Listening for the Spirit at Work
Andrea Krehbiel
I am completely broke. I have been working as a waitress since January, which is roughly the last time I got a full nights sleep, or didn’t have a dream about printing tickets, or refilling drinks, or whether someone has enough ketchup.
I’m sure everyone remembers college, and how any little problem feels like Hiroshima. Worrying is part of my daily schedule, it fits in right between giving myself an ulcer and my biology homework. This semester’s been like a whole new exercise in worrying. It’s hard to find time to find God when you can’t find time to do your laundry. Church has obviously always been huge presence in my life, but it’s hard for me to reconcile life away from home, and especially my dad, to that presence. It’s probably fitting that he’s not here today.
Until recently, I had no idea where I was going to live next year, if I’d be able to graduate on time or with two majors, or write a thesis.
These are things that are really important to me, they’re part of the person I want to be. The thought of not doing them is terrifying and heartbreaking, because I don’t know what I could do instead. When I was told that I could not possibly complete two majors, and that the topic I’d wanted to write my thesis on, looked forward to for two years, was impossible, I flipped. As if I wasn’t having enough trouble figuring out what to do with my life, the few things I was sure of aren’t an option. I literally couldn’t comprehend it, and still can’t.
I haven’t had a lot of exposure to Christian community outside of Pilgrims, and especially not with people my own age. The few encounters I have had with teenagers of faith have generally not been positive. Outside of this church, I’d started to think of myself of kind of a unique breed—a minister’s daughter who isn’t a zealot, someone who cares but isn’t really a converter. Going to Taize last year was an experience I’ll never forget. At Taize, I spent the week with the same group of students, both in Bible study and then cleaning the sanctuary together. None of them were American. One of them spoke English fluently. Only two of them knew each other beforehand. I knew them all at the end. I heard my own words coming out of other peoples mouths, felt a connection with people who’s names I could barely pronounce.
There were over fifteen hundred people at Taize that week. It was the first time in my life I felt myself to be part of a larger Christian community, people who I could see myself in. I thought anyone who was into the idea of a week of wooden floors and poorly cooked lentils must be nuts—again, good thing my father isn’t here—but I was completely blown away. The people I met had faith, it was part of their daily lives, it drove them, it fit, in the way I want my faith to fit.
I am terrified of next year, never mind the rest of my life. I have no idea what to write my thesis on now that my first idea is blown, I will major in Political Science, which sounds so lonely without and English literature at the end. But it’s enough. I don’t know why seeing something outside of ourselves makes it easier to live with ourselves, but it does. I needed to know that all of those things I want, what I said about them being the person I want to be. All of that is just details. I can still be the person I want to be, the person I saw in the people of the Taize, and every week at Pilgrims, and it really won’t matter what I wrote I wrote a thesis about.
