Julie's News from Maryland

Well, here I am, in the temporary GOE reference library, procrastinating. I keep thinking that I am going to study or prepare for this test in some way and I just don't know how to do it. How does one study for a comprehensive essay exam? Is it possible to learn anything more than what I already know? Can I ingest large amounts of data into my brain in just the right way so that they will be accessible to me in a few days? Sigh. I just don't think so. But, I have done a few things. I cleaned out my office - organizing and filing all of the piles of paper that were taking space on my desk. I organized my bookshelf, getting rid of all the crap and paperwork that I had just flung on top of the books. I also put all the books in sections so that I could find them relatively easily. Since I'm taking the test in my office at home, it seemed reasonable to create a work space that would provide space and comfort for me to work. I've now also checked out the temporary library and feel reasonably confident that I could find some random piece of data that I might need next week. The last thing I need to do is to practice using the GOE web site to make sure that I'm able to create and submit my answers in their electronic text box. And this is where the procrastinating comes in. I was good until I opened my laptop, but there is so much great stuff to do online that I wandered away. In my wandering, I came across an email that my good friend, Kath, sent to me a couple of weeks ago. I contained a link to a YouTube video that is just too funny not to share with y'all. So, here it is. Enjoy!

I made a little movie of the kids playing with the dog.

Well, since our life is so calm and peaceful and we barely have anything going on, we decided to get a dog. Actually, Rick and the kids have wanted a dog for a long time, I have been the last hold out. I thought it might be a nice Christmas present for Rick to get him a dog. I started looking at dogs in local shelters and saw one that might be a good fit for our family, so Rick went to meet her yesterday. As it turns out, she was not very engaging or interesting and wouldn't have been any fun, so Rick passed on her. But, while there, he met a 2 year old Rottweiler mix that seemed like she might be a good dog for us. She was very well trained and playful. I brought the kids up to meet her and she was very fun with them, letting them walk her on a leash and rolling on her back for Nicholas to play with her. Rick stayed to fill out the paperwork and complete the adoption and I brought the kids home to wait for her. She arrived at about 8:00pm and promptly chased the cat across the living room. She seemed very close to Rick, wanting to be wherever he was. She was ok with the kids, but seemed a bit nervous around them, even growling at them when she was eating and one of them was near.

We borrowed a large dog crate from a friend so that she could sleep in there during the night. We felt like she was a bit unpredictable, so we wanted her confined while we slept. By the time we got up in the morning she was even more attached to Rick - almost to the exclusion of the rest of us. She was annoyed when the kids tried to interact with her and she even seemed to try to keep them away from him. We decided that she had to go back, so Rick brought her back this morning, just a mere 14 hours after she arrived.

This afternoon we went to another local shelter. We met a sweet, young, incredibly calm young female dog. She is a Royal Bahamian Potcake dog. It is hard to describe and the best description I have found yet is here. (Incidently, our dog looks much like the picture of the last dog on that page - a bit like a German Shepherd). She has a very calm temperament and is a bit shy. She is not at all apprehensive about being near us - in fact she likes it best when we are all with her in the living room, but she is not an explorer. Also, she doesn't yet know what to do when she is on her leash, so she just stands there and stares at me. When I tug on her a bit, I just end up pulling her. She's little and she'll learn.

We decided that she seems to try to be invisible like the teenage girl from The Incredibles, so we are going to name her Violet after her.

The kids are delighted and we are pretty happy about it too. I'll post pictures after I take a few of them, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Nicholas has said a couple of things recently that just cracked me up. 

The other day he said, "Mom, when I have kids, if Santa doesn't come the first year then I'll know it's the parents."

At church last Sunday evening, we were at the altar and the priest had given us communion.  Nicholas was holding the wafer waiting for the wine to get to him so that he could dip it.  However, he wasn't just holding it still in his palm, he was rolling it around his fingers and flipping it up in the air.  I wanted to communicate to him that he should be careful and respectful, so I leaned over, pointed at the communion wafer in his hands, and quietly said to him, "Nicholas, that's Jesus."  He looked down at the wafer in his open palm and said, "Oh. Sorry Jesus."

He's a funny little boy.

I am now in the final stretch of the ordination process.  I reviewed the Ordination Handbook prepared by my diocese and learned that I need another psychological evaluation.  This is actually required by the Episcopal Church - if it has been more than three years since your last psych exam, you can't be ordained until you get another one.  Naturally, because of the structure of the approval process, I had to get one 3 1/2 years ago so that I could be approved initially for ordination,  so now I have to do it again.  And, it costs $1400 to have it done.  I think the original one in California cost somewhere around $1400 as well. 

Let's add it up the basic expenses for seminary and ordination.  I won't include things like housing or food or other costs that are generally associated with living - I'd be paying those anyway.  Let's just add up what I can remember paying for this adventure off the top of my head (most amounts are approx.):

1st psych eval: $1400
cost to move my family to NY: $6000
cost for health insurance that I pay out of pocket: $700 per month * 3 years = $25, 200
tuition: $12,000 per year * 3 years = $36,000
books: $250 per semester * 6 = $1500
2nd psych eval: $1400

Total: $71, 500

That doesn't include other expenses like individual counseling for various members of our family and marriage counseling - all of which I pay for out of my own pocket because the health insurance doesn't cover it.  It also doesn't include the extra expense associated with living in Manhattan - it is just plain more expensive to live here. Everything costs more, from groceries to clothes to just getting around.  I think we could easily estimate that the personal cost of my education has been close to $100,000, not including housing, groceries, or other normal family costs.

Fortunately, I received an anonymous scholarship my first year that covered most of our costs associated with being here that year.  We were extremely fortunate and are incredibly grateful for that gift.  With the exception of a small scholarship ($1000 a year) from the diocese, that is the only money we received.  We are not elligible for most scholarships, grants, or federal loans.  We are paying for this ourselves. And, by the grace of God, we can afford it.  We sold most of our assets and came to seminary expecting to spend every penny we had to do this.  And, we will.  We will have virtually nothing left when we finish.  But, we are so fortunate that we don't have to go deep into debt -  many seminarians leave school with huge loans to pay and I am so grateful that we won't have that.

Yet, there is something about this process that seems so unjust and discriminatory.  What if we weren't in the financial position that we are in?  Would I have to reject God's call to me because we couldn't afford it?  What if people aren't willing (or able) to take on large amounts of debt to do this?  Would they have to live their life knowing that they weren't fulfilling God's plan for their life because they simply couldn't saddle their family with debt? (I'm pretty sure I would have a hard time doing that) How do people do it that aren't upper or middle class, well-educated people that can afford this ridiculously expensive process?  Are we excluding people from the priesthood because they just don't have the means to do this?

When I was pregnant with Nicholas, I worried all the time that he was going to die. I worried that he wouldn't make it out of me alive. I worried that something would go horribly wrong during delivery and he would die. I worried that he would come out and we would discover that he wasn't whole - that there was something terribly wrong. Then, when he was born - on time, with all his fingers and toes in a relatively easy birth - I worried that he wouldn't make it through his first year. Maybe he would  never learn to nurse and he would starve to death - or have to eat formula (eek!). Maybe he would roll off my bed and crack his skull open and die right in front of me. The list of possible accident scenarios seemed endless. And then, one day, driving to work, when he was about a year old, I realized that I no longer worried that he was going to die. It just wasn't on my mind anymore. He had made it to a year and somehow it seemed to me that he was going to be ok. He didn't seem to have anything really wrong with him - he could see, he could hear, he could move (and man, could he move!), he could talk and engage. He was fine and we were safe.

And, for all reasonable purposes he is still fine and safe. But, we have begun to understand, slowly over the last two years, but more critically and in a more focused way in the last few months, that Nicholas has a pretty serious emotional disorder relating to extreme anxiety. Looking back, I can see it in all sorts of things that he did as a little kid, but they were so minute and I was so inexperienced, that I didn't really note them as being unusual or alarming. But, now, as he gets bigger, the symptoms are unusual and alarming. His anxiety is so overwhelming for him, often resulting in long episodes in which he loops through extreme emotions - anger, fear, violence, giggling/euphoria, back to anger and fear again. It is almost like watching someone have a seizure. The episodes are random and can be triggered by any number of things. Rick and I are pretty good at catching them in advance - heading them off at the pass, so to speak - and minimizing the impact on Nicholas and those around him. However, our ability to do that has tapered off in recent weeks and we often find ourselves powerless to help him, except to sit with him and console him as he asks, "Why is this happening to me? What is wrong with me?"

We've had him in counseling for the last year, but it is clear to us now that weekly play therapy sessions and occasional visits to a non-engaged psychiatrist are not enough. Last week we had him evaluated at the NYU Child Study Center, a place that specializes in treating children with a variety of mental and emotional disorders. They have a team of psychiatrists and psychologists and will be able to create a plan just for Nicholas and our family, so that we will all learn how to help him. I am confident that in the long term, Nicholas will be a thriving, healthy, and successful member of society. It will not be an easy journey, and there is no quick fix, but I do believe that it will happen.

In the meantime, I feel like I have a newborn again. All the randomness of life with a newborn is present in my life. I never know from moment to moment what is going to happen. I can't be confident that our family will follow through with plans that we've made - a difficult episode for Nicholas might prevent us from even leaving the house or require that we all leave an event to help calm him. Even when Rick and I have plans to go out, we can't be sure that Nicholas will be stable enough for a babysitter to care for him - meaning that every event is subject to cancellation at the last minute.

I feel like I have fallen down Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I'm reasonably sure that at one point in my life I was at Self-actualization, but now I am hovering somewhere between Safety and Physiological. There are some days that I'm not even sure how I am going to put dinner on the table I'm just so tired and overwhelmed.

And, I keep saying to myself, "I have a kid with a disability." My kid is disabled. He is not like other kids. He can't navigate the world with the same ease that all the other kids can. It seems so unfair for him. i'm so sad for him and just want him to be ok.

If you haven't seen it yet, Sara is doing another round of Bad Nativities for Advent. Enjoy!

I think I've mentioned that in January I have to take the General Ordination Exams (GOEs).  It is seven exams that test our knowledge in seven specific areas.  For each of the seven tests, we are given 3 1/2 hours to write a 3 page, single-spaced essay answering the question.  For some of the tests we will be allowed to use any resource available to us, some we will have limited resources (like a Bible and our Prayer Book), and for others the test will be closed book.  Up to this point, we all figured that we wouldn't know until test day which questions would be which.  In an effort to feel less crazy about it, one of our classmates reviewed the questions for the past 10 years and created a spreadsheet showing which tests had been which for the past 10 years.  We were delighted to discover that the Church History exam has been open book for the past 10 years (whew!).  And also glad to know that the Theory and Practice of Ministry exam had always been closed book.  Meanwhile, we've been speculating wildly about which ones will be closed book or limited resources and trying desperately to determine if we have enough knowledge in our heads to do it without any outside help.

And then, the letter came.  Yes, the letter.  The formal letter from the Examing Board of Chaplains. It describes in detail the days and times for each exam and what resources will be available for each.  THEY TELL US IN ADVANCE WHICH EXAMS WILL BE CLOSED BOOK.  How come no one told us this?!  All these people that have taken them around us never bothered to tell us that we'd know IN ADVANCE which tests will be open and closed book!!! Honestly.  So much anxiety could have been avoided if we'd just known that.

In any case, now we know.  And, just for fun, I'll share it with you. Following are the dates, times and details about each of my exams.  Keep me, and all the other seminarians around the country, in your prayers as we take these tests in a few short weeks:

The 2008 GOE will consist of seven sections, called SETS.  The examination in 2008 will be given over four days, January 2-5.  The morning examination sessions will begin at 9:00am and end at 12:30pm;  the afternoon sessions will run from 1:30pm to 5:00pm.  There is no overnight work.

Wednesday, January 2

Morning - Set 1, Holy Scripture
Limited Resources: An annotated Bible, such as the Oxford Annotated Bible or the Harper Study Bible, and concordance

Afternoon - Set 2, Ethics and Moral Theology
Open Resources

Thursday, January 3
Morning - Set 3, Christian Theology and Missiology
Open Resources

Afternoon - Set 4, Contemporary Society
Limited Resources: Bible, Book of Common Prayer, and other authorized liturgical texts of The Episcopal Church

Friday, January 4
Morning - OFF

Afternoon - Set 5, Church History
Open Resources

Saturday, January 5
Morning - Set 6, Theory and Practice of Ministry
No External Resources

Afternoon - Set 7, Liturgy and Music
Limited Resources: Book versions of the following: Bible, Book of Common Prayer [in English, Spanish, or French], Enriching Our Worship, Hymnal 1982, Lift Every Voice and Sing II, Wonder Love and Praise, Voices Found, Il Himnario, Flor y Canto, and their accompanist Editions.  No electronic resources.