faith and the butterfly effect

Back in April, I had a funny little God moment that I wrote off as merely a nice confirmation of good things to come.

I was on the prowl for a full-time job of the sort that matched my resume – chock full of event and office admin experience. A friend of mine gave me the number of a friend in the construction business who was looking for someone to help him out in the office. On that slim lead (and a strong suspicion that I wouldn’t be a very good fit in any capacity in construction), I called this guy, Joel, up and asked him about the job.

Joel and I had a great conversation where he asked a lot of thoughtful questions, and we both agreed at the end that my suspicions were correct – I wouldn’t be good fit for the job. However, Joel left me with contact information for another job at a leadership development company in the area that had a job opening available for a coordinator.

Well, as a freelancer now, I know that you leave no word-of-mouth network stone unturned, so I turned that stone and sent them my resume that night.

Turns out, they had filled the position only a day before.

But wait, there’s more

That’s when the hiring manager on the other end said – “Hey, I see you have writing on your resume. Have you ever done case studies?”

I’ve done a fair amount of pitches in my time as a freelancer and aspiring author (I will claim the “author” moniker when I get a book published), and the best sort of pitch is the one someone asks for. I immediately pounced on the opportunity and told her, in no uncertain terms, that I had never written a case study in my life. (truth!) But wait! I write stories, and (as a quick Google search on “case studies” had revealed to me) a case study is essentially a story about how your product changed someone’s lives.

Just as an aside, when life presents you with opportunities to fudge your way into something or to be honest, be honest – and then fudge your way in anyway. It’s not about lying about your experiences, its about learning to apply them, and how to do so in a convincing way. You don’t need to have many experiences under your belt as long as you’re continually learning from them.

The fact of the matter is that she bought it, and gave me an opportunity to audition my writing skills, and then she hired me for regular freelance work.

I thought this was wonderful – a great opportunity to try my hand at actual paying gigs. I also considered it a sign from God, in a small way, that there was actual value in the direction I was looking at.

But wait, there’s still more

Fast-forward to July, and after three or four case studies and a dozen or so job possibilities falling through… this company offered me a job as a staff writer.

I always think of things in such small ways. I believe that God works in both big and small ways, of course, but practically I never think that those two sizes of miracles will ever intersect. But here, in the span of four months, a text from a friend made its way from two jobs that fell through to a freelance gig and a full-time job offer.

It reminds me – because I am so forgetful of these things – that the small things demand as much gratitude as the big ones. That whole butterfly effect idea, that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the globe makes a hurricane on the other, isn’t just a fancy philosophical idea. It’s basically how the life of faith works. You plant mustard seeds and they become the biggest tree in the garden. You pray a prayer and whole nations shift around it. You find a tiny grain of faith that shakes a mountain’s core. Our lives as Christians are riddled with examples of small made large.

And even if those tiny miracles just stayed tiny, would they not be worth celebrating anyway?

By the way, I talked them down to a part-time job, because between April and July I had built up a backlog of freelance gigs that were taking up so much of my time I could only accept part-time.

Our God is in the business of growth – our hearts, our minds, our worlds. I’m learning, slowly, that it’s best to be ready for anything.

 

moving into my parent’s basement

(our front door is the white cellar door on the left of the house)

One week before I turned thirty, I joined a growing percentage of my generation and moved my entire family, including four kids five and under, into my parent’s basement. Yes, after ten years living in Chicagoland, I am once again living in the same house I grew up in for twenty years.

Recently, a number of people have attempted to pinpoint the reasons for this steady increase of home-crashing, usually in economic categories – the recession, lack of jobs, the rise of housing costs, education debt, etc. For the most part, moving in with ye olde parental units has little to do with being lazy or self-entitled and more to do with the simple and strategic need to hunker down and earn some dough. That dough makes it possible to pursue other things – like saving enough money for a down payment, pursuing a career that they actually want to pursue, etc.

why we’re okay with this

We’re in both categories, actually, but there are a variety of reasons we made this choice. For one, my grandmother is aging (in her mid-90s actually) and we don’t know how much time we have left with her. Another reason is that my sister, adopted when I was in college, is close to graduating. I never got the opportunity to redeem some of the time with her that my siblings received. Now we get to hang out and watch the new season of Trollhunter.

I think we’re most pleased to be living in community with family, though. We’re blessed to have good relationships with my parents, but that alone does not make it easy. Swaths of my friends would never dream of moving in with family – the relationships are strained beyond the chasms between ideologies and understandings. In most cases, communities made of friends or even strangers are more compatible than those who have known you for years. I feel this tension, in some regard, even though not to the intensity of my friends. One reason is that we’ve already become a family unit from our time in Chicago – we have ways of living and values that are pretty set and an identity that is more or less secure.

(finally got a family photo of all six of us!)

the old is somehow new

It’s been increasingly helpful to remember that we have grown in a specific direction as a family unit, and so have those we are returning to now. My parents and siblings are not static entities – with ten years running by under the bridge, they did and experienced things that changed them. It would be easy to assume they hadn’t changed over the years, but it wouldn’t be true. The same goes for families I grew up with, friends I’ve lost touch with over this or that reason, church folks. This place, the place I knew, is not the same even as it is so similar.

This disconnect is another blessing, by the way. As I sit on my childhood porch looking out at my childhood yard, I’m thankful for the surreal nature of returning to something old and finding it new. I’m thankful for the fact that growth occurs everywhere and in everyone, not just in me and my proximal community. I’m thankful that time really does move forward in ways we cannot foresee, and that they are good.

And in the midst of this blessing, I’m cognizant that many, many people return home after years and see only stagnation and rottenness. Home is not a place of safety, nor of growth, nor of blessing for them. My faith requires me to believe that it doesn’t have to stay that way. And I also believe that perhaps, in certain circumstances (for every situation is nuanced), the sustained presence of a child of God in those stagnant places might prompt some beneficial conflict and growth.

But in the meantime, I will take the smaller tensions as they come and seek to live intentionally with my family. I would appreciate your prayers on this matter – that as we continue to integrate into this new situation, we would be flexible and patient, and that our parents and siblings would be the same.

I know several of you have moved back in with family, for short or long time frames. Any advice or thoughts on the process? What did you learn from it?

life update: a new season

Friends,

It’s been a while! I’m excited to be back writing to you about things and thoughts in both poetry and prose.

I apologize for my absence from this space in recent months – in addition to moving our entire lives to the rural wilds of Middlebury, IN, I’ve been steadily tapping away at over a dozen projects, including the redesign of the website you’re visiting right now. Here’s the short story on what’s been happening:

THE GREAT WHEELER MIGRATION

At the end of May, with the invaluable assistance and strong muscles of friends and family in Illinois and Indiana, we succeeded in moving all of our paraphernalia (and our children) into a two-bedroom apartment in my parent’s basement.

We’ve adjusted much more quickly than I would have imagined and are loving living with family. The countryside is rejuvenating after ten years living in and around Chicago, and the kids have three acres to run around on.

We really miss the community we had in Chicago, but are not missing the crazy commute and the busy schedule we kept. I’ll share more in future blog posts about what it means to move back here – for now, know that we’re settled and loving it!

WRITING FOR A LIVING

One of our goals in moving back to Indiana was for me to take a crack at freelance writing, and God has provided opportunity above and beyond what I could have expected.

  1. I got a gig doing case studies for a leadership development company in April, through a friend of a friend of a friend, which has now turned into a part-time job writing everything from training materials to scripts – and helps pay the bills.
  2. I have been able to put all of my years of listening to random artists to good use at Think Christian, where I’ve written about Jack White and Kiefer.
  3. I joined the ALTARWORK family with my poem “begin-again.
  4. I was hired to write the script for Candlelight Carols 2018 – this year, a period drama on the Christmas Truce of WW1.
  5. Daniel Mattix and I got our Lenten collaboration published over at a new choir music publisher: O Suffering Savior.
  6. And quite a few other projects in the works that I can’t discuss yet – but you’ll be the first to know!

NEW WEBSITE

We’ve finally finished up the bulk of redesign on this website, with the goal of making it more beautiful and useful to you as followers. In the time that I haven’t been posting these last two months, I’ve been stocking up blog posts and poetry to share with you once everything was in order.

This space has been and will always be about writing that comes straight from me, no edits or over-arching marketing machine.  That will never change. In fact, I recently dived into my writing archives from my teenage years and earlier, and some of those embarrassing first attempts might even end up on here…

Suffice to say – this will always be a place for the writing that interests me most, and a way to connect with you.

AUGUST PATREON LAUNCH

I’ve been looking for a way to channel and expand my liturgical writing for some time now, and Patreon first surfaced as a possible platform in January 2018. Well, after months of building and breaking and rebuilding, I’m set to launch in early August – writing liturgies for you, your families, and the church.

Patreon presents me with a unique opportunity to connect with a community of people who believe that words used in worship should be prayerfully thought through. If you decide to sign up, not only do you receive exclusive access to devotional liturgies, family collects, and new liturgies for corporate worship, but you and I can collaborate on where they go next.

I’ll be sending along more information in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned!

Friends, I’m so grateful for your continued support of me and my family through this whole process.  We’re still in a massive time of transition, which is why I’m so glad to have this open line of communication with you available again. So until the next time I write something on here (it won’t be long, I promise!), cheers.

Chris