Growing Up

I have a couple of friends who are currently in the throes of wedding fever, or at the very least a slight wedding cold.  They're going through what I went through where you try to reconcile what you always imagined/wanted/expected compared to (sometimes sucky) reality.  It wasn't horribly bad for me as I had no huge dreams about what my wedding would be before I started actually planning it.  I was upset at myself for being overweight and it wasn't at the Biltmore but those were things I knew weren't going to happen well before I actually began planning.

Last night I was thinking about their frustrations and I realized that I was in a similar situation emotionally.  Craig and I are trying to figure out what's going to happen next.  My job's in flux and my paycheck promises to be smaller in the coming year.  He's graduating and has so many applications out across the country it'd make your head spin.  We had talked about the Worst-Case Scenario if something doesn't come through by the summer - ie him continuing on with a second degree so that we can stay where we are and keep the living situation/finances the same.  Great - it worked.  It wasn't ideal but it worked.  It would also give us an easy out if something did fall into place at a place where he knew he could serve.  

It was/is a way for us to move towards our shared dream of planting roots in a community and really feeling like we belong.  It's the most fascinating thing to be in graduate school because you feel like you half belong and don't belong.  You have a community, friends, etc but nothing's permanent.  Many of your friends are busy figuring out their own lives and plans and nobody's here for good.  I think seminary only enhances this feeling of apart-ness because church, generally a place where you become well-known and belong, is another place of apart-ness.  Even when Craig was working at his field church, an awesome little church with a great number of wonderful people, we didn't really belong.  We didn't have family there.  We weren't on committees or in choir or whatever.  Internship was that times 10.  Our internship pastor did not encourage me getting involved in any committees because what if they came to rely on me and then I'd leave.  It makes sense but it also doesn't.  Of course, he was kind of *special* all the way around.  

Anyway, so I have this feeling of looking into a world most of the time.  I love it but I'm not part of it.  As a teenager, my picture of my life as I creep toward 30 was that I would be in the process of getting a house, be married, have kids, and be living in a place I loved.  Essentially, belonging.  What I'm faced with is all of these things (minus the married because I can check that off) being delayed.  Craig's talked about maybe pursuing another big degree that would serve his specialization in social ministry.  I want to support it and I will if that's what he decides but that just pushes my timeline back even further.  The economy is slowing down any hiring right now, even in churches and nonprofits that can afford it.  What would have taken him 3 or 4 months of searching might take him 6 or 7 months.  We just don't know.

I've come to realize that life isn't so much "this is what I'm going to do and this is how I'm going to do it" but a constant dance between opposing forces of what is desired, what is feasible, and what is desired in those around you.  None of us live in a vacuum.  My teenaged plans didn't take that into account (probably because of how insanely self-centered I was).  I'm having to take that into account now.

Craig and I want the same things: kids, a home, a sense of community.  We'll get there together.  I'm just not exactly sure how yet.