A Beautiful Ambiguity

I don't really think ambiguity is beautiful. But I'm trying really hard. After much soul searching, I realized that most of the anxiety and nervousness I feel when faced with new situations or challenges has at the root a fear of uncertainty. I want assurance that everything will work out fine. When I do not have that assurance, I feel threatened by the possibility of loss or difficulty or suffering. A sense of anxiety follows. Maybe this seems really obvious and you're thinking to yourselves, Oh, Hillary. Obviously! But this was actually a revelation for me. I realized that when I choose to embrace uncertainty, then I'm not as anxious. It's like really cheap, really simple therapy. Mark and I have a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty right now, so I have lots of opportunity to practice embracing instead of resisting.

I had an interview at a school yesterday. Because I'm applying and interviewing for teaching jobs through Teach For America, I'm almost guaranteed a teaching position this fall. But not quite. I still have to interview and interview well. The school still needs to like me and want me. TFA can't force me on them. Unfortunately, I never feel like I interview well. I liked this school a lot. I could see myself teaching there. But I didn't leave the interview with a sense that my interviewers really wanted me teaching there.

During interviews, I always get this feeling that I should have taken speech in high school or forced myself to do something that required public speaking when I was in college. I just don't feel like I express my passion and excitement well. My nervousness makes me quieter and more reserved. I just want to stop partway through the interview and say, Can I be perfectly honest? I'm not expressing myself well. But I would be a really good teacher. I promise. Just hire me and you'll see! But interviews just don't work that way. So now I'm waiting (not very hopefully) to hear back from this school and waiting for more interview opportunities. I think I better force someone who loves me to ask me a bunch of interview questions before the next interview so I can practice conveying what I mean to convey.

Mark is also waiting. He's waiting to hear back on a job he's interviewed twice for already. We're hoping he makes to to the next round of interviews. He's continuing to search for other jobs to apply for, but this one looked good. (Yay! More opportunity for me to practice embracing uncertainty!)

When we arrived in the Twin Cities almost a month ago, I had hoped that before I started training with TFA on June 1 Mark would have a job and we would have begun to look at apartments. At this point, that doesn't seem likely. God is asking us to wait more and trust more. I'm practicing embracing this period of uncertainty.

I'm excited to start training for TFA. I know I'm going to learn a lot and be pushed hard. I'm excited to be in a classroom this summer and learning right alongside other new teachers. I don't mind that I have to spend five weeks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for that training. What I do mind, what I am nervous about, is leaving Mark for that period of time. I haven't been away from Mark for more than three nights, I think, since we got married four years ago. Six weeks apart is going to feel like an eternity. Plus, Mark is used to my habits - embarrassing, irritating, and otherwise - and I'm just not excited about suddenly gifting those co-habitation habits to a stranger.

But in all of this, I'm trying really really hard to enjoy the moment. I'm enjoying holding and petting and feeding treats to my parents' cat. (I love cats. I really love cats. Mark really doesn't. But that's a post for another time.) And I'm enjoying sitting at the table by the sliding glass doors and listening to birds in the trees in the back yard. I'm enjoying spending time with my parents and siblings and family-in-law and niece and nephews. I have lots to enjoy now.

So, I'm trying to embrace this beautiful ambiguity. We don't know where we'll be living in two months. We don't know what our bank account will look like in two months. We don't know where either of us will be working, or whether we'll be able to get a dog. We don't really know anything. But we know that God is good. I know I can trust Him. I know He is leading us step by faltering step. God has arranged for us, right now, this beautiful ambiguity.

The Lord is faithful to all his promises
and loving toward all he has made.
The Lord upholds all those who fall
and lifts up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food at the proper time.
You open your had
and satisfy the desires of every living thing.
            -Psalm 145:13b-16

Some Art I've Just Fallen in Love With

I've just recently fallen in love with Susan Swan's artwork.

The western United States has a very large place in my heart, so I especially like this one:

And this one:

But this one reminds me of Mark's parents' house, so it makes me happy:

And this one is just magical:

Ahhh. Lovely.

A Week of Impatience

If I could use one word to describe this past week (excepting my thrilling whirlwind tour with yogurt), it would be impatience.

For a while now, I have felt as though Husband and I had a number of significant decisions looming over us, and at the beginning of this week, I expected to be able to make some of those decisions. As in, I wanted to be able to make the decisions on Monday morning, preferably before 8:00 a.m.

But between waiting for a little information here and waiting for a little information there, we weren’t able to make those decisions on Monday morning before 8:00 a.m.

I ended up spending my week in a spirit of dissatisfied and grouchy suspension.

After Husband’s sister had spent two nights sharing our humble little house, and after I saw it snowing this morning, I realized this, and I was sorry I had wasted a week in such a state.

We had so much fun with Husband’s sister. We got to play Dominion, we shared enjoyable conversations, and we ate baked oatmeal together for breakfast. During her visit, I thought, Seeing family and good friends is so wonderful.

This morning I awoke to a town clothed in white. The welcomed white visitors were still arriving fast and steady when I sat down to read my Bible and pray, and I thought, Falling snow is so wonderful.

I caught myself in this state of contentment, as I contemplated the snow, and I realized what I had been missing this week: Contentment. Joy in the little things.

I finally remembered—thought of course, this will seem obvious to you, my wise readers—that joy is not found in making plans. Of course, joy can be found in the big things, the events that stand out as significant and life-changing, but the true art is finding the joy that’s woven inconspicuously into the plain pattern of everyday life.

While I'm Waiting: Hoping

I was listening to the radio tonight as I washed and dried the dishes. Husband had to work through the supper hour tonight at the nursing home, so I was alone. Often, for me, doing the dishes alone affords some time for reflection that I might not otherwise take.

Husband and I are going to trim the Christmas tree when he gets home from work, and I was trying to muscle up some excitement for the project. We had all of our children’s programs at the library today, which always leaves me feeling happy and yet slightly bruised on the inside at the same time.

One of the songs that came on while I was drying dishes was a song I’ve heard many times before, but I didn’t even know who it was by: “While I’m Waiting,” by John Waller. The song seemed to fit what I want to be right perfectly:

The word ‘waiting’ is obviously used multiple times in the song, but the word ‘hope’ came up too. Hearing about waiting and hoping in the same breath started me musing on the Spanish word esperar. Esperar translates to the infinitive verb form of the English phrase ‘to hope.’ But, strangely enough, esperar also means ‘to wait.’ In Spanish, to wait and to hope are one in the same.

I was reminded again tonight that this is also true in my dealings with God: to wait on Him is also to hope in Him. I am waiting for something I want, but I can be hopeful because I know that whatever He gives me now and will give me in the future is good.

The other phrase in the song that really got me thinking was: “I’ll be running the race, even while I wait.”

I absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, want this to be true of me. I do not want to sit in front of my computer and write blog lament after blog lament over all the painful things that remind me that I’m not a mother yet but want to be (and who would want to sit and read a whole bunch of laments anyway? The authors of Lamentations get special treatment. Their laments are still read because they ended up in the Bible. I have no such trump card to play.)

So.

That being said, I am going to try to get back to the purpose of this blog: being content with what God has given me while I wait. You will probably continue to hear about our child-longing periodically, but I will not allow that to take over the blog.

On that front, I do have some news to share, however: Though Husband and I are not closing the door on fertility treatments completely, we are starting to take baby steps (no pun intended) into the world of adoption as well.

As a child and a teenager, I had always said I wanted to adopt, but since getting married, I had set the idea aside temporarily because I was intimidated by the substantial cost of adoption. Husband and I independently came to the decision that, despite the cost, now is the time to look into adoption. We’re starting with research, so when you hear about our baby-longing, it will most likely be in the context of our responses to what we have researched.

In any case, with the goal being contentment where we are now, other topics besides adoption that you can expect to be reading about in the coming months are:

• Projects, current and future (gift ideas, food, home improvement, and so forth)
• Experiences in my daily life that inspire thankfulness
• Experiences in my daily life that inspire laughter (you all remember my coworker exchanging Satan for Santa—I’m expecting her to step it up, if only for the purpose of this blog)
• Ways that God is teaching me and speaking to me
• Book reviews (because despite my slip up I am going to read through our personal library and also because I just love to read that much)

I’m looking forward to this month leading up to Christ’s birth, and I hope that you will join me in learning to be content right where each one of us is.

The Current Waiting Situation

This evening I told my husband that I had decided to start a blog. Then I asked him, “What would make people want to read a blog?”

He answered, “Well, people generally read a blog if it has an interesting story to tell or if the writer is especially entertaining.”

Oh dear.

I definitely don’t have an interesting story to tell, so that one’s out the window. And as for being especially entertaining… I truly doubt it.

I would love to be a mommy right now, or very soon, but for one reason or another (sorry, no specifics yet) my husband and I are not parents and do not expect to be parents in the near future. So, the story of this blog, interesting or not, is contentment while waiting. More specifically, it’s what I do with my time while I’m trying to contently wait to have that first little one.

My husband and I live in a small-ish farming town in northwest Iowa. No wait! Don’t leave! Bear with me.

We’ve been married for just shy of two years.

My husband is creative. I think he’d probably be able to make our life sound a whole lot more exciting than me, if he ever had an inclination to write a blog. He spends most of his free time intent upon the laptop that sits on top of our piano, with ear bugs in his ears, composing music. I think his songs are interesting and very well-done, but he would shrug that off, probably thinking that I’m not really qualified to give musical advice.

Even though he loves music, he’s the sort of quiet person who would be incredibly unhappy if he had to lead a workshop on some aspect of music composition and would much prefer to be the anonymous person in the kitchen washing up dishes after the conference lunch was served. (However, if such a conference was to take place, and he was able to go, he would rather attend as a participant than do dishes.)

I would not be happy washing dishes, but nor would I be happy leading a conference. I’m much happier working with children. I spend half of my week as an assistant children’s librarian, leading story time and other kid-meets-book programs and the other half of my week as a children’s programming director at our church. I rest, sometimes uncomfortably, between being wanting to hide my shy timid self away and wanting to get to know every family that comes into our library and church.

I am, however, quite decidedly an introvert, and I spend most of my free time reading, attempting various crafts, or organizing something in our house.

I do trust that God is at work in our lives. Even though the temptation is there to be discontented with our situation just because we don’t have any little ones, I’m attempting to squeeze the most out of my life before children, my life while waiting.