It’s been two years now since that night in Brazil when my whole life changed, when I felt the earth shift under my feet. Over the past year, I have been especially thankful for God’s clarity in those first days. He knew there couldn’t be any doubt about the journey we were beginning because we were walking headlong into a storm with absolutely no idea what was coming.
When Saulo and I confessed our feelings to each other for the first time, I thought about all the times I said that I would not want to marry someone from another country, forever split between cultures and families, dealing with cultural differences, navigating the immigration system. Only if the love were earth-shattering and absolutely certain would I ever take it on. As it turned out, this love was. I wasn’t going to find this just anywhere, and God’s voice threaded the needle from years and prayers past, making me absolutely certain of what was happening.
“It’s going to be a lot of hard work, and it’s going to be painful,” I said to Saulo that night, “but I’m ready to do this if you are.”
I had no idea.
As so often happens when you’re following God’s lead on anything, the beginning of the new season usually looks the opposite of what you expect. (Think about the Israelites and Jericho–here’s the Promised Land! Oh, wait, here’s the biggest wall I’ve ever seen.) Saulo was my first real boyfriend, and in the two years after we met, I spent more time alone than any other season of my life. Not at the office. Not at school. Not at rehearsal. This is life, at the moment, for everyone, right? In many ways, I feel blessed. I was able to meet Saulo in London and spend a month in my favorite city with my favorite person. After a year of separation, this was a time of healing for us.
When I came home, that’s when the battle truly began. If you have never found yourself caught in an immigration process during a pandemic, I can tell you that there has never been a time when I have felt so powerless or so unable to make a good decision. I was barely hanging on by a thread when we started the K-1 visa process, anxious about every little thing that could go wrong and missing Saulo like crazy in the middle of it. One thing I was so thankful for was my job. I was making more money than I ever made before (which still wasn’t much), and I finally had good benefits as well.
I saw my job as an anchor, something that would give us what we needed for the next season. Prior to the beginning of the pandemic, I was working 12 hours a day most days, teaching piano and doing accompanying on the side to try to save as much as possible for a wedding, our first apartment. etc. Money was all I thought about, and I was feeling the pressure. In the first months of his time here, Saulo won’t be allowed to get a job, and I am his sponsor. I have to make enough for the both of us.
In many ways, I have been so blessed financially. I’ve been worried about money since I was seventeen years old, when I realized that my dream of going to college could easily be cut off simply based on dollars. After graduating from grad school, being able to get through six years of school without debt (miraculously, and thanks to my parents), I didn’t feel the freedom I expected to. I was struggling to find a decent-paying job that I actually enjoyed. I felt out of my element and frustrated by my job prospects. Like many in their mid- to late twenties, I started feeling hopeless almost immediately, especially when I checked out the rent prices in the Twin Cities.
If this all just sounds like real life hitting for the first time, that’s exactly what it is. And that’s why suddenly the question became this: “What are the most important things?” At my job, despite the pay and the benefits, I was miserable. I think I had been miserable the whole time but just too busy to notice. All in the name of being more “responsible,” I stayed in the job and planned to do so for as long as possible. I was excited for those larger paychecks, and I scheduled a doctor’s appointment for the first time in a decade. However, on a personal level, everything was deteriorating quickly, and I eventually made the choice to leave that job in February.
I started thinking about what it means to be responsible and how we relate to our own ideas of responsibility in a situation where the options are so limited. I got a new job, one that pays less but makes me significantly less miserable. The amount of money I was making in my other job already wasn’t enough to appropriately afford an apartment (i.e. I would be spending significantly more than the 30% or so that you’re supposed to spend on rent every month). So when it comes down to it, what exactly was I hanging onto but the appearance of a “responsible” life without any true joy or new opportunity coming from it?
At what point does being responsible for oneself and one’s own family become about something more than a paycheck? Money is a necessary evil, and very few people that I know personally have ever been paid fairly for the work they do. We are all so affected by the culture we live in, the one designed to turn us into good tax-paying employees. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against work. But I am against a system that holds wages that are too low and benefits that are too expensive over my head in order to keep me busy and convince me to consume more and more of what it offers me. But that’s a topic for another day.
Suffice it to say that I have many other “responsibilities” in my life. To myself. To Saulo. And most importantly, to the calling God has placed on my life. I have had a lot of time to evaluate the things in my life that make me feel alive. Doing these things may involve choices that I or others would not consider “responsible.” But how do we define that anyway? Isn’t it the most “responsible” thing in the world to do what you were born to do? I’m still learning what that looks like, but knowing what comes first and what doesn’t is certainly a good first step.
Past Perfect 