July 2008

There is an old adage among gamblers: "Play hand you're dealt, not the hand you wish you had." Or, it's possible that's not an old adage; I may have made it up -- I can't remember. If it's not an old adage, it should be, so please pass it along to any degenerate gamblers you might know. Anyway, it expresses a great deal of wisdom... In life, we always have to adjust our attitudes to the reality in which we find ourselves rather than pretending the situation is what we wish it was.

Life does, after all, have a tendency to throw curve balls.

Today, for example, I am writing from the sound booth at the theater during a matinee performance of Pride and Prejudice, the play that I have directed.

Prior to opening the theater to the audience, we had a photo session to take pictures of the production. I had a list of 20 I wanted to take, but I was only able to take half of them because of a miscommunication: one of the actresses sent her dress home with the costumer for laundering, and neither she nor I remembered to tell her that we needed it back earlier than normal. So now, I am going to have to take more photos before tomorrow's performance.

This is the kind of little readjustment that takes place on a daily basis in all of our lives. The bigger the event, the greater the readjustment that is required. It's one of the laws of the universe, I suppose.

As travellers, we often talk of acclimation: getting used to different physical or cultural surroundings. A mountain climber, for example, needs to rest at stages of elevation to allow the body to acclimate to the different level of oxygen. Sometimes we experience "culture shock" when we first arrive in an unfamiliar place and have to adjust to a different way of doing things. In China, for example, I have read that there is no such thing as an orderly queue to get on a train; all ticket holders just push their way on in a fashion that would be unthinkably rude to the Westerner. I'm sure there will be plenty of experiences like that on our trip.

And then, there is the tendency of the unexpected to happen when we travel. One of the more memorable nights of my travels during college was when an Italy-bound train pulled into the station at Lausanne, Switzerland, where I was waiting in the middle of the night with my friend Julie. When I attempted to board it, I found that I had somehow missed that it was sleeper cars only and I had no reservation. So, after a brief and fruitless attempt at sleeping on a wooden bench in the waiting area, we spent the remainder of the night in the 24-hour coffee shop. Wound up being quite interesting; we started talking with some girls from a Catholic boarding school who gave us a great insight into the mind of European youth at the time. It wasn't so fun being up all night at the time, but as is so often the case it made for a great memory.

Readjustment has been on our minds this week. After posting last Sunday that we had a buyer for our house, the deal fell through. The woman turned out to have lied to her lender about her finances, and had extremely unrealistic expectations about the discount she could expect for not considering our air conditioning system sufficient for her tastes. Now, our A/C is a little underpowered for the size of the house since we had the upstairs finished, and it can be a little warm up there. But the system works, and we did not feel it was our responsibility to pay for the equipment to give her the climate she desired. She didn't have the ability to acclimate, so the deal is dead.

And that is requiring a huge attitude readjustment on our part. We now have to accept that we are not going to have our house sold before we leave, and it's going to have to happen by proxy while we are gone. This is an unpleasant bit of stress to carry along with us, and it will make it harder to enjoy ourselves. But it could always be worse; at least we found out about the finances before closing and have time to make arrangements. We still know that God has a plan for us and isn't going to leave us hanging, but we sure feel like we're a lot closer to the edge than we'd like to be.

He always makes things interesting. We just need to acclimate.

Disconnect (N) To separate one thing from another thing: detach, disengage, uncouple.

This has been a pretty huge weekend, with a lot of things in our life coming together. On Friday night, Acacia Theatre Company's production of Pride and Prejudice, which I directed, opened. It's a fantastic show, and I'm incredibly pleased with it. Directing this play has without question been the biggest undertaking of my theatre career, and I'm really proud of the results. We have had very good audiences, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. It was amazing to sit and watch the fruit of my last two months' labor. Only a total maniac would try to direct a play while fixing up and selling a house, getting ready for a cross-country move, and preparing for a four-month backpacking trip.

Guilty as charged, I guess.

The other major event of the weekend is that as of noon yesterday, we have accepted an offer on our house, to close on July 31st, two days before we leave Milwaukee. It's contingent on inspection, of course, but it's a solid offer from a woman who seems very nice (she responded to my ad on Craigslist, so we've been emailing back and forth) and I'm sure it's going to go through. This is a relief of a magnitude that I can't begin to put into words. My posture today is noticeably more erect from the weight off my shoulders.

I honestly can't say that I'm surprised, though. In a real estate market consistently described in the media somewhere between horrible and apocalyptic, we have an offer for our house for close to our asking price in less than 10 days. Amazing? Maybe, but I knew in my heart that it would come through. The whole move to Houston has had God's fingerprints on it from the very beginning two years ago, so I knew He wasn't going to leave us in a lurch. Getting the house ready has been stressful, but I always had peace that everything would fall into place. And it seems to be.

As a traveller, I love to go independently and with my own plans, forging my own way. On the trip through life with God, sometimes you need to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

But all of these events are creating a really strange feeling. The opening of my last show with Acacia, my theatrical home for the past six years, and the offer on our house, have combined to crystalize the fact that we are leaving. It's all really happening, and there is no stopping it. In 20 days, we will get up early in the morning, get in the car, and start the drive to Houston. Four days later, we will be off.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the lobby cafe at our church, Mercy Hill, which has been our spiritual home for the past year-and-a-half. I love this place, and am so thankful for our time here. God led us here after a very difficult period in our lives, and the friends that we have made here have been a huge part of our healing. From the beginning of our time here, we have known we would be leaving, so it always had a bit of a feeling of being a temporary oasis.

But this morning, I am really experiencing a strong feeling of disconnection, probably because of the offer on the house. For the first time, it feels real, and when I walked in this didn't feel like my church anymore. I feel like I'm here visiting friends whom I love very much, but I don't feel like I'm part of this body. And that's a little sad.

There will be many more moments like this over the next three weeks. After this afternoon's performance, there is a combined cast party and send-off for us, and I'm sure that will be emotional as well. But in spite of the disconnection that I am feeling this morning, the beautiful thing is that as part of a larger body, we are never truly disconnected.