Jump

So I’m at the bank. I was going to give it six months, then nine months, then a year sounded good. Something was bound to come up…it always had. My first plan of marital bliss and babies wasn’t happening for me. Funny how we think we can plan those things when we are eighteen. It was becoming obvious at twenty-six that I was going to need a new plan… one that I had more control over. Control is a funny thing…when we think we have it, we realize we don’t at all and when we try to give it up we find ourselves taking it back before it even leaves our hands.
Growing up I spent countless hours jumping on the trampoline. It was solace to me. I would jump and jump and try with everything to jump straight into the sky and never come back down. I would jump until I had no breath to breathe then lay there looking at the sky, heaving and daydreaming. One day I would have a house where all the floors were made of trampoline. Of course it would have to have high ceilings and the floors would have to be dug out at least four feet below. I had thought of everything.
I learned many tricks as I prepared for the first Olympic gold medal in trampoline for the most back flips in a row. My record still stands at 32. But my favorite thing to do on the trampoline was to jump as high as I could in the air and lay out horizontally spreading my limbs as far as they would go out to the side, stretched to all four corners of the earth and wait for the impact of the canvas. As I allowed my body to receive the canvas it in turn threw me back into the air and on to my feet. I would do this over and over trying to embrace that sinking feeling.
This is what I felt as I continually tried to give my career to God during this time. I was ready to “let go and let God.” “God, you are so much more capable to make this decision than I am, I trust you to bring something perfect along and I give up complete control.” I kept getting confused when I found myself back on my feet again. Without the effort it took to jump there was no way to figure out what it feels like to fall.
I felt as if I was supposed to make the decision of what I will do with the rest of my life. I knew I could plan for the next year or the next six months even, but I wanted to ensure that I would never be in this position again. I’ve never been the type to know exactly what I wanted to do with my life, or even what I was really good at. I’ve been careful all along to make decisions that would provide me with more choices. Go to college so that I will have more career choices, go into business because there are so many different opportunities, finance has so many options for women and more varied career alternatives. That’s what someone with no plans or dreams other than getting married and having babies does. It was more of a waiting game than a path to something.
During college I also had the unfortunate timing of going through the phase of life where I have no idea who I am. I guess its all part of “coming of age,” but for me it was a true identity crisis. How do you make the decision that will forever be the answer to the question “What is your degree in?” when you are going through a phase like that? I had no defining sense of self; my choices were based solely off of what others were doing around me. I tried to convince myself that I liked my sorority and the date parties that came along with it. But I think they only fed the insecurities.
I made the friends of my life while I was in college. I am continually baffled that they saw anything beyond the false façade I was throwing out for everyone. I wasn’t purposefully trying to be fake, I just didn’t know what else to do. I prayed often that God would allow me to be myself, or even reveal to me who that is. It’s almost impossible to find any value in yourself when you don’t even know who that person is. I felt like a shell and I was ashamed.
But that was college. Sitting there at the bank four and a half years after college, I was well aware of who I was. I was so keenly aware of who I was that going to work everyday sometimes hurt. I would put on my suit and heels, dressing the part, but feeling more like I was dressing for Halloween. I worked hard, so hard that you might get the impression that I cared about my work. I would try to do as much work as I could possibly fit into my eight-hour day, knowing that every spare minute felt like an eternity. I guess a few people there got the idea that I was ambitious about my future at the bank. They started changing my title so that I would feel more important. Like Dwight… “Assistant to the Regional Manager to Assistant Regional Manager” I’m pretty sure I got the same promotion twice and they forgot they already gave it to me.
Eventually everything came to a head. I’m patiently waiting on God’s perfect timing (i.e. Crystal Ball) to reveal to me my future. More accurately stated, I am not doing anything toward changing my future because I’m preoccupied with daily life. Meanwhile, I start spending hours in the office of my boss’s boss’s boss. We keep having these discussions about my future at the bank…where do I see myself? He gives me some amazing options there, that timing and circumstance just randomly opened up. I start wondering about timing and circumstance. Day after day he calls me into his office and continues to question me and finally after a month or two of blowing smoke up his ars, I decide to be honest. “I could give this a shot, but you probably want someone in that position who is going to care more, who wants the job and sees a future in it.” I tell him I would love more than two weeks to figure out what’s next. He agrees to two more months.
Walking away from the bank at the end of May, I still had no job. I had a few irons in the fire and some hope for the future. This hope, though not as steady as a paycheck, provided me with so much more security. Ahh... hope. That old familiar friend. I floated from there…falling, falling, falling…embracing the sinking feeling. I anticipate landing on something that will not hurt or crush me. An impact that will accept me, the real me, and envelop me and throw me back onto my feet. But first I had to jump.