Feeling lost after graduation?

Hey everyone! This blog belongs to the “Advent Series” that’ll run from December 1st to January 19th. In this series of fictional short stories, I’ll be writing from different points of view, exploring how folks from various walks of life—from college grads to business executives to those in recovery—articulate why the meaning of Christmas, “God is with us,” matters to the people they come across. Through these fictional stories, I’ll be engaging with examples of how to have conversations (or not) about Advent in a variety of scenarios. Enjoy!

Oliver liked graduating college. There was the last, cathartic finals week where he and his friends had climbed to the library roof and watched the stars, procrastinating one last night. There was the last exam submitted, the Sunday where he and other graduates stood in front of the church and were blessed, and the night his grandparents had taken him out to dinner. There was the ceremony, walking across the stage bedecked in his robes, cords, flower leis, and waving for all the cameras. Yeah, graduating college rocked.

Being graduated, however? That part was much less fun. It was January, nearly eight months since he’d left school, and life was somehow both boring and incredibly nerve-wracking. His friend Adam (who majored in literature and still somehow found a job) would have called the post-grad landscape “a sea riddled with flat, listless days and furious storms around the next horizon.” Or something like that.

Basically, Oliver felt stuck in neutral. He was still living with his grandparents, and even though he liked them a lot—heck, they raised him—he missed the freedom that came with renting a house with his boys. Adam had gotten a teaching gig, Brett went to graduate school across the country, Nathan stuck around the college waiting for his girlfriend to graduate, and Oliver had to trek on home because he had no prospects and couldn’t afford a place of his own. Everyone was always talking about “the real world,” but he felt like the years he spent in college felt a lot more real than the last eight months of grocery store shifts and half-heartedly scrolling LinkedIn.

“Why don’t you settle in a bit more?” his grandmother had asked one day, anxiously looking in on his haphazard suitcase and clothes draped over his chair. “You know, there’s nothing wrong with taking time to figure things out.”

“I know,” he’d said listlessly. He was being rude, he knew, but it was hard to make his stay feel even semi-permanent. Shouldn’t he be out of the house already? Was he falling behind that quickly?

“Do you want to come down a bit before your shift? We can make butter cookies.”

His grandmother for weeks now had been wanting to teach him the recipe. Feeling even more like a jerk, he declined, and opened LinkedIn again. No new listings.

Finally driven by boredom and anxiety, alternately, he started looking around for advice. His favorite professor responded to his email quickly, saying these things take time which was true, and irritating. His boss at the grocery store was understanding, but also had no connections in the data science world. His old youth group leader had answered the door, two kids hanging off his arms, looking harried. Oliver had accepted his suggestion to go talk to the head pastor. When the door closed, it only slightly muffled the sound of shrieking children.

A few days later, he sat outside the pastor’s office. The folding chair was cold, but the room was warm, somehow. The wall opposite him held two pictures: a gorgeously painted rendition of the angel Gabriel visiting Mary, and a cartoon picture of a man holding a sheep.

As he was wondering how they ended up side-by-side, a woman came into the common room. She was older, bordering on elderly, holding a large bag of knitting. She smelled like cinnamon and cats, but it wasn’t unpleasant. She smiled at Oliver and sat down. Oliver smiled back. She pulled out a big roll of bright purple yarn and began to knit, the needles flying back and forth. She reminded Oliver of his grandmother, and though it was kind of mean, he hoped she wouldn’t talk to her. Older people always asked him when he was going to start his career, as if he knew that kind of thing.

“Waiting for Pastor Jeff, dear?” she asked, gesturing to the door. Oliver didn’t know how someone could gesture and keep knitting at that pace, but she did.

He nodded.

“Oh, me too. I’m a bit early, though. My house can get so cold.”

He nodded again.

“What’s your name? I’m Agatha.”

“Oliver.”

“Have you been coming here for a while? I don’t think I recognize you.”

Oliver shrugged. “Sort of. I went off for school but now I’m back.”

“Ah, that explains it then,” she nodded sagely. “I’ve only been here three months. Well then, young Oliver, what brings you back home?”

Here it was, the question he always hated. “It’s hard to find a job,” he mumbled. He waited for her to launch off into a lecture, but all she did was hum. “I mean, I like my grandparents,” he found himself saying, “but I thought I’d be doing something by now. It’s weird. And I know that all Advent we’ve been talking about how we have to love Jesus more than anything else, but it’s hard when I want my life to mean something so badly.”

“I hear that,” Agatha said after a moment of silence. “But you know what else Advent teaches us? That God does unexpected things all the time. We end up in unexpected situations, places, and with people we’d never think to cross paths with. I know it’s hard, dear, and I’ve been there. Maybe in the next few days, try asking God what he has for you right now? I know it’s unexpected, but that’s precisely where God likes to work, hm?”

Oliver had no idea how he was going to answer that, but was spared by someone coming out of Pastor Jeff’s office. He was called in, so he said goodbye to Agatha, who cheerily waved him off without breaking her knitting stride.

He didn’t remember a single thing from his and Pastor Jeff’s conversation. He drove home, not even listening to music, praying with the sort of intensity that felt both all-encompassing and entirely without direction. Unexpected? Well, Agatha had certainly been unexpected. Maybe there was something to recognizing that he didn’t expect to be home for so long after college. Maybe even in the midst of it, there could still be something.

He didn’t hear God speak on the drive home, but when he opened the door, he could hear his grandmother moving in the kitchen.

“Hey,” he called out on impulse, “can you teach me to make butter cookies?”

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