Trusting When We Can't Yet See

In the early days of February, 2020, I packed my car and a UHAUL full of the contents of my one bedroom apartment in Seattle's Seward Park and prepared for the trek south from the Pacific Northwest, to my native San Francisco Bay Area. My close girlfriend and fellow mermaid, Melissa, partnered with me to drive my car the 800 or so miles over a couple of days.

At the time, I didn't want to move home. I didn't want to leave the close knit community and friendships I'd formed over 3 and a half years. I didn't want to leave a place that had never been on my radar before my moving there for grad school, but became a place where I was able to be seen for who I was, and exercise my gifts of writing, art, community building and the spoken word. I didn't want to move back in with my parents, at 34 (albeit temporarily) when I had an apartment I'd made my own and hosted communities of color in. I didn't want to leave the wilderness of dewy evergreen forests and the deep, dark waters of the Puget Sound.

But I couldn't get a job.

I'd had a good gig at Seattle U, a Jesuit university located in Capitol Hill, close to artist galleries and trendy eateries and eclectic energy, but the contracted role had come to a close shortly after obtaining my degree. I didn't feel compelled to use my newly minted theology degree to go into full time pastoral role, nor did the highly administrative and low paying roles offered to me in academia appeal. So I wound up working three jobs just to continue to pay rent. 75 job applications and nine months later, it seemed no doors were opening for me in Seattle. So, I chose to throw in the towel, head home, and regroup before diving back into the search.

There were a lot of things I didn't know, at the time. That the outbreak of a virus at the Seattle Public Market days before would become the coronavirus pandemic. I didn't know that COVID-19 would shut down the world and that I was entering a season of quarantine with my aging parents, one of whom had a pre-existing health condition. I didn't know that four months later, I would be offered a remote job at a research center (based in Seattle, of all places) and would still be at that organization five years later. I didn't know that moving home would result in a major reconciliation and redemption of my relationship with my Dad.

All I knew was that the doors in Seattle had shut for me, and that fact led me into the next season of my life.

Since moving home, there has been much growth and redemption. My dad and I started Saturday morning coffees, which became Saturday morning brunches and walks and adventures, which have allowed us to craft our close relationship as adults. I was able to buy my first home, a condo underneath a grove of 17 redwood trees (did I mention I love evergreens?) and adjacent to the pool, on the Napa river. I've become a dog mama, twice over, and have rebuilt strong community in the San Francisco area, including getting to see my family often. I don't at all regret the growth and redemption which has come with resettling my roots in the Bay.

But life moves in cycles, and I find myself once again at a season where certain doors have been shut. As I move through the job search process, as I dream of what it could look like to love again after great loss, I remember the past season where I left behind a place and a people I grew to love...and the unexpected growth and redemption which came about as a result of saying yes, and putting one foot in front of another, to find myself in a new season, where doors began to open again.

Remembering all that the Holy Spirit has led me through since then reminds me that even when we can't see or don't know what's ahead, there can be great things awaiting us, as we continue to put one foot in front of the other. As we say yes to the process, and trust in the good we can't yet see. As we believe, hope for, and expect the good, closed doors give ways to opened ones.

Old seasons give way to new.