The last 18 months have been. . . interesting? Moving to Astoria when we did was not our original plan. We’d intended to fix our little house up while I worked at an internship on campus. However, those plans were decimated without any warning or care and we found ourselves living in a “fixer”—something I swore I’d never do. When will I learn not to make pronouncements to the Universe like that??

But living in this house has been a joy despite the half-started projects that surround me. I photograph very carefully and you don’t see the chaos that we live in or the questionable decorating choices of the former owners. That stuff remains just out of frame.

What has been more difficult is the community aspect of being in a new town. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about the betrayals and heartbreak inflicted by my Seminary I was carrying around. I mean, how do you walk up to a new person and say, “Hi! I’m wounded. And bitter. Let’s be friends!” You don’t!

Connecting was made almost impossible by the time my internship demanded—I often found myself too scheduled and too tired to really consider doing much of anything new. I’ve always drawn the line about talking about parishioners except in the most general of terms—their privacy is far more important than my need vent— but by not communicating the difficulties I left the impression with the few people that I met that my life was “easy” or “charmed” in ways that didn’t account for the grueling aspects of my work. Nor did it account for the loneliness that accompanies a life in ministry. Like the photographs of my lovely tea spot—I neglected to note the eyesore of a woodstove out of frame. Sadly, I had made friends with people who could not tolerate my absence or need to mend.

This is the nature of life. We are lucky if we have a cadre of people around us who are willing to look at the rotting molding in our lives. People for whom we don’t edit the photographs. Most, just want to see the beautiful pictures. But as our worlds evolve and we choose change, our photographs get blurry. Because we are blurry. And if we find people in our new world who are willing to be patient and supportive and deal with blurry photographs, we are very, very blessed.

When my internship ended I made a conscious decision for change in my life. It’s never easy to look around you and say, “This has to go!” Who wants to be that person? And I’m a bit of a packrat in this regard. But, I knew that if I didn’t jettison the toxic relationships (I can’t tell you how bad Seminary was for me!) how could I expect anything different? How could I make room for the good and the beautiful and the LIVING, if my life was crammed to capacity with decay?

I got lucky. Fate provided some endings I found difficult to imagine, yet knew in my heart were necessary. And timing too—I graduated in December and have been in the process of cutting every tie to that institution since. All that remains of my time there is a diploma, which will be sent to me in the spring. I can’t tell you just how OK I am with this.

But there were also days of tears. Of sadness I thought could not end. Weeks where I was convinced I’d made the biggest mistake of my life in attending Seminary and because Seminary brought me to Astoria, the biggest mistake of my life moving here. No matter how hard I tried, I could not capture anything but my blurry self in the frame.

Change is scary. Yet, the Universe is faithful. For every move toward change I made, the Universe has answered with vitality and joy and companionship that I could not have imagined would be my fate 4 months ago! Who knew that the toxic relationships would be replaced with healthy ones? I didn’t! I was pretty sure in December that I was going to remain a recluse living in my own tattered hell. I am unfaithful like that.

And should you wonder, the Universe is generous as well—the exchange has not been one-for-one—but one for tons! I am blessed beyond measure with opportunities I didn’t know existed just weeks ago. I find myself equally blessed with the beginnings of new relationships with people who are healthy. And sane. And supportive. And. . . happy.

Some of you have sensed my blurry self behind the photographs. Some of you have lived enough life to know that we edit ourselves, put our best faces forward, hoping for a good ending despite knowing what is just out of frame. I would be disingenuous if I told you I wasn’t still blurry… that my life didn’t have eyesores trying to sneak in for their close ups. I still wonder where I’m going and who I’ll be when I grow up.

But in this life I’m blogging, I know this much—I keep writing because it helps. . . not necessarily because it ends well.