Navigating a Crossroads

No matter how much I hem and haw over the details involved, I'm pretty certain I'll be heading to England this fall. I'm thinking September. I've thought about waiting until spring, saving more money to pay for the ridiculous cost of rent over there and giving myself more time to make arrangements, but I'm getting that swooping sensation of Great and Eternal Purposes aligning over my head, and I don't think spring's gonna cut it. I've talked to a few people about my slowly forming plans, and they all tell me the same thing: "This is really a crossroads coming up for you, isn't it?"

Yes, yes it is.

I was talking about it to my visiting teachers on Sunday. "I'm planning to go to England, hopefully in the fall," I said. "I want to go for two months if I can, but at least six weeks, the idea being to finish up a manuscript—or at least a good first draft of one—so I can start maybe sending it off to publishers. The hard part is that it would mean quitting my job, so essentially I'm launching myself into the unknown. But I really want to write, and since the setting of my stories is pretty much medieval England, that's where I want to go."

My visiting teachers sighed like I had just told them a sweepingly romantic tale. "Wow!" said one of them. "That sounds so awesome. You sound like a real writer, like Jane Austen or somebody. I didn't know people still did such things."

The awestruck reaction surprised me. Most of the time people are either doubtful of my ability to pull it off or of the wiseness of my intentions, or they scarcely bat an eye and begin launching into tales of their backpacking trip through Asia and Europe. Awe was a refreshing change; I felt like a character in my own fantasy story, about to embark on my own adventure.

"Heh, well, it's something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I've been saving for quite a while," I said, trying to be practical again. "There are so many things I have to figure out first, though. I don't even know where I'll be staying yet." I sighed. "But I am going. I'm kind of on a plateau here and it's time to move on. Probably in the fall." I stared ahead into space for a moment as if I saw the future laid out before me, as yet shapeless fog in a glass.

My visiting teacher looked at me with wide eyes, shaking her head slightly. "Can I . . . touch you?"

Ha ha, no, she didn't really say that. But she did say the bit about crossroads, and that struck me.

You see, I had just given a Sunday school lesson on Guiding Children as They Make Decisions, and the parental mandate to "be at the crossroads" was a key element in it. I've been forming a picture in my head of the quintissential crossroads scene, like something out of Jane Eyre: two narrow, intersecting dirt roads cutting across a field in the middle of nowhere, with a signpost standing at the cross, pointing out the two roads but with lettering worn off by wind and rain. Each path carries the weight of the experiences lying farther down, out of sight. Actually, not much is visible beyond the crossroads, like the whole world at the moment revolves around this small place. Storm clouds are building overhead—for good or ill it's too soon to say; they're just growing like your ponderous thoughts, like greater forces you don't yet understand, those hovering purposes you act on without fully comprehending—darkening the sky so you can see the ground clearer.

I had imagined this scene before, but this time I wondered, was anyone standing at the crossroads for me? I realized that I had not been expecting anyone. I've been sitting there in the wild grass under that signpost, trying to figure this out by myself. Only a few hours earlier I had taught my class this: "You're not always going to be there with your children when they make decisions, and this is where the Holy Ghost comes in. Teach them to hear and follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost, and they'll have guidance in their decisions for the rest of their lives." I have been taught, I have a gift of constant companionship and the promise of direction when I ask for it in faith. I should probably take advantage of that.

There's plenty of work to be done before September rolls around. I don't know what consequences will stem from this journey, but I feel like this is an important time in my life. I hope to carve a few discernable shapes out of that fog before I walk through it. But you know what? I'm excited. In spite of all the solemnity involved in trying to make wise, mature decisions, going to England and writing full time really would be a dream come true. And no matter how it all unfolds, I'm comforted knowing that God stands at the crossroads.

Keeping in Touch

To my surprise, yesterday when I got home for the evening, I found I'd missed a call from my older brother. He lives with his wife and kid in Virgina, and I hadn't heard much from him beyond a couple emails and birthday calls since Christmas. He hadn't heard much from me either.

Last year at about this time I was pretty desolate that they were moving out east. "People who know how to use technology are never very far apart," he said just before he climbed into his grandparent-in-laws' minivan with the last load of suitcases. I stood and watched, nodding and smiling and trying not to cry. He meant instant (and video) messaging, emailing, and the blog we started shortly after they got out east. As the computer science nut in the family, R kept me up on such things.

How soon we forget, huh? Technology is great ("I love technology"), and we've had great blog articles and email exchanges and a few video chats. But when I called R back last night, I realized just how long it had been since I'd really talked to him. Hearing his voice took me back for a few minutes to those lovely evenings last summer, me and my brother and his wife, discussing classes, coworkers, and careers. I had forgotten how much fun it was to talk to them.

"So this is why it's imortant to keep in touch," I thought after we said goodnight and hung up. After a fifteen-minute phone call I felt happier than I'd been all day. Everything tends to entropy, doesn't it? Even relationships. It's an effort to keep in touch. But I realized again last night how worthwhile it is to make that effort.

Rue

Nothing like a what-if thought
to rummage through my memories, caught
again inside the pointless wheel
of doubting what I think and feel.
How many times must I annoint
some reasoned lines in counterpoint
and dub the past as well and done?
How many times will my dreams run
another pass through past events
where hindsight's not yet better sense?
Why does the past come, secret, stealing?
For some things is there never healing?
Curses on the wild what-if
that sets my happy mood adrift.