“What will my future be… I wonder.” This lyric, with the image of Maria leaving the walls of the Abbey for the wide-open world, has been stuck in my head for weeks. In a month I’ll move off my beloved island, to The Mainland, to start grad school.
It could be so exciting
To be out in the world, to be free!
My heart should be wildly rejoicing.
Oh, what’s the matter with me?
I know the song by heart, having watched the movie countless times as a kid. I sang this song to myself when I first took a job in childcare in my early twenties: “And all those children/Heaven bless them/They will look up to me and mind me!” (Intermittent success with that.)
I’ve done a few stints in other places: a year in India, a year near Boston, back and forth for months on Bowen Island (near Vancouver). But I was younger then, not so rusted in my ways. This time, it’s taking a lot to pry myself out of the familiar. I’ve become used to stability: my family and close friends, my church community, knowing where everything is, even knowing the guy who pumps my gas (Rob).
Vancouver’s not far as the crow flies. But ferries make it an all-day venture. And so much will be new: a new roommate (we’ve never met), a new suite, a new town, a new school, a new church, and (hopefully) new friends. What are my anchor points? What gives me continuity and security? Will I be able to handle the academic pressures along with the loss of my familiar life?
Last year I wrote a couple papers on Albert Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy: the belief that you’ll be able to accomplish the steps toward a goal. You may not succeed—some things are outside your control. Unforeseen events occur. But you’re confident you have what it takes to do what’s required of you. We gain the most self-efficacy from “mastery experiences”—trying new things and discovering we can succeed.
That’s why kids, for example, learn skills not primarily from us telling them they’re special and amazing, but from them trying, maybe failing, and trying again. We need people to encourage us, but even more we need the embodied experience of figuring it out ourselves. The next time we face a similar challenge, maybe an even harder one, we remember the previous success and have confidence to try again.
I didn’t have a lot of self-efficacy in my youth. I was rather shy and awkward, insecure in my intelligence. Then as now, practical life tasks sent me spinning. But over the years I’ve learned to persevere, learned how much I can accomplish. That also includes an understanding of my own limits: there are some things I’m not good at, like math and paperwork. It’s possible to do them when I have to, but it’s riding the struggle bus the whole way.
It helps me to remember that God knows what’s a struggle for each of us. People may praise me for something that comes easily for me, yet never recognize my biggest challenges. Effort is more important than achievement, and only God can judge how well I’ve done with what I have.
Maria, as she sings her way to the Von Trapp house (question: did they invent trap music?), is trying to work up her self-efficacy. It will only be through her actual experience of dealing with “a captain and seven children” that she learns she can do it. But she has to get in that door first and through the awkward introductions, the Captain blowing his whistle at his kids like a reverse pied Piper.
I rewatched The Sound of Music a couple years ago, as I was preparing to leave Canadian L’Abri after seven years. I was struck by its message not to use God or spirituality to avoid taking risks and engaging with the world. This has become an important discernment question for me: “Am I leaning into trust in God, or am I being driven by fear?” Sometimes trust is staying in the familiar. Sometimes trust is going out into the unknown.
The Mother Abbess knew that Maria had returned out of fear, not out of a positive response to God’s calling: “These walls were not built to shut out problems. You have to face them. You have to face the life you were born to live.” She utters sage advice: “You have a great capacity to love. What you must find out is how God wants you to spend your love.”
But then she launches into a particularly modern self-efficacy hymn, telling Maria that not only can she deal with a captain and seven children, she can also climb every mountain and ford every stream with said captain and children. No mention of what will give Maria such strength. Previously, Maria sang nonsensically: “I have confidence in confidence alone,” then, “I have confidence in me!” Did the real Maria hype herself up this way?
I do have some degree of confidence that I can clamber through the windows God opens. I’ve worked hard to gain certain skills, and will work hard in the future. But more and more I see myself as responding to God’s invitations one step at a time. I don’t have to force windows open, afraid that I might miss out if I don’t constantly scan for opportunities.
“What’s the next step?” I ask. It might be a hard step, like statistics homework where (hypothetically) you have meltdowns that involve weeping, “I don’t understand!” over and over as you try to motivate yourself with a cookie every hour. Or it might be easy, like just keeping an open heart to opportunities that come your way. In either case, God initiates and we respond—what folks at L’Abri call “active passivity”.
I’ve done my best to respond to shut doors and open windows, and here I am. Maybe I’ll be lonely without my friends. People might think I’m annoying. I might say something super dumb in practicum or bomb stats class. Maybe my teachers will award me a restraining order instead of a degree. I don’t know what my future will be. God alone knows.
Do I have confidence in me? Sometimes. Sometimes very little. Sometimes too much! But under the ups and downs of self-efficacy, I trust that whatever comes, God will give me what I need to get through it. That trust is stronger at times than others. But I’ve seen enough twists and turns to know that even when I can’t impress them, even when I don’t have confidence in sunshine or rain, even when the dog bites and the bee stings, that firm foundation of faithful love remains.
Love this so much! Such a non-anxious posture to approach life as one invitation at a time:) Hope we get to hear more of your mainland adventures here. Also trap music hehe