Telling the Truth

That’s how I’d headline my teenage and young adult approach to making decisions.  Safe, not sorry!  I still carry remnants of this in me, even though I know nothing is necessarily safe, and there’s no guarantee I’ll never be sorry.  Life isn’t safe; often it’s too sorry for words.

My guiding principles
If I’d had a clear, compelling dream for what I wanted to become, it might have helped me make different decisions.  I’ll never know.

When I was in my teens, 20s and 30s, I didn’t have a clue how to make wise decisions.  I usually played it by ear, making it up as I went along.  Not blindly, yet definitely hoping (rather than knowing) this was a sound decision for which I could give clear reasons.

This was at least partly because I was a girl, not a boy.  From the time I began playing with boys my age (4 years old and up), I knew something was wrong.  Or at least egregiously unfair.  Yet for all my sense of life being unfair, I accepted this as the way things were.

When I grew up, my main goal would be to support my husband, if I had one, and make decisions that fit in with what he was planning to do.  He would be the major player.  I would be his support person.

Unfair?  Perhaps, but I had no wish to dispute this reality.  I also had no plan for what I would do if I didn’t marry, though it seemed becoming a missionary was always an option for unmarried women.

Looking back, most of my unrecorded guiding principles were simple.  They seemed to make common sense.  They were, undoubtedly, an extension of rules my parents made for me, and principles they seemed to follow.

1. Be safe, not sorry.
2. Don’t call undue attention to yourself.
3. Value parental approval over adventure, especially as a child and teenager.
4. Don’t waste money on yourself.
5. Don’t spend more money than you must.
6. Go for marketable skills; you never know what’s going to happen.
7. Avoid taking big risks.
8. Don’t be afraid of hard work.

Major life decisions
I’ve listed below what I consider forks in the road—major decisions that changed the course of my life.  I didn’t always appreciate their significance.  I’ve listed them chronologically, and grouped them as noted.

Relatively easy decisions that were, nonetheless, shocks to my system:

• My first paying job out of high school – good money, sink or swim environment
• Bible college – double standards for women and men; second-class citizenship
• Marriage and children – two children, no more than three; none at all for first three years of marriage; nowhere near ready for any of this

More difficult decisions, higher anxiety, more complexity, multiple variables, and less certain outcomes:

• Involvement in the women’s movement – What will my parents think?  Aren’t men the problem?
• Seminary for masters in Bible and theology – 30 women, 500 men?  Are they ready for women?
• Germany for language study – lessons in dying daily; total immersion from day one
• University for graduate degree in religion – educational culture shock; work yet to do on women’s issues
• Teaching position at a seminary – more women’s issues; debilitating workload; will I make it?

High-anxiety decisions, made largely due to unexpected developments; high stakes decisions that allowed for no turning back

• Joining a 12-step program – life-changing; empowering; redemptive
• Getting help for depression, anxiety and related health issues – same as above
• Staying away from church for one year – terrifying, life-changing, no other way
• Becoming a seminary administrator – life-changing, permanent mixed emotions
• Retiring – Why did I wait so long?  What will I do now?  Do I have a dream?

Initial observations
Most of the time I lived a tentative life—trying things on in my mind, taking them off, discarding most options.  They weren’t ‘me.’  What would people think?  The last thing I want to do is fail.  Or be exposed as an imposter who got this far by accident.

Even though I wouldn’t call myself driven, I was a high performer.  Beyond diligent.  Sometimes creative.  Rarely an in-the-box thinker.  Yet I lived my sometimes creative life inside a constraining box.  The kind that came with not having a compelling dream of my own.

Once I made a decision, I made do with almost anything served up on my plate.  A bit like dinnertime, when Daddy served my plate.  Not always my favorites or my choices.  Sometimes I gagged, yet I never forgot how to swallow things with a smile.  I wanted to stay in good standing and avoid more punishment than I already had to bear.

Not even the women’s movement gave me a compelling dream.  It gave me courage about going to seminary and teaching theology.  It wasn’t wasted.  Yet it didn’t give me a dream.  Instead, it gave me a lot of work to do.  Much of it good work—especially in my relationships with men and in my professional work.  But it was work—not a vision for what I might become beyond the borders of my limited understanding.

My dreams were other people’s dreams for me, or they were my own daydreams.  Sometimes worthy, but never compelling.  The daydreams seemed to soothe me.  They functioned to reassure me that I ‘could do that’ or ‘be that’ if I really wanted to.  I just didn’t want to.  Not that much.  I was content.  Happy.  Doing more than I’d ever thought I would do in my life.

Eventually I was jolted out of my not safe, definitely sorry mode.  My body turned against me—so I then thought.  Events in my life and the lives of people I knew shook me to the core.  Things were falling apart.

Ironically, getting help meant going against my instincts.  I took what seemed then to be huge risks.  Yet working intensively on personal and professional life issues became my most compelling dream.  The dream of being healed, normal.  Able to get through one day at a time.  The dream of being happy and productive again—part of the human race.

To be continued. . . .

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 19 October 2014