Monday Thoughts

I don’t actually have an official post for today. Just checking in on the personal level.

Tomorrow I take a 24 hour trip to meet with the full beit din for the first time. As you can imagine, I’m a wee bit nervous. But more than that, I’m annoyed with myself. I realized that I’ve been basically living an orthodox life for 11 months now (8 months since I got kashrut implemented fully in my house, thanks to a move), but without being in an official process, there’s no “credit” for that, no way to really prove it. That means it feels like another year of wasted time (going on 7 of those) because I couldn’t get off a fence. I could have pushed things forward, but I accepted the “why don’t we just think of this as a holding pattern until you move?” idea without a second thought. Since I was just starting my final year of law school, this even seemed like reasonable advice. This is a scary process, and at the time, the “holding pattern” still felt like I was moving forward. Now…I’m not so sure it was. It was still some kind of moving forward on my end, but I don’t know what it was on their end. I worry that it’s going to be counted as dead time.

To my credit, I’ve learned a lot in the last year, but it (and more!) could have been learned more easily, regularly, and cohesively in a structured process.

So tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll get the parameters of my official conversion process and get the green light to begin studying with a tutor. I have very little hope of being given a time-frame, and that’s ok. I’m very blessed to have such wonderful in-real-life and virtual friends who’ve been so encouraging over the last few weeks and months!

I just want to finish this so I can get on with living a normal Jewish life. Sometimes it’s very draining to be status-less. I’d just like to be the average, run-of-the-mill Jew for once. And honestly, I’d like to stop thinking, talking, and writing about conversion all the time. I just want to be. Several of you have been kind enough to tell me how helpful this blog has been for you. It’s been equally helpful for me because I needed to get these thoughts out of my head and onto a piece of paper. (Any other GTDers out there??) If I can write these things down, they rattle through my head a lot less. So perhaps the moral of the story is that I really AM crazy after all 😉

(I also have a less “freak-out” Jewish errand tomorrow! I’m going to meet a rabbi to learn about his congregation as my potential new shul home 😀 I’m very excited about it because I think it’s going to be a very good fit!)

In other personal news, the puppy is growing like a weed! And he’s generally as stinky as a weed too. Also, he ate my glasses on Shabbos. Literally. I think he might be amoral because he has no concept of the word “no” or shame. Off to the optometrist with me!