Walking through my faith deconstruction/reconstruction journey has required a lot of vulnerability. That is why there is a paywall below. If you want to support my writing but do not want to commit to being a paid subscriber, please consider a one-time donation. I will give you one month of access to all paid content.
Note: The following piece contains adult language because that is the only way to tell an honest story about this phase of my life.
The previous chapter
And now
I had been driving around the shopping area by our new house for what felt like forever, but it had probably only been 15 minutes. My one-year-old sat in the backseat of my car, oblivious to her mother’s rising panic attack. I finally called my husband Jeff, who calmly talked me through what I was trying to do, when something else set me off.
“Fuuuuuuuck,” I yelled, the tears streaming down my face as I prayed the little ears sitting the backseat had not heard or understood what I had just said.
I was not ok. I did not want to be there. And it felt like nothing would ever be right again.
I celebrated my 30th birthday about six weeks after our daughter’s birth. Jeff invited our closest friends and my sister and brother-in-law over to mark my entrance in a new decade of life. I had a lot of apprehensions about turning 30. It felt so grown up and now I was a mother on top of everything else. While our 20s had never been a time of sowing wild oats, I was now realizing that any chance of that ever happening was well past me.
But I was happy to be with our friends. In that moment, my life was just as I had always wanted it to be. I loved my job. I had a strong community of friends who were also attached to a church community where I felt at home. My daughter would be loved and supported by these people as well. Despite my fears about turning 30, my life was just as I wanted it to be.
The next day, Jeff dropped the bomb that would send me into that parking lot, cursing in tears.
“They are moving the plant to Fort Wayne and they want me to move with them.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, trying to suppress the rising panic.
“Sarah, we have until January to decide if I’m looking for a new job or if we are moving to Fort Wayne.”
When we moved to Indianapolis, I hoped I had finally found home. I hoped that for the first time in my life, I would be able to raise my kids and grow old in one place. I loved my job, I loved my friends, I loved our city, and I loved our life. I wouldn’t accept that it could all disappear.
Jeff could have looked for another job, but this was 2009. The United States was in the middle of a recession and the job market wasn’t looking great. As a teacher, I would have a much easier time finding a new position.1
“We have until January to decide?” I asked, holding onto hope that if we put it off, we would never have to actually make a decision.
“Yes, but I don’t know how easy it will be for me to find another job like this one.”
“We have until January to decide.” I was leaving it at that.
Jeff tried to add levity to the situation. “So, what will your last musical be?”
Instead of making me laugh, the question would haunt me for most of the first semester once I returned to school.
I became 16 again, moody and petulant and determined to bury my head in the sand concerning the decision staring us in the face. By September, I was ignoring the signs that the job I loved had lost its shine as I struggled through teaching theology and the drama behind the scenes of the theater program.
When I married Jeff, I convinced myself I had escaped the cycle of moving every few years. Sure, I had disrupted that by taking a new job that required a move after just three years of teaching, but over the past four years, he had come into his own and there was no reason to believe we would have to move. Of course, I was also ignoring the truth that church workers aren’t the only ones who make their families move. Jeff’s father had spent his whole career as an electrical engineer working for Bosch and moved the family several times across three states before they finally settled in Michigan when Jeff was in elementary school. I should have known better to believe our lives could be static, but I didn’t want to move, end of story. I chose to believe it was something I could control, even if that control was slipping out of my fingers.
