While the passenger seated beside her slept, Chelsea pulled out the workbook assignments Clark had emailed her last week. Typically, she wouldn’t want to write anything so personal with strangers looking over her shoulder, but her neighbor was dead to the world, the aisle was twice as wide as the ones in coach, so Chelsea had all the privacy she could want.
She’d met Clark last year, covering a story about the digital nomad lifestyle. Clark was based in Boston, but he’d set up his online coaching practice so he could travel the world. After their interview, she’d been intrigued by him and the raving testimonials of his clients, so she signed up for an initial coaching consult. She’d been his student for only about six months, and already Clark had called her for their coaching sessions from too many different exotic locations for Chelsea to remember.
There were aspects of the nomadic lifestyle Chelsea found alluring. Like never having to live in an area with snow if she didn’t want to. Last month, Clark had set up his laptop in a little coworking space in New Zealand. He said he would have liked to stay there longer, but the time difference made it difficult for him to connect with his clients on the East Coast. Now, if Chelsea remembered correctly, he was temporarily settled in Costa Rica, in a little village where the average temperatures never dipped below 65 or above 72.
Yes, that was something Chelsea could definitely get used to.
Still, she wondered if Clark ever got lonely. Chelsea had been born and raised in Worcester. Her parents and grandparents and she all lived within five miles of each other. Her older brother was the odd one out, having settled with his new wife in Delaware, which may as well have been the deep south as far as the rest of the family was concerned.
Chelsea’s family was close, relationally and not just geographically. She ate dinner with her parents at least once a week, more often than that when her apartment’s hot water heater acted up or the coin-op washing machines downstairs stopped working. She’d specifically planned her trip to Detroit so that she could have her article researched, written, and on her editor’s desk with time to spare before Christmas.
Chelsea stared at her notebook page, thinking about her schedule for the next few days. The Detroit superintendent was impossible to reach by phone, but that didn’t mean Chelsea wouldn’t try to get a quote from him in person. She had an interview lined up with a medical doctor who’d treated some of the elementary students who’d fallen ill. In two days, a group of parents were meeting at a local YMCA to discuss the situation.
Chelsea tapped her pen on her tray table, reminding herself she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about work right now. That’s something she and Clark had talked about extensively in their coaching calls. Chelsea needed to develop better boundaries to ensure that her entire life didn’t get overrun by journalism. So far, she hadn’t found too much success in that nebulous quest for work-life balance. She’d joined a gym but stopped going after that creepy janitor kept ogling her during spin class. She went online a week later and read that two years ago another employee had been fired and faced legal charges for hiding in a closet in the women’s locker room. Next time, Chelsea wouldn’t join a gym without reading the reviews first. Except now she was locked into a year-long contract.
Well, nobody could claim she hadn’t tried.
Chelsea’s best friend from high school was working as a youth leader at a large church in the Cambridge area. It was the perfect job for Brie, really. Even as teens, Brie had been the most serious about her faith, and Chelsea was happy her friend had found a calling that was not only rewarding but offered her a regular paycheck.
It seemed as if everyone Chelsea knew when she was younger was now settled into real life. Brie had church. Her brother had his wife and new job out in Delaware, as well as something like a dozen nieces and nephews he saw on an almost daily basis.
Chelsea knew she should be thankful for her job and the opportunities God had given her. Heaven knew finding steady work as a journalist straight out of college was on the same level as stumbling across a winning lottery ticket while picking up litter in a parking lot. So why did she feel like she was still searching for her life’s meaning?
Clark told her it was a normal stage of young adulthood. Brie said it was because Chelsea still hadn’t surrendered her life totally over to God, whatever that meant.
Mom thought this sense of unrest came because Chelsea had such miserable luck in the dating world.
Whatever the reason, Chelsea couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing from her life, and that unease only made her feel guilty. She had every reason to be thankful. Her sense of dissatisfaction with her personal status quo was the reason she’d hired Clark to be her life coach in the first place. That and the fact that when she interviewed him, he seemed to light up every time he talked about helping people discover their life’s deeper meaning. Well, if he could help Chelsea find even a tenth of the motivation and passion she saw in him, he was well worth his monthly retainer.
That was why she was so disciplined about completing each and every task he assigned her. That was why she’d printed up these dozen workbook pages and was committed to knocking some of them out before she put in her ear buds and tuned out the world with something light and funny to listen to.
She took a deep breath, tried to get her mind into a state of gentle awareness like Clark taught her, and began the process of filling out her first worksheet.
The problem with Clark’s coaching method was that Chelsea still hadn’t learned to turn off her inner editor. She read each and every word of her answer through Clark’s eyes, wondering what he’d think of her, what he’d say to her.
Sometimes, hearing his gentle encouragement in the back of her head was immensely helpful. Like the time she wrote about how stupid she felt for stumbling over her words at a meeting with mostly male colleagues. I hate it when I make myself sound like a fool, she’d written, and immediately heard Clark’s encouraging words.
Would you tell a five-year-old that she was stupid and you hated her if she pronounced a word wrong or got a little flustered with public speaking?
No, of course she wouldn’t.
This coaching process was taking longer than Chelsea hoped, but at least she was learning how to be gentle with herself.
Chelsea’s mom didn’t approve. According to her, it wasn’t right for a female to get counseling from a male. It also didn’t help that Mom didn’t understand the difference between a life coach and a licensed therapist to begin with. She assumed that the fact that Chelsea was talking to anybody about her deep personal issues meant she was somehow psychologically scarred.
“I didn’t think we did that bad of a job raising you,” she’d say, as if all Chelsea and Clark talked about were the lowest points in Chelsea’s childhood.
Brie was a better listener, but even though she never said so, Chelsea got the sense that her best friend would approve more if Chelsea went to a pastor or Christian counselor.
Chelsea wasn’t against church or Christianity. She still attended services with her parents if she was home for the weekend, and she couldn’t remember missing an Easter sunrise or Christmas Eve service in her entire life. Sometimes it bothered her the way Christians she loved acted as though she was selfish or somehow less of a believer because she wasn’t working for the church like Brie or attending Bible studies or prayer meetings three or four days a week like her mom. Chelsea loved the Lord but had other interests and hobbies outside of church. What was so wrong with that?
The worksheet she’d been journaling on had questions about her past achievements. When Chelsea saw all the accomplishments she’d made in the past two years written out on paper, she felt even more guilty for being so dissatisfied. If Chelsea could have seen this list during her first year of college, if she could have known where all that hard work would one day take her, she probably would have started squealing with giddy excitement.
So where was the joy, the spark?
Clark’s worksheet — his ta-da list as opposed to a to-do list — was meant to help Chelsea realize all that she did have to be thankful for, but instead it just reinforced her fear that there was something intrinsically wrong with her.
Imagine you’re receiving an award for all the hard work you’ve done. Your friends, loved ones, and colleagues are all there cheering for you. How do you feel?
Chelsea stared at the question, wondering if she’d answer it truthfully or the way Clark expected.
She poised her pen above the lines. Honestly, she wrote, I’d feel like a total fraud. Like any minute whoever gave me the award would turn on the lights and stop the applause halfway through and tell everyone that it was all some giant mistake.
She let out her breath. Her answer wasn’t going to make her life coach happy.
Is that what you’d tell a little five-year-old girl if she was about to accept an award she’d earned by her hard work? Clark’s voice in her mind was gentle but firm.
Of course she wouldn’t tell that to a proud little kid on the happiest day of her life. So why did she say it to herself? What was wrong with her?
Maybe Clark gave her these assignments to prove how messed up she was. Maybe it was all some giant ploy so she’d keep on paying him for coaching.
Chelsea’s negative thoughts were interrupted when a passenger tapped her on the shoulder. It was the same white-haired woman Chelsea had been studying during the boarding process.
“Excuse me,” the old woman said, her wrinkles breaking out into tiny streams when she smiled.
Chelsea shut her notebook so the old woman couldn’t read what she’d written.
“The bathroom in the back of the plane is full,” the traveler explained, “so I came up here to use this one. As soon as I saw you here, I knew I had to stop and say something. I don’t usually do this type of thing, but I just had to introduce myself.”
She reached out a hand, which Chelsea took automatically.
“My name is Lucy Jean,” the passenger said, “but I insist on being called Grandma Lucy. And I believe the Lord has a message for you.”
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