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changes, passions, and dreams

I remember telling a friend the last summer I worked at camp that I thrive on change. How I lacked self-awareness! At the time, I think that change was a way for me to not have to be vulnerable, to not have my relationships get too deep, to not really have to commit to people. On a surface-y level, I do love change! I get bored easily, I like things to change to keep my attention, I get bored driving the same way to work every day. On a deeper level, I no longer harbor any illusions that I like change.

Change is HARD. There's a stress-level indicator test I've taken a number of times that asks you to check off things that have happened to you in the last year. All of the things listed are changes: moving, new job, loss of a family member. The more that you have experienced, the higher your stress level. For the last 5 or so years, I've ranked above the stress level where you are extremely likely to have a heart attack. Great.

However, my life is about to undergo more change when I move. In deciding whether to stay in my comfortable apartment, just barely ITP, or to move back into the city, I felt like I was making a choice that encompassed a lot more than just a mailing address. I felt like I was making a choice between staying in my comfortable life, plodding along and enjoying my life, and stepping out there and pursuing what I've said are my passions and dreams.

I'm going to include an excerpt from an essay I first wrote for Teach for America. It explains some of the sources of these passions I speak of, written at a time when they were fresher.

If you had asked me in tenth grade what I was going to do when I grew up, I
would have responded, “I am going to teach in an inner city high school and
coach the girl’s basketball team so I can have a significant impact on a few
students’ lives.” However, by the time I went to college, I had forgotten
this dream. Early in my college career, an older friend asked me what my
passions were. I had no idea how to respond. Then I had an
experience the summer after my junior year that changed everything.

I spent the month of July working as an intern with Desire Street Ministries in the
Desire Street Housing Project in New Orleans. As a part of the internship,
I spent two hours every afternoon tutoring football players from the
neighborhood high school in preparation for the ACT. As I helped these
rising seniors struggle to understand the basics of pre-algebra and watched
others labor to read even Dr. Seuss, in an un-air-conditioned cafeteria in the
middle of a humid New Orleans July, I found my passions and remembered my
dream.

I fell in love with the city and becamse passionate about gospel-driven social justice. For me, this was education as a means to breaking the poverty cycle. These passions and dreams have turned into teaching in Atlanta's public schools and mentoring a few students. For me, it also meant living in the city. When moving from Auburn to Atlanta, I said that I would never live in a gated community. Well, the last 2 years living in one have not totally changed who I am or what I believe in. However, the decision to move back into the city is much more than a change of address for me.

I'm really nervous about it. Though I've lived in town before, I anticipate that I'm about to have to put my money where my mouth is in a more real way than I ever have before. That scares me. I am at a crossroads that I feel will affect the course of the rest of my life. Am I really as passionate about those things that I say I am passionate about or will I be content to stay in my comfortable Christian box, at a new address? Will I be religious in the sense that James describes it, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world?"

posted by CP @ 4:43 PM 2 thoughts