Hi. My name is Michael. You may vaguely remember occasionally getting periodic novel-length emails about my life and adventures over the past ten or so years. You may even have wondered about the almost exactly two years of radio silence in which I have not sent out a single update, and have had a very spotty record with returning phone calls and emails. (I mean, of course, a record even worse than usual).
I am sorry.
Perhaps you have surmised that I died, or retreated to a cave and took a vow of silence, or cut myself off from the world in an effort to purify my soul. This last guess is actually not far from the truth, for on August 10, 2017, Jenn and I officially became parents. (Although we had technically been parents for nine months already, we quickly discovered that it is a very different thing parenting a baby whose only means of communication and protest is the occasional kick which only one of us can feel, versus a screaming, hungry, pooping little person who is very adept at making her discomforts known to anyone within earshot.) It turns out that being a parent means that time for any other things has been a scarce commodity. (Who knew?)
Consequently, over the past two years, it has been our privilege, joy, duty, and responsibility to watch, change, dress, rock, and love Elisabeth (or “Elsie,” as almost everyone calls her) as she has grown from a generic screaming little baby (we thought she was beautiful and special from the beginning, but we are a bit biased) into a full-fledged little girl, with her own personality, likes, dislikes, fears (spiders and bees topping the list), and strongly-stated preferences on everything from activities to foods to clothing. It has been a miracle, but such miracles are all-consuming, and at times, I feel I’m forgetting how to have a conversation that does not somehow center on Winnie the Pooh & Co. and/or the content of their diapers (“Tigger got stinky-winky poop!” is a conversation we have at least once a day before we together change the diaper that she insists her Tigger must wear.)
All that to say, I have a lot of catching up to do. So, in case we haven’t told you or you have forgotten (which I myself very nearly do many days), here is the broad sweep of our lives over the past two years.
August 10, 2017: at about 8:39PM (I think…my memories are a bit fuzzy) we welcomed Elisabeth Grace Thomas to the outside world via C-section.
c. August 12, 2017: I was hired to teach part-time at Cedar Tree Classical Christian School (which means, “a Christian school which teaches logic, rhetoric, grammar, Greek, and Latin to its students and takes a rather dim view of contemporary educational fads and philosophies”). Over the following weeks, it becomes clear that I will be teaching Algebra and Biology at the Junior High level.
August 20, 2017: We move from Tacoma, where we had been staying with our church friends Don and Sarah, to our apartment in Vancouver.
August-December, 2017: We try to settle into a rhythm as Jenn stays at home with Elsie while I teach Algebra and Biology (neither of which I have studied since I was in high school myself) to seventh and eighth graders. While feeling like I am trying not to fall off the back of a speeding treadmill and staying (at best) a week ahead of my students, I am relieved to be in a place where students where uniforms and don’t carry cell phones and where “disobedience” means that I occasionally have to ask students twice to do something, rather than feeling constantly one step away from a prison riot (with the warden on the prisoners’ side). Jenn discovers that the life of a stay-at-home mom is not quite the idyllic Hallmark experience that she had thought it would be and is more than ready to start her internship by the new year.
January-June, 2018: We settle into a frantic pace of two working parents as Jenn completes her two “fieldwork” placements for occupational therapy at the VA and a hand therapy clinic. Childcare is a challenge, our full work schedules did not translate to a full bank account, so we cobble together a hodgepodge that includes my parents driving up once a week from Salem, Jenn’s sister coming over whenever she can, a mom from Cedar Tree watching Elsie about two days a week, and lots and lots of driving down to Jenn’s mom’s house in West Linn, about a 40-minute drive away (in good traffic, which means after 8PM). Though I really enjoy my students and my classes, and am pleasantly surprised to see how much I actually remember and am learning, by the end of the school year, we are decidedly ready for a break.
June-August, 2018: I watch Elsie while Jenn studies for her board exam. I have also been asked to pioneer CT’s new mock trial program (although I have no mock trial experience, since I did speech and debate in high school and college, apparently that makes me the most qualified staff member), so I spend some time (although not enough, as it turns out) trying to figure out what “mock trial” is. Jenn takes her boards in August, with the expectation that she will be able to begin working in September.
August, 2018 – February, 2019: A difficult time. To the surprise of everyone who knows her, Jenn does not pass her certification test in August. (Since, as anyone who knows her can attest, she has always done well in school, is very competent, and has an excellent grasp of the knowledge needed for occupational therapy, my best guess is that her home-school and Gutenberg education, with its emphasis on reading original works and analyzing them, trained her well in critical thinking but not in standardized test-taking.) This means that, instead of being able to apply for jobs, she must go back to studying while also watching Elsie since school has started. She will take the exam twice more (at $600 a pop) before finally passing at the end of November.
In the meantime, my hopes and expectations for an easier year than last are disappointed. Although I am again teaching Spanish (a more familiar subject), I have an entirely new slate of classes, teaching Spanish I, II and III at the high school level while also running mock trial classes and practices. This means that, although I remain a “part-time” employee (as reflected in my paycheck), I have four separate classes to prep (where, by contrast, when working full-time at Washington High, I only had two): three new curricula to learn and complete ahead of my students and one subject (mock trial) to learn from scratch for a total of four sets of lesson plans to do each week. Consequently, it feels that any spare moment not devoted to sleeping or Elsie care is dedicated to lesson planning, and even so, I am still making copies three minutes before the tardy bell most days.
Unfortunately, no matter how much I work, my paycheck stays the same, so my sixty-hour work weeks (not counting time watching Elsie or helping out around the house) are insufficient to cover our basic expenses. The previous year, we had been able to supplement my income with student loans and a stipend that Jenn got during her time at the VA, but since Jenn is no longer a student, that resource dries up, leaving us with my part-time private-school-teacher’s income and 200 dollars a month in food stamps.
January is the low point. Adding to the other insecurities, we find out that Jenn is expecting baby number 2 in September; the urge to nest that this happy news invariably brings with is met with a decided shortage of feathers. At one point, with no savings, our checking account in the double digits, and monthly food stamps exhausted, we get by through a combination of dumpster diving (the dumpsters at our apartment complex frequently have decent-quality furniture left behind by those moving out, which Jenn salvages and resells) and, more importantly, the generosity of friends and family. Jenn’s Bible Study Fellowship group organizes a meal train for us. Siblings and parents give us “loans” for which they refuse repayment, or send anonymous gift cards in the mail.
February – August, 2019: Things begin to turn around. After three months of job hunting, Jenn finally gets an offer with a home health agency. For the first time in three years, we are no longer eligible for food stamps or the Washington State Health plan, both of which we say goodbye to with some reluctance. We settle back into a cobbled-together childcare routine involving daycare two days a week, two days a week down in West Linn, and one “wild card” day that just depends on who is available. By the time the school year ends, I am very ready to be done. However, the week after school is out, we move from our apartment to a house about ten minutes closer to both of our jobs. Of our four married moves, this feels by far the most chaotic, in spite of being the shortest distance. Our tribe again comes to the rescue, but we are still living in what feels like a state of chaos a month after our move-in date. It is only as of about a week ago that we start to feel like we are settling into any sort of normalcy…until baby Sophie’s expected arrival at the beginning of September.
Reflections: Much as we might wish to, these rolling stones are in no danger of gathering moss. I keep waiting for life to get stable enough to be boring, but so far that hasn’t happened and doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon. That’s probably for the best, since, as I recently learned from my brother-in-law (or, more precisely, from his German father), “Wer rastet, der rostet” (“Whoever rests, rusts.”)
The past two years have exposed some of our deepest insecurities. For Jenn, it is the fear of being out of control: of not knowing how next month’s bills are going to be paid, or even next week’s; of wanting to buy something that seems simple, in-extravagant, useful, even necessary, and not only realizing that you can’t buy it right now, but you don’t know if you will ever be able to. For me, it is the feeling of inadequacy: of wanting to provide for my family, but no matter how hard I work, it isn’t enough; of feeling literally worthless, or worth so little that it might as well be worthless; of feeling like I have worked very hard to get nowhere and obtained the highest level of credentialing that I can without actually being qualified to do anything (or, at least, anything that anyone would pay me for).
For both of us, it is the feeling of failure, materially but also spiritually. After all, at no time were we in any actual danger of starvation, homelessness, or anything that the vast majority of those who live and have ever lived would recognize as any sort of real privation or hardship. What was really exposed was our pride and lack of faith, which are at the core the same thing. Jesus told us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but how many of us in America today actually know what it means to ask that with the kind of urgency that comes from not actually knowing where that bread will come from? For us, even asking, “Give us next month the money that we need to pay our rent” proved beyond the measure of our faith. And when He did answer, in spite of our little faith, in the form of the friends and family and even government assistance that kept us afloat, it was with both gratitude and (speaking for myself at least) a degree of shame that we received this grace. Theologically speaking, we are all charity cases who receive unmerited grace—not only salvation, but love, daily bread, life itself—from God. Humanly speaking, however, it would be nice to be able at least on occasion play the role of the conduit of grace rather than its wretched recipient in this divine drama.
Yet, when I can take my eyes off of myself and the challenges of “adulting”, I am reminded that grace is all around: not just the unmerited meeting of needs, but the superabundant, overflowing joyful grace that reminds me that life itself is a gift. Unsurprisingly, perhaps the most frequent reminders of that important truth come to me these days through Elsie. The chorus of one of my favorite songs (which happens to be written by my Uncle Buddy) runs, “In you, I see the world through a child’s eyes/ In you, I find moments that are gone / It’s true: to a child, life is just one big surprise. / I see the world again through a child’s eyes.” Watching Elsie’s intensely maternal care for her Pooh, Tigger, Piglet (etc.) dolls, whom she insists on diapering and dressing each morning, or hearing her giggle as she chases our longsuffering dog Winnie around the table, followed by collapsing, smiling as she sighs, “Silly Winnie” (which comes out sounding more like “CD weewee”), or spinning her in circles as she insists I do every Sunday after church until we both fall to the ground, too dizzy to stand, I think I must get some sort of an idea of how God feels about me: not impressed with my accomplishments, except in the way that any parent is impressed by any small thing his child does, but nonetheless delighting in and with me. And maybe He is also reminding me that the bogeys which haunt me with big-sounding names like “financial insecurity”, “uncertainty”, or even “failure” are in the end no more real or frightening than the “big spiders” and the “bad rats” that she insists I check the house for on a daily basis.
Anyway, there is much more to say, but this has gone on far too long already, so hopefully I will not have to wait another two years to say it. In the meanwhile, thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and love.