Things I Don't Want to Do

Things I don’t want to do: Second semester of law school.

A part of me feels adolescent again given all of the emotional ups and owns that I’ve undergone in the last two weeks.

And then being flat on my back sick the last two days has given me ample time to think about this. I seriously don’t remember the last time I was too sick to go to school for more than a day….So I’ve been thinking. I’ve had plenty of time to think about how hard it is to be here right now. And if I’m honest with myself it’s for more reasons than just law school.

Twice in my life that I’ve considered not getting on an airplane. Coming back here after a (glorious) month repose from school of law was one of them.

I sat in the airport and January 15^th, 2015 and thought about all the reasons I didn’t want to come back. In short? This is hard. Just kidding, but half of me wants to jump ship and move back to Paris and study literature again…at least I am good at language and I think living there would be a lot less difficult this time around, right? My law school friends have a theory that I’m a Russian spy. That also sounds good right about now. (Too bad my Russian knowledge is limited to the Cyrillic alphabet and the phrase “I’m not Russian, I’m American”—which, by the way, I think I’m going to retire because I’m not sure that phrase will do me any intercultural good right now.)

The other half of me is so completely convinced I’m supposed to be here and am committed to seeing this through. I’m not going to quit, but I’m not going to hold back on being honest either. Right now I hate this and I just don’t mind saying it.

So, Thursday, January 15^th, I almost didn’t get on another airplane. While I was considering this, I actually walked by the gate at the Portland International Airport where I last wrestled with the issue. Gate C1. It was right before I moved to Alaska indefinitely:

It was the Fall of 2009 and I had just spent another summer working on the train in Alaska felt a strong direction to move there year round and substitute teach. At that point I thought my career was going to take the teaching direction. Alaska had more opportunity for me than Oregon and I was feeling the need to stay one spot for more than 4 months. I was emotionally exhausted from all the traveling I had done at the time and just needed a winter’s respite. God seemed to think Alaska was the place. I had flown home after the train season for my brother’s wedding and now I was dreading going back.

Part of the dread was some drama I had inadvertently been involved in over the summer that I didn’t want to return to, but much more of it was, frankly: fear. Fear because I really didn’t know many people there and I didn’t know how much I really cared to be in Alaska. My dad and my sister had driven me to the airport after 3 wonderful weeks home in Oregon and with tears in his eyes Dad hugged me and said “you know you don’t have to go.” Gut wrenching. As I sat at the gate his words replayed in my head. He was right. I was going to live month to month at a furnished place and there was no signed lease. Substitute teaching was entirely by my initiative. I was going to be driving my best friend's car that she would otherwise just store there for the winter. I actually had no commitments taking me back to Anchorage.

But then I sat there and contemplated all of the conversations I had had with others where I had challenged them to not settle for good, but to aim for best. That is, God’s best. All of those times I had counseled them to not fear and to listen to Him and DO IT. That fear is no way to live.  And I hated the realization that I had to get on that plane if I wanted my life to back up all of that advice that a part of me (at the moment) regretted shelling out. So I, not unreluntantly, boarded the aircraft. I remember that internal wrestling very clearly, a wrestling match that actually continued well into that winter in Alaska.

Then I remembered not just that fight with God in the airport, but also another fight when I met some girls at my new church in Anchorage, acquaintances that were very clearly divinely orchestrated. I cried and banged on my steering wheel on the way home that day and yelled at God that I didn’t want to get to know anybody new. That I was relationally exhausted. That I was going to obey and do it but, since He wanted my candor, I was letting Him know once again how I felt about the whole ordeal and how I just didn’t understand “what the hell He was doing.”

It’s funny to think back on those moments and fill in all of the life that has happened between those raw moments of “candor” and now.

Alaska’s now home. It has become so much a part of me that it’s actually a part of what makes being here so hard now. Funny how that works. And those girls that I didn’t want to get to know—but did? They are indisputably the biggest reasons that place has such a hold on me now, mountains aside. My life is there now. And actually, I had the utter privilege of being in one of those girls’ wedding over break.

All of this kind of flashed to the forefront of my mind and I sort of chuckled to myself while gazing at Gate C1 in PDX. “If you’d only known, Traci, how much you had waiting for you.”

Yeah, it’s true. If I had only known, that fight with God probably never would have happened and I wouldn’t have looked back or second guessed whether or not I should use my boarding pass. But then I never would have known what it meant to truly follow, either. I got on that plane in sheer trust that God knew what He was doing. And I was right.

Perhaps it was a Divine nudge that I had to walk by that gate to get to my flight this time. As much as I still didn’t really want to, I couldn’t help but see and feel the parallel with where I’m at now.

In many ways I find myself with a lot of the same questions that I did in that Fall of 2009: “God, what are you doing? Are you sure I’m supposed to be here? WHY? How long?” But added this time is “are you sure about this law thing? Because so far I’m not good at it. At all.”

I guess this is one advantage of getting older, you have past experience to draw upon. It almost doesn’t even need to be said that both this thing I’m doing now and Alaska were and are obviously new and game changing chapters in my life that were both clearly directed by Someone besides me. The problem is that there’s almost nothing “obvious” about it when you’re walking through it. “Obvious” in this case comes only in that annoyingly perfect hindsight.

I was articulating some of these thoughts to a friend, and telling her the story about how I almost didn’t get on that plane to Alaska and then almost didn’t again this time. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said “looks like you’ve got some of your answers, there.” She’s right. I may not like the answer to the slew of questions that I listed above because the answer sounds more like a non-answer, but it’s the right one nonetheless: “JUST TRUST ME.”

It only really takes but a fleeting moment of painful self-honesty to know to the core of me that if He knew what He was doing last time He knows what He’s doing this time, but it’s okay if it doesn’t hurt any less this time around.

So, there we go. There I go. I can choose to trust and know that God is going to blow me away with all he has in store for me here and in the field of law, or I can keep asking questions that He has already addressed (repeatedly) and live miserably daily. He will provide community, He will weave all this crazy together to make sense—there’s nothing about what’s going on here that Him “improvising” in my life. He’s hammering stuff out of me and working in me all the while He’s carrying out His promised design for my little, crazy, wild, amazing but humble life. Because He’s good. And thank GOD I don’t have to question that. Miserable is no way to live. Fear is no way to live either. But it strikes me how both of those things are often deliberate choices.

So, this time, I’m not going to be mad about who I meet or what I have to do, I want to just have eyes wide open and my heart too. God forgive me when I don’t, just know I want to. (And can I please stop being sick?) Let’s do this thing.