One of my favorite essays that I read as an undergraduate at Pitt was Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. As I was setting up my bookshelf yesterday in my new room, I couldn't help but skim some of my highlighted passages. In her essay, Woolfe argues that women are great writers, but cannot write in their current social environments because "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (Woolfe 4). Such a simple statement. A statement that helps me make sense of why I've been unable to write in the last month.
About a month ago I moved from Ann Arbor, Michigan back to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to spend time with my family before moving into Household and working for University Christian Outreach (UCO). The first two weeks home were really difficult for me because of the culture shock. I went from living with nine women in a space designed for 3 to living with my mom and sister in a space that could easily fit double that. My mom works the daylight shift as a nurse, and my sister works evenings as a waitress, so I spent a lot of time at home by myself. The suburbs can be quite a lonely place on a weekday afternoon when you have nothing to do. Also, my mom and sister are the type of people who eat a pot of coffee for breakfast, sunflower seeds and a piece of fruit for lunch, then everything but the kitchen sink for dinner. I'm the type of person who skips a meal only when violently ill.
Another area I struggled with being at my parent's house was having a consistent prayer time. It's hard to find a time to pray when you're living out of boxes and unsure what's going on. Eventually I realized that if prayer time was a priority for me, I'd have to prioritize it one day at a time. By the third week I started driving my mother to work (at 6:30 am!) and having my prayer time right when I got home. In consistently offering my loneliness and frustrations over to the Lord, the culture shock began to lift. I began moving my things into Household, and a moved in officially last night.
What can I compare to the joy of sleeping in your own bed for the first time in 11 months? In a room of one's own? It feels like catching your breath after running a race you didn't think you could finish. Now that your blood's no longer pounding so violently in your head, you can hear your internal voice again. The race stretched and challenged you, but it's the cool down that makes you feel most like yourself.
When I look around my new room, I see a tangible expression of how the Lord worked through me on my GAP year. My mom's old chest of draws, my sister's desk, a desk chair from my grandparent's kitchen table remind me that my family loves me and will continue to support me wherever life leads me. My bookshelf crammed with everything from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man to Dr. Seuss' O The Places You'll Go! encourages me to learn something new everyday. The sunlight streaming across my black prayer chair reminds me to fix my eyes on the Lord during this time of transition. And my fireplace (ps. our house was built in 1900!) covered with the photographs of the women and men I've met along my journey reminds me of the Lord's love for me.
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