Finally

I've finally transferred this blog from my old bethel email to my gmail account. That took way too long (better part of a year).

More to come

Who Knows

11:37am.

It's deceptively sunny out. I know this because it is snowing as well. One of those days where you long to be outside, and the second you do, you suddenly long to be inside.

I confess, I don't know the correct consistency for oatmeal. It always seems too thick or too thinned out. Maybe I should follow the recipe, but in terms of simply adding water to something (i.e pancake mix, or the instant mashed potatoes) I've always been a do-it-yourself sort of mixer.

This morning, it's too thick.

Little children run places because they are excited.
Adults run to places because they are late or exercising.

(I don't eat instant mashed potatoes anymore. They are gross compared with the real thing.)

Had lunch with a friend earlier this week. Got caught up on his life, which I was very behind in.

Talked with a friend on Skype for a bit. I felt super guilty because I haven't kept in contact with him or his family.

January was a hard month for me. I was depressed, and most days wanted to just lay on the couch and sleep. I'm doing a lot better. Working out helps (sort of). I have a love/hate relationship with it.

I've been trying to let God change my perspective at work lately. I gave away a 7-top (table with 7 people at it). When all was said and done, I ended up basically giving the waitress $30 (that's how much the tip was at the end). She had had a horrible night and I an incredibly busy and fruitful one. She was very appreciative and now talks to me a lot and helps me with my side-work whenever she gets a chance. I told her it's not something she needs to repay, that that wasn't the point.

Karli and I need to register at Target. That needs to happen soon. We also need to send out our invitations. Oh my.

Music is good.

Rantings About Marriage

So, here's my warning. I'm going to say some pretty black and white statements about things such as marriage and singleness and such. I'm talking strictly about myself, and not as a general rule. Also, it seems, as I've gotten to writing a part of this already, I'm on a tangent from the original intent to express my joys and longings for marriage. I'll get to that soon.

Coming home to an empty house is such a sad event (see, this is one of those things I was referring to). I dislike every part of it. I dislike the cold feeling of a dark house, of a place that is exactly the way I left it. I dislike the large amount of space. Luckily, I am renting a very "lived in" house. Someone actually lives here full time. This isn't an apartment or dorm room that I'm just going to occupy for the next year or so. It's nice, knowing this is a home and not just a space.

But it's not my home.

I want a home. I don't care for much space, I've never needed it ( in terms of a dwelling place ). Heck, I currently sleep in a closet. I feel for the past several years now, I've not so much shared a room with my roommates, but I've simply been a guest in their room. In some ways, I'm very fortunate. My current and former roommates are clean people and have decently nice things and a nice sense of where things should go in a space. I'm grateful for those spaces and that I was able to occupy them, but I've never felt them to be "mine". It's never my room. I hope someday to maybe have a sense of that. A sense of belonging.

But I am an alien in these lands. Does an emissary ever feel at home in a foreign land?

I do long for space. I long for a good patch of wooded area right outside the house. I long for a lake within walking distance so I can take days off of work to teach my kids to swim in the summer. I long for the open air of the country, where you can actually see the stars at night, not just imagine them where they should be. Where crickets are louder than cars, and when the deafening silence catches you off-guard. I long to know my neighbors, to have cook-outs, to invite them over to dinner so our kids can play.
I long for long country roads, the kind where you can bike for miles and miles and never leave your own road. That, it seems, is as close to home as I can imagine. That was my home. 11580W 750N. I'll never forget that address as long as I live. It seems cruel that it was ripped away from me, at such a crazy and tumultuous time in my life. Divorces are a nasty business. We needed to sell the house. One parent alone could not keep up with the upkeep of it all. Mow the lawn, clean the cutters, rake the leaves, clean the roof, shovel the snow etc... And I'll never know to this day what kind of financial state my parents were in. Money was the one thing you did not talk about, especially when it was their money. Sure, we had droughts. Mom and Dad would be honest with us and say things are slow at work, or Dad would get laid off, and brother and I would just nod and understand. It's not like we had a lot to begin with, but we did fine with what we had.

I miss those days so much. Those days of a blissful ignorance of the way things really were. Of a time when friday nights meant a bonfire and the hardest decision of the week was who was going to host. No one ever really minded hosting, in fact some of us found pride in this, myself included. We learned how to use our space. That dug up hole in the ground, surrounded by rocks, man it has some stories to tell. Too much gasoline, eyebrows burned off, cans exploding up and over the house, fireworks going off without warning. And laughter. I enjoyed having people over. I didn't have much, but I learned quickly I did have space and on Friday and Saturday nights, it made me rich. People brought whatever they had lying around. Bag of chips here, some soda there, and on a good night, the local pizza shop would have some extra pizzas left over at the end of the night, and we would eat like kings.

But those days are gone. I am tempted to call them the "good ol' days" as one is wont to do. And those days are old, and they are good. But good days are ahead as well. And there have been good days since then. Bethel dorms, Wyoming mountains, Hawaiian Islands, streets of Mishawaka. It's a different type of good. A holy, wholly good, it seems.

And I'm engaged. I wish I could express the sheer joy and magnitude of this feeling welling up within me. I just never want her to leave. I'm sure, one day, I may want to leave (not in a totally give up sense of the phrase, but I'll need to get out of the house) and see some good guy friends, play some Euchre and drink some Jones or IBC, because beer doesn't taste good, and wine and Euchre just somehow don't fit. But right now, I want to come home to her, I want her to come home to me, I want to drive her to work and pack her a lunch and comfort her after long hard days and fall asleep next to her and wake up next to her. She is home. She will be family soon.

I don't have some deep conclusion to this, a lesson in which to draw from the many words I've used. I know there have been lessons along the way, but for now I'm content with getting this out of my head.

Homesick for a time

I guess I have a lot of thoughts in my head that haven't been allowed to be spoken. Sort of like a silent movie, without the subtitles.

I don't see many people these days, and you'd think it would be a restful time but this doesn't feel restful. Doing nothing is not restful. It's lethargic.

Yes, lethargic is almost the most adequate word.

I find myself in the waiting place. Waiting for people to come back, waiting for a job to start, just waiting.

I want to do something, I need to do something, but what? I guess this is the start. Should I blog for the next 40 days, or should I try cooking a different dish every night or start working out or running or enter into the putt-putt tournament Wednesday nights.

I'm home-sick for a time, not a place. A time when I had things to occupy this abnormally large amount of time I find myself with. I'm home-sick for a purpose, a direction, for movement.

Transition.

Moving from one thing to the next. Is that where I am? Where in the world am I going?

30,000 feet

I'm about 30,000 feet in the air right now. Sort of dehydrated because this water is quenching my burning throat. One little cup isn't going to cut it.
And the injustice of it all; open seats in first class. Wonder if I had asked earlier, I could have been bumped up. (I did get a nifty little free blanket).
I think the thing about flying is that I am completely out of control. Every time the engine gets louder or softer, or we bank left or right, or gain or lose a bit of altitude, I immediately come to attention, as if there really is something going wrong and I'm the first to notice, as if I could actually do something about it.
I could totally go for some more water. The gentlemen in front of me didn't get their drinks so maybe the stewardesses will take pity on a parched soul. I'm rationing the water now, each sip is half the size of the last (theoretically, at this rate, I'll never run out).
She had mercy, another cup of water is on it's way.
My throat now has an abundance of this wonderfully cooling liquid.

Little Comfort in my prayers

We're allowed to be sad, right?
We're allowed to be grieved when things don't go the way we think they should go, especially when we know to the best of our ability that we're being obedient to the Spirit? So where do you even go from there? When you've uprooted your family, moved to a far away place, barely making it month to month financially, what do you do? Is it wrong to feel that praying in those situations gives you little comfort?
I wonder if that's then a reflection on how you're viewing God at that point. Who/what is to blame? I'm not saying God is to blame, but we'd sure like to point a finger at something, even if it is ourselves.
I don't think we'll always have a finger to point.
Why is it I always feel kicked, especially when I'm down?
I think it's because when I'm standing, those blows mean little to me, but the second I'm down, they all feel like the end of the world.
Maybe Spring Break will be somewhere else?
Who knows.....?

untitled

All I wanted was food and a movie
It's really not too much to ask for
I didn't want my eyes opened to the pain
And I got so much more than I bargained for

Waiting in line, I saw her bloodied up face
The sad look in her eyes told a story
Bruises and blood covered her features
A shell of her once beautiful glory

All she wanted was love and acceptance
It's really not too much to ask for
Instead she got a backhand and a fist
So much more than she bargained for

Taking a bus back to the good old home
Running away from his fire
Tears stream down "I think i'll be okay,
It' just that I am so tired"

Waiting in line for my pizza
On her arms are the marks of her hate
She says she had a really bad day
The numbness, she just had to sate

My words of comfort seem empty and shallow
You've made these yourself, the wounds are so deep
The pain brings you comfort, it awakens whats left
But the price is getting so steep

The children are crying in the streets
Motherless, fatherless
Arms stretched towards everything but the Heavens
They'll soon drown in their own tears, they'll all soon bleed out

These are the stores we need to enter into.
Ask for your eyes to be open, you'll see the pain, the hurt, the misery.
Loves wins, but it wins at a cost.
Are you willing to have your heart shatter for these people?
Your brothers and sisters, the lost sheep of the flock?
This is not easy, this is not clean, this is not painless.
He did not promise us this would be easy, clean or painless
Only that it will be worth it.
It. Will. Be. Worth. It.