GFM Blog Series: Week 1, January 9, 2012

Happy New Year, GFM! This spring semester we’re going to introduce what we hope will become a new GFM tradition—our blog is going to feature a short reflection each week, written by various graduate students and faculty members who are involved in our fellowship. The topic of these reflections will be quite open; posts might include someone’s thoughts on the integration of their faith and their discipline, or responses on a particular intellectual or academic problem that relates to Christianity, or even a review of a book or film. Bloggers might share something more personal—reflections on their own faith, or interesting and compelling experiences or encounters. As long as a topic is, in some way, related to the faith, we welcome it on our blog! We’re on the lookout for people willing to post, so if you’re interested, contact me (kharkawa@indiana.edu).

To kick off our weekly blogging, I thought I would share a few of my own reflections about God’s goodness, reflections that have (gasp!) actually come to me while in graduate school. Graduate study can sometimes feel like one long slog through fairly barren land of writing, reading, and praying that there’s a job at the end of the tunnel. Graduate school is stressful, full of all kinds of pressures that take their toll on one’s self esteem and overall wellbeing. For me, the stress of school often manifests itself most immediately in my gut. When I get anxious, I can feel my stomach twisting around inside of me, and I get this intense compulsion to start listing out everything I need to do today, tomorrow, this week, or this semester (the level of anxiety determines the scope of the list). And when I get stressed about school, I quite easily find myself getting stressed about everything else—my house that isn’t clean and needs minor repairs, the dog who needs to be walked, the GFM email that needs sending, the friends who I should check in on, the papers that need grading, and the lecture I should attend…. And it’s not like academic stress is easily reducible to one or two tasks—finish reading that book and write this (forum post, seminar paper, dissertation chapter…you pick). One or two tasks would be doable, but academic work is not only never, really done, and seems to always be able to loom insurmountably large in front of you. Additionally, academia seems to breed initiatives, institutes, and committees, lectures series, professional organizations, and reading groups at an unbelievable rate. All of which will eventually claim some of the academic’s time, and add to her to do list.

So this might seem like an odd way to being a reflection on God’s goodness. But here’s what I’ve learned to remember about my stress: all of the things in which I’m involved, all the things that lay claim to my time, they are all good things. I’m sure you can think of some tasks on your to do list that don’t seem all that good, but I’ll bet that if you trace them back, you’ll see that they are. Cleaning the bathroom doesn’t seem good (especially if you haven’t done it for a while), but pretty much anyone reading this blog will live in the West, and will be cleaning a bathroom that comes equipped with indoor plumbing and hot water, and that bathroom will be  sheltered in a building that is well heated in the winter. In my and my husband’s case, we have the great blessing of owning a home, so even the repairs and renovations that worry me (when will we have the time? the money?) stem from the fact that we own a house. In the case of my graduate school anxieties, I try to remember how desperately I wanted to come to graduate school in the first place, how worried I was that I wouldn’t get in, and how it is a luxury to be able to choose to do the work that I love. As for all the “extras”—the committees, the lectures, the professional obligations—they are opportunities, many of them afforded by being at a large research institution, and they may very well not be available to me in the future. The coffee dates, the dog, the emails, the reading groups: all of it stems from some good thing, and so the tension in my life is almost always the tension of the good pulling on the good. I’ll try to remember this ever more frequently in 2012, and say a prayer of thanksgiving while I enter each item in my to-do list.

“Sometimes, when we’re paying attention, even the tension on our time can be precious, a sign that there is much, much blessing in the mess of our kitchen counters and lives. A sign that sometimes God fills our cup up with the blessings of family and work, both of which matter to God, and the cup runneth over and spilleth out onto the floor.” Joy Jordan-Lake, Working Families

“I am still confident of this: I will see your goodness in the land of the living.” Psalm 27:13

Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger

PhD Candidate

Departments of English and Religious Studies