Chapter 15: Homeless in Hollywood

We are screwed.

Writing this chapter, I feel disjointed. Can’t keep thoughts together. The flow is all herky-jerky. And I’m fairly sure that’s not really a term, either.

Because life is disjointed right now. Everything is out of place, nothing is working right.

Have you ever been in a situation in which everything is falling apart, and you wait, and some lifeline shows up? A job, an opportunity, one night in which suddenly and serindipitously, a few jigsaw pieces line up and click, and you have an idea of something that just might work? That Eureka moment? That magical moment where one bend in the road changes everything?

Nope.

I keep working week after week, at the Burbank mall, at the church with the awful people and sweet pastor. Speaking of Pastor Good, by now he and his family have been ripped limb from limb by those lovely church folk… there are some great people in this congregation, but they are outweighed by folks that want nothing to change and everything to stay in the context they remember from the ’50’s. MAN do people hate when you change things in the church. To this day, I see church leaders make the mistake of changing too much too fast, it really messes with people’s sense of equilibrium. People get pissed. Members tend to look at their churches as places where they find stability, where they can rely on the same old things, time after time. It’s really just psychology at work here, even in leadership outside the church, people freak when you change things too fast. and even Pastor Good is getting tired of fighting this fight.

The seminary is a bust. We have come full circle through church leadership, from Pentecostal to Charismatic to conservative Baptist, from crazy signs n’ wonders folk to stern religious elitists. DH is more than willing to push through to get the golden ticket, the Master’s of Divinity, but with the church salary decrease and me being unable to get licensed in the state of CA, we can no longer pay the tuition.

In fact, we can’t afford much of anything at all. In spite of my full time job at the Burbank mall, we don’t even have next month’s rent figured out.

We drive the ten miles to Hollywood one day, and are both surprised to discover… well, if you have ever seen Hollywood in person, you already know it’s kind of a shithole. The walk of the stars is crumbling and dirty, it always makes me snicker when I see pictures of some celebrity sticking their hands and feet in it, because they probably had to clean up vomit in order to get the pic. There’s the gem of Mann’s Chinese Theater, but really not much else that’s nice. Like so many things in L.A., the hype is so much bigger than the reality. An array of homeless trudge back and forth, pushing along long-lost grocery carts of who knows what in plastic bags, an everlasting testament to life not working out as one hoped it might. I see them now as comrades, another month or two and we might join their ranks, living in a state that is ridiculously expensive and over-regulated to the point that it’s an incredible struggle to stay afloat. I never view homeless the same after this, once I understand how things can fall apart in life.

We run into another funny conundrum. We’re still driving my beloved Honda CRX, a fun, five-speed rollerskate. Did I mention it was a two-seat car? Did I mention there is no space for a carseat, or a third passenger of any kind? Have I also told you in order to sell such car and get something with a seat I can drive my baby home in, the car has to be registered in California? And what if i then told you that it’s over a thousand dollars to register your car in this crazy state, as opposed to the 75$ Wisconsin registration? We really rather hate California at this point.

I try to be patient, to find a solution, but I no longer have the luxury of time.

Because I am about six weeks away from having a third player show up to this party.

I am very, very pregnant. Large. Huge. Help.

I am lucky, though. I have family.

“Come home!”

I am on the phone with my sister in my hometown, 2000 miles away.

She offers to have us live in her basement. Our resources having been depleted, we see this as the only option (There were more options, of course, but I wasn’t a badass yet.)

We have one credit card with just enough space left to rent a U-Haul, the piano, clothes, books and dishes go right back in yet again. I am so pregnant by now that the free clinic doctor explains in kindly broken English that I must stop every two hours to get out of the truck and walk around, or I may go into labor. We drive through Los Angeles one last time, past the taquerias, untrimmed palms and sardined-together buildings, headed back to the green trees and blue lakes so familiar to me.

I wind up giving birth on the side of a dusty road in Utah, a random Mormon couple having pulled over their bicycles and helped out, really messed up his neatly pressed white shirt.

Kidding. We make it back to Wisconsin, move into my sister’s basement, and my son is born safe and sound in an actual local hospital with my sisters yelling “Push!” just like it’s supposed to happen. And we are done with church. We moved fourteen times in seven years. We ran the gamut with denominations, and saw the dark side of ministry leadership. I immediately find a salon and start working, DH is teaching piano lessons, and we are finally stable. NO MORE MINISTRY. We resolve to find an okay church and sit our asses in a pew and do nothing.

But God is laughing.

Laughing his (her?) ass off.