in the fury of the moment

challenge o' the day

So, here's a challenging feat: sitting through a planning meeting, discussing what I'm going to work on this coming year, and trying to act interested (when I know very well that I won't be here for the coming year to work on any of it). I think I pulled it off though, with an appropriate mixed expression of both excitement and concern for my workload and those of my teammates.

Yep, you read that right ... I won't be at my current job for the coming year. I'm leaving. I just accepted a position at my alma mater, Houghton College. Sure did. This change is something I've wrestled with for a little while now. I have been nursing this hunger to get out of this job and do something that has a little more meaning, and I'm not sure I have the energy to cater to the hunger anymore. It has been eating away at my soul for too long. I feel like I have lost part of myself in this position.

Even the city (which I used to love) is starting to give me a headache. The busyness and the hustle and bustle of moving quickly but going nowhere ... I'm tired of it. I know that Rochester isn't exactly a monster metropolis or anything, but still -- it's enough of a city that it feels like a city. It smells like a city. It has garbage blowing around on the sidewalk like a city. And it drains me like a city. I admit ... there is life here (sometimes), and there are plays and concerts and coffeeshops. But I think I would appreciate this things even more if I didn't have them all the time. How fun would it be to go to the city for a big weekend away, after having spent all week long in small-town America or farmland USA? I'm sure some of you who are from small-town America or farmland USA might not share my feelings, but just humor me on this one.

So, I'm leaving this job. This office that has inspired so many posts of me reaching out to you, in an effort to remind myself that there is life outside of this brick building. There is more to the world than periods and commas and spreadsheets and deadlines. And, though the position I'm taking isn't "Official Life Improver of Everyone in the World" or "Person Designated to Help All Those in Need and Soothe All Aching Hearts", it's more of a step in the right direction. It will mean I'm plugged into a college atmosphere, and that I'm that much closer to these young adults who are in such a vulnerable state. There are all kinds of questions floating around in their heads, and they are just beginning to catch a glimpse of how big the world really is outside of the college cafeteria and the socially charged Campus Center.

And I'll be that much closer to the library I used to love, where there are dusty books calling my name even as I write this. Philosophy books and theology books, Amy Carmichael books and stories of missionaries of whom I've never even heard. And I can't wait to get my staff library card and get at those books again.

I'll also begin my journey to my long-term goal of teaching. I'm going to start doing some stuff online ... and eventually (hopefully by early 2006), I will be where I want to be ... teaching out west. It's so hard to believe that all of this is actually happening. I feel like I'm in a dream, and I don't want to move too quickly or tell too much, lest I wake up and find it all to be a figment of my imagination. But it's really happening. I look back over the past four or five years (since college) and I am able to see the pieces of the puzzle slowly fitting together. Choices I have made, relationships I have had, good things and bad things I have done, apartments I have lived in, trips I have taken, sunrises and sunsets I have witnessed, moments where God's voice was a quiet whisper, and moments where His voice was so loud it hurt to hear it ... and I can see how it is that I am where I am right now, in this moment. And there's no place I'd rather be.

So, maybe the early challenge of the day was getting through that planning meeting. The challenge I face right now is seeing this moment for all that it is: the grace and sovereignty of God permeating my life, and me letting go and letting it happen.

posted by Krista @ 11:24 AM