It's funny how time can simultaneously feel fast and slow. On one hand, Gretchen and I have done a lot in the last couple months. We moved to Austin, reconnected with old friends, set up our apartment, celebrated the holidays, and begun settling into a new lifestyle with a new purpose. On the other hand, a lot of lingering questions we've had for the last few years remain stuck in our heads without resolution. Is Austin home-home, or just where we need to be for now? Are there career opportunities here for me? When are we supposed to feel comfortable with our current situation? It seems like despite the fact that a lot changes on the outside, it isn't much different on the inside. Why is that?
Gretchen and I started taking a class at our church for perspective adoption/foster parents. The goal of the program is to help us understand what adoption is all about, what the potential challenges are, and how to view everything from the lens of the gospel. Part of understanding how to parent is understanding ourselves. Every one of us is affected by the events in our life, and sometimes those experiences in the past shape our view of the future. For example, when I was a little kid I watched the movie Arachnaphobia. If you haven't seen it, it's a cheesy movie about a mutant species of spider that takes over a small town by biting and killing everyone. A spider jumps from the ceiling and bites a woman in the shower. Another descends from a lamp shade just as an old man goes to turn it off. A guy put on his slippers - yep, the spiders were waiting for him. As a child, this freaked me out. Nowhere was safe. Suddenly every little house spider I saw was a poisonous killing machine focused on my destruction... at least to me. That was over 20 years ago. Since then, I've seen the movie again, and laugh at how ridiculous it is. But you know what, I still check under the covers of my bed before I get in it. A movie I watched as a child affects my behavior today. Our past shapes the way we see the future.
The other day Gretchen and I started talking about all those unanswered questions that are still on our minds. We're concerned about our circumstances, our mission, and whether or not we even want to do what we're doing. In a way, it makes sense. Gretchen and I have moved 6 times in less than 4 years. Most of that time we haven't had consistent employment, and every move brought with it the necessity to start over. Remember what it felt like being a freshman in high school, when everything was new? That how we feel, except every 6-9 months. When you spend enough time feeling like you don't know what's going on, you start believing that you don't know what you're doing. Nothing kills ambition more than uncertainty. If you don't know where you're going, you don't know which direction to face. Eventually, you forget where you trying to go in the first place, and never get there. The root of our questions is a result of our past shaping our view of the future.
So what do we do about it? We can't deny how we feel, but we also can't move forward if we're carrying so much uncertainty about our direction. For now, we are allowing ourselves to break the starting-over cycle we've been in, hoping there will be more clarity when the fog of uncertainty has lifted. We're praying that Austin works out from a career perspective, because otherwise we'll be forced to move. In terms of adopting, we recognize that until our life settles down, we can't seriously consider it. There just isn't enough stability in our life to accomodate kids at the moment, so in the meantime, we're doing everything we can to lay a solid foundation for the future.
Later this month Gretchen and I are starting a new community group with a pair of couples who are either fostering kids now, or plan to in a few months. We're excited to have an outlet to help families care for their kids, and we're recruiting some friends to get certified to babysit for them. We're almost done with the paperwork to get certified ourselves (there's a lot to do), and we're continuing our adoption class through our church. Even though kids are a ways off for us, we're still finding ways to stay involved, and that will have to do for now. Until next time...
-Steve
