Toward a New Land

        I only know I have to go there - a new land I haven't seen before...

Profoundly moved, I knew the poem was a gift. Especially when, that afternoon, I received a company fax ordering everyone in the field offices to be on hand for a conference call with corporate headquarters the next day. The news wasn't good. Our small company was being absorbed by a new, larger corporate acquisition. 

All of a sudden, poem or no poem, I didn't want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay right where I was. But God had other plans. It took me a full 11 months after my job actually ended in December to figure that out.

When my beloved job ended after 15 years of fun, hardwork and real satisfaction, I only knew that my world had come to an end. As a result of a corporate purchase, I not only lost my job as an editor and journalist, but my friends, co-workers, and the community I had served, heart and soul, for most of my adult life. 

I mourned, weeping my way through whole boxes of Kleenex, thinking of all the people I'd never see again. But the losses didn't stop there. Jobs are everything in this society and along with the people, I lost my context, my identity, my sense of purpose and the work I did better than anything else in the world. I also lost my paycheck, my health insurance, and the security that comes from knowing what you're going to do on Monday morning. 

What's worse is that, in a way, I laid most of this down of my own free will. During the course of the merger, we had interviewed for our old jobs. Mine was being phased out, but the company offered me a promotion - and the chance to start up a new regional publication. The job description included a significant amount of travel - something I hated. The only way to make that decision was to answer some questions I hadn't thought about in years.

Questions
Who am I? What's important to me? What's my real job in life? What are my priorities? And, most of all, what does God want for me and does this job offer work for or against that? 

Sitting in the rich, sunlit silence of Quaker Meeting the Sunday afternoon after I received this job offer, I held the whole ball of confusion out to God, and asked for help in sorting it through. More questions arose. Could I give up the status that came with my job? Was I really willing to trust God to provide for things like food, electricity and money for the other bills that are a part of life at the end of the 20th century? 

The questions cut to the heart of my faith. Could I believe that I was going to be safe and cared by one described as a loving parent? Could I really count on God's promise to provide for me when it wasn't an intellectual question any more, but the only guarantee I had? Most of all, could I believe that God actually had plans I couldn't see and didn't know about? Was I still willing to believe that God cared about me? Could I do what was best and truest for me - not necessarily what I thought was the safest?

I sat in Meeting, and I knew that was the question, "God or safety?" While I had to honestly admit that I didn't believe any of those things, I knew I wanted to. And there was only one way that would ever happen. So I turned down the job offer and hoped and prayed that my August poem was a promise as well as a gift.

Promise
I stayed on the job until December and, after Christmas, panic set in. While I'd planed to use my severance pay to take a year off, something I instinctively knew I needed to do, I couldn't do it. By the end of January I was interviewing and writing freelance articles six and seven days a week. 

By February, I'd completely forgotten about the poem and had done a remarkable job of reconstructing my old life and schedule. By the end of March, I was exhausted. 

As much as I wanted to hold onto my old life, even I could see that this wasn't what God wanted. To tell the truth, it wasn't looking so good to me either. So I called a time-out and scheduled a week-long silent retreat at All Saints Episcopal Convent in Catonsville, MD. If God had something to say, the least I could do was give him a chance to say it. 

God and I walked among the trees on the peaceful convent grounds, and by the end of the retreat the long-delayed answers to my September questions were rooted in my heart. Yes, I am loved and valued. Yes, I am safe. Yes, God will more than keep his promise to meet my needs. Yes I can trust him. Yes, Julie, I have plans to prosper you. 

No, I couldn't believe the last one, but I had enough to go on. "If you meet my needs, God," I said my last morning there, "I promise I won't try to rebuild my old life. I'll wait and see what you do." And both of us lived up to the bargain. Less, but enough, income still came in and I was O.K. What's more, I was listening to God again and, after that retreat, our relationship deepened in ways I could never have imagined. 

As I gradually let go of my death grip on my old life, God started preparing me for a new one. I began recognizing what that poem, now over a year old, had pointed to - that it was time for me to move on. I saw that, as much as I'd loved my job, I'd been stuck in a holding pattern, both personally and as a writer, for a long time. I also saw that my faith walk had dwindled from a stride to a stroll to a saunter as I'd passed up personal growth in favor of the security of a career track toward awards, retirement and status quo - something definitely not in keeping with my Quaker beliefs. 

Despite the poem's vision of a promised land, the future was still dark. But I began praying, telling God I was ready to do things his way, willing to take whatever the next step might be. 

One morning, responding to the persistent nudge of what Quakers call a "leading," I picked up the telephone and called the admissions office of nearby Eastern Mennonite University. I went for the interview the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. When the admissions counselor asked me why I, an experienced editor and journalist, wanted to go back to school, I said, "I don't have a clue!" Then something else happened. I opened my mouth and, to my complete and utter surprise, said, "I want to come back, get my degree and go on to your seminary for a masters so I'll have the credentials I need to become a religion writer and editor." 

As soon as I said it, I knew it was exactly right - that this was the promised land in my poem . What's amazing, however, is that I hadn't even known EMU had a seminary until I drove past it on the way to the admissions office. But God did. 

Looking back from the August morning when I wrote the poem until I started classes at EMU, I can see now that God had plans to prosper me, from the very beginning. 

"For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you..." (Jeremiah 29:11)  

Promised Land 

(August 7, 1997)

I only know 
I have to go 
there - 
a new land 
I haven't seen 
before; 
its rocks and plains 
surface
in my dreams 
call my name; 
I feel it tug
my heart
pull my hands 
toward itself. 
I want this; 
not to stay 
here 
this place 
I've always been 
always lived 
till now 
safe 
with little risk
of ought except 
what breeds 
contempt. 
You call across 
what once
seemed waste; 
an empty land 
I fled the thought 
in terror then 
seems promise now; 
my ears hear 
with joy
what I once feared 
and in my bones 
I know
it's time to go.

______________

Julie lives in Maurertown VA where she makes time to publish Shenandoah Seasons, a country kitchen journal honoring the simple blessings of life. As a Quaker and an Episcopalian, I can't think of anything more important than cultivating "everyday" spirituality.

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