I’ve tried writing this a dozen times over the last year at least. So, because I haven’t put pen to paper, or finger to key, I now have a list of items I heave learned over these last two years and so I have decided to try and keep it simply to the ah ha moments.

Two years ago, I left the community and the job where I was happiest and felt most loved. While all my twists and turns up to this job didn’t make sense, where I was made sense. At least it made sense until the day I realized I couldn’t stay. In a moment, everything I knew was turned out onto the ground, knocked from its foundation.

I had so identified with ‘find what you love and do it,’ that I had become what I loved. Which was great, right up to the moment I realized I didn’t love it anymore.  Bring on the tears, followed by more tears and many sleepless nights.

Compounding this sense of dread was having only a vague sense of where I should go next. I only knew for sure I couldn’t stay where I was. The community I loved and felt loved, but I had moved there for the job and it was a small town, with little more to offer a liberal arts major and I was ready for a the city.

I now live in Washington DC with many many recent college grads still finding themselves in new careers, jobs and degrees. Its funny how you don’t realize how you’ve changed until you meet someone where you once were.

At the beginning of all this shifting I had confused my sense of career with my sense of self. Then while talking to the 22 year olds I meet, I realized that while the foundation of my career was shaken, WHO I AM is not an issue. I am a person who will be of service my whole life, who will pursue love, joy, and beauty. I will mess up and screw up along the way. I will make right and wrong decisions and learn to love. How I express and manifest these essentials will also change.

Krista Tippet, in a conversation on pilgrimage with Paulo Coehlo, said, ‘Love is the greatest life long pilgrimage. We are always learning to love. We never really arrive at learning to love. We are constantly changing and learning how to be better.’

Right now I am figuring out how I will spend my days, how those days will sustain me financially. This is not a reflection of who I am. This is not a reflection of my ability to love and to live in the world.

Today I fly to Albuquerque to attend the Living School for Action and Contemplation. It is a two year mostly distance course with two gatherings a year. This paragraph is the primary reason I decided to apply.

The world needs places that equip individuals to serve with compassion, acknowledging our differences while valuing our one-ness. The Living School for Action and Contemplation provides such a course of study grounded in the Christian mystical tradition. Cultivating a contemplative mind through teachings and practices, students deepen their awareness of our common union with Divine Reality and all beings. Students emerge empowered to live out their sacred soul task in their homes, workplaces, and all relationships, within a more spacious stance that is at once critical, collaborative, and joyful.

When I applied for this course, and was accepted, I honestly thought all my financial instability would be cleared up. Something would come along and I would find myself with a certain financial steadiness.

It didn’t happen. Uncertainty still accompanies me on the bus as I travel to another interview and as I press send on another application.

However, self-doubt, uncertainties close cousin, is not a passenger on the bus anymore. Self-doubt, which caused many sleepless nights and tears, has been replaced by a new foundation, deeper than my profession. It has been replaced by a deeper certainty of who I am. For this, I am glad my foundation was rocked two years ago.