Knocked off my Pedestal

In less than a month, my family will relocate our belongings.

We bought a cute, yellow house with a private back yard here in Orlando and will be vacating the apartment we've lived in for five years. This will be the fourth home we've owned as a married couple, but the first time feeling unexpectedly transformed by the gifts and deep challenges presented by the space and lifestyle of our apartment and its surrounding community.

In 2015, my family embarked on an atypical journey from Upstate, New York, to Orlando, Florida. We have studiously lived in a 1,100 square foot apartment, and are leaving this apartment a different kind of family than we were before. For those who may not already know, we moved from a beautiful, five-bedroom home in a fairly "upscale" neighborhood (referred to as "Snob Knob" by the locals), to a three-hundred unit apartment complex tucked behind a well-visited liquor store and across the street from a bikini car wash (I have yet to apply for a job here, but now might be the time; I hear "mom bods" are totally in at these things).

Anyways, the leap from New York to Florida was not smooth, to say the least, and I want to be open about my family's story of much needed spiritual growth and a community courtyard of children where we discovered healing, joy, friendship, and the Divine.

I hope you don't mind if I use my next few blogs to tell stories of how we ended up in Florida and how this community of children, and some of our city's most vulnerable, grew us not into "better people," but more justice-oriented, inclusive and global neighbors. 

chapters 1 & 2, of a story I wrote titled:  

Knocked off my Pedestal

Chapter 1: Becoming Smaller 

Barrett was the first to pull up to our new home - an apartment - with our light gray, sporty, Mazda 3 stuffed to the gills.  You know the scene, right?  White pillowcases were smooshed tightly against the car windows, chair legs stuck high up out of the backseat, and unfortunately for Barrett, a kitty litter box was jammed into the very back.  (See what a great catch he is?  He took the cats and the kitty litter so I didn’t have them in my car.  Large biceps are not the only awesome thing about this guy).  

I pulled up to the front of our apartment, right next to his Mazda, with my pumpkin orange, Grand Caravan minivan, also stuffed to the gills (I opened the door at a rest stop and had trouble finding my kids in the van).  I grimaced as my exhausted body spilled out of the minivan, along with a tired twenty-one, seven, and two-and-a-half-year-old (Jessica, Jared, and Leah). 

Within moments, we heard the loud rumble from the entrance of the apartment complex half a mile away.  It was the familiar sound of an eighteen-wheeler, our eighteen-wheeler, and the only one I have seen in our apartment complex since the day we moved in.  In his book, “Sapiens,” Yuval Noah Harari refers to the existing “luxury trap” in our society today.  In our rapid quest for better and more materialistic living, our work and home life become unbalanced, boundaries with work are non-existent, and we chase after a mirage of “things” not actually making our lives easier or more joyful.  All those “things” we think make us happy, but don’t, was what was in the eighteen-wheeler rumbling towards us.  Like a muddy child needs a bath after a long day in the dirt and rain, my family needed that day with the fierce showdown about to take place between an eighteen-wheeler of stuff and a 1,100 square foot apartment.  That day, January 30, 2015, marked the beginning of a slow detachment from the luxury we had grown accustomed to.  We were being forced to live a new way.  And it hurt like hell.

The driver slowed the truck’s rolling, black, tires to a complete stop.  He parked the rig - filled with four-thousand square feet worth of Snedaker belongings - in front of our modest apartment, and turned off the engine.  The dark blue rig consumed almost the entire road and what the truck driver did not say as he bounced out of the cab, my father-in-law sure did, “Where the hell are you planning on putting all this crap?”  

Let's step back in time for a moment. Have you played the children’s game where you line the little plastic multi-colored shapes up according to their correct holes, and drop the shapes down into the plastic, square box?  In case you're wondering, that game always challenged me as a child.

I stood watching as professional movers began piling our stuff up between the yellow lines of nine-foot wide parking lot spaces.   With a stomach tied in knots, I was worrying this unwanted transition, from the old life to the new life, would put our marriage over the top.   

Moving to Florida was a complete risk.

Our finances were strapped, and now, here we were - at battle with our stuff.  

One by one, hundreds of personal belongings were rolled off the truck by a dolly and set into the hot sun.  We couldn’t figure out where to put everything.  Our stuff could not be placed in the apartment as fast as it was coming off the truck. That day - it’s speed, the lingering sadness, frustration, regret, and burn of the hot sun - covered me like a heavy blanket.  I remember Leah crying at one point and neither Barrett or I responding.  We needed consoling as much as she did.    

After an hour of trying to fit odd-shaped pieces into a square box they just didn't fit in, residents began shuffling out of their apartments to stare at the unusual scene:  an eighteen-wheeler in their apartment parking lot.  Inside our apartment, our one small hallway, three bedrooms, living room, and kitchen were filled wall-to-wall and up to the ceiling with moving boxes.  Snedaker belongings spilled out of the apartment.  It seemed our life - twelve years of marriage and three kids - was spread across the hot, black Florida pavement and in plain view.  We had antiques, expensive shelving, designer chairs, bed frames, tables, and desks we had no choice, but to say good-bye to.  In less than five hours, our lifestyle drastically changed as we made split-second decisions - as a piece of our home slid down the truck ramp - about whether it stayed or headed to Goodwill.  

I cried.  

Barrett and I fought.  

We’d raise our voices at each other, sweat dripping down our faces in the ninety-degree heat, battling over our material priorities.  The kids cried as we chucked toys and games from their bedrooms they had grown to love, into Goodwill boxes.  Barrett’s parents were, thank God, there to help, trying to shield the kids from the frustration and “heat” coming off their parents. 

I was shocked and almost boiled over when our new neighbors who had shuffled out, began asking for our stuff. They’d watch us standing there, emotional and exhausted, trying to decide whether something stayed or went, and voiced, “We’ll take it if you don’t want it.”

“Fine,” I’d say, “take it,” holding back alligator tears like those of a hurt child.  Three seconds later, the frame once holding a beautiful family portrait, was now gone. 

Yuval Noah Harari also speaks about our movement as people from hunter-gatherers, living in territories of hundreds of miles - to “homeowners” results in an “attachment to ‘my house’ and separation from the neighbors and a more self-centered human.  I believe Harai is right - our lifestyle pulls us apart from one another, separating us from the crisis of another, meanwhile putting a safe distance between me and my neighbors and giving me a place where everything is my own and I can, in theory, be alone for days or weeks without anyone noticing.  This day in late January five years ago, with the eighteen-wheeler and all we had accrued, marked the beginning of no longer having distance between my family and our neighbors.  Our crisis - was in plain view - and apartment 287 was already teaching us, there’s no covering shit up around here.

At 4:00 PM, two trucks rumbled their way out of the apartment complex parking lot. One rig was empty. The other was completely filled and headed to Goodwill.   So many emotions were tied into chairs, tables, décor, toys, tools, clothes – all of it.  And in less than five hours, we got rid of more than half of it. The day finally ended around nine or ten and despite bickering parents, none of our children attempted to hitch a ride out of here with the moving rig. 

Apparently, we all still loved each other. Somehow, we found our beds, climbed in, and spent the first night in our new home sweet home.  

Welcome friends, to apartment 287.

Chapter Two:  One Family, Two Different Worlds

In April of 2013, before moving to Florida, I opened an event management business.  I worked from a home office, chose my hours, and built community events.  Two years later, after our finances were shot from hefty franchise fees, and an increasing number of people were leaving the brand, I threw in the towel.  What followed, however, was a major redesign of my family’s way of life and priorities. 

On the tail end of a failed business venture and from inside the walls of a third-rate apartment, a community of forgotten children and vulnerable adults unexpectedly led my family on a pilgrimage we never otherwise would have taken. While my family thought what happened after the business was a “step back,” in hindsight, it was a step in a better direction and will leave my kids with a deeper awareness about the world around them. Their role in the world, as middle-class Americans, was challenged, and faith, the cornerstone of who we are, became real.  They and I learned being inconvenienced is exactly what we're called to be as Christians and loving neighbors - as difficult as that can be!

This community I’m going to tell you more about, held a mirror up to my heart.  Reflecting off the mirror were stereotypes I had camouflaged, shallow humility, and the most difficult to acknowledge - a harbored sense of entitlement.  Entitlement wasn’t something I had been born with, but a sneaky trait developed over years of being a middle/upper-class American.  And even though I didn’t think I took things for granted, I did.  Fast forward to the last five years of my life and revealed was a woman who was utterly uncomfortable with where she lived - and the truth is, I needed to feel the discomfort.  My faith needed the discomfort like my body needs food and water.   

Since I can remember, I’ve always had faith in something bigger than myself.  I call it God, the Holy Spirit, or the Divine; you may call it something else, or maybe you don't believe in anything higher.  I grew up attending church and, for the most part, was pretty well behaved (although there were several slight infractions against playground boys I did not like).  Over time, however, my innocent, childhood faith slowly became strangled by a heart clinging to silent cultural norms and expectations.  In 3rd grade, I wore shiny, pink shoes with my strawberry-blonde pigtails sticking out of my head and I just couldn’t sing enough songs about Moses and Jesus. But by my mid-twenties, I became somewhat enamored by the elusive American dream tip-toeing around my head at night and began neglecting the stronger, more powerful truths in life, like liberating the oppressed.  

Had my life not split open from the failure of a business venture, I never would have chosen to live where I currently am. The bottom line is, I’ve been unexpectedly taught I could do better in my treatment of others and how I live into my faith and the universal truths of love, forgiveness, compassion, and inclusivity.  For five years,  my family has lived next door, below, and across the grass from people I wouldn’t have formerly gravitated towards spending time with - and it taught me very quickly how uninvested I had become in another’s struggle to be free, and in understanding a neighbor’s story of hurt, grit, joy and survival.  While up until five years ago, I had been comfortably removed from other’s difficult struggles, apartment 287 put me in the middle of it.  

I’m going to expand on the entitlement I mentioned before.  I recognized I was fighting against entitlement in my own heart when I realized how angry I felt at myself for not being where I thought I “should” be in the game of life. 

Guess what?
There is no “should be here” in life. 

It might work that way for some people, but for most of us, we take a winding path with many unexpected turns, bumps, and hills to climb.  The straight and narrow, as it turns out, would have been way more demanding, a lot less fun, and my heart would not have been stretched and peeled open like an onion. To my disbelief, the anger and remorse over a failed business became healed through my interactions with this apartment community and some of the City Beautiful's (Orlando's nickname) most vulnerable.  

In 2015, I arrived at apartment 287 broken and wondering who the hell I was.  In 2019, I am leaving apartment 287 feeling closer to my family, and the God who calls me to be a neighbor to all.  Through widening the circle of friends around our old, rickety table, keeping our sliding glass doors open for wandering apartment children, and letting go of the perfect plans my type-A personality is always trying to set, I began letting go of the need for control - even in my faith.   I stopped holding back from planting seeds I may never see grow and began engaging with others who did not look or live like me.  It sounds simple, but I wasn’t doing it before like I should have been.  I lived in a cocoon of comfort and privilege.  My newfound community, however, took my family on a journey and deep lessons have come out of it.  My story is that I came off a pedestal I didn’t even know I was on.

So, where has this pilgrimage into the dark and dirty parts of my soul taken place? 
On the outside edge of a beautiful city enveloped in deep southern heritage, my family has lived in a low cost and poorly managed, three-hundred-unit apartment complex (update: the complex was recently bought out and now looks quite pretty).  

Our complex is tucked behind a gas station on a busy corner with reckless driving and a liquor store one-hundred feet from our front door.   After my business flop, we rented this apartment because it was what we could (barely) afford with our golden retriever, two kids, bikes, and residual amenities from our beautiful home in Upstate, New York. Though Barrett (my husband) and I were previously homeowners and financially stable, we moved to Florida nearly broke.  Along with thousands of others, we became renters in a section of town about two miles from the city center of Winter Park’s beautiful brick streets, enchanting homes, pockets of noticeable wealth and the occasional roaming peacocks. Winter Park’s curvy roads, charming chain of lakes, and hanging willow trees leave much of our zip code resembling a picturesque scene of watercolor on the wall of a local art gallery.  Where we live, however, would most likely not be turned into a picturesque watercolor.  It is much more likely to turn up on the front page of the newspaper because of a burglary or shooting - I have articles to prove it.  

Unless they have something to sell at the pawnshop, are low on liquor, or have a craving for highly processed Mexican food (which, by the way, can be very satisfying), many of our friends have never been to our place.  Others have feared the task of crossing over to our side of town, asking, “Is it OK if I leave my car in your parking lot?  Will something happen to it?” (I’ve never been sure how to answer that one, “I don’t know, would you rather we have coffee out here on the curb?”).

Living in this part of town has led my family to constantly go back and forth between two very different worlds - one where we lay our heads at night (where we can afford housing) - and the other where our church, children’s activities, gym, Friday night dates, and employment are.  Both worlds, tucked inside a four-mile radius, hardly ever collide.  In one world, incomes, expectations, and money spent on material goods are high.  They dine at what feels like fancy restaurants to me, travel by plane fairly regularly, and own or lease very nice vehicles.  In the other world, the one we lay our heads in, incomes, expectations, and money spent on material goods is much lower.  Cars sit in our parking lot for months because the owner cannot afford to fix it, people take buses to work and school and an indulgent restaurant is the near-by drive-thru or a pizza joint on a Friday night.  What I have come to learn is that both worlds come with deep, internal pressures that can be difficult to get people to talk about.  Let me tell you - the pressure to maintain your income or living status can be just as daunting as the pressure to increase your income or living status.    

After years of high-speed action - serving as a United Methodist pastor, starting a new church, running a business and having and adopting children - apartment 287 forced me to slow down and let go, something I was not used to.  And while extending compassion was something my family once calendared, our new home flatlined my obsession with routine and we grew accustomed to being yanked into a need on a moment's notice.

Admittedly, my daughter’s favorite hot-pink sweatshirt and white dress shoes are from a thrift store - because we’re not completely out of the financial hole my business dug for us.  Yet, we’ve grown rich in more subtle ways that have swelled up inside of us.  Through quiet whispers of the vulnerable, we have connected to the undercurrent of a spirit that favors less over more, love over prestige, and compassion over achievement.  I hope through the stories we tell as a family, the questions we've asked along the way, and the chains we've broken, may you too, connect to the undercurrent of the divine. May we realize together that who God designs us to be, has way more to do with the stories, lives, and needs of those around us, than it does with the size of our checking account or the list of our accomplishments.  

💛
Thanks for reading.

Peace,
Annette

I'll add chapter 3 in the next blog!