Looking Back/Looking Ahead

It's early in the morning on December 31st, and I am contemplating my past and my future. This is not an uncommon activity for the last day of the year. I think, though, that this year it's a little bit more intense than usual. This year has been a major turning point in my life. Often I have found New Year's to be a reflective time when great change is upon me. But this is the first year in which great change has occurred and great change is still to come. Change is not my favorite. So we'll see how this thing goes.

Some reflections on 2012:

• Moving. This year has been all about moving, in most cases forward, in some back. I left the only home of my adult life, New York City, to return to my childhood home in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. It didn't really feel like a regression though. I hadn't lived in Colorado in 15 years and my parents aren't here. Rather than coming home, I felt like I was embarking on a new adventure to uncharted territory. Even though I appreciate the familiar view of the mountains to the west and my proximity to important places from my past, this still felt like starting over. In some ways it has been incredibly easy; in others, much more challenging than I anticipated. I miss New York badly. But I believe this is where God has me, and he has given me a great deal of joy in my new life.

• Falling in love. I've been wanting to fall in love for many, many years now, and in fact tried to on a number of occasions. I spent way too much time wondering what the real deal would be like. It has been both exactly what I expected and well beyond what I imagined. The biggest surprise, I think, is that it was less about feelings and more about certainty. I'm thankful for that because my feelings fluctuate as much as any woman's. There is romance, to be sure, but plenty that is not romantic. With the right person, that's okay.

• Money. I spent six years in New York being told by everyone everywhere that this would be the most expensive time in my life and that everything would be a breeze when I left. Well, there's no nice way to say this: they were all WRONG. Here's what I learned, and New York friends would do well to take heed. While living in the city forces you to grow up in a number of ways, it can arrest you financially. If you don't own an apartment, and are fortunate enough to live in places where most of the furniture and kitchen stuff belong to other people, and you aren't in debt, you can actually get by on pennies. Rent is expensive, sure, but living with a bunch of roommates makes utilities dirt cheap, transportation is a piece of cake and doesn't involve messy things like insurance and repairs, and there are all sorts of free things going on all the time. The city is truly a place for those who want to constantly reinvent themselves, and it provides a measure of financial freedom that makes that possible. But see, then I left the city, and realized that I had not yet grown up when it came to money, and that has been very difficult. I'm in debt for the first time in my life because I did not own a car and had to take out a loan for one. I also have loans from grad school that I've had to forebear and think I'll probably be paying off till I'm 80. Moving was expensive - still paying that off too. And I had no furniture when I arrived, which was a fun adventure in and of itself. Now I have monthly bills I'd never had before, most related to the car thing. Electricity, gas, internet, water, all of that is now my sole responsibility since I live alone. Rent is cheaper, sure, but not by much, and all these extra bills really negate the difference. Plus, I realized that in New York I always had this forward-looking mentality. It was easier to deal with some of the frustrations because I felt like I was always looking ahead to a time when I would be more stable, more independent, more, well, "grown-up." And now that time is here, so I can no longer look into the future to when I won't be living paycheck to paycheck. I left New York, and I still am, and I can't picture a time when I won't be anymore. Which is paralyzingly scary. So there you have it. Among the hard lessons I learned this year, the fact that financial problems multiply rather than disappear when you leave New York was one of the hardest.

• Career revival. The whole reason I went to New York in the first place was to teach inner-city kids. I've come to realize that my motives for that were not the greatest, and have dealt with some spiritual sobering as a result. But in any case, leaving that job back in 2009 was very difficult, for a number of reasons you'd rather I didn't get into (trust me). I spent three years nannying for one of the most amazing families I've ever known, and working at my church, and going to grad school. I think I will always look back on that as a really wonderful time in life. I was not stressed out about work, but I earned enough money to pay my bills. The thing about going to school on loans is, you can pretend you're not spending money when you really are. And my jobs allowed me time to do a lot of things I loved, including be the editor of a baseball blog for a year and a half, which was a dream come true. Even though I felt unsure of my future, the present was good. Still, that uncertainty loomed large at times, and occasionally I would lie awake nights wondering if I'd ever teach again. I wanted to, badly, but feared that God wouldn't make a way, that I would always be wandering in a work wasteland, making ends meet but never fulfilling any sort of purpose. In the back of my mind was this school which had been built in my hometown back in 2006 and which I held up as sort of the holy grail of job opportunities. If anyone had asked me during that time where I would work if I could work anywhere in the world, well, I might have said MLB Network. But my second answer would have been Valor Christian High School. Guess what? I just finished my first semester teaching there. The story of how I got the job is pretty incredible too. Suffice it to say that God wanted it to be clear that he was giving me this job, rather than me earning it for myself. I hope I never forget and that I never stop being grateful.

• Reading. I just do not read enough anymore. In New York I always read on the subway, and I plowed through books like it was no big deal. Now that I drive everywhere, I've been finding it very difficult to carve out time in my day for reading. This makes me really sad. I love to read, I think writers need to read more than the average person, and I have a ton of books that I still haven't read. I want to go buy more but I can't justify that until I finish what I've got (and maybe pay off those moving expenses). So there's been a serious lack of reading joy in my life for the better part of 2012. I'm pretty determined that 2013 will be different, somehow.

• Grief. There have been a few small things and a pretty big thing that have caused me to grieve this year. It's been an interesting process, and I don't think I've grieved as well as I have in the past. Mourning well is important to me, because I'm a melancholy person and things get to me. I realized this years ago and in conjunction with that realization learned that grief can be incredibly redemptive. Those who choose not to grieve or who do not often face situations that inspire grief are actually missing out. Grief can be powerfully healing and it can bring about great change (there's that word again). I'm still waiting for some of the things I grieved in 2012 to produce their fruit. I have to admit, my faith in that is small. This morning I read these words by the great L.B. Cowman: "Every man sits over against the sepulchre in his garden, in the first instance, and says, 'This woe is irremediable. I see no benefit in it. I will take no comfort in it.' And yet, right in our deepest and worst mishaps, often, our Christ is lying, waiting for resurrection." I hope that's the case for me right now. And that's my prayer for all of us in 2013: that Christ would redeem our griefs and resurrect us, bringing joy that we would not have known had we never sorrowed at all.