Questions

The Dilemma of My Generation: When “You Can Do Anything!” Means, “You’d Better Make it Good!”

Not many people know this, but for the past several months I have been diligently pursuing applying to PhD programs in cultural anthropology.  Travel, different cultures, and many of the issues of applied anthropology have continued to fascinate me and as I’ve thought about what to do in life I’ve started to lean more towards further study of anthropology. I was thinking of pursuing the PhD because I wasn’t aware of much that could be done with just the master’s and because I thought having the PhD would give me the option of working in the non-profit sector or teaching in a university. I’m all set to take the GRE on Tuesday and over the past few weeks I have started contacting programs and asking more specific questions. Most programs require you to go into them with a very specific research question in mind and many recommend that you’ve already dialogued with a professor who would be willing to serve as your advisor. It’s a lot more work than simply filling out an application.

As I’ve started to get responses from people I’ve contacted I’ve become more and more discouraged. Not only has no one so much as said, “thanks for looking at our program” but they have by and large responded with an attitude like, “Why do you want to this? “ or “Why are you bothering me?” Yesterday I got in touch with a Wheaton grad who recently earned his PhD from the University of Virginia. He basically told me that if I get a PhD I will lose my faith, change all of my political views, and be completely unemployable because I’ll be overqualified to work with non-profits and I will be in a very, very competitive pool for the few available university positions that don’t even pay enough to support a family on.

I’ve become overwhelmed with the sense that maybe I am not pursuing this because it’s really the passion of my life and I know that it’s what I’m supposed to do, but rather that I’m pursuing it because I am so tired of not having goals or something to pursue and if I got into a PhD program that would give me something to spend the next 6-7 years working towards. Which probably is not a good enough reason.

I have a theory about people in my generation. Particularly people who have been blessed with a lot of opportunities. People who have good, supportive families and went to schools like Wheaton and have been told all of their lives that they are exceptional. The theory is this: being told that we are exceptional, having it drilled into our heads that we are destined for greatness has ruined us for ordinary life. Believing that I am extremely gifted and talented and that I could do anything I set my mind to and that I have been given privileges in order to do something amazing makes every ordinary, mundane day seem like a failure. I feel like I am not living up to my potential or to the expectations of all of these people who believe in me. I can see and agree that I have been given opportunities that not everyone gets and despite pulling my hair out trying to figure out what I’m meant to do with my life, I can’t help feeling that I’m squandering the gift of those opportunities. I feel that I have to (and want to) do something cool and significant and amazing with my life, but I have no earthly idea what it is and the feeling is beyond frustrating. Sometimes I feel like God is teasing me. Like he is saying, “I gave you all of these opportunities for a reason, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. But if you don’t figure it out on your own, you will be held accountable.” I know God’s not really like that, but sometimes it definitely feels that way.

It is the moral gem we learned from Spiderman, “With great privilege comes great responsibility.” I genuinely feel that if I don’t do something amazing with my life, I will have wasted it. Thank you, John Piper. And so today, as I sit in my cube and design flyers to sell properties and maintain databases, I feel that I am indeed wasting my precious life. Watching it slip past me day after day and week after week as I plod along doing the same thing with very few highs or lows to break the monotony.  I am striving to make the most of my days. To be a good friend, employee, co-worker, and wife. But mostly, this doesn’t feel like enough. Beyond the expectations of others, I’m disappointed in myself. And I am so afraid of life always being this way.  I am afraid I will finish life having seen and done so little. This is not at all a critique of those who do feel fulfilled by staying in one place or working a corporate job or just raising a family. But it is true that I have an insatiable desire to see and experience everything. I literally stay awake at night longing to see the canals in Venice and the Greek islands and the Great Barrier Reef and being afraid that I never will. It’s silly, I guess, but it’s true.

Every so often I strike out and choose a course of action from my list of possibilities (writing, non-profit work, academia, kindergarten teacher, pastry chef) and every time I am advised, “You shouldn’t pursue this unless you are 100% certain that this all you want to do in life ever, ever, ever.” And  between the “you can’t” s and the “you shouldn’t” s I’m advised to “wait” until I know. And I feel like I’m never going to just “know.” It’s completely unhelpful and infuriating, particularly when so many of my friends are in grad school or are already teachers or nurses or photographers, pursuing their chosen profession. Meanwhile I actually feel  hindered by all of my options. When you are led to believe that you can be anything you want and do anything you want and you are already an indecisive person (me!), it is a tremendous burden rather than a freedom to be asked to decide or to discern. Ultimately, all I want is to honor God with my life. To do what he has gifted me and called me to do. But I am so tired and so discouraged by doing nothing while I wait for him to tell me. And I’m tired of him not telling me. And I’m tired of feeling that any direction I try to move in is blocked.

This isn’t uplifting, but this is true. I know God has a purpose for my life, but I sure wish he’d share that information. And I know I’m not the only one.

When God is Silent

I feel like a rug has been pulled out from under me the last few days and it hasn’t just left me flat on my back staring up at the ceiling with a headache. When my metaphorical rug was pulled out from under me it revealed a giant hole where I thought the floor was and left me falling through it like Alice down the rabbit hole with nothing to grab hold of and no end in sight

My brand-new nephew

This is my nephew, Jasper Mason Trahan, about four hours after he was born

Over this weekend my breathtakingly beautiful sister graduated from high school and I met her very first boyfriend, I got to hold my nephew when he was just 4 hours old, I got to see my family and friends from home, some of whom I hadn’t seen since my wedding last summer. I also learned some really upsetting things about people that I love. The type of things that I have no control or authority over, but that still make my heart so heavy. And while I was gone my husband received a job offer out of the blue that would move us to a place that I really don’t want to go.

In the past few days there have been three separate things that I was really excited about that I feel have now been tainted or taken from me entirely, the biggest of which being our move to Raleigh. We had already made a decision we felt good about and were making plans to move the first week of July. We even had a place to stay free of rent for the summer. I had been applying to jobs almost daily and Jonathan had made arrangements to transfer with Starbucks until he lands another job. One of my dearest friends is also moving to Raleigh this summer where she’ll be in school for the next 5 years.

And I had found a darling little cottage we were going to look into renting…a white cottage with a stone pathway and a beautiful garden and an office loft for writing

My breathtakingly beautiful sisters at graduation. Maggi (left--graduate), Anni (middle, 16) Me

.

To be asked to give all of that up for a place that holds no charm for me is staggering and painful. However. To refuse to give up my dreams and my wishes in order for my husband to walk through a door that God has opened for him is unbearable. How do you love someone selflessly and still be completely honest with them? How do you make a decision that could change the course of your life without feeling any excitement about it? How do you lay your life down so sacrificially that you never, ever regret it?

I can’t stand the feeling of regret. Just last week I got in touch with someone I hadn’t spoken to in years just because every time I thought about him I still felt regret over the memories I had from the time I knew him. It’s the worst feeling.

I briefly shared the situation with a friend of mine from home and she said, “You will never regret going where God tells you to go.” I needed those words and I so appreciate the encouragement that comes from them, but I am still at a loss. Neither of us have a clear sense of where God is telling us to go. A week ago, we obviously thought he was saying Raleigh, but now we don’t know. And my husband isn’t even sure he wants to take the job being offered to him, but doesn’t want to regret turning down a good job to go to a place where he doesn’t have a job lined up at all.

When we got married, I committed to lay my life down for Jonathan. Somehow I (foolishly) couldn’t conceive of a situation like this one in which it could really mean the sacrifice of more than my choice of movie or not complaining about him watching sports. But I really did mean it. And if God told me to do this I would. But right now all I’m hearing is heavy, heavy silence.

Thought I'd try to lighten the mood with a few more Two days old

Jasper with his Mommy, Amanda, doing Blue Steel

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

When I was little (picture me at around 7 or 8, dressed like I was on Little House on the Prairie, waist length hair in braids, and sporting enormous green glasses) and people used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would say, “A writer slash missionary,” because I thought it was interesting and impressive that I understood the meaning and usage of “slash.” I suppose I probably also went through periods before that when I wanted to be the typical things little kids say, Doctor or Teacher or Professional Ice Skater. I admitted in a previous post to my brief aspirations to be an olympic gymnast, Miss America, and a marine biologist. I never did go through the phase that my friend Mary Claire went through when one of her elementary school teachers asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she proudly said, “A daddy!” But that’s not really the point. The point is that the “writer/missionary” ambition is really the first one I clearly remember.

For most people, what they want to be when they grow up changes significantly throughout the course of their lives, especially throughout their educational careeers. According to the source of all wisdom and knowledge (Wiki Answers) 80% of college students change their major at least once during college and on average they change it three times. That’s a whole lot of people who are legally considered to be adults without having any clue what they want to do with their lives.

I sort of prided myself on my single-mindedness when it came to a major. I went in as an English Writing major. I still wanted to be a writer. I declared it freshman year and never changed my mind. I ended up with two minors (in Biblical and Theological Studies and in Anthropology) which, if you think about it, are very much in keeping with my childhood interest of “slash missionary,” but the main focus never changed. I watched somewhat pitilessley as those around me waffled through those early years, knowing they had to commit to a discipline and finding it so difficult to choose. Ha-ha, I thought. I am so clever. I have figured out the meaning of my life. I am not plagued with this absurd epidemic of indecision. I know what I like. I know what I’m good at. I have chosen a course of action and am able to stick to it. Boo-yah.

Fast forward five years. My friends and I have all been out of school for a year. The friend who switched from Math and Business/Econ to History and Bus/Econ sophomore year now works for a major financial consulting  firm and makes 50K. My friend who at one point considered a triple major with Math, Spanish, and Business/Econ is now a PHD candidate in biostatistics at a major university. My friend who was never interested enough in college to attend classes still managed to graduate early and is now a Navy Seal. And I, with my smug little English Writing degree have been working as a nanny for a year and am now applying frantically for receptionist jobs becuase A DEGREE IN ENGLISH WRITING FROM A SMALL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE QUALIFIES YOU TO DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!!!!! Smugness gone.

I realized that knowing what you want to major in and being aware of a skill you possess or would like to use in your work is a far cry from knowing what you want to do careerwise. Dream jobs for myself include: travel writer, anthropological researcher for non-profit who then writers stories about anthropological research,acquisitions editor for children’s books,  national geographic journalist, novelist, magazine editor, queen of world. The problem is, there just isn’t anything entry level in any of these areas. As many well-meaning but discouraging people have pointed out to me, the print media industry is failing enormously right now and there simply aren’t any jobs in the magazine industry that aren’t top-tier must-have-10-years-experience type of jobs. And I would have to go to school for many, many years to be an anthropologist, which sounds terrible to me, so I’d want to be sure there was an awesome career waiting for me on the other side before I committed to that.

In contemplating all of this I have realized that I so easily fall into the trap of thinking that who I am and my importance in life is dictated by what I do for a career. This past year whenever anyone has asked my what I do, I have mumbled, “I’m a nanny” and immediately followed it with apologetic explanations that it’s just for this year and that my husband was applying to grad schools and that it’s not what I want to do professionally. As if it reflects poorly on me as a person to not have an exciting, upwardly mobile career. But really…if I’m honest…I want the kind of job that people ask “What do you do?” and when I tell them they think, “That’s so cool!” And, I suppose more importantly, I want to think that myself.

It’s also really easy for me to feel like if it doesn’t happen now, it is just never going to happen. I sort of go into a panic mode when I start thinking like this. My husband and I were having a conversation a few days ago where I very dramatically told him I could just picture my life in 15 years, explaining to my kids that I too used to dream about doing things  and I never did (as I drive them to soccer practice and gymnastics in our minivan. Shoot me now.) I basically felt like the world was caving in on me as I started to accept this as the inevitable future.

Of course, DH spoke some words of truth to me. He reminded me that that will only happen if we allow it to by giving up on dreams. He said that we should just be committed to pursuing things we care about and not feel stuck in any situation we are in. Actually, I think his exact words were “Lily Dunn, you HAVE to snap out of this. We are not going to let that happen.” If we’d been in a Rom Com he would have slapped me. I told him that if I could just have the assurance that it would happen someday and that God did have something perfect picked out for me, even if it isn’t coming for 10 more years then I would feel at peace, even if I have to be a burger-flipper. And he reminded me that that’s not exactly the way God works.

God promised Abraham that he would have a son, and didn’t fulfill the promise until Abraham was 100 years old. God promised his people that he would deliver them from Egypt into the promise land, yet they were slaves for 400 years before God sent Moses. God promised that he would send a savior, a messiah and he did…2,000 years later. This isn’t entirely comforting to me, but it does remind me that I am not the only person who has felt this way or will feel this way. This is what faith is.

So…I still do not know what career I want to have when I grow up, but this I do know. In the meantime, I would like to learn to be a woman of faith. Someone who is able to be at peace with where I am and trust that God has a plan. I am not this woman yet, but I would like to be. When I grow up.

Eat, Pray, Love: How things you won’t find in a Family Christian Store can move your soul

Well, it’s been a while. In the time since my last post I’ve been to Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, Canada. I have seen the Amish, been to Niagara Falls, lost two more pounds (for a grand total of 12.2, for all you Weight Watcher buddies,) watched a delightful performance of My Fair Lady, decided to move to North Carolina, and underwent minor surgery. But I don’t actually want to write about any of those things. For now, at least.

What I do want to write about is how I am borderline obsessed with Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. My first encounter with it was last summer when the movie first came to theaters. I was mesmerized. I was literally unable to look away as I watched the movie. Since then I’ve read the book and seen the movie several more times and each viewing evokes the same response in me. Admiration. Longing. Inspiration.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Eat, Pray, Love it is the true story of writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey to find peace and joy and balance in her life. Gilbert travels to Italy where she spends several months eating Italian food, learning to speak Italian, and learning to really enjoy and savor life. Then she spends several months in India at the ashram of the guru she follows, devoting herself to spiritual disciplines and making peace with God. Then she finishes her year with several months in Bali making friends with natives, and learning to love others.

It’s not that I agree with the particulars of her journey. I don’t think I should leave my husband and travel the world to find myself, I’m not Hindu so her version of spiritual truth doesn’t impact me, and I hardly think that a Balinese medicine man holds the key to balance in life. What I find so compelling about Gilbert’s story isn’t really the particulars, it is the overall sense of the journey. Besides feeding my overwhelming desire to travel and see everything in the world before I die, the thing I find most captivating is Liz Gilbert’s honesty in admitting that although her writing had won prizes and she lived a life that most anyone would have called successful, there was something missing. She recognized that she needed to find spiritual peace and that she needed to understand herself better. From the way she describes it in her book, the majority of her adult relationships had been co-dependant ones in which she lost herself in trying to become the perfect match for whomever she was with. Her journey was about self-discovery, it was about spiritual discovery, and it was about learning to balance those things in such a way as to be loving towards herself and towards the rest of the world.

Julia Robert’s version of Liz Gilbert sums up her journey here:

I admire this woman for her desire to know God and the lengths she was willing to go to to make that happen, regardless of whether or not I believe in her religion. While not many of us have the means or ability to leave everything and go somewhere new and unfamiliar to devote ourselves to nurturing our spiritual lives, I am convicted that I am rarely willing to leave anything or put anything aside for the sake of developing my spiritual life. I have many questions for God and I also want to come to peace with God and with the truth, but if I am going to be honest, I haven’t really devoted my energy to it. I have thrown up questions to the sky as though I wasn’t expecting them to be answered. This final clip of the movie about what Gilbert calls, “The Physics of the Quest” is a challenge to me. I have asked and continue to ask my questions. Getting to the point that I allowed myself to ask them in the first place was a journey of its own. But now that I’m here, I realize that I need to do that second part. To regard those I meet and the experiences I have as teachers and lessons. To acknowledge that God works in our lives through other people and through our circumstances and to pay attention to the ways in which he is offering answers. Granting peace.

This is what I wrestle with…I want to believe that God has a purpose for my life that doesn’t include wandering aimlessly through it, but lately I just can’t see it. I want to believe that God is good in such a way that I really can trust that the events of our world are in his hands, but sometimes I feel like we just attribute good things to him and write bad things off as his inexplicable sovereignty. I want to believe that God is perfectly just, even when I don’t understand how he’s displaying that in a particular situation. And finally, I want to be open to seeing and hearing the ways God meets me in my doubt in my everyday life.

I think we are all voyeurs at heart. It’s why we read people’s blogs and stalk their facebook pages, and (even if we aren’t the type to seek it out on our own) can’t help being interested when we hear a detail about the Royal Wedding or Lindsay Lohan’s arrest record. We love to take our stories and lay them beside other peoples, compare and contrast. We are comforted by finding that someone else thinks like us, struggles the way we do, wants what we want. Or we are (strangely) comforted by seeing someone doing worse than we are and pumping ourselves up about it. Whichever one you are (and don’t be ashamed because I’ve definitely been both) I want you to know that I’m inviting your voyeurism. I invite you to watch and to listen to my ramblings. And I invite you to participate.

PS. If you want to read some supremely witty and clever commentary on movies and media and life, check out my hubby’s blog, Found Footage.