Definitions

Last night after work I went to visit my best friend about 25 minutes from where I live. I ended up staying pretty late, and was really tired by the time I began talking about going home. Kayla asked me if I would like to spend the night, and not have to bother with the drive home. I paused hesitantly, at which point she gave me a knowing look and said, “your cat?”

Apparently I have used my cat as a reason to not stay out very long, stay overnight anywhere, and even as a reason to stay home. Oh crap. I'm a crazy old cat lady.

I've always joked that this day would come. But I never imagined it would happen in my mid-twenties!

Now, I do have a cute cat. I found her under the dining hall of the camp I used to work at in Pennsylvania and after “cat-sitting” her for a week, she was mine. She also has no tail- not really sure why, maybe a genetic defect or something got it while she was a kitten under the dining hall. But she and her little butt-nubbin are very cute.

But not that cute. Not cute enough to threaten my personal life, which, as a 24-year-old single girl in a bustling metropolis after a lonely two years in a boondocks town, is finally on the rise.

So it gets me thinking. Why am I so attached to, so homesick for this little cat all the time?

Because, to me, in this time of exciting uncertainty in my life, she represents home to me.

I'm squatting in my (other) best friend and her husband's guest room. A room full of their decorating style, their furniture. This is only a temporary situation, and I expect to move out within the year. All of my good friends in Mpls have significant others they have been with for 5+ years. I am single. I am working an odd mix of fun and challenging, yet temporary jobs. And my job-search is wide and varied. My sense of place is hanging by a thread.

Many people in their between-college-and-grown-up-life years have little, if anything, that people are usually defined by. We don't have spouses, houses, jobs we will work into old age.

I happen to live with a couple who do have these things- which may be another reason I cling so tightly to the things that do feel stable in my life. Like the cat who came with me in my big move from PA to MN, and who will live long into my 30's with me. And, I suppose its not that bad to really like my cat. She is cute.

But perhaps I should be clinging to some other things that are just as stable as marriage, home-ownership, careers. Like God. Talk about stable. This time of in-between for me has begun to force me into defining my relationship with my God outside of the superficial definitions of myself. Not coming to Him as a (fill-in-the-blank,) but as bare-naked me. It is very humbling to come to Him with out anything to offer. But, for the third time in my life, I am feeling grace in a new, soul-defining way. In being stripped of definitions I've placed on myself for years, I am learning more and more about what really defines me. Grace, forgiveness, blood, Words, Spirit, love, heart.