The Light Changed Today

The light changed today. 

It happens every year, right around the start of school. My daughter has her first day of Kindergarten tomorrow, so we are right on schedule. She wanted to go to the pool today to celebrate the last day of summer, but I told her that it was probably a little too cool for the pool. I was right because the light changed today.

I don’t know how to specifically describe it. All that I know is that it’s clearer. It’s like everything is shimmering and radiant, almost like looking at the world through a diamond. There is also a change in the air- the humidity lessens quite a bit and there’s a healthy breeze outside. At least, that’s how it was today. And this isn’t just a thing in the mountains, where I’ve lived for some time. I have a distinct memory of laying on my back, under a shade tree on my high school soccer field in southeastern Tennessee, and noticing this change in the light for the first time. At that point in my life, I loved summer best because going to school everyday felt so confining and the social aspects of my education were difficult for me. I was sad as I lay on the ground before evening practice, realizing that not only was the light changing, but school was set to start in a week or so. The summer was gone, never to return. I probably had some fleeting adolescent nostalgic thoughts about the whole thing and then moved on to practice. But ever since then, I can remember, every year, noticing when the light changes.

It’s not the start of autumn, but the harbinger of cooler days on the way. We will still have some hot spells- we plan to go to the pool this weekend since it will be hotter then. But when the light changes, autumn is on its way. At this point, we’ve got a little over a month until the equinox and the earth turns as the days wane, changing the light.

Autumn is my favorite season. I don’t know when or how my preference shifted, but sometime after high school, I wised up and realized that I preferred cooler weather to the scorching-threshold-of-hell heat of the deep southern summer. I get excited to drink out of my pumpkin mugs and plan halloween decor. Sweaters and sweatshirts are my favorite things to wear. I genuinely enjoy that everything comes in pumpkin spice and the leaves changing bring tears to my eyes. There’s also a little part of me that is still seven years old and can’t wait to start the second grade- back to school time will always feel electric. Fall is the best season by far, so I always get a little hopeful when it begins.

I’m hopeful for all the fun seasonal things that my family and I will get to do. I’m hopeful for the cooler weather and pumpkin foods. I also get a kind of new year freshness to my perspective. Maybe it has to do with all of my experience working with students and the beginning of the academic year each fall. Maybe it has to do with that seven year old still squealing inside of me. Maybe it’s the change of the light. Either way, I feel some measure of fresh light and hope every fall. At least, I usually do.

Last fall was really difficult for me. At the end of the spring of 2022, one of my favorite team mates left my team to go serve with another ministry on the same campus. And then, later that summer, a friend who I had spent so much time with in discipleship and relationship just up and left and never really spoke to me again. I got to talk with her on the phone once after all of this and then, never again. It was heartbreaking and it kind of ruined the fall for me. My last year on campus at Radford University started with betrayal and ended with betrayal. Some of the things I endured just felt like a betrayal, but some of them were the real deal. My friend changing gears in how he did ministry made sense on a lot of levels, but it still hurt me deeply. My friend leaving and just cutting us all out to go home to a bad situation? That one probably didn’t have a lot to do with me personally, but it was still a betrayal of trust and time invested in her life. I was less excited last fall than I ever have been. And I grieve because it was my last. 

To bookend two major betrayals at the start of last fall, my trust was again betrayed by those in authority over me. I’d been searching for other jobs that better suited my skill set as well as gave me more ability to learn and grow professionally. I’d shared this information as well as some of my fear and frustrations about my job at Radford University. And, in response to these vulnerable and tender realities, the powers that be deemed it wise to just eliminate my position to give me “urgency”. And now I’m starting this fall in a job that I’m not excited about in a new town with no friends and not enough time or emotional space to process how I really want to, much less make friends.

But, for some reason outside myself, I’m still hopeful because the light changed today. 

I’m hopeful that at the start of this unfamiliar and unknown season, something will change. I’m not excited to meet new students or hand out 2304938098 freezer pops on Muse Lawn. I’m not excited to plan my club talks or develop a small group strategy. I’m not looking forward to planning curriculum or meeting with friends for discipleship. Though I’d love to do all of those things, I won’t get to, so I can’t be excited for them. But I am excited for some things to change.

I’m excited to not be professionally undermined in a field where that sort of thing should never happen. I’m excited for life and hope to be spoken over me in church rather than death and doubt about who I am and how I’m called to serve those around me. I’m excited to not have the wounds of the past ten years reopened every time I walk into my favorite coffee shop and have to see and acknowledge the existence of those who’ve hurt me. I’m excited to not have to worry about the spiritual well-being and development of my leaders who are going to s church that has a toxic theology of women and sacrificial living. (Not to mention a RAMPANT climate of gossip.) I’m excited to not have to count how many people I’m serving in ministry while I’m being told that the numbers don’t matter. I’m excited to be free from this and so much more. 

I’m excited for the hollow feeling deep inside of me to give way to something whole. If I’m really honest, there have been hollow places in me for my entire life. Things have been missing from the very beginning and I’ve always felt uneasy and insecure about that reality while not really knowing what to do. While I know that Christ fills all and is in all and through all, the deep places of my soul are still waiting to be filled or healed or made whole or…something.

Since I lost my job, it feels like all my purpose and all the things that were enjoyable in my life have been emptied out. I don’t think it’s a secret that I don’t like being a Mom. I like being my daughter’s mother, but I don’t like being a mom. The mere idea of that title being primarily given to me makes me want to throw up. But now, there’s not much left to my life. I can no longer identify as who I really think God made me to be: a minister of the gospel. And I always feel like I’m having to explain myself and afraid that people will uncharitably fill in the gaps about why I lost my job and what I must have done to deserve it. Most people probably aren’t that hateful, but most people that I encountered in Radford were quite uncharitable not only about my professional prospects, but many aspects of my personal life as well.

More than anything, I feel the hollow places acutely. I don’t think that’s one of the five stages of grief, but that’s where I’m at. Not really sad or angry anymore, though I’m sure I’ll get there again, but just hollow. As if I’m a tree full of potential, vitality, and promise, but emptied out by a wasting disease. I hope that God will use the negative experience of the past decade to fill in all the hollow places once and for all. I hope for this and I want to believe it, but I’m not so sure. 

That’s why the change in the light this year is so significant to me. I was reminded today that God has been changing the light for me every autumn. He’s been changing the trees and ripening the pumpkins and cooling the weather. He’s been giving me all the money that I need and a place to live and the sunrise every single day. More than that, he’s given me his son Jesus and, if he cares enough to change the light, how will he not also change me?

I want to believe this in my moments of spiraling where the hollow feeling takes over. I’m not there yet, but I do know that I’m on my way. Because the light changed today.