Beginning Thoughts

I never thought that I would become one of those people to blog about my life.

There are many friends of mine who have done something like this, a service year or some year of Different Life, and they’ve started blogs, but I never read them. I tried to, and sometimes I’ll browse them as the link pops up on Facebook, but reading a blog about someone else’s life can be really unsatisfying when you’re not doing anything special with your own. Thus, I really didn’t think anyone would care about my year with LVC, so I didn’t want to start a literal blog. But on the plane from Chicago to Oakland I remembered that my mom definitely cared. So here I am, blogging it up.

Anyway, I joined LVC! LVC stands for the Lutheran Volunteer Corps and they’re rad all the time. You can click here to learn more about their mission and values and such. But I'm not here to convert you or convince you that LVC is the best and you should be Lutheran (not yet, anyway) so you can read about them on your own time. This is a blog for me and my processing of life.

It’s been a quick turn around.

Friday, August 4th, I was still at camp. I spent an absurd amount of time cleaning cabins, scrubbing down walls and bed frames, trying to savor every moment I still had with the people I called my family. Karl had spent the afternoon singing Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and then at pool time, when they set up the sound system for a second pool party of the week, I could hear it blasting through the air from where I cleaned in Cabin 10. I judged other people’s cleaning habits, trying to remember that it was the last day and it didn’t matter how people cleaned, as long as it was actually clean.

I said goodbye. I was doing really well with the Not Crying until I sat between Deanna and Karl during the singing of One Body and held their hands. Like, that was my own fault. Made myself cry. It sucked. And when I say that I’m really not into the song One Body, I mean it. I’ve sung it so many times that when I see someone grabbing the song cards I’m immediately annoyed. So it was the fact that I was surrounded by friends that made me cry, I think, and the actual knowledge that I’d be leaving these people that meant way too much to me.

I cried again when everyone held hands and said the Lord’s Prayer. It was storming outside, reminiscent of my mood. Camp can be like that sometimes.

Deanna drove with me back to my mom’s house so I could drop off the car, and Ben picked us up there before driving us to my dad’s, and then I had a restless night of sleep with my friends by my side before they drove me to the airport.

Saturday, August 5th, I was in Chicago. It was the farthest west I had ever been and the farthest from home I had ever been and the most alone I had ever been, all at once. It’s super hard to go from a place where you know everyone and love everyone so much to a place where nearly everyone is a stranger.

You have to start over. You have to decide what kind of person you want to be.

I’ve always been a bit of an in-betweener. Just as it feels I’m comfortable with my surroundings and my peers, life gets uprooted again. You find home in the people around you and then suddenly those people are gone and you’re left looking at the holes in the walls wondering why it’s so cold at night. You adapt, find a new place to set your home, and then something happens again. It goes on like this for months, years, as people cycle in and out of your life on their own journeys. And now it’s here, happening again.

Quite literally, I’ve left my home for an entirely new place. I’ve never left the east coast and suddenly I’m living in Oakland, California with a daily commute into San Francisco for work. If you had told 10 year old Jenn, even 20 year old Jenn, that this would be her life, she never would have believed you.

It’s currently Saturday, August 12th, and my one roommate Danielle started us off by saying, “Aw, it’s our anniversary!” seeing as all seven of us met one week ago today. In that time we have flown from Chicago to Oakland, opened up a joint bank account, traveled through both Oakland and San Francisco, toured all of our placement locations, debated on which rooms we would be living in, eaten lots of pasta, gotten library cards, and slept.

We’ve slept so much. Adjusting to timezones can be a bit of a challenge.

Even in just a week I’ve learned a lot about myself. (Most of it is that I like to wrap my emotions into boxes and place them into smaller boxes and just sort of pretend that there is nothing in the boxes at all. Taking time to process a move across the country is also a bit of a challenge.)

Still, we carry on. We buy small plants to line our bright open windows with and we take turns using the laundry machine and we help paint the ugliest, greenest room to get rid of the bad juju that lingers from years before. We start fresh. We start over, all together.

I’ve decided to start this blog not as a way to gossip or vent or any of those things, but so I can actually become someone who is intentional in my reflection process. Sometimes I journal, but sorting out my thoughts via blogging might be a bit more my style. And then this way I’m keeping all who are interested in my journey in the loop.

I’d like to end with the words that are written on the back of the LVC shirt that we were all given at orientation.

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”