...More

Today is Patriots Day here in New England, our "extra holiday" of sorts--jealous? It should be fun, except for the fact that my husband still has to work today. Boo. There is a marathon and all kinds of festivities around the city, apparently...and of course, a game at the green monstah. Outside my window, I can hear the locals getting all riled up. I, however, have not gotten out of my bathrobe yet to go see what all the fuss is about. I know I should be out and about exploring my new city, which I have done a little bit, but I'm just not there yet. I'm not sure why I'm not. I hate that I sound like Debbie Downer here, as I have every reason NOT to be. It's just not as much fun to explore stuff by yourself either. I feel like every word out of my mouth is criticism of our new place. (Well, you would be complaining if you realized that "heat and hot water included" really meant heat no higher than a 60 degrees for winter months and water no hotter than 80 degrees at best). Coming from owning your own place (and all those problems you own with it), it's very hard NOT to get frustrated b/c you can't control even getting a hot shower. I think this is called transition and I don't think I'm very good at it. It feels like a huge step backward for us. I miss our house and our neighbors and our friends and I'm wondering why we moved here. Nothing seems better at all. But I have to wonder if it really was supposed to be better, if not just different, even in ways we don't like. We have fallen into the metropolis lie and lost our way. I know there are good things to see and I can't right now. I am reading this and know I come across completely over-dramatic but I have to be honest in saying I'm not going to just put on a happy face and be okay with it. There should be a top five coming later.

We visited a church yesterday and it was okay. They had a missionary speaker from Brazil there, which seemed to distract me from my anger about having to get another cold shower that morning. He spoke plainly, without the cool and regulated tones of pastors I've learned to tune out. Which is why I think I heard him...after telling us about his wife having had Alzheimer's for over 9 years and that this was his first 'break' from her in that time, he talked a little bit about having an eternal perspective in living...something I know I've lost sight of and what made me rethink my current wailings a bit. I know there is peace in that kind of hope. But looking back over the last few years, that seems to be the last place I go in my heart, in my progression of faith. Returning from Brazil the last time was so hard for so many reasons, but I think I just felt so awful, so much like a failure, and things got so dark, that I think I just gave up on following as persistently as I had in years prior. I felt so blind-sided; it didn't seem like it was worth the pain and part of me is ashamed for letting one person affect me so much. I think things just got a lot more cloudy and light for me too want to make definitions for how I was going to be, and I ended up just living in distraction, ignoring my own brokenness and shaming others for theirs. 

I have fewer distractions here, I'm seeing. It's easy to make the 'few' quite large...and quite ridiculous. And now that it's quieter, relatively speaking (there IS a stadium 300 yards from my apt window), it's hard to not listen a little more to His still small voice wanting me to converse with Him...kind of like we used to...but more. There's got to be more.