History and Hope

In 1989 I was born in Lexington, Kentucky. I was the fifth child to my parents. They had moved from Indiana to Kentucky four years prior with three children so that my father could accept accept a pastoral and teaching position. We lived atop a hill on the remote Kentucky Mountain Bible College's campus. 

After adding my sister and I to the family, we moved to Potsdam, Ohio in 1992 to another pastoral position. We lived across from the church in that small village for eleven years. What I did best: played, dreamed, copied my brothers and sisters, read, drew, felt insecure about my position in the world. 

Then, in 2003, we moved away from everything I knew to Montcalm County, Michigan. No friends, no point of reference. I was scared, mad and lonely. But I made friends. I did life. My commitments were ambiguous at best. The future was a mystery that I didn't feel like I had any control over. 

In 2007 I enrolled at Bethel College (Mishawaka, Indiana) to study Sign Language Interpreting. People said I was good at signing; they said it would be a good ministry to those disadvantaged deaf people. My parents went to Bethel; from the stories, it was a familiar place. I made friends. I had a good time. I took out 20,000 in loans to drift through the experience. It was fun. I gained a lot of social, academic and 'spiritual' experience, But in the fall of 2009, I decided that's not how I wanted to live--in debt. Drifting.

I left Bethel after the spring semester of 2010 and volunteered for the summer at St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker in South Bend. The experience was challenging, riveting. That community, with it's ideas of love and hospitality, justice and mercy--that's how I wanted to live. But it was exhausting work, and I was happy to go home at the end of the summer.

Home, work, life was dry. It's not what I expected or wanted. I tried to "run away" (not literally, but in in sense to responsibility) But I came back once, twice, out of necessity, more tangled in my web of financial and relational recklessness. My present was holding me accountable for my irresponsible ambiguity of my youth. Bondage is devastating, especially when it's well deserved. 

So now, at present, I am learning to be more responsible--to work for what I want, to maintain appropriate relational boundaries. To be realistic, to plan, to practice hope in the face of ingrained and societal negativity. There's more that I'm learning that I can't put a name to yet.

And all this history has brought me to this point:

I am attending Kendall College of Art & Design this fall to study Art Education. 

I don't have steady employment, although I'm looking.

I'm commuting-an hour drive one way, because I can't afford to live in Grand Rapids at the present. 

My goal is this: to do well at school, not take out more loans, work perhaps full time third shift; all this to become an art teacher. I want to be an art teacher--not just in a school or college, but I want to work in prisons and shelters. Moreso, I want to establish a neighborhood art club for various ages so that I have a medium to inspire children, teens, and adults who are marginalized, down on their luck and hope. I want to love them, to show them that they have potential, show them that "In repentance and rest is their salvation; in quietness and trust is their strength." There is hope.