Life Update: Becoming Useful

Today is August 5th, 2013.  Thirty five months ago was the day that I packed up everything I owned and drove to Denver, Colorado along with my good friend Tyler, who would split the driving with me. Thanks again, pal...it was a long drive.

Let’s jump back for a minute to that time of life and make our way forward. I moved to Denver because I had never lived outside of Arizona in my whole life and wanted to try something new. I was offered a job at a company called Clayton Holdings as a Credit Risk Analyst. SPOILER ALERT: The job wasn't quite for me #tooextravertedfornumbers. Six months later was March 13th, I turned in my resignation, cut my hair into a mohawk, and started teaching guitar to kids. The mohawk and analyst job overlapped for a week but I dressed really nice that week as to distract everybody. “That cardigan is so nice I am sure that his hairstyle is completely business appropriate. I won’t even check.”

I thought that teaching guitar would be a job that just helped me pay some of my bills in a time of transition but proved to have a far greater effect on my life. As well, I also sought out an internship at a small church plant called Refuge Community Church and started helping to create an intentional community of ordinary radicals who would live communally in Denver. These were my two bigger passions: Church ministry and communal living.

It took about four months for us to find a house which ended up being at Federal and Alameda. If you’re not from Colorado, think of that one place of town where your parents wouldn’t want you to go when you were in high school. And you probably wouldn’t have been interested in going there either, because it wasn’t one of those hip and bad places to go. Well that’s Federal and Alameda. We later coined the phrase Culinary District to describe our neighborhood; a homage to the number of vietnamese restaurants in the area.

Moving on.

Jump to February 2013. Four of my roommates and I moved into a house that I am borrowing from the bank, in Englewood, a small little suburb of Denver. Yes, I own the house but it doesn’t really feel like you own it when the amount of money you owe is SOOOO much bigger than the amount of money you have already paid. I believe I own about a small section of the breakfast nook at this point.

As a community, we have seen our number of failures and successes. We still run our weekly  dinner night where everybody has one night a week they are to make dinner for the whole house. Different seasons have yielded different prayer meetings. There are a number of neighbors that we met, some that we have yet to meet, and others who we never did.

I still have a passion for community and believe that intentional living has the ability to change the church. Two years later I still don’t know exactly what that looks like. My prayer is that this isn’t just a two year experiment that has proved to be an exercise in futility. I would pray that we are still very much at the infancy of what has the potential to be a long lasting, well oiled machine for hope and change in a broken world.

Rewind to a few months ago. I believe it was February 12th. I found myself in a meeting room at First American TItle signing about 400 papers to purchase a house on South Inca street. I’m not sure if I was supposed to, but I kept the pen that I used to sign all my papers. It wasn’t completely full of ink but it probably had 75% left. I considered it a win and left the building.

(left to right) Nick, Colton, Jamie, Dave, and Bonnie all in Texas

Ten days later, my roommates and I had moved into the new house. I was and still am very grateful that they all moved in with me. If it wasn’t for the knowledge that I would immediately have four friends to rent rooms from me, I would not be able to afford the house, nor have enjoyed living in it. As well, I went into the house with the knowledge that I had four people in my life who supported me, loved me, and would see through these dreams of intentional living with me. I love the house that I live in and love the people that inhabit it with me. I will always be grateful that they made that possible for me.

So many things in my life were lining up the way that I wanted them. However, there was one major part of my life I couldn’t quite get to work. Work.

I am able to pay all of my bills and even have a little bit of extra money for fun and saving. However, there was nothing that was putting me on a steady path to have a stable career and have a family someday. As I believe I’ve mentioned before in my blog, I now romance about what it might be like to have a wife and kids and live in that house. I’ve realized that if I want my kids to eat, I would probably need a bit more money.

Money is not hard for me. I’m very good with money and I can usually find a way to get more of it. Money wasn’t the problem. The problem was stability. Trajectory. A path. Call it finding a career, shaking hands with people, moving up over the course of 30 years, and not hating it all the while. There’s no word for that? Hmm. Strange.

But I'm tired of waiting!

I could get back into finance, but I think I might rather get paid to go to the dentist every day. I was pretty good at teaching guitar and parents seemed to like me and I could continue building up clients. But that only solved the money problem, not the trajectory one.

Then it came to me like when you realize it’s raining. You may have felt the first raindrop 5 minutes ago and a few in between, but you really needed to feel the rain before you believed it was actually going to rain. The first drop is never enough. Plus, maybe it wasn’t even a raindrop to begin with.

I digress.

The thing that I loved most about teaching guitar was the one on one time. The personal and vulnerable interaction and somebody allowing me to connect with them on a deep level. I had thought about this for a long time but as I sat in the living room with Dave one night, it became very clear that I ought to go into counseling. Perhaps it helped to hear a close friend say that he thought that was exactly what I should be doing.

We mulled it over and the more we talked about it and thought about it, it was a perfect fit. Denver Seminary was about 3 miles south of my new house (I can even ride my bike along the river to get there) and they have a fantastic counseling program. I already lived with two people who had graduated from the program there and know a handful of other counseling graduates. Though it was already the middle of summer it was not too late for me to apply.

In addition to the time of schooling seeming to work out perfectly, it felt like the perfect career for me. The biggest reason being that when I thought about a career in psychology, it made me happy. It was the first time in years I was able to think about a job (besides professional basketball player) that I would be excited to go to. I took some time to pray, think, and discuss it all the while moving forward in the application process.

Several weeks went by and I was able to work with a fantastic admissions counselor. He completely understood my urgency in wanting to start classes this semester and moved the process along as quickly as possible.

I called up friends, asked for letters of recommendation, asked to have my entrance essay edited, and ordered my transcripts from undergrad (in which I coasted in hardly above a 3.0 just in case I ever wanted to go back to school, though I never thought I would... phew!). Thank you to all who helped me! Whether editing papers, writing references, talking with me, listening to me, or praying for me, thank you.

On July 24th I received word that I had been accepted into the program. I was excited, relieved, nervous, and hungry (always hungry) all at the same time.

Jump back to today. I am having coffee next door to the seminary at a little coffee shop I found that is just off the bike path. I will start classes on August 26th. I will be in school for the next 2.5 years putting me at 28 when I finish my masters and begin my career as a counselor.

So that’s where I am now. Three years into Denver, a couple jobs, a lot of questions, and a few answers. I am far from complete in my own personal journey. Two months shy of 26 I still have so much to figure out. However, I am so grateful to the Lord that I am able to put down one more building block in the foundation of my life.

I’ve committed to writing in here more. So subscribe to my blog if you want to keep up and journey along with me. I’m sure you’ll at least get a few laughs. Sometimes because I want you to laugh, others because you have made the same mistakes that I might currently be making, and others because you are figuring out the same things I am figuring out.

peace,

Colter

p.s. If you clicked on the link I emailed you because of the spoiler alert and found yourself not satisfied with the spoiler... Spoiler alert: Snape kills Dumbledore.