to think about what we saw ourselves doing in the future.

I sat there and sat there, and I couldn't see myself doing anything. Well, other than watering the flowers outside of my cottage as I walked around in sandals and a sundress. That's what I saw in my head. So I wrote that down. I don't remember the teacher's comments when she saw that my life goal was to own an English-style cottage with sloping roofs and ivy up the side and to water my plants and sit and read in the sunshine. Doctor? Teacher? No, it didn't llamarme la atención.

Currently I am not doing that. I'm pursuing a graduate degree and working as a research assistant. And often I feel a little lost, like I'm a little minnow trying to swim upstream with a bunch of muscled salmon. That sounds a lot lost. Okay, maybe like a little kid trying to use the big words and use the same gestures as the big kids, trying to fake my way through until hopefully I actually do start to get it, do understand, can make my own sociological analyses and feel confident about them. Right now I think I'm just pretending.

Recently I took a personality test through the Enneagram Institute, and I turned out a 9, a peacemaker. Several of the graduate students I've talked to are 4s and 5s - Individualists and Investigators. I haven't met anyone else who identifies as a Peacemaker; easy-going, receptive, complacent. These make me wonder if maybe I am lost; maybe my personality doesn't prepare me to be a world-class sociological researcher.

Then why am I here?

When I took my first sociology class as an undergraduate student, it opened my eyes. I learned so much. I started thinking about my assumptions and prejudices. It changed me. I think it made me a better person. I continued with sociology, planning on doing social work. After an internship where I realized that it was mostly paperwork and a lot of redtape and dealing with unhappy children and unhappy parents, I thought maybe I could try something else. A lot of my professors, and friends, had been mentioning graduate school for a while. I started to take them seriously. I'm smart. I'm doing well as an undergraduate. Maybe I could be a professor and help students view the world in a different way as I had been helped. I read Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and felt excited by his encouragement in the value and validity of Christians working in higher education. I wanted to be part of that.

So here I am, halfway through my first semester. I have research projects that I keep sludging along with. I have three papers staring at me like a mountain in the Black Hills and I have my little MacBook of a pickaxe as I try to create Crazy Horse. But I'm also working as a teacher's assistant in an introductory sociology class, and I like that a lot. I was able to lecture on a couple of topics. I've had one-on-one interactions with some of the students, explaining on a personal level the nuances of a particular sociological concept. I like that.

We'll see where I end up. For the time being I will continue chiseling away at my future publishable papers, thinking about how my life experiences and my individual personality meet up.

Enjoys: long walks on gravel roads

Being home seems at once the right place to be, and at the same time incongruous with the rest of my life. What I mean is this: I came home after graduation, and I fit right in. My bed is still as uncomfortable as ever, I drink three cups of tea a day (it's like a comfort blanket). Shanna still keeps me awake at night, (last night it was recording my name in a gravelly voice on her phone and then playing it back to me, right in my ear.) These are things that fit like a glove.

At the same time, this is just a pit stop. I'm moving to Mexico in two and a half weeks. My clothes don't have a drawer in which to belong, because Shanna has usurped all the space in the room upstairs. My stuff sits in peripatetic piles, piles that I carry from place to place but have no final destination.

I feel comfortable at home, content, yet there is a restless corner inside, because I know I will not be here long. Unsure how the next step will turn out, let alone the step after that, I want to be fully present, here for these next few weeks, and still fully prepared for what happens next. I will keep you updated as to the success of this venture.

Not a finished product

We had a song on a kids tape when I was growing up, and the words were
"He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be.
It took him just a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient he must be - he's still working on me."

Five days until graduation! I'll be all shiny and clean and one of 550 other blue-gowned graduates. Like Wheaton is a tube of toothpaste that annually shoots out a big glob of educated young adults. Not finished, in process, a step along the way.

It's an interesting feeling to be graduating and thinking that I should be somewhere I'm not - like I should have squeezed more out of my education. Similar to the feeling that I should be writing incredibly profound and insightful things in my blog - that one day I'll put it in a book that will bring hope and joy to millions.

I leave with you this thought "God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal, 'the Lord knows those who are his.'" 2 Tim 2:19. I do not have to prove myself, I do not have to act like a finished product. He's still working on me, and he knows those who are his. I rest and trust in his work, delighting in the adventure he has set me on.

The first step of the adventure I have some idea about - at least locationally I'll be in Mexico. Step by step, because he's still working on me.

"with anticipation"

Accolades do not prepare us for mediocrity. Unexpected recognition says "you are better than you think you are." Well, thank you very much, but that's still quite terrifying. What do people expect of me now?

Today I sat on stage in chapel and shook hands with President Litfin because I was inducted into the Wheaton College Scholastic Honor Society. Chapel attendance was pretty thin, but there were still quite a few people who witnessed the event. I'll put this on my resume, too, so from now on this event will shape the way people think of me and what they expect of my life.

A book that I had signed by a professor said 'To Karen, with anticipation of God's leading you.' I like that. That's helpful. Wherever God leads me, that's the way to go, that's what to expect; that's what Dr. Treier expects, at least.

It's interesting how one accolade leads me to desire others. I entered a paper contest and went to the award ceremony today. I didn't win, but part of me really wanted to win, to continue to recognition that I have begun to garner.

But another part of me also wants to sink back into a comfortable anonymity, only a few people knowing how fantastic I really am, but without the pressure of having to be excellent and to be one ahead of everybody else.

And I don't want to forget what Paul says in Galatians - are we trying to win the approval of men, or of God? May I always ultimately seek approval from God.

Interview Schminterview

I have an interview this afternoon! I will be going to a place called Geneva Foundation which works with adolescent boys who are aging out of the foster care system. It seems like a neat place. If they like me today they'll ask me back for a second interview, so I won't know for a while if I have a job offer.

So many choices. Americans are faced with a plethora of choices and then supposed to choose wisely. If things don't work out, it's our own fault because we could have chosen something else.

My choices are bifurcated. I can apply for and accept a job here in the Chicago area or I can do something totally different; go to Zacatecas, Mexico, and spend 13 months working with kids there. I would be going from a safe comfortable place where I can make my crockpot meals, chat with my roommate, take the El to work, and make wise financial choices. Or I can go to Mexico, a decision which would cost me at least $17,000.

I do not want my life dictated by monetary concerns. Good stewardship, yes. Wise choices, yes. But generosity! Values! Concerns! What is important in my life and do I allow these values to change the way I act?

"we could really use the help down here."

"I called you because you are poor."

I've been applying for jobs in the social service sector of Chicago, jobs where I will be "helping" people who are "less fortunate than I." We've been talking about this in our sociology capstone course, particularly because our discipline of study has given us tools to be able to help others. Yesterday one of my classmates shared the following passage from a book by Jean Vanier entitled Befriending the Stranger. Vanier founded the l'Arche communities, which work with people with disabilities. He has this to say about being in community:

God's ways are not our ways; God's choices are not the choices of society.
God chooses "the poor, the weak, the needy",
those who recognize their poverty -
not just a material poverty but an inability to cope with life.
...
the problem is that we refuse to admit our weakness, our needs, our poverty
because we are frightened of rejection.
We have been taught to be strong, to be "the best", to win in order to become "someone".
Since society tends to marginalise those who are weak we think that weakness means rejection.
So we try to hide our poverty for as long as we can
and to pretend that we are strong;
we build up an appearance of being in control.

We need to hear that gentle, inner voice of God who tells us:
"you do not need to pretend.
you do not need to hide your weakness.
You can be yourself.
I didn't call you to community first of all to help others
Or to prove that you were generous or efficient.
I called you because you are poor,
Just like the ones you came to serve,
And because the Kingdom of God is promised to the poor."

Hi, I'm Bob. Would you knock me out please? (now with pictures!)

Baby steps around this office, Baby steps get on the bus.

Baby steps to graduation.

I'm not sure which number it is (in the baby steps to post-collegiate life), since I've already finessed my resume and had several interviews, but I bought a suit on Friday. It's Italian. Now I just need the attitude that "I'm exactly what you need for this com-pan-y."

What I need is a tailor. The pants are too long. Kathryn!

14 digits

There are little things about living at Wheaton that I will miss. Little, rather insignificant things except for what they represent - belonging.

For instance, I really enjoy typing my fourteen digit ID number into the computer to access my library account. I have it memorized. Likewise, I like turning the dial on my CPO lock, waiting for the expectant catch when it clicks and I can open it.

I enjoy textures - running my finger along the groove in a brick wall, resting my unfinished carrot on my lips while I chew. Likewise, what I like about the above things are the tangible feelings they give my fingers - I like watching my fingers move quickly across the key pad and like feeling the tug of the lock as it catches. It is easy for me to think about how I'll miss them because I like them at such a basic (though not quite visceral) level.

Both of these activities are privileges of belonging to this community. Once I graduate my library account will be disabled and my college post office box will be given to an incoming freshman. This is the way of life - it keeps moving and changing. It is easier to think on these trappings of belonging rather than on the true substance of the community that I will miss. My future has a bend in the road which I cannot see beyond so I busy myself enjoying opening my CPO box.

Free pizza

When one changes one's meal plan at the college dining hall, when lunches and suppers become more sporadic and need a little more planning than walking in and swiping a card in order to enjoy a banquet of Medieval proportions, then the words "free food" have more than just a passing allure.
I know it's been said "there's no such thing as a free meal" but there are ones that have less pecuniary payout on my end, even if I do contribute by cleaning up or some other way.
It is within my best interests not to chase after free meals like a ravenous, tight-pocketed fool. I would lose self-respect, for instance. Nonetheless, I cannot deny that I think twice about going to an informational meeting about digging ancient dust in a city where bombs are falling (aka Ashkelon) when they say "free pizza!" And by thinking twice I mean that I actually consider going to the meeting.

But even if I do go and stuff my face with hot, greasy, delicious pizza at no charge to myself, Kathryn would never allow me to spend the airfare money just to follow her around the whole summer and complain (which she knows I will).

Moving target

I want my center to be in Christ and I want to live in the reality that my identity is found in Him. Yet as soon as I center myself I allow myself to be distracted. What I need is a staple gun, to staple myself to Jesus, yet I'm afraid I'd just take out the binding ligatures. I run around in my life saying "Jesus help me" as if I'm playing tag with him, getting so close and then jumping just out of reach.

What I need is for Jesus to staple himself to me, 2 Tim. 2:13

Ashes to Ashes

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

But the steadfast love of the Lord never fails.

Merciful God, you call us forth from the dust of the earth and name each of us as your beloved children. Now look upon us as we enter these Forty Days bearing the mark of ashes:
sign of our mortality,
reminder of our end.
Bless our journey through the desert of Lent to the font of rebirth.
May our fasting be a hunger for justice, our acts of charity, a making of peace; our prayer, the chant of humble and grateful hearts. When we come to Easter and behold the empty cross, renew in us the certainty of your unfailing love; assure us again that neither life nor death
can separate us from you.

Windsor

I played Scrabble tonight with Pauline, Winn, Louise, and Dee. Louise has a day-lily named after her. Pauline and Winn graduated from Wheaton in 1945 and knew my grandmother, Anna Hess Lander. What is it like to live at a nursing home with a college friend sixty-three years after graduation? As Simon and Garfunkel say "Can you imagine us years from today? How terribly strange to be seventy" let alone 85. We make choices in our lives and are responsible for those choices, but in a grand sense life just happens and we respond in a right way. These ladies have lived for so many years and have done so many things in their lives.
I'm only 22 and am so worried about what will happen in the next few months, the next few years. If my life isn't settled by the time I'm 30 I'm lost. But here they are, 85 years old. Life happens and you take it one day at a time.

Otto gave me three kisses, and he's 101.

Career Fest

Today Natasha and I went to a Career Fest, booyah. It was crazy. There were a lot of different employers there, but I was only really interested in the human and social services. It was good experience, definitely, and a couple of the employers seemed interested in my resume, so I guess I've got something going for me.

Mostly it was good experiential knowledge because I've only ever gone through a real interview process once, and that was with Teach For America. It can be a bit daunting to think about stepping out from my nice, sheltered enclave at Wheaton and merging with the work outside of here, so it was nice to feel like perhaps I do have good stuff to offer and can do good, meaningful work after I graduate.

Tomorrow's Groundhog Day, and the rodent will probably see his shadow because the forecast is sunny, but that's okay because we can eat the hog afterwards. ;)

paper explosion

My plan this afternoon was to go through old class notes, bank account statements, receipts, letters, etc., and either throw away or neatly categorized. I don't like having lots of things around, but I hate the thought of throwing something away that will be useful in the future (particularly for taxes or grad school). After three and a half hours, I am taking a break and creating this blog, the inspiration of my dear roommate, Natasha. Though it will probably not be as profound or interesting as some, perhaps it will provide insights into my life for friends and family.

This last week has been quite difficult. I've been in the process of considering my future and I worry that I won't use the gifts and opportunities that God has given me to their fullest potential. It's a heavy responsibility to have a life. I've been considering happiness and the difference between happiness and contentment, as well as what is most importance in life - a relationship with and obedience to God. Romans 8:28 says that God works all things for the good of those who love him. This "good" isn't necessarily happiness - it's being transformed into the image of God.
As I've been considering happiness and contentment I've also wondered about the connection between choices and trust. I can pray for wisdom and guidance, but I don't always have solid assurance that I'm making the right one. Trust is an uneasy adventure.