Comfort Zone Cliff

For those readers that are new to my blog or don't quite understand what I'm doing in San Francisco...


This is what I'm doing... 

About a year ago, I started the applying process to be a Dominican Volunteer. I had no idea what wanted to do when I grew up (still don't), but I knew after graduating that I wanted to do a year (maybe two) of service with Dominican Volunteers USA.

What is DVUSA?
Dominican Volunteers USA (DVUSA) is a lay mission program sponsored by 18 congregations of Dominican sisters and friars in the United States.  

Dominic de Guzman (1170-1221) founded the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, at the beginning of the 13th Century. Today, many Dominicans would say that they preach with the Sacred Scripture in one hand and the newspaper in the other. In this way their preaching is to bring the Word of God into dialogue with the complexities and challenges of our world. 

The Gospel is brought to life through teaching, care for the poor, advocacy for justice, art, music, care of creation, spiritual enrichment ministries, housing advocacy, and much more. Dominicans can be found in the halls of Congress, in rural farmlands, in universities, in prisons and in neighborhood centers. 

Each year, DVUSA invites lay men and women for a 10-12 term of life in mission and in intentional Dominican community. (http://dvusa.org/about/index.html) 

Want to see what other DVs are up to all around the country??? Click here!

After three rounds of interviews and lots of trust in God in the process, I was placed at the Immaculate Conception Academy in San Francisco, CA, in the Mission District.

So, here I am... actually realizing how much trust that really took.

My ministry this year includes:

• Instructing two sections of sophomore Scripture.
  **Luckily, I have a very seasoned teacher working with me-- lesson plans, activators and summarizers, and all those teachery things that, as a student, I rarely appreciated.
• Proctoring/Supervising lunch tutorials, with student progress follow up 
• Assisting in the Academic Intensive one-on-one support
• Chaperoning the corporate work study students to their respective job placements in downtown San Francisco
• If time permits, assisting with Campus Ministries and in the Music Liturgy

The challenges...

New people, new surroundings, new time change, new community, new stage in life, new income, new prayer life, new food, new home, new city, new transportation system, new work, new copy machine, new, new, new, new, new. The combination of all this new-ness has been really overwhelming. Where is my place in all of this? I graduated college, and yet I feel more like a freshman than I ever did five years ago-- A freshman that doesn't have other freshmen living across the hall, but rather, is living across the hall from Dominican sisters and working at a school right next door.

How do other people adjust to such new-ness? Am I the only one that feels like this?

In the midst of frustration and feeling overwhelmed with the challenges that I faced in the first week, someone reminded me of a blog post I wrote not too long ago...

"When I'm at the edge of my comfort zone, that's when I thrive; I feel like I'm really living. This opportunity to live in San Francisco and work at the Immaculate Conception Academy will definitely place me at the cliff of my comfort zone and will most likely bring some challenges my way. However, as I've learned, following these obstacles is where personal growth flourishes. It's so easy to stay where I am and fall into the comfortableness of life. But, I want to seize this opportunity to embrace the large world and all it has to offer."

... Ok, let's take a step back, naive MP of the past. You had no idea what kind of a comfort-zone-cliff you were jumping off.

The processing... 

The best I can do right now is remember what was said at the beginning of DV Orientation...

This is where I am; this is where I'm meant to be right now. 

Most times, I don't understand the bigger picture when I'm living in the present. I like to think about it as the Google Maps metaphor. Right now, I'm living in the blurry street view. As I progress through time thinking about the past, the street view turns into the city view, to the state view, and pretty soon everything fits together as a bigger picture. Somehow, together it all makes sense.

This is where I am meant to be... and, honestly, I don't really understand why right now. I'm far away from people I really love and from the comfortableness of life. However, I'm trying to have faith that somehow it'll all make sense in the bigger picture.