Life is just a series of changes. Isn't it? You find yourself getting comfortable or settled with one thing, one way and then it suddenly changes and that thing is gone.
I was home for four months this summer and I was so surprised by how much of my hometown was different. I found myself constantly being surprised by the businesses or restaurants that were no longer open. It seemed that at least once a week I received news that something I had known or patronized for many years had suddenly shut its doors. And it was sad. It was sad to see so many things and places that I knew go by the wayside. It was disconcerting.
I am by nature an adaptive person. And while I am able to go with the flow, I find myself floundering when so much changes so quickly and so permanently. This summer I gained a niece and a brother-in-law. Don't misunderstand, these are additions that I welcome and am excited about, but they still present something of a shift in what I know and what I am rooted in. These changes were easy to accept. There have been other changes in my personal life that have been developing over the last couple of years that have been challenging. I know that there is purpose in what has been happening, but I don't know what it is. Additionally, what hasn't necessarily been easy have been the changes in my professional life as I said goodbye to a wonderful colleague and dear friend as she remained in the US rather than returning to Rome.
I knew that this change would be significant and would bring an adjustment period, but I don't think I was fully prepared for all of the ways my life would change or be affected. There are so many subtle differences this year that I find myself pulling back because the life that I knew isn't there any more....it has a foreign feel to it and leaves me feeling a shadow of what I felt like when I first arrived in Rome. And I confess that I don't quite know how to deal with it. I confess that my selfishness and stubbornness have been present in my own head and heart. I don't want to feel like this, I don't want to resist the new way things are....but I am at a loss as to how to forge ahead and how to embrace the new life that is here for me. It's a challenge for me to feel like an outsider in a place that I've considered home for the last 2 years.
In addition to all of that, there was a personnel change within the community that I live in that took me aback when I arrived back in Rome in the middle of August. A woman who I considered a friend and something of an ally would no longer be working with me directly. That was a hard blow to absorb. I looked forward to returning and seeing her smiling face everyday, conversing with her, and enjoying a sense of community with her. I know that I am now presented with an opportunity to get to know someone else, but it just seems to be a bit much when lumped with everything else.
I suppose that I felt the full weight of the difference in my life here when I had a rather unpleasant encounter with a woman who works in the same physical space that I do. I don't consider this woman a friend or even a close acquaintance of mine. Rather, she is someone who works here and someone that I have to have contact with. While I've known her for two years, she's never been a particularly nice person to myself, my students, and our guests. She's prickly. Things hit a new low this past weekend when I delivered some chocolate chip cookies to the nuns as a thank you for their help when students arrived. Rather than just accepting them and letting me leave this woman felt like it was her right, her duty to comment on my weight. There I stood in utter shock as she proceeded to tell me bluntly that I weigh too much and that I need to lose weight so that I can be pretty. She literally pointed to places on my body where she thought I needed to lose weight. The humiliation and shame that I felt washed over me so violently that I was left unable to process a clear and conscious thought in defense of myself. So, instead of saying anything to the effect that it's none of her business...I just said goodbye and returned to our side of the property as hot tears fell from my eyes. All I wanted was to retreat to my room for a good cry and then to go to my dear friend for support and comfort, but she wasn't here to offer that. And that's when the feeling of utter aloneness struck and knocked the wind out of me. I am no longer known here. I am no longer part of a dynamic duo. And I don't quite know how to reconcile that.
I don't know what God is doing in my life right now. I don't know why He's allowed SO much change all at once. I am trying to trust that what's happening is for my own good, but I fear and confess that it's easier to throw a pity party for myself in my head and heart. I can't live like this for the next three months. I need and want to get to a place of acceptance and life rather than a place of resistance and existing. I suppose this is where dying to self comes in. I suppose this is where I submit my will, my desires, and the way I think my life SHOULD be to Jesus to do with what He will with a life that's not really my own to begin with.
