Reflections on Resignation

As most of you know, I have decided not to return to Cono in the fall. I should have posted this awhile ago, as I announced it in January, and I recently heard some crazy rumours flyings around Chattanooga that I was leaving effective immediately, which of course is not true. I will be sad to leave this place and these friends, but it is time. I'm moving back to live with my family in Maryland for a while and to take some time to figure out what I'd like to do with this life. I spoke in chapel recently about the things that God has taught me while I have been here, and it's going in the Cono Bulletin, so I thought I'd post it here:

Cono is a place for young people to learn and grow in a Christ-centered community. We expect that students will learn—to write critically, to find the area of parallelogram, to dribble a soccer ball, to mop a floor, and most of all, to know Christ and to understand their task in cultivating creation. I have been a part of this education and life for five years. It has been a privilege to teach English and direct plays, but Cono has also been a place for me to learn and grow.

Five years ago I arrived on this Midwestern campus, fresh out of college. I was 22 years old—young, idealistic, in many ways naïve, and certainly full of myself. It had been a sudden decision to come teach at Cono. Andrew Belz had called the morning after I had declared to friends that I wanted someone to just offer me a job so I wouldn’t have to look. I also knew it would be good for me to get away from an unwholesome relationship in my hometown; like my students, I came partly to get away from some bad influences. God had made it clear that this where he wanted me, but I wasn’t so sure. I’ve grown up some in the five years here, and I’d like to list some of what God has taught me.

I don’t always know what is best for me. My senior year of college, I lived in a house with six girls. After that, I was looking forward to living in calm solitude and saw the move to Cono as a fulfillment of that. However, shortly before I came, I was informed that I would have a roommate. I was angry and resentful of this, and yet, once the year began, I realized that living with Elisabeth Winkler was both more enjoyable and beneficial than living alone ever would have been.

The best way to learn history is to live with a history major. This is a specific example of the aforementioned benefits of life with Elisabeth. If there is anything you are interested in learning, find someone who knows it well, and live with that person.

Change comes slowly, but it does come. The first two months that I was at Cono, I couldn’t make it through the church service without leaving in tears. The style and structure of worship felt so confining, and I chafed against the difference, impatient for change. Since then, the church has changed, but perhaps more importantly, I have too. One of the changes is that I have realized more what submission to church leaders entails.

Submission means obeying when you don’t want to. Essentially, my desire for autonomy is not a legitimate excuse to resist authority. I have not yet learned to enjoy submitting to an authority that I disagree with, but at least I understand that my will doesn’t negate the need for obedience.

Hymns are worth appreciating and loving. Once, in high school, I sat down to page through the Trinity Hymnal and count the number of hymns I actually liked. I came up with nine. As I have been part of a church culture that cherishes and sings so many hymns, that number has grown significantly. I am glad to have so many words of truth now familiar to me.

Structure is a good thing. My natural inclination is toward spontaneity and procrastination. The structure and rhythms of Cono life sometimes feel confining, but I have also learned the richness of planning in order to make good use of the time when you have it.

It is very easy to get your car stuck in Iowa mud. Apparently, small purple cars can’t be driven like military SUV’s. I have learned this twice in the mud and once in a snowdrift. Consequently, I also learned that people in the Cono community are able to literally pull me out of my foolish predicaments without patronizing or shaming me.

I cannot make it through the day without the help of God. I always knew that I should feel this way, but through most of my life, I have felt capable of handling things. In college, it seemed as though I often made it through the day on my own intelligence and abilities, but at Cono, I started to see my need for Jesus early in the morning. Each day, with its mixture of lesson planning, conversations with students, need for gentleness and firmness, and unexpected demands, was clearly beyond my own strength. Of course, this had always been true, but I have come to know it as truth in the past five years.

As I look back over these years, these are just some of the things that God has taught me. I’m sure most will need to be learned again. I will as likely again believe that my way is best as I will treat my little car like a Hummer. And the one who pulls me out of the mud with a truck and chain will be yet another lesson of God’s willing rescue and restoration, entirely free from condemnation.

Like many of our students, I was resistant to the idea of being at Cono. I wanted more freedom and less structure. On my own, I would not have chosen to come here, but God’s ways are not my ways and his will is not my will. The past five years at Cono have taught me to be full of gratitude and humility that he is God, and that I am not. May his will be done, and may we all, children and adults, know and see the joy of it.