During university, I was in a relationship with a young man named Steve. Steve and I cared greatly for each other and, there is no doubt in my mind, we were not good for each other at all. In some ways, I feel that way about New Jersey. I love what I have learned and experienced living in Northern New Jersey. My neighbor, a born and bred New Jerseyian, states that the state motto should be "Only the strong survive." I laugh whenever she says it, because I know the phrase holds truth for me.
As I sit intentionally and wholly present to this year long good-bye to this state I have loved and cursed, I begin to realize how much living here has changed me, and my perceptions. The sense of community and care I have found with Friends and with my neighborhood is overwhelming. The goodness I have experienced from those I have met has forever changed my perception of "East Coast types". It was here that I discovered the East Coast has the lowest rates of divorce in our country, the highest rates of high school and college graduation, and the highest property tax rates. Here that I paid into the Federal taxes in a way that made it clear that this part of the country subsidizes the wheat the farmers in Kansas grow, the roads the western states build, and children all over the country who have federally subsidized health care. And I don't think I have ever heard a complaint about that.
It was here that I realized while the whole country felt the impact of 9/11, for this region the stories are personal. Class mates whose moms and dads died in the collapse, brothers and sisters who worked in New York City and were out of touch for hours, most have a story of a connection of personal impact. And yet this region was against going to war in Iraq. I sit with that fact, and wonder what it means to be a Christian and love my enemies, and turn the other cheek.
It was here that I realized being from Kansas, Wyoming and Colorado was cool. That people want to hear stories of what it was like to grow up in a different part of the country. That the frustration with some of the political and religious differences is real, and, at the same time, there are few who resort to an "us vs. them" mentality. I just have not experienced it.
Who would have thought that the denizens of NJ overwhelmingly lived without attached garages? That many lived without central air conditioning. Or grew gardens. Or had farmland close by. And that what we held in common was much more than the differences that were highlighted my whole growing up years in the Mid-west and west.
I love what I have learned here. And this time has been hard for me personally. It was here that I was finally diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Here that I was told I needed a full thyroid removal and full neck dissection for my thyroid cancer that had progressed into my lymph nodes. Here that we have walked thru major mental illness with a family member. Here I have begun to accept how chronic illness changes one's life, one's limits, one's perceptions and ultimately how it changes one. Here L and have loved through job loss and nine months of unemployment and many meetings for worship with a concern for vocation later job found. It was here that I was finally able to fully bring the deep apocalyptical fear that had been lodged deep inside me into the Light, and wait for Jesus to speak truth to it, and see it poof away, one strand of a tightly wound ball held in the Light at a time. As the fear dissipated, I explored what it meant to live free from authoritarianism ways that I had always known.
And although it doesn't quite make sense on paper, it was here that my anger and disgust at the organized Christian church overflowed, and I left organized religion and found Friends. Here I learned about expectant waiting, and waiting for Way to open, and dropping down into the Seed, and Christ has come to teach his people himself. Here that my beginning reality of relationships of equals flowered, here that my marriage solidified, here that my parenting skills grew to encompass teens and young adults, with their own struggles, and their own beliefs, and their own Inner Light guiding them on.
In less than a year, I will be moving finally completely a very small distance geographically. Only south and a bit west, across the Delaware River, into an area of Philadelphia that has recently been included in the designation of Center City Philly. Anticipation has always been a hard word and hard work for me. It meant waiting for the other shoe to drop, increasing my already high alert hyper-vigilance to avoid damage or hurt. For the first time, I have the time and the ability to anticipate a change in location. I love to move, I always have, for me, there is a freedom that comes from not having deep ties to a place. Wanderlust could be my middle name, but anticipation is new to me. And I want to savor every minute of the back and forth from NJ to Philly, every moment of grief at leaving the communities I love, every moment of anticipation at the communities I will find there. I want to hold space for my sons as they work through their own feelings of dislocation, and for the 15 year old as he deals with moving part way through his high school years. We are not all, obviously, on the same page feelings wise about this move. But the unemployment went on long enough that we are all grateful for the new job. And we are all connected still in love.
L has already made the move, our Morristown home has become a vacation home to him. The row home in Philadelphia is where he lives, this home is where he visits. And where his family and his puppies still have their abode.
When we moved here, there was deep grief in me, I felt as if I had been torn from Australia too soon. I wanted to go back. There was nothing in me that was ready to leave. Leaving New Jersey feels so different. I leave in a state of readiness.
In NJ, it feels as if I have purged many of the old automatic responses that no longer serve me well. What will this new place teach me? What new questions will I learn to live into?
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