When you tend to process things in writing and you also like to be vulnerable and post about such things publicly, you will find that when the New Year rolls around Facebook will present you with undeniable evidence that you tend to exhibit certain trends around this time of year. Healthy eating goals, exercise, hopeful schedule changes. I tend to reset around this time of year. This year, my reset has as much to do with attitude as with any of those things. And as with all of those intentions, this one will also need to be revisited throughout the year to maintain.

My husband has a birthday at the end of December. It is, without a doubt, possibly one of the worst times to have a birthday. Right smack between Christmas and New Year’s, his expectations are somewhat low for a special day devoted to marking his start of a new year. This year we had a communication failure that ended up in him having a pretty lousy day. This coupled with the depression that was already quite low, meant the days leading up to New Year’s Day were quite hard.

John’s birthday is the 30th. On New Year’s Even I woke up without hope. It was so hard to envision any sort of future as I look into a year that will have to include a lot of change. We can’t just sit back and maintain the status quo. It isn’t that the status quo is that great right now anyway. The last year has been rough. There are lots of positive highlights, but just as many, if not more, really sucky things. And right now, even though we are technically in the middle of a job search for a priest position starting this summer, there are days I cannot picture a future at all.

I wrote the following words in my journal that morning: “This year is hard to hold hope. There is so much unknown. I can see clearly the pain that lies ahead. I want to be able to face it with courage, to remind myself that the pain is the shadow, which means there must also be light. But right now I am afraid. I do not know how much will be asked of me this coming year. Will I have the strength to meet it?”

Along with the fear that I was feeling, I also recognized anger. Anger at circumstances and situations that have robbed me of things. And in my journal I allowed myself to express those things. But afterwards I wrote gentle words of encouragement to myself, ending with “It’s ok to be angry. But what you do with it matters.”

That night, we lit a fire in the fireplace and gathered around it. Being all together as a family is important, but I’m going to be very real with you and admit that it is hard right now. The kids ages and all the stress that we have all internalized the last few years mean that peace and calm are never long-lived, and even meaningful connection is punctuated by frustration, tears, and misunderstanding. So, it is important to focus not on the negative parts of that night, but the positive. The light reflecting off my children’s faces. Their smiles. Their laughter. Seth had written a letter to Emma and had asked if he could put it in the fire to let the message go up to her in the smoke. So, we lit that fire, and all together, we watched the note burn and crumble and the smoke rise. This was true sacrament. 

I asked my kids what their favorite memories of the year had been and I asked them what their hopes for the new year were. Some answers were expected, some took me by surprise. All showed my kids deep inner selves.

After everyone but Elise, John, and I had gone to bed, we sat and talked. We laughed and teased. Regrets were shared. Hopes and creative ideas for the future were discussed. Eventually Elise also retired and John and I sat and dreamed together. We painted a picture of what life could be like this year. We talked about job opportunities and we talked about logistics. I don’t know if the specific plans we made will actually come to be as obviously we don’t yet know where he will get job offers to, but what we envisioned was hopeful and exciting to the both of us and that was something that I hadn’t felt in awhile.

I woke the morning of January 1, 2019 full of hope. A song by George Ezra ran through my head:

“If it’s a new day,

Why don’t we invent a new world to explore?

Why don’t we create a moment to remember

In five years?

Winner’s just a word,

Loser’s just one too.

Oh, forever dreaming

Lullaby.”

The song is called “Only a Human” and the chorus goes like this:

“You can run, you can jump

Might fuck it up

But you can’t blame yourself

No, you’re just human

Come on, come on

No, you can’t blame yourself

You’re just human.”

This is my song for the year. I step forward choosing hope. I will take risks this year. Risks that open up possibilities for a healthy future for me and my family. But I will also hold gentleness. Gentleness for myself and for others when things inevitably fall apart. Because life is not perfect. In the light, there is pain. In the shadow of joy, sorrow lives. I choose it all because it is beautiful only in its wholeness.

On Mondays I go to therapy. This is a new addition to my schedule, so my relationship with this therapist is just beginning. But despite the fact that I’ve only had two sessions so far, there is a sensitivity to the undercurrents in my life that has resulted from my openness to delve deeper into my soul with someone else. The intention to do this work has been enough to initiate it.

This week my focus has been on relationship. My mind has been turning that word over and over and looking at from all different angles. And it was all a result of one question my therapist asked me: “Is there someone in your life who you’d be willing to take a risk with and go deeper?” This simple question has led me down several different interesting and unexpected paths this week.

A story, in which I recognize that I don’t like to be alone.

Before I take you down these paths with me, let me tell you a story. Once I was a little girl growing up on a farm in a house heated by a wood stove and the bodies of six healthy active children. I was rarely alone, and as one of the few true extroverts in my family, I never saw that as a bad thing. 

Even at night I shared a bed with my older sister. Sometimes she would force me to lie on her side of the bed for 10 minutes while she lay on mine so that when we switched her side would be nice and toasty. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in my adult head, but at the time we were both convinced that I was so much warmer than her that I warmed up her spot more than she warmed up mine. But it didn’t really matter that much to me. To have companionship even while sleeping was enough to put up with any sibling tension. If I kept her physically warm, she kept me emotionally safe.

I don’t think I realized how much I relied on her until the day she went on a two week trip without me. For the first time in my life, I was forced to sleep alone and the prospect was terrifying to me. I was so used to her protective presence that I slept with our large stuffed bear at my back each night to keep myself from feeling exposed to whatever dangers lurked outside our dark windows.

Path 1, in which I unexpectedly cry over unhealed wounds and loneliness.

So, with that little peek into how I tick, let us proceed with this week’s journey. Monday I went to therapy. During my session we touched briefly on the need for healthy supportive friendships. And my therapist asked the above mentioned question.

On Wednesday morning I sat at my table in my patio visualizing my relationship with a particular friend, practicing the ability to sit with and then let go, as I often cling to people. As I let that friend go, I was suddenly aware of so many other people. The names of my family and other people I love, as well as the general sense of the community that we are physically surrounded with here on campus, filled my head, one after another. I was aware of an interconnectedness that left me with an actual physical sensation of tingling energy. I felt joy and peace as I sat with these people.

But it didn’t end there. As is my morning practice, I picked up my journal to record my experience and see where it led me. That path should have been full of light, but it got dark surprisingly fast. With my mind full of these people I thought about the question my therapist had asked. Which of these people could I go deeper with? There are several that I am already doing that with, but as I pondered my present community I was hit with grief. A past event emerged and a wound reopened and before the morning was out I found myself sobbing in the car after I dropped the kids off at school. 

I am not at liberty to share the details of that event because it would trespass on the privacy of others, and that is part of the problem. It is hard to know how to navigate a painful situation with transparency and sensitivity. How to keep private what belongs to others and still process the pain that is mine. There is a lot of perceived rejection surrounding this event. Rejection that I recognize is mostly in my head, but the pain I internalized is still very real. And as I cried tears of pain and anger and grief, I realized that because of this event, I chose to start looking at my present community as temporary rather than essential. I withdrew. And therefore I have experienced loneliness as a result.

Path 2, in which I remember that loss is part of life.

I pulled myself together, made a mental note that this would probably be something worth discussing in my next Monday session and headed to work. It was a good day. Work went well, and there was an interaction with someone that was significant to me. Someone brought up Emma, and in our brief conversation, even though I had tears in my eyes, I appreciated the connection this friend initiated and the connection to my daughter that it allowed me to reinforce.

I didn’t think much more of it until Thursday morning when I woke from a dream in which I was pregnant. This is sort of a recurring theme in many of my dreams, and as I usually do, I wondered where it came from. What is it that lies deep within me that brings this out? 

I was exhausted, and I was facing one of the hardest days of my week, so I put the dream aside and continued with my morning routine. There were no fascinating events in my quiet time and my journaling was filled with recognition that the day was going to be hard and I would need to be aware of self-care.

It wasn’t until I sat on the bus headed to work that I found myself on this second path. Deep sadness hit me. It was very real, but very comfortable. The kind of sadness I don’t mind inviting in and sitting with. I thought of Emma and of loss, and I held the sadness close. And I realized that this was also a story of relationship — relationship lost.

This path is very familiar to me. This particular journey down this well trodden path began last week. One of the reasons relationship came up in my therapy session on Monday was because of a conversation I had with a friend about the need to hold people loosely, with an open hand. The authority in which I spoke to her was experience. The two examples I used were the loss of my child Emma and the journey over the last two years to see myself as separate from my husband, a journey that has allowed me to love both myself and him more fully. It is in fact just a deeper and more serious version of the lesson I learned as a little girl learning to sleep alone. The words I wrote to her were these: “You see, in order to really help others, we need to reach out to them from a place of centeredness in ourselves. When we do that, we are actually able to offer them a place of stability and safety. If we are reaching out to them because we are defined by them or because we cannot imagine our lives without them, then we are not safe and it is hard for us to help them be safe.”

I’ve walked this path before, and I feel comfortable on it. I may be noticing new things along the way, like the fact that my pregnancy dreams perhaps relate to the death of the  relationship with my daughter, but I sort of feel like I know where this path goes.

It is of course when we think we know where we are going that we find ourselves somewhere completely new and unexpected. Path 2 was actually very much a shadow of path 1, but I didn’t make that connection until I had walked path 3 and then taken the time to write the journey down.

Path 3, in which I am humbled in the realization that I have barely begun to know how to love.

Thursday ended with a long talk with another friend via phone. The connection between us is strong and vibrant and fills me with energy. Which is why I woke early on Friday morning with my mind and body still humming with that energy. But this is a person that I tend to cling to, and my time in silence Friday morning was spent reminding myself that I am separate, but connected. To hold him with an open hand.

I envisioned another connection that morning as well. Still, strong and stable, a cord stretched between my heart and my husband’s. I was comfortable in those feelings, but something niggled at the back of my mind. I had used my relationship with John several times over the last week as an example of holding someone with an open hand, but something didn’t feel quite right. As I pondered my hesitancy to envision this connection with a pulsing vibrant power, rather than the still quiet strength that I was feeling, a thought surfaced in my journaling. A relationship is made of two people. Both must hold each other loosely. A truly healthy fulfilling relationship is one in which each person is there because they want to be there, not because they need to be. And so I started wondering about the possibility of holding someone loosely while they held on tight. What would that connection feel like? Humbled, I realized that the more important question is how do I respond if I perceive this to be the case? I like to be needed. It wasn’t hard for my sister to convince me to warm her side of the bed because deep down I desire to fill someone else’s needs. So, it is not enough for me to recognize that I exist apart from the other person and that without them I will survive. I must also recognize that they exist apart from me, and without me they will also survive. To truly love someone is to desire them to not need me. And that hits me hard. Because my true fear is this–if they do not need me, will they still want me? 

And so this path ended up circling me back to the first path. I have experienced the loss that comes through death, but that is not the only type of loss that we can experience in life. Loss can also come in the form of rejection. And that type of loss I am a whole lot more uncomfortable with. 

A Dance, in which it all gets mixed together and I experience a metaphor of life.

Friday night was Advent Affair–a night of revelry and dancing for the students of VTS and their significant others. John and I have always gone, partly because once I realized that I was expected and encouraged to dance in public at this thing, I don’t like to miss it. This year, both John and I approached this day with a bit of hesitation. Despite being a part of this community for 2 1/2 years, we both feel the struggle to find our true space within it. John’s stress and depression affect his willingness to interact with people and the pain that surfaced earlier in this week for me colored my perspective as well. I went for the dancing and I think my husband went for me. And so we walked in that door, full of our insecurities and pain, but there. Present. And I danced. Two previous years of Advent Affair have loosened me up and given me the permission to let go on the dance floor. Sometimes I danced alone. Sometimes I danced with a partner. Sometimes I danced with everyone in that room at the same time. Some moments were awkward. Some were full of confidence. I smiled and laughed and eventually lost myself and found myself in the chaotic abandon of full body expression. I’m still learning to dance with people. Since I was not raised in a tradition that valued dancing, I have learned to dance alone. And in my few experiences of dancing on a crowded dance floor, I am surprised at how easy it is to still be dancing alone. But that’s ok. I’ve worked so hard to learn to be safe alone, that I don’t mind taking a bit longer to learn to dance with others.

My night ended with a rare dance with John. Rare because he has not yet learned the art of abandoning himself to the dance. Our steps are not very synched, our energies so very different, but I still found extreme pleasure in being in his arms, being together with him, letting it be whatever it was. This is life–sometimes awkward, sometimes graceful. A beautiful attempt to connect with those around us. Sometimes we fail, sometimes we get it right. Our best attempts flow out of the security and confidence we find in ourselves. But even our shy inexperienced steps are rewarded because we are all in this together, and our energies interact to fill and empty and play and learn and dance with each other.

How should a pacifist approach Veteran’s Day? It’s a day that always makes me a little uneasy. On this day my social media feeds are filled with recognition of those who have served in the military. And I am usually silent. I have no desire to disrespect veterans or those who are in military service now, some of whom are family members of mine. So I usually let the day pass without thinking too much about the unease that I feel with every post. But I don’t post either, because I do not want to condone the system of violence that underlies much of the messages we hear about the military. Can we respect individuals while also critiquing a government that makes really poor choices with their use of the military? Can we honor the service of these individuals while also promoting the way of peace and questioning whether being a military power is at all wise? I recognize that many may think my questions are in bad taste on this day. I anticipate that my silence is exactly what quite a few people would prefer. So, I’m choosing a compromise. I’m posting this blog on the day after Veteran’s Day is observed. But I am still posting it because I think these things are important things to be having a conversation about.

Over the last week I have seen the evidence of the public school system’s indoctrination of my children as we approached this day. And I feel a responsibility to point out the problems I see in the messages they are receiving. My 9 year old has started musing about which branch of the military he will join when he grows up, and asking me again why it is that he can’t play violent video games. My 5 year old gave me his handout about veterans and asked me to read the words across the bottom of the sheet — “Thank you for being brave.”

Now, I know that these things seem harmless to most people, and maybe even beneficial. But to this pacifist momma, they make me cringe. I have told my 9 year old that just because his parents are pacifists does not mean that he has to be. He’s asked me if I will be upset if he grows up and joins the military and I have said that I do not plan to meddle in his life when he is an adult. It will be his decision. But right now, as his parent, I also feel the need to make sure he is hearing more than one message, because I know his fascination with the idea comes from an American ideal that I do not support–the glorification of violence.

And my 5 year old? This bothers me perhaps the most. None of my other kids did their Kindergarten year in an American public school, and I am discouraged that the message begins so young. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not upset that they taught him what a veteran is, or that they encouraged him to thank them. But I am upset with the way the message was framed. When we discussed it today, these were his words: “Veterans are all around us, like God. They are there to protect us. And they have guns so they can keep us safe from bad guys.” Oh man, there are so many problematic pieces to this that it is hard to even know where to begin. And in our conversation while I was yet again trying to convince my son that “bad guys” do not actually exist he responded. “You are wrong. They do. They are in other countries.” Gah! Do you know how hard it is to deconstruct these ideas once they are in a 5 year old’s head? Now, granted, I am not entirely sure he understood what he was saying. He was upset with me because he thought that I was somehow telling him that veterans were the bad guys, and I wasn’t. So, maybe he just meant that veterans are in other countries. Hopefully I misunderstood him and he wasn’t actually repeating some nationalist agenda. I don’t know. But I am frustrated. Somehow my 5 year old believes that guns exist to keep him safe, and that the world is somehow made up of good guys and bad guys, a dichotomy that is possibly even defined by national boundaries.

The simple phrase–thank you for being brave–he has really latched on to. Can those who serve in the military be brave? Absolutely! But something about this message seems to equate military service unequivocally with bravery, which belittles the actual brave actions that do occur on the battlefield and completely ignores the brave acts of those peaceful warriors who choose to stand in opposition to a government that sends these men and women into war often needlessly. “Hero” is another word that I hear a lot on this day. Individual military personnel often do heroic things, but please do not tell my children that just putting on a uniform of brown or green or blue automatically makes them a hero. Why does that bother me? Because if we think that a person’s actions are automatically heroic because of their uniform, it becomes too easy to justify harm in the name of heroism. It becomes too easy to act out questionable orders in the name of duty. It becomes too easy to kill in the name of patriotism. Last week a veteran with a gun (someone who in my son’s words should be there to protect him) entered a bar and killed someone else’s sons and daughters. We must be able to critique this. We must be able to ask the hard question of whether or not our military, our government, our system that glorifies violence in the name of patriotism had something to do with this.  

Veterans are important. Their sacrifices and service should be remembered and recognized. But not blindly. We must open our eyes and see how our country has broken many of them, and not be afraid to ask the question: Was it worth it? We can love and honor and respect those who’ve chosen to serve while also speaking up against the violence the larger system perpetrates. And we can tell our children the whole story, the true reasons wars are fought, the heavy weight of responsibility they will carry if they choose to pick up a gun in the name of their country, and the humanity that exists on both sides of national borders; so that when the choice is theirs, they can look beyond the rhetoric and make a truly informed choice.

It should be obvious to anyone who reads my blog that I tend to express myself in prose, not poetry. But there have been occasions when poetry comes to me unexpectedly. I have no idea if it would stand scrutiny by anyone who actually knows how to write or critique or even how to read poetry, but when words come to me in this fashion, it feels important to write them down. Sometimes art is the attempt to communicate something that cannot be easily expressed in other ways.

I attended a conference entitled “Evolving Faith” a couple weeks ago. It was a very full two days of listening to intense speakers presenting how an evolving faith intersects with relationships, parenting, social justice, politics, art, theology, church and everything in between. I soaked in the words, trying to internalize, to critique, to listen, to learn. All the things. And afterwards I was so exhausted all I could do was bundle up all the swirling words I had heard and carry them deep into my soul where they pulsed with color and light as I tried to tuck them away safely into the fabric of my being. Little bits and pieces of it have emerged when things come up in conversations with others, but for the most part, I haven’t really touched these things intentionally yet.

But, twice in the last two weeks, words have bubbled up unexpectedly in poetic form. Words that express the feelings and emotions that this conference stirred in me better than I can right now in prose. And so, here are two poems. One more personally expresses the painful intersection of internal faith shift and external action; the other is an encouragement to those who I’ve intentionally left behind, a call for them to join me.

Where to stand

I don’t know where to stand,
On the rock or in the sand.

I don’t know where to wait,
In the crooked or the straight.

I don’t know where to fight,
In the dark or in the light.

I don’t know what to do,
Turn away or follow you.

I don’t know the shape my voice takes.
Is it the breath of angels
or the roar of lions that I make?

I don’t know the power that I hold.
Is it the force that builds the new
or the fire that burns the old?

If I were hurt and if I bled,
Would my blood be white or is it red?

If I were asked to be bold,
Could I find a hand to hold?

And when we go out into the night,
Will we make peace or will we fight?

A Call to the Evangelical Church

Step out.
Step out from the faith you have known.
Go forth into the great unknown.
Move forward with your head held high.
But hurry, for there isn’t much time.

There are people here who are crying.
There are people here who are dying.
There are people here.
There are people.

Step out.
Step out from the faith you have known.
Go forth into the great unknown.
Find beauty in the ashes.
Stand shoulder to shoulder with the masses.

There is truth here to build hope with.
There is hope here to build a home with.
There is love here.
There is peace.

Step out.
Step out from the faith you have known.
Go forth into the great unknown.
Let go of your assumptions.
The idea that all that isn’t you is nothing.

There are people here who are striving.
There are people here who are thriving.
There are people here.
There are people.

Step out.
Step out from the faith you have known.
Go forth into the great unknown.
The kingdom of God is near.
The kingdom of God is here.

There is freedom here for those who doubt.
There is freedom here for those who shout.
There is freedom here.
There is freedom.

Today I started bleeding. This monthly rite of womanhood is a reminder of the flow of life. Of time passing, yet always returning to the origin. A reminder of where things begin. A breath. A break. A place I am invited to each month. 

I know that many women my age want to be rid of this. If they have chosen to be done with childbearing, they feel ready to also be done with the bleeding. To them, menopause will be a release, a freedom. Freedom from the fear and worry of pregnancy; freedom from the inconvenience of bleeding.

I wonder if I am alone in viewing this monthly ritual as freedom itself. It is this time of the month when I feel that my body is mine and mine alone. No matter how empowered, how informed, and how self-confident I am, I still struggle with those past voices in my head and the training I was given by my culture. The history of my patriarchal society told me that my body belongs to someone else. The story I was given was that in marriage my husband possesses me and in motherhood my children rely on me to be self-sacrificing. I pour myself out for others and there is guilt, a burden that I carry anytime I say “no.” Except when I am bleeding. When I am bleeding I know that my body is mine and mine alone. When I am bleeding there is no guilt. I allow myself permission to make space within myself for me. I allow myself the luxury of boundaries around my body. I say no to sex and feel no guilt. I more readily tell my children that I need space and time for myself. What I sometimes label as grumpiness is really my body reminding me that I exist. 

Day one of a woman’s cycle the body stops the process of creating space for the other. Before that moment, it has been preparing gifts, sacrificing of itself to provide for another. It has quite literally created a space within me for someone else. On day one the focus shifts to the body itself. The lining of the uterus is shed, the space that was created to receive life is released and the body heals itself to prepare to do the process all over again. 

Six times, possibly seven, that space my body created received a life. My womb began the process of pouring into another human being. Once, possibly twice, that life was lost within days to miscarriage. And five times I had the privilege of joining in the creative act of God. My heart beat not just for me, but for another. The space that was prepared was filled and grew with the life of a child. Five times I labored, gave myself to the painful act of releasing that life into the world, watching it separate from myself to become a separate being. 

And every month as my body goes through the process of the preparation for life, I am reminded of the strength of being a woman. I am reminded that we give, over and over again to others. That we pour of ourselves, give gifts, create, and serve those around us. Life giving birth to life. All of this beauty, all of this sacrifice, all of this joy, all of this pain. In the rhythm of the menstrual cycle, all of it is revealed, over and over again. Our capacity, our sacrifice, our strength and our pain.

Day one. Day one, we release it. Our focus turns inward. When I bleed, I belong not to my husband or to my children, but to myself. When I bleed I am reminded that in order to sustain my ability to give to others, I must also give to myself. I do not live in a culture that recognizes this externally. Sometimes I wish I did. Not in a shameful way, but in an empowered way. I wish we as women had the courage to step aside, retreat and reconnect with ourselves, our shared womanhood, and our need to be filled. So that when we step back into the lives of those we love, we can give freely, fully, without restraint. So that when we give, it is not because we have been told to give, but because we know our own capacity to give. So that when we pour ourselves out, we do not worry about being emptied, because we know that each month the time will come again when we will be filled, because we choose to love ourselves as much as the other. I wish that this monthly rite and ritual would free us. Free us to love. Free us to give. Free us to know who we are, so that we can enter the lives of others without losing ourselves.

This post might be a bit long, because I realized as I processed this a bit this week, that loneliness has been my traveling companion for quite a few years. It hasn’t always been the same, but it has been there. And I think it is that loneliness that inspires me to help people find their village. Because I long so much for one of my own. I’ve found it sometimes. And that knowledge of what it is like makes me long for it all the time.

Several years ago I lived in a large fairly new house with a very large back yard. My kids were about 9, 4 and 3. I was attempting to homeschool my oldest while also keeping two very active little boys occupied. I was feeding my family, hoping for a clean house, and also running a business. My days were full, but the people I interacted with all day long were my children. It took me awhile to realize that I was lonely. That what I was longing for was a community of people to live life with. People that weren’t all children begging me to meet their never ending needs all day long. I longed to do housework alongside someone else. I wanted to have adult conversations that went beyond the niceties. I wished for friends who would come into my messy life and be a part of it.

I wasn’t without friends, but it was becoming very clear to me that the American culture did not easily make room for deep and meaningful relationships. People just didn’t have time to step out of their own lives and into other people’s very often. Once I realized what I was longing for, I was able to see that it was something worth longing for. I believe people do live more fulfilled and contented lives when they have people that they are sharing them with.

During most of my mothering career I did participate in a mother’s group that helped to meet that need. There was one year that my small group within that group became to me a community unlike any I had ever known. It only happened once in that perfect “I can’t believe these people are all my friends” sort of way, but those friends I made then were a big part of my life. They were my village.

Shortly after that time, John and I moved out into the country, into an old farmhouse that someone was willing to rent to us. We were surrounded by land, which we loved. We started pursuing some of the things I had always longed to do. John built me a chicken coop and I mail ordered a box of fuzzy little chicks. We bought two perfectly adorable miniature goats and John and I worked together to fence in a portion of the field for them. I loved that house. I loved the things we were dreaming about. But it was even more lonely. It took nearly half an hour to get into town, so I didn’t go that often, saving my trips to consolidate my time.

But it was also in that house that for possibly the first time in my life I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning talking with my husband. It was during that time of our life that we started looking at the possibility of real adventures. We talked about mission work, and we started looking at possibilities, and then chose Germany as our desired destination. Life was purposeful and exciting and we were working together to make our dreams reality. My husband and I were making our own little village of sorts.

We moved back into town into a little tiny rental because we needed to be closer to meet with people and raise financial support. My contribution to our support raising endeavors felt very real and appreciated. We met with people several times a week and shared deep conversations. We realized how sad it was that it wasn’t until we were leaving that we actually had our first real conversations with friends that we’d had for years. It was a hard, weird, and exciting time. But it wasn’t particularly lonely.

Eventually the long awaited day of our flight came. We finished up packing all the possessions we hadn’t sold into our bags and headed across the ocean. I think I expected Germany to be lonely. I was 20 weeks pregnant, and not assigned to any specific job in the mission. I was leaving behind friends that I’d had for years. I was leaving behind a church I’d attended since I was a kid. There were definitely lonely times, but they were often interrupted by the unexpected kindness of a community that welcomed us with open arms. Like when I got the flu shortly after arriving and someone brought me soup and muffins and someone else took my son to and from kindergarten. And when I was in the hospital wishing my mom and family were there to help welcome our newborn son and we were visited by new friends who showed they truly cared.

And a few months into our stay I found a group of friends who are still the people that I tell everything to. A group of moms who all found themselves in very similar circumstances and all clung together sharing life and real deep conversations. I had found my village again and I was happy. We moved away from Germany a short while later as did many in that group then and in subsequent years. We find ourselves all over the place now, but we are still an online village. It isn’t the same, but it is something that I am thankful I have.

Ironically, my husband was entering a very lonely period in his life. He hadn’t realized how much he would miss the friends he’d made in recent years. How much he’d miss the interactions and their supportive conversations. He and I were growing even closer as I learned to be more honest and open with him, and as we learned to rely on each other for the community we needed. But I did not realize at the time the depth of the depression he had entered, the hopelessness he often felt, the weight of the questions he was asking.

When we came back to Arkansas I entered a period of loneliness that I wasn’t quite prepared for. I was returning to a place that was supposed to be home to me. I had friends and family there. But it wasn’t like everyone had left a Miriam sized hole waiting for me to step back into it. I felt like I had to force my way back into relationships. I know it wasn’t that people were purposefully leaving me out, but it didn’t feel as effortless as I had hoped. I was a different person who was starting to believe very differently than I had before, and it was hard to find where I fit into people’s lives. I was also very wary, waiting to see how each person would react to the new things I was learning and changing my mind on. Even if they accepted me and respected me in the midst of disagreement, it was hard to acknowledge that the majority of my friends did disagree with me. My therapist told me when I talked to her about my loneliness that self-discovery really is a very lonely process and that only when I was more sure of who I was would I be able to step into relationships in that real way again. It helped to know that some of that loneliness was to be expected, but it was still hard.

There were hurts during that time as well. Because of my changing perspective on LGBTQ issues, I was asked to step down from leadership in the mothering group that had been so life-giving to me before. And that still hurts. Even now, I get tears in my eyes thinking about it. A group of women I respected, who had respected and valued me, now looked at me differently. A church I had grown up in and felt at home with had rejected me. I felt that I was suddenly not trusted, not respected, and not valued. Some of the women in that group have made it clear to me since then that they do not feel that way, but my emotional reaction to what happened made it very hard to find community where I once had.

My family, thankfully, welcomed me back easily, but my relationship with them was a bit more distant as I allowed myself to question all the assumptions I was raised with and found myself moving down a different faith path than the one they were on. Self-discovery meant recognizing that I am not my family and they are not me and learning to be ok with that.

We also left the church we had known since childhood, which was understandably very hard. I realized very quickly how much of my socialization happened in church. We were attending a church I loved. In fact more than ever I loved being at church for the service, but I felt a bit like a stranger in the midst of these people who were so new to me. Despite being an extrovert, I have learned that I do not start conversations easily. Start a conversation with me and with very little encouragement I will reveal my deepest soul secrets, but expect me to initiate and you will hear very little from me. Plus, I feel like mothering littles on a Sunday morning greatly restricts your ability to interact with adults. And so I felt that my relationship building was very slow. It was happening, but it was also happening in what we knew was probably a short term stay in Arkansas, which meant always questioning whether friendship was worth pursuing for such a short time.

I did have a little village there though. There was a small group we met with weekly for a time. People who were also looking for friends to truly live with. And my husband and I entered what I consider the best part of our married life thus far. We were closer, more honest, open and vulnerable with each, than we ever had been. And as a result we truly enjoyed each other’s company. We still dreamt, though the dreams were all over the place, so the plans were fuzzy and incomplete.

Eventually, we left Arkansas to go to Virginia. I was supportive of my husband’s desire to pursue an MDiv and possibly ordination. I believed in him and so supported our move even in the midst of uncertainty of how I fit into all of it. I didn’t want to lose myself after having finally found it. Ironically what met us here in Virginia was a life seemingly all set up and ready for me and the kids, and disappointment, disillusionment, and depression for my husband. We had moved for him and everyone was thriving except for him. I had no idea what we were supposed to do now.

About halfway through our first year here he received a diagnosis of major depression, and suddenly a lot of the last few years made a lot more sense to me. The diagnosis was good because now we can focus on treatment. But it was hard too, because ever since that moment I think I have struggled to see my husband as something separate from the depression. Every conversation, every interaction seems to be tainted by it. The happy, unbelievable, and unexpected almost honeymoon period of the year before has been replaced by a constant internal swing in me between deep raw emotion and terrible numbness. I’ve learned to live in the present. I’ve learned to be strong. But I am sometimes very sad, and my loneliness right now not only has to do with the fact that I have very little energy to put into finding a village here, but also because I feel like I’m living a life parallel to my husband, but not WITH. Loving work, hobbies, children, life while my husband just survives beside me. It is the oddest juxtaposition I’ve ever experienced. To be so joyful in my daily life, while simultaneously feeling deep sadness at the fact that my husband is not able to share in that joy. He supports me in it, but he doesn’t feel it for himself.

And so loneliness is becoming a close friend these days. I do still believe that a village can be found everywhere, no matter what the circumstances. But sometimes it does take finding, and I’m not always sure I have the energy to pursue it. I sometimes wish it would just find me.