I love the weekends with Ash. All of it. And E does too. She and I are much more restful and at peace when this man we love is WITH us. I love getting him at his best...in the morning, well, mid-morning (you'll see). Most days, he is gone before I wake up, and gets home around 7p. After we put EV down, we have maybe 2 hours of time together before we hit the hay. Maybe. His eyes start rolling about 9p most nights, as well they should since he naturally wakes up on the dark side of 5a or 6a most days. That is typically the deepest part of sleep for this girl. I still think it's funny that we are so opposite when it comes to sleeping. He can almost fall asleep before his head hits the pillow and it takes me what feels like forever to finally fall asleep. He wakes early and I can sleep-in with ease when Ellery isn't waking me up to early. It's even more odd, if not just plain sad, that most of our time together is spent sleeping. Close but unconscious. Yeah, it's just sad. But it's our reality. If only we could converse in our dreams...

Why are our lives so busy, so filled with so much work? It's frustrating that the person I care the most for in this world is someone I feel like I see so little. It makes me feel like we never use our time together as well as we should considering the ratio is so off.

This kind of thinking makes me reflective of how little I contemplate the larger presence in my life. Of God. As a Christian, it's a little shocking even to me, how little thought or time or energy I have for loving God and loving people. I don't blog about this often b/c there are quite a few of our friends that don't know this about us. It's not something that easily finds its way into conversation up here in New England. Church: yes, religion: yes, but often with hostility...which doesn't make it easy to discuss knowing God, which is very different. I really don't like religion. And most of the time, I don't like church. It's easier to be funny and snarky or to just drink my wine and keep quiet for fear of being grouped in with Westboro Baptists or have to fight against with someone's past experience, often a very bad past experience. And we all know I'd rather just have fun.

So in hiding (I'll admit it), I feel like our role in relationships has been more of listening and learning one with some of our friends in the last three years here in Boston. And I have to say, I've learned so much more about people in general, and my interaction in the world as someone who says they love God than I ever thought about before. Don't get me wrong, I feel like it's present in the South, but still very buried. And the results for me have challenged a lot of my auto-responses and how I dialog--I feel like I've just gotten to relax a bit too, which is a surprise. I'm so thankful for all the people that I know here. For the moments I brush up against and can very tangibly feel the anger people have with the church and God. I have it myself. It clouds my view of a God, and easily leads me to bitterness and assumption instead of more understanding.

I feel like this season has been a good place to hide. The good part has been listening, understanding and reflection. The bad is that it quickly hardens my heart toward many things, as isolation is prone to do. And I do hope that it is a passing season for me (the hiding). I am not ashamed, but I just don't know how to articulate very quickly or effectively what kind of person who loves God that I actually am. I hope I am one that is struggling alongside all these wonderfully diverse people I love here in Boston and elsewhere to understand meaning and relationship and that very real ache that nothing else fills. Not even a husband who comes home to me at night and on the weekends. Or my dream house. Or dream vacation. Or warm weather.

I don't know what else to say.

Thoughts?