A Picture Tells a Thousand Words

Last week during Orientation the Communications Director took a candid picture of me. It turned out to be a really good picture, so I forwarded a copy to Mom. She posted it on her Facebook page about half a day before I made it my profile picture. A flood of comments posted on Facebook and in emails soon followed. Many folks commented that they have not seen me look so happy and relaxed in a long time. One friend even said that she couldn’t conjure up a picture of me in such a good place, and Mom noted that I have not appeared this happy in at least five years.

Ding! Ding! Ding! That friend is one I met through my work at the Episcopal Church Center and has seen me primarily in the context of that work and during my long period of unemployment. The five year period? That’s about the time the first of the reorganizations went into effect at the Church Center, followed by three more reorganizations, the elimination of my position, and 16 months of unemployment. The amount of change that occurred during those five years left many of us who worked there with whiplash.

Change. Not long after I started working at the Church Center I visited a palm reader at one of the Renaissance Faires Rachel and I went to regularly. I held out my hands, and she gently pulled my thumbs away from the rest of my fingers. “You don’t handle change very well,” she said. Over the years I would stop and see her now and again. Each time she performed the same exercise, and over the years my hands became more and more relaxed. “You’re learning to handle change,” she’d say. Of course, handling all the change going on didn’t mean the stress of change disappeared. It took an emotional toll.

Then came the biggest change I’ve had to handle in a long time. I moved to Virginia to take a new job. In the space of three weeks I went from being asked to interview to accepting the position. From acceptance to starting I had 40 days to pack up my belongings and move. A lot of change in a very short amount of time.

When I went off to the University of Wisconsin-Madison I imagined that I would eventually end up at an academic institution, although as faculty. During the last bout of unemployment my outplacement counselor and I talked about possible options in the travel and hospitality field, though not at an academic institution. For many years my path looked as if I might end up at a seminary, but as a student. Now I am the Hospitality and Guest Residence Manager at Virginia Theological Seminary.

Which is amusing given all of the above but particularly in light of my decision last year to finally say to myself and to everyone else that I was DONE with the ordination process. The fact that I held off submitting completed paperwork for over a year was probably my biggest clue. It has felt very liberating to no longer be on that path. Yet I end up at a seminary. God does have a sense of humor.

So the picture tells the story of moving on, change, and new beginnings. It tells the story in ways words cannot. I'm rather enjoying this new chapter in my story. Can you tell?