blah....

It's raining…again.
We're getting the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry.
I should have known..…all things coming from those named 'Barry' are suspect in my book….Barry Bonds, Barry Manilow, barium enema….
At least our living room ceiling appears to have stopped leaking. I wish I could say the same for the roof. The temporary patch that the roofers threw up there has simply detoured the water to another hidden cranny, and the woman who lives upstairs has discovered a brand new leak in her linen closet. Four laundry loads of towels and sheets soaked in icky yellow/brown roof water. Yuck.

I can't believe its June already.
Just a few short months ago I was looking forward to the summer. I was looking forward to being a college graduate and taking a few months off before I tackled the next phase of my life - Seminary.
I planned on spending the summer months at church working with whoever was taking my place as Sunday School superintendent, and by the second week of August I'd be packing to move to Boston.
Now none of that is going to happen.
Instead, I'm looking at 15 months of uncertainty and waiting.
I am going to seminary in the Fall of 2008, no matter what, and I've placed a countdown clock in my blog sidebar to remind myself of that daily.
But in the meantime I'm faced with the prospect of getting a job to pay down my credit card debt, planning another year of RE/Sunday School (which entails recruiting twice as many teachers because we're splitting the class), and erasing all of the imagery and expectations I had of going to the Boston seminary as it now looks like I may end up in New York City.

So here I sit on a rainy day contemplating my next move and all I have to say is…blah.
I've accepted that this unexpected wait is a good thing- It fits all the criteria of the clichéd "blessing in disguise:"

- The NY school is a better fit for me; The more I learn about it the more I realize that I'll be happier there and get more out of my seminary experience than if I had gone to Boston.

- The Boston school just announced that one of their long-time New Testament professors is leaving and now they're scrambling to cover his classes in the Fall.
Now I don't have to worry about suffering through the repercussions of that.

- I could do with another years experience as RE chair. There are new things I'd like to try and there are things that I would do differently the second time around, and now I have that chance to do it….and knowing that my seminary field placement will most likely involve some kind of RE work, the more experience I have working with kids the better.

- Working full-time for a year will allow me to pay down some of my debt so I'm not carrying it all the way through seminary.

- This is the first time in my life that I've looked for a "temporary" job. Not having to worry about a job's long-term prospects, vacation time, and 401k options, allows me to consider jobs that I might otherwise have never gone for. I can try something new, or take a job because it looks fun, or do something that's repetitious and boring but pays decently, knowing that I don't have to do it for very long!

I've run these silver-lining options through my head many times over the past few months, and I've continuously paraded them out as 'reasons to be cheerful' in response to the lamentations of others when they hear about my seminary saga.
But now I'm realizing that I may have moved too quickly to the "when one door shuts another one opens" mantra.
I didn't allow myself time to grieve.
I didn’t give myself time to let go of one dream before I latched onto another
I didn't give myself permission to be pissed off and disappointed beyond the few days that it took for it to sink in that I'd have to put seminary on hold for a year.
I've been nothing but patient and understanding in my interactions with the Boston seminary telling myself 'that's just the way the admissions process works', when I really want to scream and rant at them for dragging their feet for months and leaving me hanging.
I want to accept the fact that in their eyes I'm just another student looking for money that they don't have to give, when in reality I feel slighted because they seem to not care one iota whether I attend their institution or not.
I want to grab them by the lapels, slap them about the head and scream "You fools! Look at my GPA! **smack** Look at my financial need! **smack** Look at my recommendations and transcript which you described as being "stellar"! **smack, smack** Look at the fact that I'm a UCC member looking to go to a UCC school, and I actually WANT to be a parish minister, as opposed to all the UU "I haven't got a clue why I'm going to seminary" aspirants that I ran into during your orientation weekend! **smack, smack, whaaaaaaaappp**

That's what I want to do.
But I won't do it because it's petty, and ego-driven, and presumptuous, and not at all becoming of a minister-to-be.

But it still lurks in the back of my mind whenever someone asks me: "have you heard anything new from Boston?" Mentally, I've already moved on to NY and all that the school there has to offer. I just have to be patient and take this year that God has given me and appreciate it for the opportunity that it is.
But I also have to allow myself to have days like this.
Days where I look at all the work I have in front of me, work that is different from the work that I expected and wanted to be doing, and the only response I have is to plop myself on the couch, curl up in a ball and say "blah."

That's how I'm doing today.
Ask me again tomorrow when it's not raining.