Around the House

When you rent an apartment (even when it feels like your rent is higher than 90% of the country's mortgage payments), there's a tendency to not really make it your own.  "We won't live here THAT long" or "It's not ours anyways" somehow become excuses for blank walls, boring spaces and general malaise toward decorating.

Let me be clear.  When it comes to our rented apartment, I = malaise.

But in an effort to make our rented apartment feel a little bit more like a home (we did move in back in July, after all) M finally framed and hung some of our favorite pictures of the Chicago's World Fair.

What you can't see in this picture are the high-hanging light bulbs that need to be replaced

And yesterday, after getting rid of four large trash bags of clothing from our closet, I 1) organized my clothing by color, 2) did two loads of laundry, and 3) marveled at how productive I was being.

And now, NOW, I can hear M upstairs cleaning the bathroom.  I would go up there, but I surely don't want to distract him.  I mean, I am probably more effective sitting here blogging than helping.  Because who likes help when they clean?  Certainly not me.  I prefer to do everything by myself, so that I can complain later that I had to do everything by myself.

Because the reality is that, whether you rent, own, squat or whatever, where you live is your home and should- at least I think- reflect in some ways the things you love.  We've chosen to decorate our home with paintings and pictures that we've gathered on our travels: a large painting of a cityscape from Croatia, another of pomegranates from Bosnia, two small paintings from Slovenia (though I'm not really sure the meaning behind the one where it looks like a housewife is being washed after talking to a devil...) and other art, gathered from around the world.  We have pictures of our families, books we love and mirrors picked up at the local flea market.  

So maybe we don't own it, and maybe we won't live here forever.  But we're working to make this little apartment in DC our home, by the things we put on the walls, the people we invite in and the love that we share with each other during this unique time in our lives.

Thankful

This time last year, Mason and I were unsure what exactly we would be doing a few months down the road.  And by "unsure" I mean "completely stressed out and emotional because we had no idea what was going on."

But then God- because that's who I believe was at work- ended up leading not one but both of us to jobs that could not have been better fitted to us and, AND the city that we love.  About a year away from that time of stress, we are both able to look back now and see the clear hand of God in this move back to Capitol City.

And it reminds me: sometimes when you're in those deep moments of despair, when you just can't seem to figure out what the hell, I mean HECK, is going on, it's good to remember these times when you have been provided for.  And not just provided for, but blessed the freaking socks off of.  

That's a technical term.

I'm weary of the "health and wealth Gospel," as if God wants all His children to be multi-millionaires who never get hurt or sick or laid off or always get exactly what they want or...whatever.  But I also know that God is ultimately good, and that He often times works the most in my heart when I am petrified stiff, scared or unsure of what in the world is going on.  

And I'm thankful for that.

Hey, I have a blog!

Somewhere around November of this year, our lives kicked into overdrive.

Chalk it up to our international travels...

Or maybe our domestic ones...

And craziness at work for me...

And Mason...

(No, he's not a mason.  Ok, he IS a Mason but not a Freemason.)

And what you're left with is a woefully under updated blog.

And, if I'm really honest, it's been an emotionally, spiritually and physically exhausting few months, with lots of internal processing, thinking, wrestling (figurative, mostly) and trying to understand the realities of the things I face every day at work.

But I'm back.  I can't promise much more than a few posts a month, and I don't even know if anyone is still around to read this thing.  But more posts are to come, many reflecting on incarceration, poverty, funny stories and other lighthearted moments.  

Because seriously, if you can't laugh, you might go crazy.