October 26th, 2006
If you’ve been tracking with us over the past year, you’ll know that 2006 has brought a lot of changes. Early in Janurary Jen and I quit our jobs, put all of our stuff in storage, moved out of our apartment in Berkeley, flew out to Massachusetts for the winter term at L’Abri Fellowship, went back a second time during the summer, driving across the country to the east coast and back over 7,000 miles and through thirty states. After that was all done, we thought we wanted to move to San Diego, then changed our minds and came back up to the San Francisco Bay Area. All of that you can read about in past blog entries.
When we got back up here to the Bay Area, a friend of ours hooked us up with a couple in Danville, CA who generously opened their home for us to stay while we both found jobs and a new apartment. We had a great time with Joe and Tanya. They were very hospitable and accommodating. I think they probably would have let us stay six months if we needed. Joe turned out to be quite the chef, I think due in large part to his Italian blood. At least a couple times a week he would grill or bake some great dinner for the four of us.
It took a couple weeks of hitting the pavement (online and in the real world) and Jen found a job at a small IT company in Oakland near Jack London Square on the waterfront. She went in for an interview and was offered the job on the spot because her boss said he recognized something in her character that he knew would be a great asset. She’s now working as an office manager / executive assistant / mother for two bachelor tech support guys and her boss. It’s not the most ideal job to suit her passions, but it pays decently well, her boss likes her, and it gave us a source of income again for the first time in the several months since leaving Crusade earlier this year. Some of you may wonder, “what about grad school? since that was her plan a few months ago. Well she’s still interested in doing it, but isn’t sure about commiting to two years of full-time schooling plus another 2-3 working to get established in the field. She’s still looking into grad schools, but right now is focussing on her job. It’s a big relief for her to be back working again, having a regular weekly schedule with evenings at home together.
About a week after Jen got hired, I landed a contract job doing QA work for Wells Fargo in downtown San Francisco. It’s related closely to computer programming, what I ideally want to end up in, only instead of writing new software I write software to test other software and find bugs so that other people can fix it. I just started there this week, and though I’m not sure yet if I’m going to love the work, I can tell already that I’m going to like my coworkers and the work environment which feels big-company corporate though fairly laid-back and casual. There is a strong possibility that my six-month contract will get extended to a year, and also a chance if it goes well and there is still more work to do that it could turn into a full-hire.
The timing of us getting our jobs worked out at the same time as this apartment that we found became available. It’s a unique sort of place unlike any that we’ve ever lived in before, but seems to suit us. The building was originally part of the California Cotton Mills factory built in Oakland in 1917. It’s all brick with big factory windows, and has recently been converted into loft apartments. Our suite sits on the top-the fourth floor, and affords an amazing view of downtown Oakland, and even the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges and downtown SF. Sometimes we just sit in our living room and stare out the windows. The interior is industrial with all hardwood factory flooring, exposed brick and concrete walls, and steel girder beams that reinforce the original external brick wall. It’s got a lot of space, and presumably because of the location in the industrial part of Oakland (at 23rd Ave and 880) across the Park St bridge from Alameda, the rent is affordable. We feel really fortunate that it became available at the same time that we were landing our jobs. You can check out some photos on my Flickr page of the place during the stages of moving in.
All in all, we are really happy to be back in the Bay Area, not in the least because of our church home at First Pres in Berkeley. We’ve come to admire our pastor Mark Labberton because of his preaching, the importance he places on seeking the welfare of the people in our city and around the world, and for his personal input in our lives post-Crusade. He was largely responsible for getting us connected with the Massachusetts L’Abri which played a vital role in helping us transition from a poor fit in Crusade campus ministry to beginning to discover what this next phase of our life would be like and re-instilling hope for the future.
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July 31st, 2006
So I’m breaking the blog silence after nearly two months. We just finished the L’Abri term last Saturday, have said our goodbyes, and are heading west again in the ol’ Sentra.
Spending a second term at L’Abri was really worth it. As helpers, we had a lot less study time and a lot more work to do, which I was glad for actually. I think my brain appreciated the rest from absorbing new stuff, because it got more time for processing what what I’ve been learning and where I’ve landed post-L’Abri.
Going into the winter term last January, I was dealing with some significant doubts about the truth of the Christian faith, some frustrations with my own Christian experience, and just feeling fried in life.
My mentor at L’Abri, Dick Keyes, was really helpful in talking through my doubts. He was one of the first Christians in my life to encourage me to express my doubts openly in their most obnoxious form. Through conversations with Dick and the wealth of lectures and books he pointed me to in my study time, I’ve come to a a renewed belief that the Christian faith in the Bible is the truest source of meaning available. I’ve also learned that a lot of my doubts have come from a general attitude of cynicism I’ve slid into. The effect of identifying the cynicism has been to clear out room in my mind and my heart for belief.
So now we’re on the road headed back west. Since we were in New England and Canada was so close, Jen and I popped up to Montreal for a couple days. We enjoyed being surrounded by French (which makes it seem like farther away place), walking around the Old Town, and trying out the Montreal Casino. After putting a whopping $30 in the nickel slots, we walked away only ten in the whole thanks to my skills at the one-arm bandit.
We stopped to see some good friends in Ashland, Ohio for a few days and had a good time with them. Today we’re headed on to Iowa, then on to Minnesota after that. Inevitably Eventually we should find our way back to California. We’re planning on staying with my parents in Fallbrook, CA which is near San Diego. Jen’s looking into a graduate program at San Diego State University in Rhetoric. I’ll be looking for a job in computer programming or systems support. Hopefully we should be back into an apartment of our own by my birthday, September 11.
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May 23rd, 2006
The term at L’Abri is almost a week old, and we’re having a really good time. I cooked my first meal for the students the other morning, and it went off pretty well. The baked French toast that I found on AllRecipes.com garnered thumbs ups from the crowd as well as food-comas from all.
The title of this post actually doesn’t have anything to do with that meal though. A few days before the students arrived, I was frying up some bacon for me and Jen, and inadvertantly produced more smoke than the fire alarm would tolerate, alerting the entire house to my presence in the kitchen. It was quite embarrassing. But I didn’t burn the place down.
The weather here is warming up, and it’s looking like the rain has finally left us for the time being. It’s something like mid-60s outside and we’ve got a cool breeze coming through the windows at the moment.
Friday night Dick gave a good lecture on self-control. A couple things that he said resonated with me. The first was an observation he made about how our American culture gives us mixed messages about self-control. On one hand the workplace wants employees who are dedicated and efficient, and are willing to work long hours giving 110%. But once they leave work, our entertainment culture wants them to have no self-control, spending lots of money gratifying every whim.
Another more personal thing I took away from the lecture is that how we live out self-control is dependant on personality. We don’t need to strive to live up to another person’s level of discipline and structure. This was really good for me to hear, because for the past two years I’ve been surrounded by Christians who are highly structured people, and found myself feeling guilty because I couldn’t live up to their level of discipline.
The summer term here at L’Abri is shaping up to be a good one. I hope to send more updates as the term progresses, and perhaps I can coax Jen into putting her two cents in as well.
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April 16th, 2006
Boiling Point
Three months ago Jen and I found ourselves standing at a crossroads. Having been nearly four years in what we thought was going to be a lifelong career, both of us felt strongly that we needed to leave Campus Crusade and the field of full-time Christian work entirely.
From this vantage point, looking back to last November when we started thinking along these lines, the proverbial writing was on the wall. I was finding myself regularly dealing with cynicism towards Crusade. In fact the best part of my week was the weekend when I could take a break from ministry and do things I enjoyed. And the thing I dreaded most about my work was the part most distinctly Campus Crusade: evangelism. I felt like a square peg trying to be pushed through a round hole.
Each of us was wrestling with our own questions and doubts about our Christian faith. Jen has described herself as feeling like the brand of Christianity she was trying to live out was just too narrow. She felt stifled by a daily pressure to share the Christian message verbally with others and to constantly be examining her own “growth” as a Christian. I was wrestling with doubt about the truthfullness of the Christian message in a world with many world-views, a struggle I’d been having since college. Also I felt like the last thing I wanted to do was “share my faith.” I think it would have been more accurate to call it “sharing my doubts,” because when I was in conversations with people on campus about faith and the Christian message, I felt like I was trying to convince myself just as much as the “non-christian” I was talking to.
Just What We Needed
It’s difficult to convey just how big a sigh of relief we breathed when we left Campus Crusade. It was like a pressing weight had been lifted. A friend recommended this place called L’Abri. Having never heard of it ourselves, we checked out the website, and immediately saw that this place was for us. It described itself as a place where people take genuine questions seriously and where they believe that the truth of Christianity affirms life and speaks to all of human life and thought.
The environment at L’Abri was true to it’s word. We found welcoming people who having heard of our reason for coming were so excited to have us. And as we shared our stories with other students we found that struggles were par for the course here, a welcome change from our environment back in Berkeley where we felt more like problem children.
We soon settled into the daily schedule of work and study punctuated by mealtimes and morning and afternoon tea. I chose to work in the morning and study in the afternoon when I was more alert. Work consisted of supplying wood for the stoves to heat the house, doing laundry in the basement, prepping for meals and doing dishes afterward. My personal favorite, and the job I volunteered for whenever possible was laundry. I relished the alone time in the basement because I could listen to audiobooks on my iPod. In fact, L’Abri laundry got me through the first two books in CS Lewis’ Space Trilogy.
Doubt and Unbelief
My studies focused on struggles with doubts about the truth of my Christian faith. I met weekly with my mentor, a worker named Dick, who encouraged me to ask my questions in their most obnoxious form rather than in the polite way I tend to verbalize them in. He recommended a lecture called “Troubles with God: Questions, Doubt, Unbelief.” I learned that the word doubt comes from the Greek word for “two”: literally it means being in two minds. This is contrasted with unbelief, in which someone has already decided something is not true. This was quite affirming to hear because I found myself identifying more with doubt than with unbelief. In my experience as a Christian I felt like I was bouncing back and forth between belief and unbelief, and it gave me comfort to hear that most of the main figures in the Bible did so as well.
Another important conclusion I came to has to do with my doubt that the Christian message is the only true way of seeing the world. I mean, how can I believe that millions of other people in the world are wrong? I was slowly beginning to believe in the possiblity that it couldn’t be true that Christianity was the only truth, but that within every religion was a true path to God. I don’t know if I would have verbalized it this way, but it was there none the less. Dick had me listen to some lectures on the subject, and it turns out this many roads-one God analogy has been around for a long time. One of the older illustrations goes like this:
Several blind men have encountered an elephant. One man finds it’s leg and proclaims he’s found a tree. Another man touches the trunk and thinks he’s found a snake. Still another man discovers the tail and says he’s found a rope. The point is that each man in his own mind thinks he has a “true” understanding of what he is observing. But though each has his own version of “truth,” in the greater picture they are all encountering the same elephant. This analogy is used to describe the relationship of all religions to each other. They each have their own “truth” but in reality are all describing different parts of the same “God.”
This way of seeing the world has an air of humility because it claims that all religions are true. But below the surface it is rather high-minded to believe this. Who is the one who is descibing the scene of the blind men and the elephant? It is someone who is clearly not blind of course. The observer is the only one who can see things as they really are, while the blind men each grope in darkness. I realized rather quickly that I can’t hold onto that belief, because it would actaully be more unlikely that I had arrived at this correct picture of the world while millions today and down through history have been misguided in their own seperate religions.
Dick challeneged me to affirm the differences between other beliefs such as Islam or Buddhism and Christianity. To claim that the differences aren’t really there or that they are only minor would do a great disservice to these other faiths which have a rich history of belief. But I would need to wrestle with each competing truth claim to see if it was in fact an accurate description of reality, and to approach Christianity the same way. This was a real turning point for me in my struggles with doubt and helped me to see how I can as a Christian respect other people’s beliefs though not neccessarily agree that they offer a true explanation for things.
Rearview Mirrorism
Another “aha” moment happened when we heard someone describe what they called “Rearview Mirrorism.” We had been talking about how we had been feeling this pressure to “grow” as Christians, and regularly felt under scrutiny that it wasn’t happening. I remember last year saying once that I never feel the freedom to “coast” as a Christian. I felt I couldn’t relax in my Christian life or in ministry, because I was always having to check in weekly about how I was doing spiritually.
Anyway, someone at L’Abri said that living this kind of life as a Christian is like driving down the highway while continually looking in the rearview mirror. The point is that you can’t get very far when you’re always looking behind you. Another way to put it is like trying to grow a plant, and continually pulling it out of the soil to check the roots. Now you don’t have to be a rocket horticulturalist to know that a good plant needs good roots. But if you keep pulling up the plant you’re going to kill it. That made a lot of sense to me, and it seems to me like Christian growth for me has been somewhat of an idol in my recent Christian experience. There is much more freedom to be had in relaxing the growth expectations placed on me by myself or others, and not needing to take constant stock of “how my relationship with God is doing.” In fact much of the Bible speaks to taking our eyes off of ourselves and being open to the needs of others.
Fun and Games
Life at L’Abri wasn’t all serious “spiritual” discussions. I developed quite the passion for ping pong this term. One of the houses has a table in the basement, and pretty much anytime we had lunch or dinner up there a few of us would play afterwards. Danny (one of the other students) and I played together quite a lot, and even managed to let serious conversation creep in now and then while smacking the little white ball back and forth.
I also took up a new winter sport: snowboarding. We lived less than an hour’s drive away from a ski area, and in a couple of outings I picked it up pretty fast. By the end of the second day I was cutting it up down a black diamond run. For the following week, though my knees were debating about whether it should have been a black or a blue run, because as soon as I hit the steepest section they became good friends with the ground. Bruises aside, it was quite an exhilirating experience to come shooting down the mountain shifting from my heel to toe edge and back again and enjoying the view.
What’s the Plan Stan?
In the short term, we’re headed back to L’Abri for the summer term. We liked it so much we want to go for another round. This time we’re going as helpers, which means we get room and board paid for, in exchange for well, our “help.” Our responsibilities will involve cooking meals (sometimes for 15-20 people) and working around the house. We’ll still get to participate in all of the community activities and discussions, but our personal study time will be limited. Jen and I are looking forward to being around and learning from the L’Abri staff more, and also for the opportunity to informally mentor younger students who come next term.
As far as next step career-wise, Jen’s strongly interested in pursuing a graduate level program in some field realting to community, poverty, and/or women and children. We’ve recently started checking into some programs at UC Davis, as well as seeing what UC Berkeley has to offer. At this point it’s looking like she’ll try to apply for the Fall 07 term in either Community Development or Social Work. If and when that happens I’ll probably work in an on campus job to pay her way through school.
Between the end of the summer at L’Abri and Fall 07 is an entire year, which neither of us is certain about. Unless something changes we’ll probably come back to the Bay Area and work for a year, or possibly travel a little bit, I’m not totally sure. I’m not sure yet what kind of career direction to go in myself. There was a period of time at L’Abri this past term when I was getting stressed out and putting a lot of pressure on myself to figure out my next life direction soon now. But I’ve concluded that right now it’s not urgent, and I’ve relaxed a lot in that area. So I’m relatively content to wait around to see what happens career-wise and give myself more time to get re-grounded in my faith.
And speaking of faith and sort of to conclude this book-length update, in the faith arena, both of us are doing rather well. As I look back to the end of last year, I can speak for both of us when I say that if we had continued in the path we were in (ministry wise with Campus Crusade, and personally in our own Christian faith) we may very well have walked away completely. We were both so burned out on ministry and burned out on our experience of Christianity. But at L’Abri we found a broader experience of what it means to be a Christian, one that touches all areas of life, not just the traditionally spiritual activities. We feel a sense of relief and a tremendous release of pressure to be where we are right now. I’m not sure exactly what’s coming next, but for the first time in a while, I’m optimistic for the future.
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April 16th, 2006
Here’s some of the titles of books and lectures I read/listened to at L’Abri:
Books
Lectures
- All of Life Under the Lordship of Christ by Dick Keyes
- Did Yahweh Evolve? by Sandi Richter
- Gender and Vocation by Mardi Keyes
- Higher Criticism of the Old Testament Today by Sandi Richter
- Irony, Humor, and God by Dick Keyes
- The Book of Job by Dick Keyes
- Troubles with God: Questions, Doubt, Unbelief by Dick Keyes
- Vocation by Os Guiness
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March 9th, 2006
Hi friends…
So, we’re doing very well. It’s hard to believe we only have three weeks left, but I guess that is still a long time. We’re glad for it though; we’ve been learning so much.
I finished the book I was reading, Beyond Identity. It has been one of my favorites. I coupled it with a tape series on forgiveness, which was very helpful and I’m actually hopeful that I can forgive. What was most helpful was hearing what forgiveness isn’t and then having the author define clearly what it is. You all know that I love specifics.
We’ve also been talking a lot about what it means to live counter-culturally. Basically following Jesus in the midst of our materialistic, commodity-driven culture; culture that has largely influenced the church and Christians as well. It has been challenging to think about a ‘new’ way to live, but both of us are exicited about the possibilities.
Finally, as far as studies go, I’ve been reading/listening to things on feminism and the role of women in the church/marriage/motherhood/etc. Mardi, one of the workers, has done a lot on this topic and regularly gives pre-evangelistic lectures (her term) at universities to mixed groups of Christians and Feminists. A few lectures I’ve found particularly helpful are “Are Christianity and Feminism Compatible?” and “Gender and Vocation.” This has been some of the most exciting topics for me to study because I feel like I’ve met someone who is very educated on the subject and has affirmed some views I’ve always held as well as challenged some others.
I’ve also enjoyed reading the book, The Myth of the Perfect Mother: Rethinking the Spirituality of Women. Though I don’t agree with everything the author espouses, I have to say it has been very liberating for me.
I guess I’m most excited because I feel like my faith is expanding wholistically and wide enough to include the things I’m most passionate about. I told Joe yesterday that I’m actually excited to be a Christian and talk to others about it because for the first time it seems relevant to more than a few issues.
In other news, Joe and I and some friends when snowboarding last Thursday for the first time. It was pretty fun, although I think I hurt my knee after taking a few nasty falls 
Planning a doctor visit tomorrow so I hope it doesn’t come back serious.
As far as our future we’d appreciate your prayers. We’re considering a couple different options. First, we’re seriously considering coming back and helping at L’Abri for the summer term that starts in May. We’ve loved it here and we just don’t think we’re ready to be done with our mentors or how we’ve been able to do ministry with the other students. We’re pretty much getting to do what we enjoy most informally. We’d also like more time to study and use the resources available.
Secondly, we’re strongly considering teaching English abroad this fall. Our destination of choice: China. We’ve had close friends teach there, and of course have visited there ourselves. We liked the culture, though the food was a bit challenging, and were excited to hear about what God is doing there. Plus, we’ve always wanted to live abroad and now is the perfect time to do it. This option is still just that: an option. We’ll keep you posted if it materializes.
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February 26th, 2006
So L’Abri is sweet. It’s really been nice to have relaxed time to slow down from the busy pace of life. It’s pretty laid back here, though things do run on a schedule. We eat three home-cooked meals a day, and so far the cooking has been top-notch. We eat homemade bread at least once a day, and have only had the same main dish once in the past three and a half weeks.
I’ve become used to getting up early, as breakfast is at 7:45 each morning. My chores are between breakfast and lunch, which frequently entails refilling the wood bins for each of the wood stoves throughout the house. I’ve also shoveled snow, done laundry, polished wood furniture, vacuumed, hung a shelf, painted a wall and am helping to rip the some few thousand taped lectures onto mp3s. Needless to say there is plenty to do around here. The house is an old (1800s old) New England mansion, which they say used to take a staff of 12 servants to run, so there’s always plenty to do around here.
In the afternoons, I do my studying. Dick, the director, has me reading books and listening to lectures on faith, doubt, and cynicism. It’s all been pretty helpful so far, as I try to make sense of the cloud of doubt that’s been my companion since college. I’m learning some things that are helping me to deal with stuff that came up through my Religious Studies degree and some big disillusionment with Christianity that I went through my senior year of college. So I’m pretty optimistic that I’ll be able to put some of that stuff away or at least in it’s place so I don’t have to be overwhelmed by it.
We’ve also had some fun jaunts out of the house. This past Thursday a bunch of us drove into Cambridge, Mass to Harvard University for a panel/debate put on by the Veritas Forum on religion and social change. The two panelists were Dr. Tim Keller, a Presbyterian pastor from New York City, and Dr. David Koepsell, who is the chairman of some secular humanist society. It was pretty interesting to hear both perspectives on the place of religion in politics, and was amplified by the ivy-league atmosphere of Hah-vad (incidently, I did attend Arizona State, the “Harvard of the West”).
Not much clarity yet on what we’re gonna do post-L’Abri. Jen and I have started to kick around some ideas such as going overseas for a year, or going back to grad school (mostly Jen’s desire). But it’s too soon to say whether any of that will become a reality. If nothing else crystalizes in the next month, we’ll probably find an apartment in the East Bay and maybe get temp jobs to pay the bills while we try to figure out what to do next.
I’ve been snapping a few photos of our L’Abri experience, which you can check out on my flickr page.
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February 10th, 2006
I want snow. When we arrived a little more than two weeks ago, there was snow on the ground. It was especially fun to lug our three rolling suitcases off the train platform up a icy/snowy sidewalk to the general store where we first waited for our ride to L’Abri.
But in the past couple weeks, the weather has warmed up (by New England standards) to a sweltering 40-plus degrees, enough to melt off the snow from the previous storm. But the weather forecast says lots of snow tomorrow night, so I’ve got my hopes up that we’ll be back to a winter wonderland. Since the temps have dropped back to the low 20s here, it made me think that there’s something about snow that justifies the frigid temperatures.
You know, the snow makes everything glistening and white, but without it, things just seem barren and cooooooold, so I’m hoping for a dumping tomorrow night.
Yesterday on our day off from studies at L’Abri, four of us took a jaunt into Boston for the first time since our arrival late last month. We found the Freedom Trail in the quaint Italian North End and walked it all the way to the State House on Beacon Hill. Some stops along the way included the Paul Revere house, the Old North Church (where the one if by land, two if by sea lanterns were lit), and a stop for some calzones at Cafe Pompeii (where the music jukebox kept cycling between Mozart, Sinatra, and some sort of European techno).
If you’ve never been to Boston before, the Freedom Trail is a literal line on the ground, in some places a red-brick path, and in some places only a painted red line that traces a path past many historically significant sites. Interestingly enough, it also took us past about a dozen Starbucks, one of which Paul Revere may have stopped at to fuel up before his fabled midnight ride to warn New Englanders of the impending British attack.
The only sight we did not see was the boat that figured into the Boston Tea Party, when members of the Sons of Liberty heaved a bunch of Chai Creme Lattes over board, which had the effect of giving the British a collective middle finger from America (thanks but no thanks), and ensuring a caffeine high for all Boston marine-life. But seriously, we walked from South Station about a mile (with wind chill seemed like an eternity) roughly to the spot where the map said the boat was supposed to be, only to find out that it had been moved to another location (I’m sorry Mario but the princess is in another castle).
All in all, it was inspiring to be surrounded by great architecture and to learn about history. But do you think the founding folks had any idea what their fight for freedom would lead to? Do you think any of them had a clue that they were creating what would one day become the most powerful, the most loved and most hated nation on Earth? Do you think if they could have hit fast forward to see a Starbucks on every Boston corner that they still would have thrown all that great English tea overboard? Hmmmmmmm…
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February 2nd, 2006
Just wanted to drop a quick note. I’m at the small library right now while the snow is coming down pretty thickly and sticking. We’re talking about sledding tomorrow night!
Obviously Joe and I made it safely. We’ve been warm enough and have really enjoyed making friends. There are 4 other students right now besides us and some helpers we spend regular time with. Some others have been here for a few days and are gone now, but it doesn’t seen weird to make their acquantaince and then say good-bye quickly. Everyone is embracing and family-oriented. We eat every meal together and have already had a lot of great discussions on a variety of things. One of the other students isn’t a Christian so it has been great to hear about his struggles and to wrestle through them together.
Both Joe and I really love it here. I can’t tell you how much freedom I’ve experienced in less than a week. Just to be able to talk about how I’m really doing and feel total safety and encouragement because no one here has it figured out completely either. And, at the same time, getting a sense from our leaders that this place is okay to be because God can be trusted. It’s clear that our leaders’ faith is firmly founded on Scripture and comes out in every formal and informal discussion. It really gives me a sense of peace and stability because even when I’m not sure, they are.
It has been great to see things from a variety of perspectives and not in the formal black and white, right and wrong way I’m used to. I feel that my relationship with God and my faith is expanding wholistically for the first time, even when answers aren’t clear-cut and simple. I guess the best way to describe how I feel is hopeful. And, for those of you who know me fairly well, I have felt pretty hopeless at times.
So, my note became longer than I expected. I have to get going. I have the afternoon chore shift at 2:15. Yesterday I did all of the laundry. Maybe I’ll do the bathrooms again today. I’m reading a really good book in my morning studies called Beyond Identity by Dick Keyes. I’d recommend it.
P.S. I didn’t realize it before, but we can get mail here. So, if you’d like to drop us a note or such feel free. Here is the address:
Joe and Jen Golike
c/o L’Abri
49 Lynbrook Rd
Southborough, MA 01772
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January 17th, 2006
A month ago Jen and I decided to quit our jobs with Campus Crusade and embark on a new direction in life. The process of coming to that decision has been stretching to say the least, since the choice we eventually landed on is the one involving the most change and unknowns.
I was telling a good friend last night on the phone that when I graduated from college nearly a half dozen years ago I skipped the senior panic. Back then, when I was on the verge of completing my degree I really wasn’t too stressed about my future. I knew with a relatively high degree of certainty that my future was working full-time with Campus Crusade. The next couple of years before joining staff were just a holding pattern during which our major goal was to pay off school loans. As I thought to the future, I envisioned myself as one of those CCC staff lifers, the ones who stand up at conferences and are praised for their 25 years of service.
Well, that vision clearly is not going to become a reality. Now nearly four years later here I sit and I wonder what’s next?, and I feel that senior panic nipping at my heels. What am I going to do with my life? What do I want to accomplish? What am I passionate about? These questions are running through my head, and I feel it especially when I tell people about the change we’re making. When I get to the part about “what are we doing next?” I feel a pressure to convince others that I’ve got a plan and not to worry because everything’s gonna be fine.
But to tell the truth my plan can pretty much be summed up as follows:
- Pack up the apartment
- Go to L’Abri
- Come back from L’Abri
- Find a job
- Find a place to live
Yee-hah, it looks like we’re off on an adventure. But then again, my parents raised us on adventures. Now that I’m all grown up, Mom and Dad have let me in on a little secret: those “adventures” were usually their method of turning a mundane trip driving across four states on family vacation into something to look forward to, or putting a positive spin on a difficult expereience like moving to a new town and starting over. Ten years ago, I scoffed in that cynical teenage way at the prospect of one of mom and dad’s “adventures.” But now at twenty seven, with a third of life under my belt, I find my mother’s outlook much more attractive. In fact I think I’ll follow her advice on this one and look at this change as a new adventure, one filled with opportunity, growth and discovery.
So what’s my plan you ask? Well, we’re at step 1: pack up the aparmtent. And it’s funny because now the reality of what we’ve decided to do is starting to set in. A week from today I and my wife of five years will offically be homeless. I feel as if I’ve started a ball rolling that can’t be stopped, and whose path is TBD. But you know what, as my mom would say, it’s just the start of a new adventure…
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