The call has gone out at last and I can talk about it now. You would not believe the secrets I keep. You'll probably hear about them eventually. Patience, I'm trying to navigate this 'living for today' method. I waited so long, I have patience for one hundred souls, I swear to God. And sometimes I have none at all.
I apologize, it's random and jumbled, sometimes the difficulty of the change will be reflected in my efforts to get it onto the page. So I can read it and find a place for it in my brain.
The blame has been shifted, the self-induced guilt assuaged. The latest natural disaster averted. I couldn't even talk about it to myself, here, too many very familiar readers. Family and friends, getting their daily Bridget barometer. Now you know why I write pornographically sometimes. Sexual explicitness. Because I like it. Because I like to freak them all out. If they're going to read my deepest and darkest then they will pay the price, and the price is my whole picture, with nothing left out. You want it? You need to take it all, my friend. For I am an all-or-nothing girl.
Back to the topic at hand.
You know when something big comes along and even though you've heard and felt the rumblings for over a year, you sort of freak out when the earthquake hits? You knew it was coming! Don't be so naive! Or, oh shit, did I cause this?
Jacob has chosen to leave his church.
The call for a new minister, a lengthy selection process, has begun. A long and difficult decision has come to a optimistic end.
I took a deep breath, it's been a while. I had no idea I could hold it that long.
This church that he helped to build with his bare hands, from practically nothing. This thriving, living institution that he is so proud of. One that loves him deeply. I have never seen so many tears as I saw this morning as he made his announcement, after calling us up to stand beside him, as a family. Most of them were not surprised, as he had planned to leave at the beginning of the summer and then chose to forgo that journey all together when I landed in his heart with a resounding thud (which makes it as much my fault, because he was going crazy being near me and he wanted to get away). His congregation had very temporary relief in his decisions before he was off and running again.
This has been months in the process, brought into the spotlight once again by the summer's redemption, the choice my heart made for me while my head was stuck somewhere else. Everyone I know is presently caught in the turmoil of a life crisis of sorts. Cole's death at the age of only 38 knocked so many of my friends off their tightropes. I wasn't the solitary mourner because he had kissed my skin. My life changed in ways I haven't talked about. Loch was rocked to the core. Robin deeply affected. Ben, well, never mind-he's in reverse at present. Everyone else is quietly considering or forcing change. The circus is in full swing over here in my corner of the world.
Jacob hit a wall and realized how thin he had spread himself, his one renewable resource, his soul, being no match for his nonrenewable resource of time, time to spend.
When things smoothed out in his personal life the unacknowledged difficulties he has fought with for the past five years being a parish minister came back into focus and were so much more obstacular (yes, I'm making up a new word just for this) than before. What was he fighting so hard for? The status quo? You can't lead people to God when you're buried in paperwork and every last decision has to be studied and delayed and ripped apart by committees. He was frustrated, and grew apathetic.
An apathetic minister is a deeply unhappy one. This is one career field that you can't afford to become disillusioned by. He could no longer hold on to his sacred responsibilities. He was so ashamed. And his personal life was a mess, truth be told.
He had asked for a sabbatical and was denied. He needed that time and they couldn't give it to him. With each emergency he has struggled to fill his own shoes and has needed up to eight people at a time to cover for him. He's used up all of his study time and vacation for the year. They have broken even, Jacob and his church and he's going to leave it in the hands of the congregation to continue to raise up. He's shifting gears in a way that will fulfill what he's been looking for. Fine-tuning his ideals. Giving him time to rest. Quieting his needs and his heart while letting his talents shine, letting him continue to do what he loves most.
Which, stripped down to the basics, is teaching.
He's accepted an offer to teach religious studies full-time at one of the universities here. It's a tenure-track position with benefits. It's a Monday to Friday gig. It's half the workload he has shouldered thus far. As a bonus he's going to still function as an occasional guest at the pulpit at church and (and!) he's going to serve as a volunteer fire/EMS chaplain with the district here, which makes him very happy indeed.
Here's the part where I point out that I missed the 'chaplain' part of our discussions surrounding the fire department. And did I mention I've been wearing my hearing aids for three days now? Because he refuses to let us argue on points that I didn't hear or misheard drastically. Like that one. Which was huge. He wins.
He can still pace and preach his message in a new setting. He can lecture and inform and reach people. New people each semester. Young people open to learning. He can develop and plan his curriculum and not have to work so damned hard. He'll have time to write again. He won't have to emerge from being counsel to people as troubled as they were when they came in. He doesn't have to pin himself down to one religion. He fits in, he looks like a rumpled, unshaven, adorable college boy (no one tell him I said that.).
Jacob likes being tied down but he doesn't like being boxed in. It's taken him a lot of years to find a place where he feels comfortable, not in the way that he can do a good job, because he's proven himself with his church, but in a way that makes him happiest.
He's had two churches now in a relatively short time period for a minister and he can't stress enough, it isn't the churches, it's him. He's the problem. He's a bit of a wanderer, one who simply loves to lecture. I've been teasing him that for all his explorations and orations he should have been a travel guide. He laughed, nodding, and then corrected himself and said itineraries when traveling weren't any fun at all, so he could never do it.
He loves teaching. Loves it like Bridget loves cake. He's been teaching at the university since he got here, and he taught back home. Enough to keep his foot in the door. The university had an opening and he applied and was accepted and he's going to take it. He qualified easily.
And he's been talking about not preaching forever since he started, so that assures me that this isn't my fault or anything as devastating as that. What gave him the courage to jump out was the fact that Cole died with his life in a shambles, unhappily married, working himself to the bone, and stuck in one place. Stretched laterally in a torturous balance with no end in sight. Jacob believes that life is too short to be unhappy, to want something else. It's too precious to maintain a path you're not fond of. It's too beautiful to waste, he has said to me time and time again when he wanted to me to leave Cole so he could have me for himself. This same zeal for living at one hundred and fifty percent is what gave Jacob permission to be less than proper when it came to capturing the heart of his best friends' wife. He wasn't going to stand by and hope, out of some socially structured etiquette, he was going to give me, us, himself every chance he could. Jacob gives himself permission to seek out his own happiness at any and all cost and it's one of the things about him that I love the most.
He appears to know what he's doing. My free bird, always alighting long enough to sing his song and then he moves to the next branch. I've watched him do it for years, and I finally get to go along with him.
The best part? The best, funniest part is that the pay is actually deplorable, the benefits practically non-existent, the parking questionable, the office space cramped and musty and yet he is so happy he's like a little boy on Christmas day. There's a visible lifting of weight. He holds no doubt in his heart about any direction his life has taken in the past six months.
And who could blame him? He's finding his way just like the rest of us. He's young and full of enthusiasm and idealization and promise and he refuses to let it be quashed. Jacob will never settle. For anything. Ever again.
Last night he held me in his arms and he told me he has everything. Everything a man could ever want in his life. A job he likes, a wife and children he loves down to the bottom of his soul, warmth, bread and wine. Shelter, faith and contentment. Happiness. Everything is new and good. Every wish he has ever wished for in his whole life has been granted. The rest of our lives to live out our dreams, with hope and love carrying us forward, willingly. Swiftly. Contentedly.
And since I know everyone is wondering on the edge of their seats, he keeps his preacher boy nickname, because he'll still be guesting at church. And because the professor doesn't work as well. As Chris pointed out, this isn't Gilligan's Island. It's no idyllic tropical paradise set with a cast of characters who perform with a canned laugh track. It's real life and some days you can only wish you had a script. Or a 'cut!' yelled at the end of a scene.
Time to catch your breath at the very least.
