a novel

My fall has been very full - and mostly of good and wonderful things. For the past three months I've been driving a middle schooler (Sky) to and from school most days in exchange for a car, gas money, and a weekly stipend for the nights when her mother is on call and I stay overnight with her (and have to put up with the great dane and the two cats wanting to sleep with me).  Two months ago I started a hostessing position at the Melting Pot where I great and seat guests for 3-5 hour shifts 4 to 5 times a week. And a few weeks ago I started training as a receptionist/social media manager for a small chiropractor's office where my friend Tania works. I've been getting somewhat less than 10 hours a week at the moment, but it should be closer to 15 when the second receptionist leaves next week.  I've also committed to a 3 hr volunteer shift at Ten Thousand Villages each week (which I love) and am a volunteer board member/trainer/facilitator-in-training with the Alliance for...

I accidentally find myself employed. After a month filled with cover letters, resumes, and way too few interviews, a fit of stressing about having no work led to an afternoon hitting the pavement which led, after an hour, to a job. The change of reality is drastic. After six weeks of nothing to structure my life, I start tomorrow. And after four weeks of constant job search, I find myself strangely with nothing to do. That in itself is an image makeover. Add to that the concept that my job falls completely out of any category I would have imagined to be working in. Yesterday I inquired about, interviewed for, and was hired as a hostess and serving assistant at The Melting Pot. All in the span of about an hour. What confuses me most about this position, other than the fact that I needed to purchase a black cocktail dress for my shift tomorrow, is that none of my life experience has been preparing me for this line of work. It wasn't even on my radar and I'm struggling to rati...

When anticipating graduation of EMU a year and a half ago, I was tempted to believe that it was my responsibility and my calling to change the world in drastic, meaningful, obvious manners. And maybe it still is - but I cannot wait for these world changing manners and activities to add value and meaning to my life.  In a number of conversations I have had over the past week, I have been reminded that it is the small acts in life that create meaning. So far my day has consisted of two half an hour walks (one with each dog) a cup of tea and a cinnamon bagel, a bike ride to the DMV - including the relinquishing of my Manitoban id - , a skype date with a friend from EMU, left over Indian food and a chat with my sister while sitting on the porch, and three job applications.  This is my life. No grand life saving or life changing activities. No obvious purpose or long term world changing vision. But it is my life. And I need it to be meaningful.

I have spent the last month in Richmond, VA learning to start over once again. This is a different move for me, mostly because it is unstructured. There is no program here for me to plug into, no course objectives, no deadlines, and no responsibilities other than those I set for myself. The lack of structure and expectations is grating on me, as is the lack of definition to my life and my goals right now. I what to see my life as meaningful, purposeful, successful, etc but it is hard to do that with no external form of identity. And I am struggling to define the internal identity I want to in-body. Last week I re-read a paper I wrote during my junior year at EMU (almost 2 1/2 years ago if you believe that) about how I wanted to grow and develop over the next 10 years. While reading it was encouraging as I felt that I haven't steered to far from the goals and vision I had for myself, I was struck with a strong sense of nostalgia for the confidence and sense of self I found during ...

“How do you have such absolute faith in the ultimate triumph of good over evil?” I blurted out at the end of a discussion in Ted Grimsrud’s history and philosophy of non-violence class, fall of my junior year. Ted, much to my surprise, responded to what I thought to be a rhetorical question with a lecture in our next class together on how he maintains faith in the transforming power of love, or something along those lines. This anecdote from history and philosophy of nonviolence, a class I very much recommend by the way,is almost a perfect reflection on how my faith and my identity have grown and changed during my time at EMU. Almost at every turn my fixation with absolutes, my doubts and my questions, have been replaced with aprofound awe of the transforming power of love. It seems somewhat cliché to admit, but the college verse, Micah 6:8, has had a significant impact in shaping this transformation. “What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk ...

About a year ago (I can't be certain on the date) I told a man I loved him. I believe it was during a phone conversation late at night– and it was at least a week or two before he returned the sentiment. I have continued to grow in love for this man over the past year, and loving him has meant different things over that time. Sometimes it means different things every few hours. At first, and many times still, loving Matt was an affirmation of all I find within him that is a reflection of the divine – of his grace, his patience, his creativity, his love and care for others, his questioning and curiosity, his child-likeness. It is an interesting conundrum that loving Matt is a response to noticing how the God he doesn't believe in is expressed through him in the world. Loving Matt was also, and can also still be, be an inescapable realization of the relationship we have created, or allowed to take place, between us. An actualization of the chemistry, of the butterflies a...