Like coming out of the half-time break into the second half of a sports game, the start of Adventure 2.0 beckons for me this month, after 40 months of an adventure having my firstborn and then my secondborn in a space of two years.
Towards the end of last year – at what felt like the darkest nights of my life – I felt a deep birthing of a new dream beginning to take shape alongside.
To briefly unpack the dark night of the soul I experienced… A soul sister in San Francisco, K, who did not at that time know in full detail what I was experiencing, responded to one of my lamentations on IG pointing me to check out a series of podcasts by Ps John Mark Comer titled “Naming Your Stage of Apprenticeship“.
I remember that while I agreed with the overall message of Ps Comer’s book ‘The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry’, I wasn’t exactly a fan of his writing style at first read of the book back in 2019! So I was cautious with his podcast, only to be hugely surprised and blessed.
It also goes to show how I was just at a point of sheer desperation and would try anything that could possibly help me process through or make sense of all that I was experiencing.
Recently a very wise friend, A, shared that there are times when you open a book and start reading it, only to realise you weren’t ready for it. Fast forward years later, the material comes to your attention again, but this time you feel ready to read it, able to understand it, and to apply it.
Between this podcast series and recommended book readings (particularly, ‘Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity’ by Ronald Rolheiser), I felt completely lifted out of a fog or a wall I had hit and was at the brink of quitting it.
Alas, the last thing I expected was to experience the intense birthing of new dreams as I felt myself pushing past that wall. New dreams, that required new levels of grit and resilience.
I came across this sign at an outdoor space we frequent in San Francisco with a quote by Picasso: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up.” I believe the same applies to how to remain faithful to His call once you grow up.
Seeing this, it made sense how I took the unpopular choice pursuing a “starving artist” life post-college, all of my twenties, to stay true to living out the “tentmaker” life.
The sleepless nights filing stories, the roughing out sleeping in airports to be on the earliest a la cheapest flight to work in the fields, the strategizing affordable ways to eat, the living out of my suitcase, living paycheck-to-paycheck, month-to-month, Airbnbs to co-livings.
Though alone on the road (with soul friends made along the way), I know and I know it is the path He has set me on. Not as much to remain an artist, but to be put through the fire in why it’s hard to stay an artist — or a believer — once you grow up.
I don’t think I can fully quantify what it all did to my spirit but as I look back at how my early motherhood years went well beyond what I’d expect of having two pandemic babies — deep in the trenches without help is super intensive — but surprisingly liberating.
The pandemic hit us right after I had Maise in Feb 2020. With all work forced indoors and uncertain, I worked on a film through the fourth trimester without any maternity break or so, until a year-ish later in summer 2021, only to also find out I was pregnant with Cruze.
So 2021. I was both compelled and terrified to leave my last full-time creative corporate job — some just call it “full-time parenting” but mostly I found myself in a great unknown (again and pregnant), leaving a good but wrong job, and headed into the midlife — I had to live simply, living off savings or investments.
I had everything to lose but nothing to lose at the same time. Matthew 16:26.
Two years later, I am thankful what 40-month of parenthood so far has most gifted me — this period of a ‘pause’ — to figure it out on my own terms than the world’s. Pushing through experiencing ‘the dark night of the soul’ that peaked in 2022, but now sensing being led out of a wilderness, with fresh vision for the midlife and clarity for all my life.
Truly the darkest before dawn.
At the turn of this year, I had one of those the Lord speaking so clearly into my spirit moment of a “faithful completion” and to begin to step up or rather, step into. With the massive layoff and an economy in recession, there was barely anything I could hold out for. I interviewed for two roles that I felt most led to and could see either one work out, but one had a more “perfect” situation my childlike faith had hoped for as America is extremely tough on working moms for a lot of, well, capitalistic reasons.
Where I am at takes a bit of a childlike faith step but forty has always been a divine number in my life, so I’m calling this even if curiously cautious. It took me forty months to get to this place of clarity of it all — the who I am but slightly forgotten in the dark trenches and constant tugs to like conform — rather than to still forge my very own unique adventure.
Like hopping on a train (or plane) and not quite knowing where it’s going has always been like an ethos — here I am once more, a new ride, a step forward to a whole new adventure.
honest & hygge 