A Way Out

How our move to Indianapolis gave us a new lease on our lives together and our careers

Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash

Note: The story of my faith journey, church trauma, and spiritual abuse is inextricably linked to the stories of my parents and sisters, but this is my story. Their experiences, memories, and hurt are separate from my own and I do not speak for them. Details are also their own and not mine to share, and so I keep the details where they matter only to my own experiences.

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Within the first months of my third year teaching in Illinois, I grappled with the reality that the job wasn’t getting any better. I had good relationships with several of my students and my friendships with Kevin and my co-director Anna helped keep me somewhat grounded, but it was too much. The work was too much, the half-truths regarding the school’s future were too much, and my marriage was paying the price of twelve-hour days spent at school teaching, grading, planning, and then directing play rehearsals after sports practices were finished.

But getting a job at another Lutheran school meant moving. It meant selling our first house. And it meant Jeff would have to search for a new job as well.

“Jeff, I think it’s time for me to put my name back out on a call list. See if there are any more Lutheran school teaching jobs out there. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

The truth was, neither of us knew how much longer we could do this. We were tired of time spent apart. We were tired of my long hours. And we were tired of Jeff’s two-hour daily commute up to Michigan and back. But a move would mean a lot of significant changes, and we had bought our first house only a year before.

Jeff took me into his arms. “Sarah, I’m fine with moving if you find a different job. Just make sure that this time, they have a football team.”

I laughed. My very tiny school had an athletic program, but our fall sports consisted of soccer and volleyball. My football-loving husband who spent all four years in high school playing in the marching band, missed Friday night lights.

“Ok, I’ll see what I can do.”

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It Sucked the Life Out of Me

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I filled out the necessary paperwork to get my name on a call list in several states, including my dream state of Colorado and back home in Michigan.

As I waited, life at school did not improve. I started thinking about other jobs I could do with a teaching degree that wouldn’t involve moving and completely upending our lives. I looked at job openings in downtown Chicago and dreamed of working in the education department at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. I look at the museums to see what jobs they might have available. And then I started looking into the requirements to get my Indiana teaching license and apply for teaching positions in the public school system.

For the past two years my principal, who had come to Illinois from Texas, had been telling me my Nebraska license was sufficient for me to teach at the school.¹ Had I gotten my Illinois license as soon as I started teaching in Illinois, I could have easily applied for my Indiana teaching license. Instead, I discovered a complicated process with no guidance for how to complete it. Once again, I felt stuck in my situation, unsure how I was going to get out of it.

And I felt guilty. I had been raised in a world of church workers. I had gone to a Lutheran university with the goal of dedicating my life to church work. Now I wanted out because I found myself in a situation that was too much to bear.

During a rare telephone conversation with my mom, I finally asked, “Will you be disappointed in me if I decided to start teaching in public schools here?”

“No,” she reassured me. Yet I still felt like I was somehow letting people down.