2) The Switch.

It was as if a switch had been flipped.

The certainty I had was gone. Instantaneously. It was not a growing feeling… a piece by piece dismantling, but rather like a game of Jenga… the long buildup before the tower comes crashing down.

I was living the crash.

Waves of anxiety swept over me in a steady torrent. My chest grew tight. Severe bouts of nausea came and went.

At night I didn’’t sleep. Normally I sleep soundly… but now I was waking up 2-3 times a night in a cold sweat, the waves of dread coming in with relentless force. “What the fuck did I just do?”

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The moment I looked at her… I just knew.

There was awe… reverance… something magical. Like a moth to a flame I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I kept coming back.

When I tell you that we looked at every single home in the entire state of New York, listed for sale in our price range, I’m very much being literal.

Everything was a “maybe… or yeah… I kinda like that… it’s ok… we would have to change xyz to make it work… maybe?” But nothing stood out.

We found a gorgeous old Victorian that seemed to check off most of the boxes only to find that it was built right next door to a slaughterhouse. Hard pass.

We found another beautiful old farmhouse on some acreage in one of the northernmost parts of NY… perfect! Except that a Google Maps walk around the block quickly revealed the maximum security prison directly across the street. Back to the drawing board.

And there was even a really cute stone home we found in a little town we liked… but the amount of pushing and prodding and tinkering that it would take to make that space work for our family, just didn’t feel right. That space was so obviously not meant to be.

But the church?

When I saw her I knew. When my husband saw her… he knew. She was a dream wrapped in sweat equity.

So I did what I do best and I obsessed. I looked up every bit of information I could find about the property, the renovations that had begun over a decade earlier, the former owners… while still holding onto the mindset that the church was just a dream… that people like me didn’t get opportunities like this…

Still though I could not stop dreaming, coming back to her, imagining the possibilities… imagining myself sprawled on the floor of the sanctuary staring up at the 21ft ceilings with the long gracefully curved oak boards that were meticulously placed there over 125 years ago. I pictured myself walking down the stairs in a flowery dress, soft light streaming in through the windows… warming the cool brick walls. I couldn’t help but think of all the history that this building had seen… how immersed it was in the story of the village and the people who had once worshipped there… I pictured weddings and funerals in the sanctuary… I pictured rows of parishoners silently praying in that space. I wondered if they found comfort in that beautiful room.

My husband felt the same. Every search for a new life led right back to the church. An irony that was not lost on an atheist/agnostic couple.

There was a history there and it felt palpable… the craftsmanship, the beauty, the absolute majesty of the place. We were transfixed.

Then there were all the little signs we were on the right track. I picked them up like scattered bits of bread on a darkened forest trail… this was our path and all the pieces led us right back to her.

When the price dropped we were that much more convinced that the universe was bringing her to us and us to her. Then the virtual tour… tears streamed down my face as we were walked through the building… I’ve been to Notre Dame… the Alhambra in Spain, St Patrick’s Cathedral right here in our own backyard and I have never once been moved to tears. But here they flowed freely. There was a deep feeling, something that felt so otherworldly, so compelling, a magnetic force… she was speaking to me and I was drinking down all of her.

We put in an offer the very next day. Two days later when it was accepted, all the paperwork signed, I broke down again, tears streaming down my face… she was going to be ours.

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And then the switch was flipped.

I now laid in bed, tossing and turning… Days ago I had envisioned her beautiful towers reaching towards the sky, her cross still affixed to the Belfry. And now my brain was doing something truly awful. Instead of reaching to the sky the towers were closing in on me, falling, a feeling of claustrophobia, panic… it was as if they were closing in on me, mocking my faith in this whole nutty plan… “people like you don’t get opportunities like this… this is a trap… you don’t belong here… this is not for you…”

I did my best to reason with myself. “Thank you brain,” I whispered out loud, “Thank you for trying to keep me safe. I’m ok though, I know what I’m doing… this is ok. I’ll be fine.”

But the words fell hollow. The towers would not relent. Everything felt as if it were crashing down… “You sold your safe little house, you’re leaving a city you adore, with most of the people you deeply love and care about… to go move to a building you’ve never stepped foot inside in a village you’ve spent less than 30 minutes in, in a state where you’ve never lived…. What kind of idiot does that? What kind of reckless human being takes a leap of faith with three children… a family to worry about?”

No amount of reasoning, no amount of gentle talk with my brain, no comfort in knowing that this turn of events could very well be the manifestation of my severe OCD, nothing kept the panic at bay, the waves of nausea were crashing into me. In a few days I lost six pounds, barely able to choke down a handful of nuts… gagging as I did my best to chew and swallow.

“What have I done?”

My husband’s words were of no use. My best friend couldn’t help me shake the panic. I was spiraling. I was a complete and utter wreck…

A few days passed and David asked if we could talk about the move. We had just gotten an email from a woman involved in the sale of our St Pete home… she had a long list of dates all culminating to the final piece: the closing. I opened the email and closed it immediately. Further angering myself with myself… “You have got to face the hard shit… you can’t just close the email and make it go away.”

But David was more patient with me than I was with myself… “I know that this is very hard for you. I know that you’re having a lot of big feelings about all of this. We do have to get everything taken care of though. So I went through the email and wrote everything out on paper and we can go through it one by one and if this is too much… we can stop. Are you up to that?”

I had been crying. My eyes puffy and dry. “Yes… I can handle it.” I was going to force myself to do the scary shit and this was a very gentle way to weave through one’s grief.

We went over all the dates, I did fine. Then we came to the final date: the closing and I immediately broke down again…

“I know that you’re really upset. This is normal. Do you know though, where the fear is coming from… is it anything specific that maybe we can work out?” my husband asks.

I had thought about this a lot. I knew exactly what I was afraid of… “I’m terrified that we bit off more than we could chew. I’m afraid that we can’t fix up the church. I’m afraid that we’re going to find more problems and that we will be shivering in the freezing cold hating our decisions with absolutely no way to ever come back to St Pete.”

David hugs me close, on the table are his neatly written index cards. They’re a plan. They’re a path through all the mess, all the uncertainty. I can appreciate the effort, I feel good seeing all the emails and bits and pieces brought together so neatly. On the table were several piles of white note cards. They were each loosely held in piles by a white piece of computer paper… “Getting There,” “To Do Before Closing,” “After Closing,” “Our trip….” Every unknown… every what if… every single scenario analyzed, dissected, and each problem solved for. My regimented, organized brain felt relief in those cards.

“What if,” he says… “We write down every single fear and worry that you have on these cards? We can go through every single scenario and come up with a game plan like we have here and we will already have the solutions figured out for all the problems you think that we could possibly have?“

And just like that… the switch was flipped again. My brain, that conniving little OCD bitch couldn’t come up with a scenario that could not be overcome with a sit down at the table, a couple of index cards and some good old fashioned problem solving.

That night I ate a huge bowl of pasta and slept soundly, not waking until the morning sun illuminated our bedroom in a soft grey light… I smiled: We close on our church at the end of the month.