Wandering in the Wilderness

It was over two years ago that health issues caused me to make some decisions that would dramatically affect my life. At the time, I was working as a professor of speech communication and theater...something I had been doing for over twenty years. I was good at it. I loved my students. It was something I thought I'd do until I retired. Then life happened. The aforementioned health issues resulted in four back to back surgeries that decimated my energy and required a lot of recovery time. I found that I could no longer give 100% to my students, nor could I envision when I would be able to operate at full capacity again. So I made a difficult decision. I took early retirement. My husband had recently been laid off from his job as a geologist. We were in the wind.

We took the money I had accumulated in my retirement account and bought an abandoned manufactured home (with a lot of problems caused by neglect) and fifteen acres in the middle of nowhere in rural Missouri. In our aging vehicles, we transported 5 dogs and 5 cats six hundred miles to our new home. We arrived, exhausted, to find that every water pipe in the home had frozen and busted. We took what money we had left and replumbed the home, bought a new holding tank, a new hot water heater, ripped up ruined carpeting, and replaced flooring in the rooms we would most frequently use. (The rest is still a work in progress).

There we were. In the middle of nowhere. No jobs. No prospects. No money. Doug took whatever temporary, soul sucking job he could get to keep us afloat. That hasn't changed much. My health was still precarious and I did not trust myself to be able to hold down a job. I am finally getting stronger because my husband values my life more than my ability to contribute to the family coffer. But I was left adrift, no longer tied to the work that had always defined me, feeling useless and used up. I was literally wandering in the wilderness, which might have been beautiful if I had not been so filled with despair.

Being alone in the middle of nowhere gives you time to think. Wandering in the wilderness reveals faint paths you need to carefully uncover to follow. My husband, Doug, helped me uncover those paths. He encouraged me to follow them, and assured me he would be with me every step of the way. Because of him, I have ventured forth into my new life, born of my sojourn in the wilderness. I am finding my way as an author, as a performing artist, as a storyteller. I celebrate being part of a small community that values theater, that embraces art in all its forms. This is never what I imagined my life would be. I miss my students. I always will. But here I stand, reborn.

There is a saying that "Not all who wander are lost." I think that is only partly true. Lost is part of the process. So is found. By wandering in the wilderness, we come back to ourselves stronger and braver, with new knowledge and new dreams. It is not an easy journey. But it is worthwhile. Here's to the wild places in all of us.