The Green Journal: Part 1
"Be careful always to remember-and never forget- what you have seen God do for you."
May
May was hard and easy at the same time. After my recital and graduation, I literally had zero motivation for anything. Staying in Siloam Springs was a good decision, but I had no car, and no idea what to do with so much free time. All I wanted to do was sleep, go on long walks in the park, and read books...for about a week. After that week, I desperately wanted a job. Being thrust outside the safe ivory tower of academia I had inhabited for the past four years was scary and, oddly enough, boring. Days consisted of something like the following:
I'm not sure if anything of note took place today. I did try tequila shots for the first time last night. Tried some wine the day before. Right now, Squirt the turtle keeps hitting his head against the aquarium five feet away. Used that image in a free verse poem. My word, the poetry is flowing so much lately. Also, I get the feeling Squirt doesn't like me because he does this "head banging" thing a lot whenever I am reading in the living room, or in the house alone. It's kind of creepy. Otherwise, not much else happening. Just me and an iced tea with some Tennessee Honey in it sitting in the living room. *bonk bonk bang* And Squirt, too.
It's easy to tell how bored I was: all the poetry writing, and the tasting of alcoholic beverages. I was making up for a year of being legal while being under the JBU Covenant. Likewise, when I write a lot of poetry, it can mean one of two things: I either have a crush on a boy, or have a lot of time on my hands to think about where my life is going. After graduation, I had too much time to think. Then something wonderful happened: I got a job.
June & July
June and July were warm and exciting. Almost every day on my way to work as a barista, I stopped to pet the yellow lab, Gunner, who lived down the street from me. Then, I made my way to work via a path through the woods alongside the Siloam Springs Creek, cutting across the creek over a slab of concrete that the ducks like to sit on, calling out "Hello ducks! Yes, you with the feathers, get out of my way, thank you." From there, I crossed the grassy lawn of the park, strolled (or hurried) down the street and through the door to my job at Cafe on Broadway. I learned so many things there, one of which is that I really like helping people have a good day by making them a hot latte. Also, the camaraderie shared when it's just you and two other people making drinks and food for a line that goes out the door is irreplaceable. I came out of my shell because nothing was expected of me except simple things like having a good attitude, getting the orders right, doing dishes, test tasting the baker's wares, and, of course, participating in group dance parties on the day shift. I loved taking the trash out at the end of a long night, imagining any frustration with customers and dirty dishes going into the dumpster with the sometimes dripping white and black trash bags. Afterwards, walking home in the quiet darkness, I felt safe and at home.
When I wasn't working, I was taking part in Book Trio, a group I formed with two of my closest friends, Nathan and Jewel, as a method of keeping in touch over the summer. We each contributed three book suggestions, reading everything from Asimov to Lewis, Tolstoy and a young adult fiction book called The White Noise (don't read it), Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, various poetry selections, and a very silly book by Alexandre Dumas called The Black Tulip. If you are wondering what this book is about, wonder no more. It really is all about a guy in a prison cell trying to grow the world's first black tulip. Jewel and I teased Nathan to no end about choosing that one, but he still likes it. One of my favorite things to do during Book Trio meetings was to say, "Oh gosh, that's such a good line of text. We should put that on a T-shirt!" The other two just gave me weird looks, and shrugged at one another.
In July, I travelled to Canada to be a bridesmaid for one of my best friends from Brasil. Whilst there, I broke the law driving the bride to and from her wedding day hair appointment with an expired license in my wallet. It was worth it. I felt very dangerous and exciting.....until I found out there wasn't a cop for miles.
I went on long walks in the Canadian woods with girls I knew from boarding school and marveled, not for the first time, how easy it is to pick up with my missionary kid friends right where I left off. I never grow tired of that instant sense of understanding, that joke we used to tell five years ago that is still funny, or that ability to finally say something and not have to explain it to the person next to me because they really do understand me. The wedding party carried on a long tradition of missionary kids traveling extraordinary distances to do very ordinary things like playing soccer or Dutch Blitz or setting up a wedding tent. To most it may not make sense, but to us it does.
On my way home from Canada, I wrote the following:
I am hungry, tired, and sick, but it was worth it to stay up talking with Karen. The wedding was so beautiful. Now, I'm sitting here in the Halifax Airport in a rocking chair I found by a window where the sun pours in, and I am wanting only two things: sleep, and a way to stay in this beautiful country longer. The reality of the trip actually exceed my expectations, aside from the whole having a cold and fever part.
June and July were also filled with sadness. My grandfather passed away in early June. He was a good man who cared about me and my siblings, always encouraged me to keep playing the piano, and, before his illness, was one of the hardest working men I had ever met. The day he died, I wrote:
He's gone, I mean he's with You and that is the best place for him. I talked to Mom for a long time,but not about that so much. I told her about my day, about work, the weather, and got her to laugh with some story. I didn't tell her how I came home from work after getting the news and curled up on my bed for hours just staring at the peeling ceiling. Wouldn't have helped her.
Then, in July, my younger sister came home early from a Thailand missions trip due to severe illness. Facing the fact that my sister was enduring intense pain on the other side of the country where I could not physically be with her was very difficult. I started to hate baking muffins and making chai lattes, wishing I could be with my sister to take care of her and encourage her. When the teenage girls came in wearing their cute summer dresses, brimming with health and summer laziness, asking in their high pitched voices if they could "Like, get a sugar free, non-fat latte", I bit my tongue to keep from ranting,
"My sister deserves so much more of my time than you and your stupid lattes do! She's actually really amazing, and talented, and had to give up one of the only things she's ever really wanted to do because she's ill, and I don't get to be with her right now, I have to be here listening to you being ridiculous with your stupid request for a latte that you don't even appreciate but order because you think it makes you sound classy! Newsflash: it doesn't!"
I never gave into this tirade, thankfully. Denying my feelings to my friends and coworkers was easier than talking about them, though. One night, after a long day at work, I wrote:
I'm wearing a mask for everybody. I paste on my silly, happy face all the time, and have been getting better and better at lying about how I am doing. The reality is that life after college is so unstructured I don't know how to handle it. I want to be so many things: a good pianist, a woman who is focused on God, and a good friend to the people you have placed in my life. I'm not, though. I don't meet any of my standards, and I hate myself for it.
I finally shared some of these thoughts with a friend, and in typical concise fashion he responded with, "Well, I think you should give yourself more grace right now." Grace. What a difficult concept to grasp and then act on. I kept talking to God about this, writing down verses that seemed applicable, like 1 Peter 5:10, "And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast." How could I become any of those things when all I felt was weak and unfaithful?
August
In August, I moved into the house on Holly Street with two housemates, and had my own room for the first time in five years. John Brown University hired me to teach piano in their Community Arts Academy, and I became the accompanist for a conducting class, Women's Chorus, and a local children's choir. The Cafe let me stay on, and I worked an eight hour shift every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday night. By all appearances, I was doing well. I loved driving to and from my jobs in my recently purchased used car that announced its arrival with a loud sputtering. My guy friends told me I had a muffler problem. I just smiled, nodded, and named the car Mr. Knightley.
The struggles of the previous month continued, though. One night, I wrote:
I feel like I've failed. It's been there in the back of my mind for the whole summer, subconsciously nagging me. It happened again today, after I was dishonest with one of my good friends about how I am really doing. I thought: I FAILED. FAILED. FAILED. I sat in a parking lot afterwards and cried. I feel so stuck here in Siloam, I don't know what my goals in life are, and life is really hard. My family is so far away, and I don't always like work. I hate feeling so confused.
I also began noticing how tricky relationships outside of college could be, and saw the potential for loneliness. So many of my friends were still in college while I was working three different jobs every week. At the same time, I started practicing for grad school auditions and applying to be an English teacher in Korea. It seemed like a lot to take on, and my family expressed concern that it all might "wear me out." In typical Rachel fashion, though, I believed I was invincible. After all, I didn't have college to worry about anymore. Surely I would have free time to figure everything out, including my relationship with God. No matter how much I prayed and read my Bible, though, nothing seemed to touch the loneliness and sense of failure inside of me, despite how "successful" I may have seemed.
September
I began to have social anxiety at the thought of going to church, mostly because I dreaded the question: "How are you doing?" I felt like a hypocrite whenever I went to Sunday services, struggling to focus on the sermon and also on the people around me. Everyone else seemed so sure of themselves and of the words in each hymn and worship song. They were all constantly baring their teeth in what I think were supposed to be welcoming smiles. This, however, only made me feel more anxious. Was I supposed to do that with my face too? My mask was wearing a little thin. I felt very alone in my pew, literally and figuratively.
During the week, sleep was elusive, and clarity of thought even harder to find. I was doing so much, it was hard to sit down and stop. Melancholy began settling in. A former music professor stopped by the Cafe and gave me a hug. Pulling away, she looked me over and exclaimed, "Rachel, you look so reserved! You're not your normal cheerful self. What's wrong?" I hadn't meant for anyone to know that I was unhappy. I went home after work and cried at my failure to hide my problems.
By this time I had 17 piano students every week, ranging from age 7 to 24. Teaching piano was, I decided, absolutely what I wanted to do with my life. I loved finally being able to do something good with my music degree. Helping my students figure out the beautiful language that is music was so fulfilling and energizing. What anxiety I had felt about teaching soon began to go away as I grew in confidence. Accompanying two different choirs also meant that I was hearing words about God and his love every week. It reassured me that God was listening to me. It was a gift from Him, a way of reminding me that life was worth it, even though it was often a battle to get out of bed every day. It may seem odd that while I was experiencing doubt, confusion, and dark thoughts, I was also feeling bouts of intense joy and gladness, but I think that's how life sometimes is. Pain can intensify joy.
I joined a bible study at the beginning of the month, hoping it would help with some of my spiritual confusion. We began exploring the idea of how we see God, and what that image says about us. My God was loving, faithful, and kind, but I always felt like He wanted me to do more for Him, that I wasn't being faithful if I wasn't doing full time ministry, or evangelism, or going to church every Sunday, or praying all the time. My loving God had requirements, or so I often told myself. He was a God of grace, but that grace was only for everyone else, not me and my habitual secret sins. Because of this Bible study, though, I began to think about the possibility that repentance might be more about looking at Jesus and accepting His gifts in place of my sin, rather than me trying over and over again to make myself a better person. As the sun rose on a new day, I decided to stop thinking about everything that had come before that moment and focus on the present, not the past. I quoted the desert father Anthony to myself and said: "Today, I begin anew. Today, I start." It was the beginning of allowing myself to accept God's grace.
That was the end of September, but it wasn't the end of the journal....
Today I begin anew!!!! Don't ever forget that!!! How fun to read your precious thoughts!!! Thanks for sharing!!! love you, Kim
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