New Beginnings and an End to Waiting

It's been less like stasis and more like a sort of limbo, a weird, indefinite holding pattern of weeks on end, shuffling our feet, twiddling our thumbs and pacing through Detroit and Chicago as we wait for the powers that be in the Israeli consulate to give us a thumbs up.

We go to YAGM orientation and then the rest of the YAGMs leave. We tearily say goodbye as they disperse across the globe, and then we lie around Chicago and go to a museum and our sentimental feels start to get a little puzzled.

The other YAGMs who got their visas late start to abandon us too, but it's okay! We drive to Michigan! Things are happening and we're going places! We watch some movies and it's interesting and there's a whole bunch of band geeks and Jesuit retirees and everything's hunky-dory.

Then the band kids leave us too. We tearily say goodbye as they tromp off to start the school year, disturbed and perturbed by the clingy, sobbing young adults from Chicago. The cafeteria starts to empty, the schedule begins to loosen, and all of us start showing up to every meal 5-20 minutes late. Pretty soon even the employees there start disappearing, and we're left pining for a weekend retreat group to come ask us to be quiet or simply a staff person to come refill our coffee and nag us about the mugs and spoons we keep squirreling away from the dining hall.

But then we see the light at the end of the tunnel, albeit shrouded in a murky haze of visa uncertainty and regional conflict. We drag our things back to Chicago and try to keep our heads up, but the doubt and abandonment issues of recent weeks cast a pall of uncertain futility over our efforts to remain something vaguely resembling "positive."

Then commence two days of chaos. We drive and walk and public transport our way back and forth to and from Trader Joe's, the Israeli Consulate, and the ELCA Churchwide office countless times. We face sudden interrogation at every turn from embassy security officers, grocery store staffers, and well-meaning receptionists.

"Are you having a pleasant browse?" "So how's the visa situation?" "Are you carrying with you a weapon or anything that may resemble a weapon?" As we slump over our cart in the frozen food aisle and wait for the latest stressful 7-way phone conversation interchange to end -- as an ELCA staffer passes us in the hallway on their way to another productive and fulfilling work venture through which they meet a purpose and feel validated -- as a deep, hushed, and strongly-accented voice shoots rapid-fire questions at us over a phone and ushers us up to the 31st floor of a building with messily transliterated name tags.

Through last minute sprints across town, through reschedule after reschedule and visa delay after visa delay after desperately awaited cross-country overnight package after desperately awaited cross-country overnight package, our long period of waiting in limbo began to come to an end.

An end arose in sight, but we were too doubtful, too beaten down by past betrayals and past hurts to hold too firmly to hope. Monday. 5:30 p.m.ish. With a slightly-better-than-decent chance of all visas and flights appearing in the right place and time.

We've spent nearly a month on orientating, and now we're finally being retrieved from the dirty cryogenic chamber in the ELCA's basement. But we feel loved! And validated! And ready (more or less)! My body's just afraid to get too excited for fear of disappointment.






(Pictures will be added after arrival overseas in order to make more clear any weird, unexplained portions of this.)