A Spouse's Seminary Reflection

Hello from Beloit, Wisconsin!  It’s been nine months since my last posting (lol).  After TJ’s ordination to the diaconate, his ordination exams, getting pregnant, my competition season, senior celebrations, graduation, a quick trip to the Apostle Islands, packing the apartment, saying goodbye to Nashotah, moving to Beloit, TJ’s ordination to the priesthood, and settling in at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Beloit, I feel like I finally have the mental space to write again (I just read through all that and felt exhausted all over again).  It feels like things have been changing every day, but we are finally feeling like we’re settling in to our new lives.  I have been keeping a journal with writing prompts, and I’m so happy to have some space to actually write again. 

If you’ve been reading our blog these past three years, thanks for hanging in!  We have revamped the whole site and will add lots of awesome stuff.  It’s not only our way of updating our family and friends in one place, but also our creative outlet.  So, thanks for checking in, and sorry we are slow on the updates J

As you can see from our last post, TJ was ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee this past December:

During his winter break from school, TJ prepared himself for the ordination exams, which for him was basically three days of essay questions with very specific instructions.  Apparently it’s pretty difficult to prepare yourself for these exams, so TJ’s pre-test prep included hauling two huge boxes of books to his study carrol in the library and praying for the best:

 We endured another polar vortex in January, with actual temperatures near -40 and windchills of -15987.  We holed up in our apartment and tried not to get too bored.  A few weeks later, we found out I am pregnant… so I guess we didn’t get too bored during that time…

(Baby girl and I finished a strenuous hike in the Apostle Islands together)

(flash forward to the third trimester and more than ready to meet this little one!)

(Jason enjoyed the polar vortex)

Competition season at Studio One was awesome, as usual!  Being here during these last three years has been such a blessing.  It was only supposed to be a three-year deal for me while we were in seminary, but I fell in love with those darn people and found it really difficult to completely step away when we moved.  Since I am (quite) pregnant right now, I’ve taken a small hiatus, but still managed to choreograph a few pieces for competition season and sub some classes.  After the baby is born, I’ll return periodically to sub and rehearse my competition pieces for this season.

(This awesome team swept first, second, and third place overall at this competition!)

The weeks between Easter and graduation were full of some really wonderful celebrations for the seniors.  To be very honest: in the weeks leading up to graduation, we were *more* than ready to move out and get on with it -- which, by the way, I think is the healthiest response to the end of seminary... to get on with it!  However, the community at Nashotah House will always be special to me.  Being able to share a meal with the seniors and their families at the Deanery, laugh and cry at the Women of Nashotah House brunch, and have one more round at the weird and wonderful Splash Martini Bar – the time I spent with these people will always be precious to me, for better or for worse.

Finally – FINALLY – TJ graduated! 

(Preparing to take a senior photo, with Jason practicing his "flips" in the middle)

(This is the face of sheer excitement after the very last evening prayer)

We took a quick trip “up nort” to the Apostle Islands and Duluth, MN.  It was a little hectic planning a trip right between graduation and moving, but it was just the respite we needed.  We enjoyed some quiet family time, beautiful hiking, and lots of good food.  Wisconsin, you are beautiful.

One by one, the seniors began leaving Nashotah House right after graduation.  Saying goodbye was hard, but we are completely positive we have made lifelong friends here.  It’s reassuring to know TJ has a support network of other friends/priests who have followed the same path he has.  I have already been able to spend time with Maryl, who is thankfully still pretty close to WI, and there is another reunion in the works not only for me and Catie, but for Jason and his best friend Alexandra (!!!).  When you live in community together, experience true joy and immense heartache together, bond and argue together, and go through intense spiritual transformation together, you can’t help but be bonded whether you like it or not.  These are my people.

The goodbyes were definitely the hardest on Jason – Nashotah House is pretty much all he knows since we moved here when he was eight months old.  He made his first friends here, and was completely devastated watching them leave.  Holding my son while he cried about not getting to see Alexandra whenever he wanted was heartbreaking, and it’s very hard to explain to a three-year-old that you can still be friends with someone who lives far away.  We have been surviving on FaceTime and snail mail, and he will hopefully be surprised with a reunion very soon!

To finish out the long road to priesthood, TJ was ordained in a beautiful service at St. Paul’s at the end of June.  This will be a whole other post of its own, but I can very much assure you that it was a lovely and surreal celebration.

(People often ask us how we keep Jason so quiet in church.  The answer is cars and trains.  Sorry Fr. Scott, he wasn't paying attention to your sermon.)

(Vesting the new priest)

(Proof that I cry literally always)

(Father TJ celebrating the Eucharist for the first time)

(... and giving the blessing for the first time)

Finally – we are here in Beloit, getting settled in to a new house, new routines, new grocery stores (hey Woodmans, I love you... also Schnucks is BACK) a new church, and new friends.

(It's a work in progress, but the rectory is coming together!  Here's my favorite room, the living room)

(... and another favorite room, the screened-in porch.  For you Ralphie fans reading the blog, this was the easiest move this cat has ever made: a one-hour car ride from our apartment in Nashotah to our rectory in Beloit, and then he promptly fell in love with this porch and had zero problems moving in)

(The baby's room is almost done as well!  Here's Jason rediscovering his old baby toys we saved)

(... and a sneaky picture when I couldn't find him one day and had discovered him reading to himself in his baby sister's chair)

Reflecting on these last three years spent in the woods of Nashotah, I still find myself asking “did we really do that?  Are we actually crazy?”  If you remember how we made the decision to do all this, then the answer is yes, we are a little crazy.  But now that we’re on the other side, we have been able to take long looks back and really see how much this experience has caused us to grow and change.

(Home sweet Nashotah home, the day we moved in)

When I first found out that the MDiv program at Nashotah House included three years of community living, I protested just a little.  There was the option of completing the program online, but TJ was really attracted to the idea of being physically on-campus, participating in the daily rhythms of prayer, class, and meals together.  I was still super reluctant.  I had already done the whole campus living thing in college, and now I was an adult woman with a family and I had to do it again?  Ew.  But now, having done it, I cannot imagine not doing it.

*honest realness coming up*

After being in a house for seven years, moving back to an apartment was a hard pill to swallow.  Not to mention a small apartment.  We had already purged over half the items in our St. Louis house, and our apartment still felt cramped.  Some of our furniture legit didn’t fit through the door, so our parents mercifully kept it in their houses until we moved.  Suddenly our cute yard where we spent hours of uninterrupted time became a community yard/parking lot where it was hard to get a moment alone.

As we got to know the other students and their families, with new waves of students coming in each fall, we learned that we are all here for the same reason (school and hopefully gainful employment in a church someday) but we are all extremely different.  Sometimes the differences could be overlooked, but sometimes we felt that it was hard to just be ourselves.

Once TJ got through orientation his first year and officially started school, I realized just how isolated I felt as a student spouse.  There was a support network within the Women of Nashotah House, but I didn’t get the same immersion experience that TJ did as a student.  I wanted to get something out of this experience too, but was very unsure of what it was going to be.  At times, I just felt like I was keeping my head above the water.

As the semesters wore on, we started to get more comfortable with each other.  This was great, and also even more isolating.  We began to form deep friendships, and found people that we could truly open up to.  However – and this is some real realness right here – there were times when I felt like I was treated differently because of how TJ was perceived as a student.  I would hear about a difficult conversation he had in class or in the refectory about a “hot button theological matter” (and it feels like everyone has different hot buttons, so everything becomes a hot button and we stop having meaningful discussions about hard topics).  Then, at the next social event when all the students and their families were together, there would be certain classmates who once spoke to me that were suddenly acting differently.  Or – even worse – there were classmates who never took the time to get to know me because I was just a student wife.  Maybe it was because I wasn’t a theologian, maybe it was my gender, but I always felt like I was on the outskirts in these situations.  When you’re trying to maintain a healthy community, this is not a good feeling.

Meanwhile, my personal pursuit of Christ was getting messed up.  I wanted so badly to bolt headfirst down this new Anglican path, but I just couldn’t figure it out.  I had thousands of questions about the new and strange rituals, and utter confusion as to why *some* of us get so upset when a small mistake is made during one of these rituals.  I suddenly couldn’t figure out how to pray anymore.  I felt like everything was a foreign language, but that it was exactly what I was supposed to be doing at the same time.

PS – what I just wrote was hard to admit in a public space, and I'm sure there were many things I could have done differently in the unpleasant situations I described.  I don’t feel the need to apologize.  However, I do want to stress that this was *my* experience.  I can’t speak for the other spouses, or the overall culture on campus.  But I believe in honesty, and this is me being honest.  Moving on…

One of the best things I did for myself while at Nashotah was get a spiritual director.  The best thing she did was encourage me to be honest during our time together.  We talked, we laughed, we prayed, I cried (not surprising).  I tended to forget that, as my husband was enduring an intense transformation during his path to the priesthood, I was also being transformed.  She was there to remind me of this, to ask me the hard questions about prayer, to encourage me to adopt a rule of life for myself.  This served me well during our seminary time, and will continue to serve me well.

Another wonderful thing I did for myself was figure out my own spirituality – apart from TJ.  It would have been easy to do my own thing during our seminary time, and ask him surface-level questions about his day and what he was learning/experiencing.  But, for our family, God distinctly called both of us to this journey, and He called me down my own spiritual path.  I engaged my husband, other seminarians, and spouses in deep conversations.  I pursued prayer and worship in different ways to figure out what works best for me.  I learned about my faith, with TJ and apart from TJ.  I don’t believe I’ll ever come to a conclusion in my spirituality, but I do believe in the importance of seeking it out alongside my husband and others AND by myself. 

But the best, best thing I did for myself during this weird time – and the best piece of advice I would give to other student spouses – is to go to morning prayer and Eucharist in the Nashotah House chapel at least once a week.  It makes for an early morning, but it’s worth it, I promise.  You might think that you’ll have time for a cup of coffee and to make yourself look decent, but you’ll be running in right before the Angelus rings to start the day.  Sit in the very back.  Take your child, if you have one.  Let him drop his cars on the hardwood floor and startle everyone as they try to concentrate.  If you’re not familiar with the Book of Common Prayer, use it.  Let it be confusing.  Lose your place as you’re flipping back and forth.  Try to hold your baby and the BCP, but then set your BCP down on the chair without losing your page for the tenth time and pick up your hymnal because it’s time to sing.  Kneel – but wait, there’s no kneelers, so you’re going to be on the hard floor that, for the better part of the year, is covered in salt and melting snow from winter boots.  Your child will crawl into your lap when you’re trying to earnestly confess your sins.  Try to actually pray, even though you might feel like you’re reading words on a page.  Come forward for the Eucharist, and kneel next to people who thoroughly pissed you off the day before.  Hopefully you’ve forgiven them before you’ve received the bread and wine, but I would venture a guess that many of us don’t do that.  Maybe you should be controversial and receive the Eucharist anyway.  Maybe something about the bread and the wine will transform you and cause you to walk back to your seat realizing that you love this place and you love these people.  In the midst of hard stuff, we are all here, praying and searching, eating and drinking, worshipping and questioning.  Finally, receive your blessing.  Watch your spouse hang their cassock in their stall and move on with their day while you move on with yours, in opposite directions. 

Maybe – hopefully – you will do this.  During your time at Nashotah as a spouse, you will mostly feel like you’re on the outside looking in.  Please force yourself in.  Let it be confusing and awkward, like you’re crashing someone else’s party – it gets better.  I pray that, by the final months of your third year, you will look forward to morning prayer and mass.  You won’t be confused by the BCP anymore – maybe you memorized some stuff!  You won’t be self-conscious about your child dropping cars on the floor and making fart noises, because these future priests need to figure out how to focus when their congregants are noisy.  You won’t mind the early morning – the lake right outside the chapel is beautiful and still in the morning light.  Most importantly, receive the Eucharist with people you love and people you find hard to love. You will realize that coming to the altar with your community can truly be a transformative experience. 



To sum it all up, I would absolutely go on this exact journey again.  I would return to Nashotah House over and over.  I would choose, again, to awkwardly make new friends in the beautifully flawed community.  I would choose, again, to live in that tiny apartment, with the sweetest neighbors next door.  I would choose, again, to stumble through my spirituality and undo everything just to figure it all out again.  This was one of the hardest and most rewarding things our little family could have ever done.  Because we chose to do it, I believe we can do just about anything.