Crash Landing in a Corn Field

FACE TO FACE

Katherine Baylis

I landed a job. Two weeks after my college announced that it was closing because of some virus I’d never heard of, I packed up everything I owned in 48 hours, said goodbye to friends I thought I had two more months with and got on a plane to LaGuardia to move back home; and then, I landed a job.

My mom laughed when I tried to describe the position to her because all I could remember from the interview was that it involved math. So, when I got the offer, we were pretty confident that God was at work.

A landing place and a launching pad: the slogan of the 20s Ministry. Also an accurate description, I must admit, but “landing” makes it sound as if we planned it that way. If you were to imagine how one would land a plane, you might think of a runway and tarmac, perhaps even a near-miss with the Hudson River. You certainly wouldn’t picture it hurtling towards the middle of a corn field, the navigation system a wreck and the wings stuck on with chewing gum, but that’s a far more precise depiction of how I landed here.

I thought I’d know what it’d be like to live on my own for the first time. It was a naivete akin to my belief as a precocious college freshman that taking Latin for the first time at the college level wouldn’t be that hard. It was. My friends and I romanticized independence the summer after our junior year while living in an apartment above a boutique in Forest Park and commuting to our internships. We meal-prepped and made elaborate Sunday morning breakfasts. A far more accurate representation of early-20s adulthood is the belief that pizza rolls count as a meal so long as you have a vegetable with it.

For four years I had attended College Church entirely by myself and saw no problem with that. I served in the nursery, but I never stayed afterwards to chat. Year by year, the Lord worked on my heart, slowly peeling away the false perceptions I had, both of myself and how one was to live in a Christian community. In the darkest points of those years, I often turned to friends first who were only able to pull me up halfway. It became clear that just relying on friends wasn’t enough, but in the moments, when I should have been leaning on God, I instead learned to be satisfied with good enough.

In my last year of college, I had a friend who insisted that I should go to College Group. I said sure. And then week after week found some excuse not to go. Thinking back, I’m convinced now more than ever that God used her persistence as the battering ram to my wall of obstinance and indifference. I eventually joined a college small group. While I enjoyed the weekly gatherings and meeting new people, it was the friendships that formed because of that group and the conversations that came out of it that started to cause a change in my heart.

The community I found in that small group became a lifeline during quarantine. During that time, I must have filled out a dozen surveys sent out from my university, each asking what students needed. We had no idea what we needed. But I think we were mostly lonely. We all handled it and engaged with that feeling differently, but it was there all the same. I don’t recall how I passed each day except that my thesis was somehow completed, and papers were somehow submitted. The brightest spots were my Zoom meetings with my writing cohort and our College Group zoom calls. It became a running joke to keep track of how many days it had been since I’d gone outside. Mostly I just wrote.

When I moved back to the area for work, I knew I’d drown in a sea of new responsibilities if I didn’t have the grounding of a solid community. Among the many things I didn’t anticipate was the struggle to make friends. Thankfully, I live with a friend who also attends College Church which helped immensely. After a few emails back and forth with the leaders, my roommate and I set out to our first Thursday night small group meeting. So, I landed in 20s Ministry.

It was during that time last summer when most everyone carried lawn chairs in their trunks. It must have been someone’s birthday because I distinctly recall being offered a piece of ice cream cake as dusk was starting to fall. As the weeks went on, our gatherings stretched more and more consistently past dusk and into the evening.

It seems right to say I’m on the other side of it now, of being new and starting over, that is. But I didn’t get there as quickly as I thought I would. About three or four months in, both at my new job and in my new small group, I felt overwhelmingly lonely again, which didn’t seem right, considering I’d made friends in both my work and social circles and enjoyed both immensely. I realized I didn’t feel known. Although not overly shy, I tend to observe more than participate in large groups and I had

started to feel as though I had unintentionally put myself on the sidelines. Eventually I started to see different friendships grow. It wasn’t until we had an influx of new people join our group that I realized just how much they’d grown and how comfortable it all seemed to me.

The refrain of early 20s adulthood seems to be, “It’s just so hard to make friends.” I’ve seen it constantly across social media and heard it from nearly everyone who’s joined our small group. The pandemic seems to only have exacerbated what would already have been an inevitable struggle. But the real difficulty for people in this life stage lies in making Christian friends who can point you back to God. In my experience, the seasons when I’ve been the least connected to other Christians are the ones where my spiritual life has taken the most hits. It's the difference between elbowing your way down the crowded streets of Times Square alone versus walking with a few others going the same direction as you. One can accomplish much more in the latter scenario. While a strong community might not have been a central point to my spiritual life two or three years ago, I’m grateful that it is now.

Adult life is incredibly weird. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said that in the last year. I’m not sure what the past year would’ve looked like had I not found 20s Ministry. But perhaps I would have been okay. Perhaps I would have simply read more books, learned to cook better, gone on more walks to pass the time. After all, seasons of being alone do not always breed loneliness. But when I think of the incredible personal and spiritual growth I’ve experienced in the last year, I know it would not have happened had I not been surrounded by Christians in my life stage, supporting and challenging me.

I’ve never stood in a corn field (shocking, I know) but I would imagine being lost in one would be rather disorienting. If you sit on the ground, you may feel protected but inevitably the enormity of the stalks will overwhelm you. You can wander, shouting over the tops, hoping someone will shout back. But if there were a clearing, some place where you could see around you for a second and where others might also find each other, it would all feel a little less terrifying. Because even if we’re all a little bit lost, at least we can be a little bit lost together.