Church of the Chora, Constantinople

Then

Pascha 2012 was, perhaps, not my brightest moment. I had recently moved to Austin and had only just started attending St. Elias, but between my new job and my temporary living situation I had a looong daily commute, and I wasn’t able to make it to a single service for Holy Week. Still I thought, I can be there for Pascha.

Of course it did not work out that way, mostly because I had failed to account for the reality of life in a much larger city. The streets downtown were packed as I drove to church, people pouring out of bars and onto the sidewalk, cars meandering in and out of lanes, and even a few horsedrawn carriages walking straight up Congress Street to really keep things interesting. When I did finally arrive at St. Elias, I found there wasn’t a single parking space within three blocks of the church. I was tired, I was overwhelmed, and I was beginning to doubt the sagacity of a move from country life to a thriving metropolis when I was clearly ill-equipped to handle the transition. I burst into tears, gave up, and went home.

Like I said: not my brightest moment.

Now

A lot has happened in the year since then. My moments of doubt have been replaced by a growing sense of comfort and confidence that this is where I need to be, downtown traffic and all, and I have found a wonderful home in my new church.

So this Lent and Holy Week that’s exactly where I was. As much as I was able to be, and grateful for the gift that is this particular season of my life, I was in church. It was wonderful.

And I made it to Pascha. Last year’s had been a sad and lonely affair, a tearful time of prayer in my room as the clock turned over to midnight. This year I celebrated with my church family, receiving the light and proclaiming aloud with the multitude: Christ is Risen!

Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness. (St. John Chrysostom)

Now I really feel as though my year has come full circle. The negative has made way for the positive, the good experiences have redeemed the bad. My life is here now, truly and fully. I am home.

I’ve tried to be intentional about my time, space, and need for quiet this Lent. It’s been a good few weeks, lots of time for thinking (and repenting and praying), lots of church services to attend, and sometimes days like today: rising with the sun, checking everything off the To Do list, and then resting to enjoy the fruits of good labor.

I need more days like this, after Lent. Cutting back has made me see how much I don’t want to be running around everywhere, or seeing everything, or staying busy. I still fill my life with a lot of nonessential stuff, while what my soul really needs is more quiet and space.

What my soul really needs is more days like today.

I even organized my bathroom. I find this very relaxing.

(My mom would be so proud.)

And after all that, I made food and watched an 80′s movie. It was a good day.

Happy Saturday <3

I’ve been working on this now for over a year.

It seems fitting that my marker gave up the ghost just today as I was putting on the finishing touches.

A (mostly) full accounting of a very full year.

I think it’s safe to say that I can draw my new home state far better than I can draw my old one.

I still get whomped with allergies this time of year and I’ve seen far more cockroaches since the first one that scuttled away from my feet. Austin did not, perhaps, leave me with the greatest of first impressions.

But I’m still here.

I’ve been at St. Elias for just over a year now. It’s a wonderful, wonderful church, and every day I am thankful not only for Orthodoxy, but for a parish that supports and expresses it so beautifully.

Of course, in laying out the curtain for completion and subsequent photographing, the cats assumed that I was providing a fun service just for them.

As I said, it’s been a full year. All the things we did together when my family came to visit…

…and all the ways my first birthday in Austin would be one to remember.

 There was this little tidbit from last April:

It came as a direct result of a Facebook status I posted about wide open spaces being good for my country girl soul. A friend posted in response, “Maybe we should go do something to get you some country air this weekend.”

And so we did.

So much of this year has not been blogged, but it has been preserved in a different way. Facebook, Instagram…and a shower curtain: my first full year in Austin.

My first you-are-so-an-Austinite-now moment: SXSW kicked off last week, and as I headed through town on Friday I was more than a little tempted to grouse and grumble about the traffic that it created.

But then I stopped myself, and really considered the fact that I live in a city where people really want to be. Like, really REALLY want to be…and that’s kind of awesome.

Sometimes all you need is a little re-framing.

I was driving through town to hang out with a friend who’s both a fellow ex-pat from the Northeast and a transplanted veteran of nearly three years, and we’ll both be headed home for visits this summer. “I’m going to the beach every morning,” I said. “And one morning I’m going to get up early enough to watch the sunrise.”

Which led, of course, to talking of home and reminiscing on our peaceful, quiet, middle-of-nowhere childhoods.

Do you remember what it’s like to sit in your backyard and not hear a sound except for bugs?

Do you remember what it was like when nighttime was actually dark?

For all of the cultural clashes that have come – and there have been many – the biggest hurdle to transitioning to life here in Austin has not been that I’m a Mainer living in Texas but that I’m a country girl living in the big city, and I’m re-framing a lot of things these days.

SXSW is like ten days of San Diego Comic Con for people who are into tech, movies, music, and gaming. It’s incredible, interactive, and much of it is entirely free. This year SXSW will host 30,000 paying attendees, not to mention the thousands more who will attend the free shows and events. Famous people, famous bands, tons of partying.

Meanwhile I’m boggling because that’s over six times the population of my entire hometown.

I miss it sometimes. A lot. I miss the quiet and the green. I miss the way that grass feels cold and soft on your toes. I miss the ocean. I miss the stillness.

I could never ever move back there and be as happy as I am here. For one, summer is just not long enough. And Austin is vibrant in all the ways that New England isn’t – on the whole, what it offers far outweighs what it lacks.

But I do miss it sometimes: being a country girl. I am happiest exploring the city when it’s calm and everyone else is busy working. I am happiest when I go to events with a minimum of at least two feet of space between each person. I am happiest staying in at night.

I cannot pinpoint this need to justify my choices, but just as I was several months ago, I find myself once again wrestling with ideas of what it means to be here and what life in Austin “should” involve. Maybe I need to stop listening to my delightfully extroverted coworkers who thrive on the action and pay attention instead to what nurtures me.

“The Upside of Being an Introvert” by Noelle Stevenson

So for this year, at least, this will be my SXSW experience: quiet and rest.

Lent is coming up next week, a time as blessed as it is physically and spiritually demanding. More church services mean things get just a little busier, and the delightfully warm weather is pushing us all outside. So while the rest of Austin parties I’ll be taking a pause, clearing my head, and enjoying the silence.

My blood, it seems, became Texan very quickly.

It’s been one year, one week, and one day since I left New England, and almost a year since I’ve been in Austin. While it is undeniably fun for me to share my story (yes, I drove 2000+ miles on my own. no, I didn’t have a job. yes, I stayed with friends that I met on the internet. no, I wasn’t scared.) it’s also hard for me to see it as something all that remarkable. Moving to Austin made such perfect, deep-down-in-my-gut sense that I never really felt the pangs of nervousness or uncertainty.

Me, the happy homebody, who still shudders at even the possibility of navigating downtown when it’s crowded, confidently traversed half the country to move to a city where I could count the number of people that I knew on one hand. If that’s not a divinely-gifted assurance – for which I can claim no credit – then I really don’t know what is.

One year.

Back home, the month of February is approached with something like a resigned dread. Garrison Keiller said that God made the month of March to show “people who don’t drink what a hangover feels like,” and in New England, we reach that point about a month before that. I’ve never really liked February.

It was not just by chance that I happened to leave home during this very month and if there was ever a sliver of uncertainty for my success, then at the very least, I thought, I won’t be home for February. Now that I’ve been here for a year I realize that among the very many things that this move has brought (a new job, new apartment, new church, and new friends) there was one thing I did not think to expect: Texas has redeemed February. No longer the month I merely endure, it’s the month where I take stock and reflect on the year that’s been. It’s the month when the sun and warm air return to remind me why I moved here in the first place. It’s the month of milestone-marking and eager anticipation. Pascha is coming, and summer is on its way.

But for now, I am happy for February.