Well today I embarked on the journey of going through some of the stuff in the spare room. There is so much stuff that we probably don’t need but I find I’m having a difficult time letting go. I opened a couple of boxes and started pruning away. Inside one of the boxes I found a smaller box filled with old letters. Many of them from friends but quite a few from family. I opened a few just to reminiscence. Letter after letter I read my childhood through the eyes of my loved ones. Letters from grandparents who I never got the chance to meet, family who I tried to get to know but communication dwindled as I aged. Family and connection has been so important to me and as of late I have failed to keep in touch. Facebook has stunted my letter writing, my phone calls, and my meet ups. It’s just easier to be a lazy friend. I’m trying to get the courage to no longer communicate through facebook but it is so hard. Facebook is one of the few ways that I see photos of my nieces and my nephews. Not to mention other family who I miss like crazy. However, facebook is poison to human connection. Sure it seems like a good idea but in reality it is so impersonal. People just don’t connect like they used to . It’s sad.
As I continued to look through letters and notes and unset but stamped thank you cards I realized that in the blink of an eye my life has passed me by. I’m not 22 any more and life is just speeding up. I keep praying that God has this plan for me that I can’t see and that some day I will wake up and think “oh it all makes sense now”… but I must still be dreaming because I just can’t see it yet. Life just keeps moving forward. I sometimes feel like I am moving backwards. Not using my degrees… doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t be. Life is funny like that.
Here we are in the city we least like living, in a small little condo, and hoping for the best. So many snags from day one. We arrived during a monsoon only to have to unpack in the pouring rain. Water past our ankles, running through puddles, and trying to out run the down pour that just seemed to chase us. Yet, somehow we managed to unpack the very stuffed U-hall in a short amount of time. Our floors were wet and our boxes had little puddles we had to pour off but we lived through it. The next few days we unpacked and spent money we didn’t yet have on things we deemed necessary. Both of us became discouraged as we dislike purchasing anything on borrowed money. I especially learned my lesson from student loans. But without any furniture or kitchen stuff… we had to bite the bullet. We made our way into the valley of defeat where we are now owned by the shackles of debt. We’re doing our best to make the best of it. We’ve been searching for the silver lining and looking for the positives. Jay hasn’t had an appetite since we’ve been here. I can tell he is struggling. Life seems to be spinning out of control in a sense. It’s like we got on a treadmill but can’t jump off.. just have to keep going. Faster and faster and faster. You want to turn off the controls but they aren’t within reach. So you pray. Pray for the beauty of life to show itself and hope that you can see it when it does. And then maybe things will slow down and feel somewhat normal (whatever that is).
We really miss LA.. we miss the green and the weather and the ocean and all the beaches and the beauty… so it’s not hard to understand why we wonder if something beautiful can happen in a place so opposite.
I keep thinking of that song by Gungor… Beautiful things. I keep thinking that even though things aren’t ideal maybe something beautiful can find its way through.
Here’s a picture just before the flood!
