Today’s post is from Laura, happily Ryan’s wife, Vivienne’s and Lia’s mommy, and a child of God: She is blessed to have a life that can focus on these joys. She blogs at 10 Million Miles.

Travel back in time with me to my college days, when I was the musical director for our campus- only female a cappella group. Ah, the days when we cared more about the color scheme of our outfits than we did about the harmony of our opening triad – and got away with it! Who could blame us for our shallow preoccupation? We were riding on the coat-tails of gorgeous, high-achieving, ever-popular foremothers who taught us the importance of looking as good as we sounded. Each year, dozens of star-eyed freshmen auditioned while only two or three were accepted. We were the “acappella elite” in our world. So, you can imagine, once a girl was accepted, she was committed -for life.

It was a Thursday evening rehearsal when Alison, a junior at the time, blurted out an announcement that shocked us all: she quit.

Alison: our funky, book-loving, outdoorsy alto.

Quit: something so inconceivable that we renamed her decision, “taking a break”.

Actually, there was more to the shock: she quit everything. And why? “To listen to God without the static of a packed agenda, pre-existing conditions, and obligations.”

Alison: promising business major, sorority girl, Christian club regular, campus news writer…

Quit: words like “crazy”, “wasteful”, and “ABNORMAL” came to mind. (After all, doesn’t every upperclassman wake up in the middle of a nightmare hours before dawn as her subconscious freaks about her resume? Naturally, the NORMAL co-ed spends the next few sleepless weeks grappling to cram in a few more extracurricular activities before graduation day. This is no time to quit anything!)

Our little musical group was seriously sobered that evening.

As Alison graciously answered our aggressive questions, I got the feeling that she had walked into another world. Like Lucy Pevensie walking past the fur coats into a magical world of Narnian snow, Alison had somehow stepped out of our competitive collegiate environment into a world where she was free to slow time down, to say “no” whenever she needed to. She was not just resisting the status quo; she was living without it entirely.

At the time, I handled Alison with kid gloves – supporting her odd decision, while keeping a safe distance in case she was… contagious. I noticed, however, that her life became beautifully quiet. Iʼd stop by her apartment on my way to a meeting, a stack of binders and a cardboard cup of mocha latte in hand, and Alison would be sitting on the couch, a Bible on her lap, smiling up at me, free to spend the rest of the evening teaching me what she had been learning about the Lord. That is, if I didnʼt have to run off to that pesky meeting.

My brain was so deeply ingrained with “Commitment!”, “Accomplishment!”, “Approval!”, “Involvement!”, that I could not entertain the possibility of quitting anything – let alone everything. The way I figured it, if God needed my time or attention, He would just have to keep up with me or shout a little bit louder to compete with my exhilarating schedule. Several years marched by as I reveled in accomplishments, checking things off my extensive “to-do” lists, busting my rear-end to please people, and striving to achieve the golden status quo.

Then I got married.

And had a baby.

And tried enthusiastically to pull these two new faces into my spinning, selfish lifestyle. But, before I knew it, we crashed into a marital crisis so tragic that it would have ended in a divorce if God hadnʼt shouted so loudly that we had to reorder our lives.

To be continued tomorrow…

(Read part 2 here)

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Posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 and journaled under Uncategorized. Follow the coffee talks on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a Coffee Talk or trackback from your own site. Keep up with Like a Warm Cup of Coffee by subscribing here.