So now what?

Well here it goes, a more personal blog post than I usually do.

Let's be honest, I don't blog often enough to make that statement but I am making it anyway.

I am having a bit of an identity crisis.  I am too young for this teenage angst and not yet old enough to be having a mid-life crisis, yet here I am, experiencing both.

Let me explain

Since leaving home right after high school graduation, I have always been on the move. I spent 4 years in college, then got married. My husband and I moved from one community to another over the first 4 years, but always within the same general area. In this time I had four different jobs, all within the same field, always experiencing a 'promotion' with each job.

Then we had our son and felt the need to live closer to family, so we made our first provincial move as a couple, from British Columbia to Manitoba. Over the next three years we moved twice in Manitoba. I got my first pastoral job, and boy was it a job. It was amazing and frustrating and scary and exhilarating all at the same time. Looking back I was awfully inexperienced to be running such a large department and at times it showed. It was a breathtakingly painful experience to work in that church. The pressure, leadership, friendship and grace were intense at times but in the end it was not a fantastic fit for me or my family, and we found ourselves moving provinces again.

This time we landed in Saskatchewan, where I worked at one church and my husband took a job at another one. We both loved what we were doing and where we were. We were developing friendships and a community until the unexpected happened. My husband was offered an amazing opportunity in Montreal, and we just had to let him take it. This left my son and I alone in SK keeping on with life in the most normal way we could. This continued for two years, until his employer offered him a permanent position and we decided to move to Montreal, ending our 4 years in SK.

Fast forward to today. We have now been in Montreal for just over three years and if you have been paying attention, 3-4 years is the longest we tend to stay in any one place. We have had the same house, church, and school for 3 years. I have already started and finished a master's degree and am starting a PhD this week.

So here is where the identity crisis starts. I don't know how to live in place past 4 years. How does one stay in a place that long? How do I take those friendships and turn them into deeper friendships? How do I challenge myself in an employment that is starting to feel like the 'same old thing'? I think that starting my PhD will help keep me challenged and excited and in many ways it will, but in some ways it won't. More schooling does not have the same excitement as starting again. There is a thrill in applying for jobs, selling homes and moving. But I know that there is a sadness and stress in them too.

I don't know how to survive in a place once the excitement has worn off. And worse than that, I don't know how to survive in a place when my polish has worn off and the others around me can see my short comings.

This lack of long term experience in a place is freaking me right out. I just want to quit everything that I am doing and pack up and move. The question is where would we go? And for what reason? Could I do that to my pre-teen son? Could I move him again when he is just really starting to make great friendships here.

I can't. I know I can't.

I guess that means I need to learn how to put down roots in a place. I need to learn how to not fear failure, knowing that I can't run away from it. Not this time. Not right now at least.

Not right now.

Confessions of a nervous Nelly

Okay, I'll admit it, I am a nervous Nelly.  I get nervous doing silly little things, like finishing a blog post (what if no one reads it ? ... or worse, what if someone reads it and hates it?). I get nervous answering the phone (what if it is someone calling with really bad news?) and getting the mail (what if there is an unexpected bill in there?) I even get nervous taking a new route on the bus for the first time  (because we all know that I could end up going in the wrong direction).

I tend to be okay with the bigger events in life, things that I am able to control, like applying for jobs, interviewing and going back to school.  These are activities that I have some level of control over, things that I can put into my calendar and prep for. These activities still make me nervous  but in a different sort of way. I find them way easier to deal with then unknown that comes with the little things. And there are times that I let the little things paralyze me.  My mail sits in the box a few extra days, the phone goes straight to voice mail on numbers that I don't know and my blog posts sit un-posted.

But not any more.  I will not have the extra time or emotional energy to feed into this nervousness when school starts in a week.  More than that I do not believe that people are created to live in fear and anxiety, yet we are all suffer with it in different ways over different things.  It is not a new problem, brought on by increasing technology, societal pressures or recession, this is a problem that has been around for centuries and will continue to be around for centuries to come.  So what can be done?  Well for starters I am following the writings of the Apostle Paul as he wrote in Philippians 4:4-8:

   4  Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

There are so many good reminders in these verses to help combat those nagging fears! For me these verses boil down to shifting my focus from myself and my fears, to Christ and all of the great things he has done and will continue to do.  Now that is so easy to say, but so hard to do when the bank account is dwindling, the phone is ringing and the mailbox is full.  So I am starting small, I am working on seeing the little things each day, the things that I can offer thanksgiving for as I offer my requests to God.  Little things that make me smile, that touch my heart, that make me laugh, that cause me to rejoice.  Some days it is as simple as a hot cup of good coffee in the morning and other days it is my wonderful family that cause me to rejoice.  I will try not beat myself up too much on the days that I fail to see all of the amazing gifts around me, I will just repent, repeat the verses to myself and start over, rejoicing in the little things.

I know I will still have times when the mail sits in the box, the phone will go straight to voicemail and I will start more blog posts than I will ever finish, but God has grace for that.   He has enough grace to cover my fear, to reassure me with the peace that transcends all understanding and to give me strength each day to look for the little things which lead me to rejoice in him.

Suck it up Mister...and other things I say for his own good.

There are some days that I feel like the worst mother in the world, I think we all have those days but today was one of those days.

We recently moved to a new city, and my son has not adjusted super well to a new school and new friends.  To be fair there are days that I haven't adjusted well either, I'm just 'old enough' to deal with my emotions and more often then not, pretend they don't exist.  So I am trying to help my son learn how to discern when he can share his emotions and when he should pretend he doesn't feel them (see...worst mother in the world).

My son is a super sensitive 8 year old boy with a strong passion for justice and fairness and he is very compassionate.  All amazing qualities that I don't want to squish.  But with that often comes over emotional break downs, drama like you wouldn't believe and tears, oh the tears. So I find myself saying some of  my mother's favourite phrases "suck it up",  "Life isn't always fair", "you reap what you sow".  Man is it hard to tell your crying son that he needs to tough it up before the school bus arrives.  I can barely do it without crying myself, goodness I am almost crying just typing this, but he needed to hear it.  He needs to know that there are times that crying is good and right and appropriate and then there are times when he needs to hold it in.  School isn't as safe of a place emotionally as I wish it was.  I wish that he could express everything that he was thinking and feeling and have his class look at him and say 'boy that kid is sure in touch with his feeling and he makes a good point, we should all care as much as he does", unfortunately that isn't the case.  He is just getting to be known as the 'weird crying kid'. And it breaks my heart.  I want to sit outside his school and watch him each day.  I want to talk to each kid in his class and make them be his friends.  I want to shake each teacher and tell them that they should make the kids in the class be friends with my sad little boy, but none of those things will help him.  I want to tell him that one day the most perfect friend will just show up and come and talk to him as he sits there crying into his sleeve on the playground and that they will be best friends forever, but this is not an after school special.  This is real life.  If he wants friends to play with him, he may need to ask them to play.  He probably needs to take a deep breath, wipe his eyes and for the 15 minutes that recess is, pretend to have fun.  Pretend so hard and so often that before he knows it he is having fun.  He needs to ask for phone numbers to create play dates, he needs to stay in class, instead of heading to the office to cry. He needs to change his attitude, even though it is hard.

And he needs to suck it up.  And so do I, and there are times when you probably do too. As adults we know that we can't go around crying through meetings, dinner with friends or on the bus, we need to hold on to those emotions until we can release them with safe people, in a safe and appropriate place.
So along with saying 'suck it up' I am trying to create that safe place, here at home for him to release that sadness.  I am trying to help him nurture relationships, new and old, where he can express those emotions without judgement or fear.  I am trying to help him grow into a man who knows when to be strong and in that strength know when and how to express how he is feeling.  I am trying to teach my son that his compassion and sensitivity can be shown to the world through words, deeds and acts of justice, not through drama.

And that is not easy.  Thankfully I am not doing this alone.  We have friends and family and a church family (past and present) who are leading by example as well as with words of encouragement and prayers of support.  Even the school is trying their best to support him in this transition.  And he does have some great friends here and in our last city who are keeping in touch and helping him be happy.

I will keep being that mother who tells her son to suck it up, and I will be there to hold him when he just can't and celebrate with him when he suceeds.  This is just a season of our life.