Janathan Grace Reflections   This is my journey of self discovery shared with you

Kimberly left last Wednesday to visit various family members in Chicago and St. Paul.  She won’t be back till the day after thanksgiving, which leaves me all by my lonesome.  The aggravating thing is that I rarely get two days off in a row, but last week I got Thursday and Friday off and this week I get Monday and Tuesday off–all during the week Berly is gone!  I have gotten back to cycling regularly (for about 3 months now), and it feels good physically.  Mind you, this is in the mountains, so I’m getting very good exercise!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Kimberly and I continue to learn more about ourselves and each other.  It continues to be hard but good.  Things are always changing and growing in us and between us.  I really should journal to remind myself of the truths I keep discovering.  We took a trip to Shenandoah to celebrate our 2 year anniversary and two weeks later Berly’s brother and sister-in-law came to visit and we took them hiking up Crabtree Falls trail (the most beautiful set of falls and cascades I think I have seen).

Berly and I took a few days vacation at Va Beach last weekend.  “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  Somehow all our issues seem to come out when we go on vacation together.  We can spend lots of time doing daily life with only minimal problems cropping up.  I haven’t thought it through, but maybe it is because vacation brings unique dynamics and situations that we don’t ordinarly have to face and so haven’t worked through yet.  Vacations always force us to face new issues and work through them, so it helps us grow, usually in significant ways, but it doesn’t do much for providing rest, refreshment, and relaxation… but then, whose vacation does that?

Okay, so it has been forever… well four months… since my last blog.  First, I had to get accustomed to working a full time job again, one that is very different from anything I have done before and lots of things to learn with a fluctuating schedule.  Second, I had to move into the L’Arche home (at the end of July), though I left most of my furniture, etc. at the apartment for a friend to use.  Third, I had to take everything from a two bedroom apartment and reduce it to one room (at the end of September).  Some of my books and furniture are at Berly’s place, some stuff I gave away, and some are packed into every spare hole in my bedroom at L’Arche.  At least it’s bigger than my efficiency in Arlington (but there I had storage at the church).

I keep up with all you bridgeway folks through your blogs (I check it daily), though it says more about your personal lives than about B242.  There is so much I am learning and being stretched with at L’Arche.  It can be very stressful but also relaxing depending on what is going on and if anyone is having a bad day–we are very relationally based and a small community, so anyone’s issues becomes everyone’s issues.  I used to think that if you worked hard enough at being a community, you would reach a level of being fairly comfortable and supportive with each other…  Now I am learning that true community is always full of screwed up people and relationships, and the hope is that the positive will outweigh the negative, but that even the negative, when faced in a healthy way, is really valuable for our growth personally and as a community. 

Love to all of you at Bridgeway, Kent

I’m seeing rather bleary-eyed.  Because of an upset stomach I got to sleep around 3 a.m. and I woke comfortably to the songs of birds in the dim light of early morning before 6 a.m.  I was feeling good, excited about starting work.  But the job doesn’t start till 10 a.m. today, and I wanted to get more sleep.  Unfortunately, sleep did not want to have me.  At least I was not feeling physically miserable and I was in a good mood, which made my 3 hours of sleep somehow bearable.  I spent the next hour reliving parts of my childhood, (something I very rarely do)… running from bullys (and sometimes confronting them), playing with friends, getting into mischief.  All my memories seem to be faded, washed out by years of neglect.  When I took Kimberly to some of my childhood haunts a year ago we discovered my old little league field completely overgrown (when I say completely, I don’t mean grass, I mean trees!).  There were sections of the old fence left, but that was about it.  My old elementary school has been turned into some sort of government building.  My Junior High was plowed under and being constructed into something else.  It was a rather sad effort at sharing a past that no longer existed.  The confluence of foggy memories and disappearing structures reminds me of M. J. Fox’s fading photo in Back to the Future.

The significant news for this week is that I will be joining Kimberly as an assistant member at L’Arche, a community (or group home) where those born with developmental disabilities (core members) live together with us assistants, who are considered “normal” by society (as though there are some humans who are not broken and dysfunctional in some way).  Kimberly is on the administrative/counseling side of things and lives outside the home.  I will live outside the home for now, but plan to become a live-in assistant in August.  I still have a long way to go on my dissertation, but I can no longer manage without an income.  I have a high regard for L’Arche’s commitment to life in community based on an understanding of our mutual brokenness.

In other news, Kimberly’s father came to visit last week and stayed for a day and a half.  We had a great hike to Crabtree Falls, the most beautiful falls in the area (and I believe the highest waterfall east of the Mississippi).  It is actually a series of falls and cascades that stretch for perhaps a mile up the side of the mountain. 

On returning, we had a picnic and then watched “March of the Penguins” together (what very interesting and endearing creatures they are!).  “March” reminded Kimberly and me of another Antarctic movie “Eight Below” that we saw a week earlier (based on the true story of a dogsled team).

Kimberly’s father, Tom Hayek, brought along an adorable German Shepherd puppy, yet to be named, that he was transporting from one sister to another, and since Kimberly is unable to keep dogs at her apartment, I kept her at my place (the dog that is!).  She slept most of the two nights she was here, but both mornings began a constant whine at 5 a.m.  It gave me second thoughts about the idea of owning a dog!

Well, I’m back from Europe.  It was a good trip.  My messages on grace were very well received by both the missionaries and the bible school students.  The first week in Croatia I spent in a hotel overlooking the Adriatic sea (the hotel patio ended at the stone beach and I had a balcony).  It was really gorgeous.  The second week in Albania I spent at my second cousin’s home with his cute family. 

Croatia was beautiful and quite developed.  I took one afternoon to see the old walled city of Dubrovnik.  For somebody raised on knights-in-shining-armor fairytales, it was really delightful.  You could walk the mile and a half circumference on top of the city wall and take little detours up into the towers.  At points the walls were 200 feet high (how’s that for early skyscrapers!)

Albania was another matter all together.  I have never been on such bad roads, even in Calcutta, India!  I rode a bicycle the two miles to the school each day to teach because it was faster than taking a car.  The school has about 20 students and I had to speak by translation.

In the two weeks I was gone, spring swept in.  I left with gray, empty branches lacing the sky and I returned to a world covered in green.  Spring is so beautiful here!  It was good to see you bridgeway folks also on the way back.

I’m headed for Croatia and Albania this Thursday.  the first week I speak to a dozen missionaries on a retreat and the second week I teach a class on grace to Albanian bible students.  I’ll be flying out of Dulles, and hope to stay on a few days in D.C. to visit folks after returning April 22.  I’ve been unusually apprehensive about this trip.  Why does it feel you become more vulnerable when you grow? 

I was very emotionally stable most of my life, but not emotionally healthy.  I was just very good at overriding my own feelings and getting on with life.  It felt better, but it had serious negative repercussions in my relationships with people and God.  Now that I am learning to listen to emotions and make room for them, I have to deal with all kinds of bad feelings I didn’t have before.  I’m less emotionally ‘stable’ but more emotionally healthy.  It feels much worse than ignoring my feelings… it seems that is the way growth works–stepping into the things that are uncomfortable. 

Berly and I watched regarding henry last night.  I was very moved by the frailty and vulnerability of henry (harrison ford).  I could identify with him so much better because before his accident he was ‘normal.’  I am realizing more and more these days how fearful I have always been of not being accepted by others.  I covered it up so well that I was not even aware of it myself.  I would tell myself that his opinion didn’t matter because he was ignorant, that she dismissed my views because her values were screwed up, that I didn’t want to be their friends anyway because they were not worthy of me. 

I was so good and so quick at reacting to rejection… or perceived rejection… or even lukewarm acceptance that I didn’t realize how scared I was, afraid to face my real feelings.  The rejection of others made me feel worthless, and if I admitted those feelings, it seemed I was agreeing with them… that I really wasn’t of value.  So I convinced myself that I really didn’t care what others thought.  Instead of being okay with who I was, I tried zealously to be someone better, to increase my self-worth by working hard to be smarter, more successful, more popular (at least with my chosen crowd).  But deep down I knew that I really did care, deeply, about what others thought of me… even the approval of little kids and the socially marginal and mentally handicapped… those folks whose opinions shouldn’t really matter (as I thought).

It is amazing how frail I am, how scared of not measuring up, of not being welcomed or heard or appreciated.  Just imagining people thinking badly of me makes me clutch inside like I was being pushed out the 10th story window.  But here is the truth: my sense of frailty as I accept my own fears and inadequacies is actually a new courage.  I was far more fragile and cowardly when I felt ‘strong’ and ‘successful’ and ‘didn’t care’ what people thought.  Now I don’t need to take desperate measures to protect myself from others’ opinions of me.  It is scary, but liberating.  I am slowly learning who I really am… and to respect and appreciate who I am, with all my faults and failings.

We are all wounded, and out of self-protection we snap at those who touch our wounds… or we jump away.  It is such a long, slow, scary process of healing, and we need each other to fully heal.  So let us all encourage one another on to more courage and honesty and gracious thoughts about ourselves and others.

Thanks for your input about driving points.  I followed Jen’s lead and took an online course (that lasted 3 hours instead of 8–self-paced) and will be good for 5 safe driving points.  I have to go to a local center to take the ‘final,’ but you can take the final as often as needed to pass (and I think passing is just 80%).  Everyone gets 1 safe driving point for each year without a citation (and you can have a max of 5 safe driving points).  Your citation stays on your record only 2 years (I think it used to be 3), so if I’ve figured it correctly, I should actually be one point in the positive by this summer (passing the two year mark for my first of two 4-point citations for speeding)… unless they wait till the year end to update. 

Those who have ridden with me will find it hard to believe that I am a much more laid-back driver now… my laid-back lifestyle inclines me that direction.  Lynchburg is good for the soul… just not for the pocketbook!  Since my finances are now sinking into the red, I’m going to have to get a job soon (but not before returning from Europe).