Twenty years after

It's a very rainy Thursday in Lynden, my home town. I've lived in this town, and this house, longer than I ever lived in one place continuously before. Actually, now that I think of it, it's kind of my 20-year anniversary in Lynden. I vacated my apartment in San Jose, California, on October 31st, a Saturday, and I preached a farewell message at my dearly loved church, Friendship Agape, on Sunday, November 1st, and, on Monday, I started the drive up to Lynden, Washington. It was a two-day trip, so I guess November 3rd is really my 20th anniversary of living in Lynden. I moved into this same apartment I'm living in now, in the downstairs of my parents' home.

I had been a part of Friendship Agape Church for seven years, helping out a small, young congregation by teaching and assisting in any way I could. It was thrilling work to see people come to Christ and witness their transformation and growth. The work led me to seminary. I went two years to Fuller Seminary's Northern California Extension Campus. I went to school half time while working full time, which was exhausting. Also, as much as I loved Friendship Agape Church, I felt drained. One day I was sitting in traffic in San Jose. It was the morning commute, and I was in a line of cars waiting for the metering light that would let us on the freeway at 30-second intervals, where we could crawl along at half the speed limit. I thought, Why do I live here? I had moved there a couple years after college because my sister and her family lived there. But I was spending half my wages on rent and putting in almost an extra work day per week in commute time. Meanwhile,  my parents were in Lynden, I had a brother and his family in Lynden, I had extended family in Lynden, and I had always loved Lynden. When I was a girl and moving from place to place every few years, I dreamed of living in Lynden forever.

I considered that I would only go to seminary one time in my life and that to be too worn out to learn well and study deeply was a waste. I remembered that my dad had always told me that if I ever needed a place to live I could live in their downstairs. It has its own kitchen and bathroom, a living room, two bedrooms (one of which was my dad's office), and its own door in and out. So I called my folks and told them I wanted to move to Lynden, live in their house, and go to seminary full time at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Lynden is just a few miles from the Canadian border, and Vancouver is closer to us than Seattle. Because they were wonderful parents, my dad and mom were actually thrilled by the idea. My dad immediately went out and bought a gas stove to keep the basement warmer and had gravel laid along the side of the house so I could park there. I told them I thought I would probably move the next spring, around March or April 1999.

But, looking back, I think the Lord saw how tired I was. At the end of September I was laid off from my job. I didn't think it practical to look for a new job when I was planning to move in six months anyway, so I brought my plans forward early. I gave my landlord a month's notice that I would vacate at the end of October. My parents came down from Lynden to help me move.

On October 31st, my sister and her husband, my dad, and kind members of my church packed my worldly possessions into a U-Haul moving van. I had two cats at the time, who both hated riding in the car. Whenever I drove them to the vet, their desperate claws would cling to the lattice of their carriers, and they would yowl the whole way. So I consulted the vet and got some tranquilizers to give them, so they could sleep through the drive.

My church, which was still small and relatively young, was sorry to see me go. When I spoke to them that Sunday, it was the one time when I preached when I really felt the Holy Spirit gave me the message. I spoke more fluently than I can now remember to encourage them to rely on God, the true builder of the church.

The next morning, we started out in two vehicles. My dad and my kind, generous brother-in-law drove the U-Haul. Or, more accurately, my brother-in-law drove and my dad kept him company. I drove my car with my mom as a passenger and my two doped-up cats in their carriers in the back seat. We drove all day Monday, and stopped somewhere to stay in a hotel Monday night. I don't remember where. Then drove all day Tuesday and got to Lynden. I remember bits and pieces of the unpacking.

I put my cats into an unfinished little room that housed the furnace and hot water heater. I didn't want them to be scared by all the coming and going of people with furniture and boxes. My cats were frightened of most people except me. They had been feral kittens when I took them in. Even in the furnace room, they apparently were terrified and disappeared into the walls behind the drywall that didn't quite meet the ceiling. After everyone had left and I was calling them, I could hear them meowing inside the walls. I wanted to keep talking so they would hear my voice and come to it, but I ran out of things to say, so I sat on the floor in the hallway and sang the verses of Amazing Grace until they came creeping out to me, their whiskers full of cobwebs.

I waited until fall of 1999 to start my classes at Regent. I visited the campus and arranged to have my credits transferred, and all that. During the year that I waited, I did odd jobs for some income—some editing, some substitute teaching, and I wrote some book reviews for Publishers Weekly at $45 a pop. But I rested my mind, body, and soul. I read some spiritual classics: Augustine's Confessions, and Teresa of Avila's Interior Castles.

In the fall of 1999 I started at Regent College, I went to school for the academic year, the summer, and the following academic year, and graduated with my Master of Divinity in 2001. I was 40 years old. I decided not to go to Calvin Seminary to complete the work that would be required for my ordination in the Christian Reformed Church. After two solid years of grad school, I was not eager for more. I loved my studies, but I was glad they were done. I also decided not to leave Lynden. The family support was too sweet, the community too dear for me to want to leave. Since at least the age of 10 I've suffered from bouts of depression, some of which frightened me in retrospect. Several of the depressions were triggered by moves. I just didn't want to put myself through that.

I also wasn't up for the challenge of being a woman pastor in the CRC, for two reasons. One, most of the churches who would call a woman were in Western Michigan and Ontario, and I didn't want to move. Two, I didn't want to be a lightning rod for controversy. The ordination of women was (and in many places still is) controversial in the CRC. I did not want to have to justify myself constantly for being in the job I was in. My brother who is a pastor in the CRC encouraged me to consider other denominations, but I didn't want to leave the CRC. And I wasn't that sure I wanted to be a pastor, anyway. I pursued my M.Div. mainly because I wanted to know the things you learned for that degree. I wanted to study the biblical languages, church history, and theology, and I did.

I went through a few jobs after that, some tech writing/editing, teaching English online to home scholars, running a picture-framing store. None of them worked out well. Teaching high school students seems to be another depression trigger for me. Go figure. Framing pictures was fun but did not generate enough income for me to live on. Also, my oldest brother died of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease).

Finally, in about 2007, if I recall correctly, although I had no enthusiasm for more school, I enrolled in the paralegal training course at Whatcom Community College. I wanted to get some certificate that would open a door to regular employment. And it worked. I needed just one year in the program because I already had my B.A., and by the time I was done I had a job offer from the lawyer I interned with. Yay. I worked for her for nearly five years, until she joined a firm that took her but not me. Boo. Then was about a year of some unemployment and some work for another lawyer, but that situation did not work out. Finally, in March 2013, I was hired as a legal assistant where I work now, and I'm quite happy there. As happy as I'm capable of being. Any unhappiness I do have is not because of my job. It's because of the aging, the slowly failing health, and then the death of my dear parents. And having to vacate my house for six months due to water damage just a few months after they died didn't help.

I've been back in my home, with its new floors and re-drywalled, freshly painted walls, for eight months now. I'm still mostly not unpacked. I have lacked energy and motivation. Frankly, I've been mentally ill. I feel like I'm just starting to recover from that illness, but I'm not fully restored to health yet. But I'm improving.

And that's how I got from there to here.