The Distance from Home

You might call it irony, the way I am sitting on a couch in Spain, sorting out my future the same way I did thirteen years ago in North Dakota when I promised myself I'd never move far away.

At fifteen, the future was lined with a handful of cards ripped from Campus Life magazine. I checked the boxes carefully, making sure not to leave errant ink next to the name of any college that wasn't in Minnesota or a Dakota. I wasn't even open to free info from either coast, so sure recruiters would try to rip me out of the Midwest with their shiny brochures and scholarship offers. And when I finally made a decision, at seventeen years old, it was exactly 502 miles away. Not far enough for my classmates, who all claimed they'd blow this dump after graduation. Too far for me, the only one who felt safe inside the edges of our tiny world, a bell jar safely covering the radius around my family's farm.

The 4500 miles between North Dakota and Madrid don't feel as wide now as those first 500, that eight-hour drive carving a sharp divide between childhood and adulthood. I thought then that choosing anything new meant severing the old--and not only severing, but hacking to bloody pieces with a dull knife. I left my parents' home--a stray sunflower in the middle of a wide open wheat field, as if someone dropped the wrong seeds, magically harvested a ranch-style earthberm on the prairie. I had no idea where our land started and stopped, only that I was somehow included in the "our," that I was invited to return to the pastures and tree rows and gardens forever, even if I hadn't helped with the planting and harvesting.

When a college friend enlisted in the army, she distributed her five most precious books to friends for safekeeping. The rest of her possessions were sold, trashed, donated. I opened an envelope once to find a letter handwritten in the margins of pages she'd torn from an Emily Dickinson volume. This was a great mystery to me, having grown up in the same place where my father has spent most of his nearly-sixty years, which is also where his father spent an entire eighty-six. My closet shelves have buckled beneath the books I've been stashing since graduation. I've never yet had to change my permanent address.

And yet I live across the sea, doing things I never anticipated I would be brave enough to do. That's not exactly true, though--that I am doing anything because I'm courageous. The truth is that the sense of belonging to a place is the weight allowing the balloon to dance in the sky. The number of miles between two spaces means less than having a space to measure distances from. And this, I think, is why it's impossible to completely cut the strings, to fly haphazardly until tangling in a tree. I am free to go anywhere because my heart is tethered securely to the one place I can always call home.

Mom, Dad, thanks for letting me fly so far this time. Next year, we'll do this together. Merry Christmas.

The Card

Since I needed to go into Madrid anyway, I tried my hand at Aluche.

(Aluche is topped like a circus tent, blue and white and swirly. It's the place in charge of sending out the letters that tell you to come on down, get fingerprinted, wait 45 days for a plastic card that proves you're a legal resident of Spain. But Spain has conveniently decided not to send me this letter for the second year in a row, so here it is, nearly the new year, and I've spent seven months of my new card not having it in hand.)

The laywer told me to go first to Manuel Luna, which is the place I first went last January. (You may recall that I handed my first stack of papers to the authorities in June and finally received that residency card the following February.) "Is it necessary to start there?" I emailed back, since last year's visit resulted only in a wasted day of school and some lady at a desk telling me I should've gone to Aluche in the first place.

Anyway. Friday. First day of Christmas vacation, and I had a date. With destiny.

I walked into the carnival of bureaucracy with a sheet of paper I'd printed from the secret website which no one's ever told about directly, just learns of through others having paperwork woes--like a secret password handed around between members of a secret society. The man ushered me through the door, and though I was supposed to request a fingerprinting date on the second floor, something inside me--something spontaneous and adventurous and, I don't know, maybe glutton-for-punishmentous--decided just to stand in the short line. The line where all the people who received their letters go. A kid on the "naughty" list, trying to sort things out with Santa--that was me.

A few minutes later, someone pointed me to a desk. I slid my paper stack across the table to a man who clicked a few buttons and typed a few things, then handed me the bank form for the extra tax I needed to pay. "That's it," he said.
"That's it? Just this, and the photos, and these papers?"
"And your passport."
"And that's all?"
"That's all."

(Keep in mind that this was in Spanish, so my part of the conversation probably really sounded like, "And all? This and photos and papers and is everything, yes?")

Could it be? Could I dare to hope against hope that my piddly little internet paper would in fact grant me access to fingerprinting that day? I rushed from the building, powerwalked the next few blocks back to the train station, and asked some nearby policemen for the nearest bank. The first two banks had signs posted on the front door: We only allow payment of 790 tax between 8 and 10. 11am. Dang it. I rushed around the corner, paid my form, hustled back to the train station to get some quick passport photos done (since both photo booths at Aluche were broken), and nearly skipped all the way back to Aluche, fists clenched around the papers. Once again, I stood in line just to see what would happen.

I'd been composing happy facebook statuses in my mind, things like, "The world must be ending today: Spain has finally decided it likes me!" The man at the booth must've seen the hope in my eyes, because he reached out to snap it in half. "This is not an official date." He jabbed at the paper that declared me approved. "Who told you this was okay?"
"I don't know, this guy who was sitting there, he said I just needed these three things..." (Again, a more literal translation would be, "Um, uh, don't know, a man he who seat yourself here, he say this is good.")
"This is not a date."
"Okay. Where do I go?"
"Second floor."

I hear stories of people who glide into Aluche with their paperwork and glide out two months later, card-wielding members of this crazy country. Sarah even got a letter reminding her that her residency documents were due! As for me and my household, we resigned ourselves to the second floor, where an indifferent man stamped a piece of paper and handed it to me. March 6th, 2013. By the time I actually receive my residency card, I'll have about six weeks left in Camarma. Apparently Spain wants to save my card for a going-away present.

This video pretty much sums up all feelings I have regarding this process:



P.S. On the brighter side, I rode the train into Madrid with two dorm kids. One of them was sniffling incessantly halfway through the trip and kept asking us for Kleenexes. "Where is a bum selling Kleenexes when you need them?" (It's common practice for people to walk up and down the aisles of commuter trains, setting Kleenex packets on your lap and hoping you'll buy them.)

A few minutes later, a homeless man with a "Pide Ayuda" sign did enter the car. As he neared us, asking for money, our boy asked, "Got any Kleenexes?"
"Of course I don't have Kleenex! I live on the streets!"
"Oh, okay, man. No worries."

And that, friends, is a little something I like to call irony.

Another Delightful Installment of Student Quotes

Boy 1: "We should just sit around and eat all day."
Boy 2: "I will not do that. That is against the Ten Commandments of my life."

Boy 1: "Ms. C, he looks like a girl."
Boy 2: "I always look like a girl, honey."

Girl: "I have a prayer request. I'm ill."
Me: "Okay?"
Girl: "Not, you know, the regular kind of ill. The other kind."
Me: "Yes?"
Girl: "You know, the other kind of ill. You know. Lovesick!"

Girl: "Did you get a haircut? It's so cute!"
Boy: "No, I just showered."

Girl: "Hi, Miss C."
Me: "Hi, Miss (Name)."
Girl: "I'm not a miss yet!"
Me: "You're always a miss."
Girl: "Well, you're more miss-y."

Test Question: Name three major characters in Judges. What are they known for?
Girl: "Ehud was a very epic leftie who killed a very fat king."

After I scolded a student for making the world's most obnoxious (and continuous) noise
"Unfair! You won't let me woodpeck!"

At English camp, when I told two of my boys to join me at the Shrinky-Dink workshop
Boy 1: "Yay! Shrinky-Dinks!"
Boy 2: (crestfallen) "Oh, there's no food in here?"

Card drawn from a board game based on actual events from Joshua
"Evil unicorns attack your house! Go back three spaces."

Boy, in reference to The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle: "What's that book about the girl in the ship? Sarah Palin?"

Boy: "Ms. C, why doesn't this school have Slushies?!"

Girl: "Ms. C, did you ever have crushes?"
Me: "Well, sure, most people have crushes at some point."
Girl: "I bet you dumped 'em all, huh?"
Me: "The thing about crushes is that most of them are kinda secret. Most of my crushes never knew they were crushes at all."
Girl: "Oh...do you have a crush now?"
Me: "Nope, no crushes."
Girl: (quite sympathetically) "Well, that's okay, Ms. C."

Girl, after learning my age: "28? That's young for someone so tall!"

Team Retreat in Toledo

Summary: American Thanksgiving celebrated in Spain, with lots of turkey and no lefse. Followed by meetings and bonding in the magical town of Toledo. My WorldVenture team is really divided into three different areas of ministry: theological education, MK education, and working with North African immigrants. Such a diversity within our group--and such great people.

And then, for the first time ever, I got asked out to have a beer. In Spanish. By an overfriendly store manager named Paco who was at least thirty years older than me. "No, no, I have meetings," I said, "lots and lots of meetings."

"Will you be back in Toledo?"

"Maybe one day, maybe in a few months."

"You stop by my store."

"Maybe I will bring a friend to see all the beautiful paintings."

"No, no, no friend. Just you and me."

Buying stuff in any small Spanish store is magical because your purchase, no matter how common or small, is treated with special delicacy, wrapped carefully, sealed with a sticker saying Deseas te gusta (We hope you enjoy). But I've never before had a purchase come with a date offer. I need to move north, where nobody touches each other.

A Few Disconnected Thoughts

Last year at about this time, I was on an airplane leaving Marseille. I remember leaning my head against the window and saying to myself, in a voice so loud I'm sure even those outside my head could hear, "I am never going to make it." We had three weeks til Christmas break, and I felt like my bones were going to splinter under all the pressure.

I can't believe it's been almost a year since that plane ride. That we're almost to another Christmas break. We have only two full school weeks, three half weeks, and twenty-five research papers to go. There's been such a distinct ebb and flow to the semester: first, the month-long euphoria of smaller classes and a year's experience. Then, the drain of October, of assignments collecting dust in the grading bin. The November peak, the holidays ahead, the nestling in of the classroom, the routine. Now it's a steam train plowing toward 2013, to Lord of the Flies and Anne Frank. And my head is in such a mess of it.

I wish I'd kept better track, even if it meant writing down one-sentence summaries of the days:

Biked to Alcala and ate potentially rancid hummus on the sidewalk outside the Asia Store.

Got a visit from a friend and introduced her to one of the most integral parts of Madrid: Hello Kitty.

Scary man on the street yelled at Sarah in Spanish: "You are a big problem for my friend!"

Alas, I've been asleep for the past year and a half. How painful to realize that, potentially, the biggest legacy I'll leave for future generations is a string of semi-coherent facebook statuses.

Sometimes it feels like there's nothing to say, only because there's too much to say. The days blend together into a mess of weeks, and I'll flip back through my lesson planner, trying to figure out how on earth we got from there to here when it seems like we just started! I wish I'd written more! I wish I'd captured every minute of it! The end of November makes eighteen months in Spain, leaving just six more. Six! A fraction of a second. And the life I was so sure would crush me last December has become the most normal and--dare I say it?--enjoyable thing.

My kids keep asking why I'm leaving and what I'll do next year, and I don't know what to say to any of them, but I wish I could pack them into suitcases to carry with me. Don't grow up, I'd tell that. Nah, that's bad advice. Grow up wise, but always keep your childlike hearts. I get nervous for their futures on their behalf, maybe more nervous than I get about mine.

These days, it gets dark so early. I'm ready to hibernate by 9:00. The most important man in my life is Michael Scott. I am not as tired as I used to be. I want to hold on to every minute.

Here I Raise Mine (28th) Ebenezer

Here I raise mine ebenezer; hither by Thy help I'm come. I never really got that when I was in my high school hymn-hating days. The idea of ebenezer is a "remembrance stone," a memorial to God, but to me, the lyrics conjured up images of Dickens' Scrooge swigging a cup of grape juice with old Father Abraham. This was the best you could do, Robert Robinson? Israelites in the desert, raising cane and ebenezer?

Still, thirteen years ago, I came home from camp with a styrofoam cup filled with sand from the volleyball court. "Miracle debris," Todd had called it. He asked us to pick something--a twig, a rock, a flower--any physical reminder of all God had done that week. I carried that scoopful of sand home with care before stashing it in my desk. There I raised mine ebenezer. Perhaps the first deliberate one.

---

I turned 27 with a list of virtues in hand, of disciplines I wanted to work on during the coming year, of characteristics I was going to develop. Then the calendar flipped to the most stressful month of my life, a September that yanked me from bed at 7.30am and refused to let me collapse until the lesson plans were wrapped up at 9pm. I was too hot to exercise, too tired to read, too exhausted to care that I hadn't been as generous or encouraging as I'd intended. I took inventory during Christmas break, figured out all the things I hadn't done. Hadn't written a book, hadn't cleaned out my file cabinet, hadn't made one school lunch the night before, hadn't saved the world, hadn't lost weight, hadn't figured out how to make my impulse haircut look presentable. Oh, but I had watched two full seasons of The Office in the course of one week. So, basically, at 27, I was still the same, disappointing me I'd been at 26. I'd tried to lead her into the forest without a trail of breadcrumbs to bring her out, but she kept managing to follow me home.

---

On my last night of 27, I plunked my legs on the table underneath a tree, just Sophia and I still awake on our staff retreat. We'd overlapped life in Spain for only two weeks last spring, but she was back now, asking if the past year had been good. I'm not good with that question unless you're good with long answers. I'm always tacking a caveat somewhere. It was a good movie, but... I loved the book, except... I think I said something like, "Well, overall, it was a good year," but what I really meant was, "The year was good, but I still suck."

The things I hadn't accomplished had been spinning like laundry in my brain, wringing out disappointments in dishwater colors. But Sophia asked, and the thoughts untangled, arranged themselves in a straight line, and leapt straight out of my mouth: "I know that I've needed to be here, because God has me in a position that is forcing me to see something I couldn't see from any other vantage point." I'd been testing out those words for months, but suddenly they tasted true.

That's when I saw my past year--my past ten years, even--all burned up and burned out like a row of scorched trees waiting for the ax. I've carved the charred branches into planks just so I can shove them in my own eye; I've searched the crevasses of the bark for rot and ash, never noticing the tiniest of leaves uncurling. Or the stacks of stones glinting between the piles of broken branches.

I've built them with my own hands, I guess. Stacked stone upon stone and cemented them together with criticism and self-loathing, the prodigal daughter carving a shrine from pig waste. Here stands the row of ebenezers left to become ruins. Ebenezers to self.

Oh, dear Lord, that's it.

That's it.
The night flipped past midnight and into 28, and I had to be sitting under that tree at that moment, at that angle, answering that question, if only so I could see clearly this one thing: I'd been ignoring a path lined with miracle debris because I wanted God to notice my ebenezers. Hoped this would be the year I'd check everything off the list. Looked so intently at myself that I forgot whom I was building for and began to loathe what was being built.

---

It's been two months. It's still so easy to look at myself and see only the lack. But I know this: I know on an August night, I felt Him yanking the plank out of the place I'd so firmly lodged it. It could take another 28 years, but I'm certain he is removing this chunk of wood, planting it, watering it, transforming it, miraculously, back into new life.

Into ebenezers.

The Distance Between Yes and No

The last time I did this I told myself I wouldn't do it again.

I have three distinct memories of deliberate disobedience: (My mom could list off about a hundred more, including the time I called her "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and bolted down the driveway. But I mean the kind of disobedience with potential to reroute your entire path.) Crying in the college career office, a counselor assuring me that the gloom lodged in my stomach might be the divine sign I'd been searching for. The "great opportunity" I accepted by saying yes when I meant no. The hand I deliberately held despite recurring and obvious premonitions.

---

After taking a career interest survey my senior year of high school, I sat down with the guidance counselor, who waved her pen above my chart like a magic wand. "Your top two interest areas are the arts and humanitarian services," she said, then added, "I would consider ruling out the arts, since there aren't many jobs available here in those kinds of fields." The pen swooped down to X out that part of the paper, a divining rod for my future.

It wasn't her fault, this intense fear of following my heart. (Her credibility rating as a counselor was low anyway, especially after the rumor that someone made her cry in class by insulting her shoes.) But her words sat atop a stack of excuses ten times as high as the stack of job-finder newspapers collecting in my bedroom. They joined writing isn't practical and you're not good enough and how could your desires possibly count as ministry and teaching is the best way to impact kids and you won't make any money and if society depended upon one profession to stay alive, they wouldn't vote for writers. I can't tag all the words back to their origins, the tangle of magazine articles, books, sermons, discussions I'd overheard. I only know that I believed them.

Now, "following your heart" is a phrase that gets a bad rap (not, thank goodness, "Ice Ice Baby"). It's deceitful and utterly wicked, that heart, and so it gets written off as untrustworthy, as inferior to logic. That flimsy, fluctuating heart, that derail-er of common sense. But I have tried to cut the heart out of decisions--dropped the unpredictable, beating thing to the side while I scratch out lists of pros and cons. I convince myself that God must be testing me, that he couldn't possibly ask me to do something I also want to do. I put my gifts, dreams, desires on one side of the page, X them out. Burn them as a sacrifice. Do whatever you want with these, Lord, except ask me to use them. Make me a better person by making me miserable. Like all those missionaries who don't want to go to China and end up in China. Send me to China if it makes you happy. And he responds with confirmation, from the lips of friends, from the pages of the Word, from the pens of writers: Shar, I did not come to bring you misery. You're adding it to yourself, expecting that I'll send you to China when I'm really just asking you to do what I've called you to do. These things you want to do--I've put them in you. And in refusing to follow your heart in this, you refuse to follow me. 

Perhaps it's why we're given a heart--the one thing we can't ignore. You can snap the Word shut, cover your ears so no wisdom gets in, but you can't ignore your own pulse. Call it your gut, a conscience, call it intuition, but I think they're all tied up together, these parts God uses to amplify his voice when we're committed to silencing it from any other source.

And the last time I disregarded the way my heart was being prompted, I told myself I wouldn't do it again. Those three disobediences are three of my heaviest regrets, my yeses that tasted bitter like nos. Yes to the security of paychecks and a title and wrinkle-free four-year plans; yes to a future that I can control. No to risk, to trust, to the conviction driving me breathless to the floor. In my most crucial decisions, I hate to admit, I trust fear more than I trust God.

---

Which is why I can't keep delaying this decision. I do not have a specific career plan charted out. I don't know where I'm going to live. I don't have any reasonable answers about my future. Everything about it is fog-colored, and for some reason, that is the only option that gives me any peace. I have eight months left in Spain, and this intent form is staring me in the face, daring me to check an option. There's "Lord willing, I plan to return for service at ECA." Then there's "I believe the Lord is opening other doors for me." To Spain or not to Spain. Yes or no.

How do I put words to it? I have no regrets about coming to Spain. I work with generous people in a magical school community, almost too good to be real. I am in love with my students. I have received even more confirmation that I should be working with teenagers until I drop dead. Still, I know this is not my forever place or even my forever vocation. I have prayed that my desires would be in line with God's, that he would reshape my desires to match his if this Spain life were meant to continue.

Instead, he's cracked open the door of this cage where I sit defeated and tired on the floor. He reaches in; I shudder at the feeling of being held. I back away like a broken little bird, terrified that these giant hands will set me down somewhere new and cold, alone. He whispers, "Would you like to come with me?" I know that sound; I have spent years trying to block it out. And I'm sick of leading myself in circles. It's time to follow instead this still small voice that stirs my heart. But how do I tell the kids I adore I won't be back to teach them? How do I tell their parents? How do I close up this unique chapter of my life?

I have contemplated every possible way to word it, from "my commitment was only for two years" to "I'm not made for the classroom," but in the end, the truest truth is simple:

I have spent my entire life choosing what's safest over what's best. It is time to say no so that I can, finally, tell him yes.

At the Beginning

I didn't sleep well on the last night of summer.

Three months is a long time when it comes to routine, and my body in its purest state is designed to wake up at 11am, to do the best thinking just before it passes out fourteen hours later. The working world is not designed for people like me. Certainly the school day isn't.

But I showed up at 8:00 on the first day, took the classic first-day-of-school picture that didn't involve sobbing next to the bus driver like the one in 1989. Handed out syllabi, recommended books, situated the homework hand-in boxes on my file cabinet just so.

It's a very different year.

The house is different. (No more black mold growing in a square above the shower.)

My roommate is different. (My former roommate returned to the States, and my current roommate is in love.)

My kids are different. (My biggest class is now 8, instead of last year's 16.)

My classes are different. (I'm teaching 7th grade Bible, and the rest are the same, but I'm not at school at 9pm, scrambling to make worksheets. There has never been anything so beautiful as folders full of already-created lessons and activities; I have been leaving school by 6 every night. I'm still trying to figure out how this is possible.)

Highlights of the first month:

Overheard on the bus ride to secondary camp, from a 7th grader who had thrown up that morning
Sickling: "I'm so hungry!"
Friend: "Dude, why didn't you eat breakfast?"
Sickling: "I did! It just came back up through my mouth!"

Said by a 7th grader, pensively viewing his White-Out pen
 "Ms. C, can you explain to me the mechanism of this?"

During Bible class, while re-enacting key scenes from the Pentateuch
Boy: (pretends to fall from the sky, then lands with a crash)
Girl: "What is that supposed to be?"
Boy: "It's the people falling from the sky!"
Girl: "No, it's manna and quail that fell from the sky."
Boy: "Oh. I thought that was a couple. Like, Manna and Quail."

While I sat in front of my computer with a thousand tabs open, as per usual
Girl: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Oh, just checkin' my email and some other random stuff."
Girl: "I wonder what that random other stuff could be. Muahaha!"

Conversation with a 5-year old boy/aspiring intellectual
Boy: "In Europe, I only like Spain, France, and England."
Sarah: "What about Italy?"
Boy: "I HATE POMPEII!"
Us: "What? Why?"
Boy: "Because it was full of Romans!"


And other sundry things heard in class
Boy: "Do you have some White-Out? My White-Out's not working." Pause. "Do you have the answer key? My answer key's not working."

Boy: "Hey, don't interrupt; she was calling on me. Come on, you're British, you're supposed to be polite!"

Me: "Stalling will not help you."
Boy: "Stalin? Of course he won't. He's dead!"

Girl: "There are no rules in reading except 'have fun.' That's why I love reading."

Something Old, Something New

Perhaps I should take the hint. (When was that last thing I wrote? A month ago?) But I am writing every night, writing in bad, scratchy handwriting, spilling out the things that won't let me sleep, and those piles of papers get deposited in stacks on the floor, on my desk. Years later, I am finding old, scribbled-on receipts in drawers, wondering what I meant by "matt black and fiction."

I've always been terrible at keeping a journal, and this blog has become my substitute, my way of storing memories while retelling them for others, but I'm always being bombarded with these other things I can't stop thinking about, things I just need to sort out on paper somewhere, and I'm not sure a European update blog is quite the place for that.

So I'm starting a new place.

Shar Meets World will keep on keepin' on right here. In a year, I'll probably scold myself for creating this need to maintain divergent blogs, but I like organization, and double-blogging seems like the best way to manage my brain right now. If you're interested at all, you can visit the second home for all my words over here, all the poetry and stream-of-conscious thought that usually gets pressed into essay about everything and nothing. And if you're not interested, I still like you.

And one of these days, I'll bring my computer home and tell you all about what it's like to wear blue for three weeks in a row.

Alive!

School's going, I'm here, things are great, less work, more work, new kids, old kids, classroom full of owl decor, stomach full of pan con tomate dipped in hummus, and I'll write again one of these old days.