In mid-February, I started a job in homeless outreach. It was a full-time job—the first full-time job I’ve had in a decade.

Two weeks into that job, I was asked to apply for another position in an administrative-level nonprofit organization. Briefly, it’s a lead agency for other homeless nonprofits. I applied, interviewed, and suddenly started on 18 March 2024. In my role, I am considered a “system leader.”

I don’t like job hopping, and that’s not what I felt I did. Even if someone could accuse me of job hopping, the job I applied to was not the job I was offered. My job title was different, and the nature of the work was significantly different.

I judged the situation and gave one week’s notice. The executive and a mid-manager said they wished I had given two weeks. I told them both that a week’s notice was generous because the job was different than advertised. They dropped the issue.

Burning bridges is a bad idea, but bridges connect two sides. It is biased to think that someone across the table is burning a bridge from their side. They might have lit the match, but you might have poured the gas. Or, they might have had the wisdom not to cross bridges doused in gasoline. So, I walked away.

In hindsight, my stint in that homeless outreach gig indicated that I had to zoom into homelessness to see it on the street before zooming out and seeing it through policy and administration. It’s as if I was reminded of what all the paperwork and meetings are for. It’s about real people.

Homelessness is changing. In many ways, it’s the same, but it’s changing. Street drugs, despair, hopelessness, and comorbidities are changing. Interventions are changing, too. Take permanent supportive housing, which I call the new vocabulary of a housing imagination. As darkness hides behind new shadows, light glows around new penumbras.

The new job is incredible. I sense jamais vu, the feeling of culture shock and homecoming. On the one hand, it’s entirely new to me, but on the other, I feel like I’m right where I need to be, as if I knew what the one good job would be like—the one I went to college and grad school for, and all of that unpaid work.

Suddenly, my wife and I can be considered middle class (if only income was considered because we’ve been classy and cultured in other ways).  Suddenly, gentrification is on our side, and the housing market looks pretty good.

And suddenly, I am in a position where I could forget—through material gain—all that I had learned from my suffering and poverty. It came to me that I could lose everything of spiritual value. And coming to my senses, I believe I have genuinely feared God. I’ve been broke, but I’ve been broken. Being broken is scarier.

My life fell apart in my 20s. In some respects, it might have never been together with anything more than Goop, zip ties, and 1×2’s. In my 30s, I ran out of McGuyver-like materials. It’s been a lengthy rebuild. I’ve learned of the suitable materials of this world, like David’s cedar, but I’ve also learned that they alone aren’t enough. That rebuild could be lost if I forget what and where I am. It has given me pause—a fearful state.

I’ve responded to my fear by thinking about the vision for my life. What is it really for? What is a day in the life of a person who, in 2016, lacked shoes, mental health, and a home, but in 2024, has a marriage, free market agency, a family that respects him, and retirement benefits? How does he live?

This week, I realized that what I’m getting at is not invention but innovation. The difference between these words is that invention adds something that wasn’t there, while innovation rearranges the things that already were.

I have not invented a new life, but I might have innovated one. When we talk about rebirth, we are not talking about something that defies conservation of mass but one that operates within its rules. We are never short on resources. We are short on organization. Any addition of resources might have been through the kind of living and loving energy transduced through our relationship with God. The Liberator floods our shoulders with heaven’s dew as we carry the cross. That’s God’s agency.

As I put things together and continue to do so, I’ve noticed something and told my wife about it. My personality is changing. My behaviors, priorities, efforts, outlooks, opinions—they are changing. Yet, my personhood feels intact. I don’t know what to make of that. I’m trying to figure it out.

Living through poverty puts you in survival mode. Suddenly, I’m not in survival mode. I’m not constantly patching a quilt of efforts into a comfortable status quo. The quilt is becoming a tapestry. It’s becoming recognizable to others at first glance.

Yesterday, I spontaneously bought a membership to Planet Fitness and worked out all of my muscle groups for an hour, book-ended by two half-mile runs. At one point, my abs, which hide behind a blubbery veil of a middle-aged mid-section, flexed and would not stop flexing. All of those old nerve connections woke up and could not stop firing. The synapses remembered what and where they were. I told my wife, “I’ve been missing this in my life.”

I talked with my wife about drinking, which I do. It’s not necessarily problematic, but it is consistent. You see, my energy is suddenly invested in a new career that calls upon advanced and abstract thinking. I need rest and recovery. Alcohol provides neither.

My bank account has four digits, and I no longer feel like shopping. I crave saving. I seek bigger purchases and repairs like a new computer, a vacation, a downpayment on a home, and counseling.

Like the motor neurons in my abdominal muscles, I am becoming aware of a super-distinct awakening. Potential in states of unrest is a productive disturbance. I can’t stop unflexing. I’m not sure if I could if I tried. Suddenly, again, I am going somewhere to a place where I’ve already arrived and becoming the person who I always was.