Ten Million Choices

When I was 18 and rebellious, I wanted to be a rock star.  I joined a band and we worked hard to achieve that goal.  To get to sing for a living, to get to have the adulation of the crowd and get paid for it?  Uh, yeah.  When I was 19, I became too cool to want to be a rock star (people who sign onto a label are “sell-outs,” man).  Even though I secretly still wanted to be one. 

I took mostly sociology courses in college, because they were incredibly easy and interesting.  I had no clue what I wanted to “be.”  Despite all the leadership positions and advanced classes I took in high school, I had no idea who *I* was, much less what I wanted to do with my life.  The whole college thing confused me.  Everyone knew what they wanted, or at least seemed to.  Maybe it was the drugs that put me in a fog, but I secretly think that they only helped keep me in that uncertain place, because the fog was there before the drugs.  

Then I met God, somewhere in the thick of my messed up 19th year, right in the midst of the smoke and the dark and the angxt.  There was a Voice there then, and in so many ways I felt as if it was a Light far off, like a door barely opened, sending in a promising beam of light into an otherwise unlit basement, and so I stumbled my way toward that door for about a year, maybe longer, until I found it and walked through into a bright place.

Only, it would be silly to say that the bright place meant all my problems were solved, or that I suddenly had a burst of amazing insight, or that I knew what I wanted to do with my life.  All I knew for certain was that I wanted my life to be God’s—whatever that meant.  I was figuring overseas, another country, going permanently to live and to love for Jesus.  So I dropped out of the university and went to a Bible College (unaccreditted, uh, sort of regretting that now)  and I married a man who loved God as much as I did, if not more, a man who’d had a similar Road to Damascus experience where everything turned upside down.  And then we had babies, and then he wanted to move to Alaska, and then he got hired as a youth and worship director for a little church in the woods (the same church I grew up in)…

So here we are.  And all of a sudden, I’ve discovered that my life is not supposed to be a passive thing that flows along wherever other people say it should.  We’ve laughed and cried in the past when we’ve acknowledged that I’d never have gotten married had I known what it meant.  Because I didn’t realize that it would mean all my hopes and dreams would have to be set aside, that I would be called upon to put my money down on another’s dreams, whatever they were (whether to be a pastor or a woodcutter).  But when I thought that’s what God was saying, that’s what I did, and I did it for Him…and for him.  Because I love them both. 

So here I am now, realizing that perhaps the dreams I had were not fleshly and fallen.  Perhaps they were of God.  And that marriage does not mean one person silences their hopes and the other person doesn’t.  It might.  But that would be because both parties actively choose to do so, not because one person has to because those are the rules. 

I’m 31.  And I’m just now trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with my life.  Among his dreams, Jeff longs for more time at home, and would like us to find a way to both work part-time, so that he can be at home and be involved with homeschooling (which he LOVES) more.  And I’ll confess to being caught off gaurd.  Work outside the home, for money?  Me?  That was another life ago, another person ago.  But as we question the “roles” we’ve been taught, I have to admit it’s a fair thing he’s asking.  Why shouldn’t he be with his family more, and why would I complain about having a guy who loves his kids this much (and who’s so great with them!)?  But work?  Me?  What would I do?  What do I want to do?

I’m looking at various online college programs, etc, and it’s like the sky’s the limit, except that I’m 31 and have 5 children, which is a distinctly different scenario than the one I was looking at when I was 18.  But it still comes down to asking, what do I want?  Who am I, what am I made for?  And more than that, do we want to move to Haiti and work in orphanages there or go work with a relief program somewhere?  Should I go in a direction that would provide me with skills to help—midwifery, human services, etc?  Do we want to stay in the USA and just be normal people in a normal neighborhood?  And if so, do I go into education, or counseling, or business management, or shoot for seminary? 

Jeff’s game for just about anything, as long as I’m sure it’s what I want (meaning, he’ll happily sacrifice during the education phase, as long as he knows I’ll stick to it—can you tell this guy knows me well or what?).  So far, I don’t have a clear sense from on high about any of these things…more of a general approval thing, a, “Go ahead, you choose,” thing.       

I am just sort of standing in this weird place.  It’s too big, on the one hand, yet I’ll admit it feels so good to be free.  The only thing with freedom, though, is that it affords you choices, meaning at some point, you need to make one.  Patriarchy trains you differently.  I learned to be passive there, to let others do the choosing (and make the mistakes, too).  It’s admittedly uncomfortable to take responsibility again and I find myself standing here in this open space, just staring at all the room.