A frustrating time

I'm ready to go home now. Five months back and I'm ready to go home. Now.

The husband is in Wisconsin for what I'm terribly afraid will be a fruitless missions conference. It's hard to convince the mega church that people in modern western Europe are in as dire need for a Saviour as the rest of the world is. Especially when the "rest of the world" is within a 5 mile radius of the church and is also in dire need of a state-of-the-art work out facility and wedding chapel and climbing wall... I could go on and on. Nevertheless, I hold out a wee bit of hope, because I want to go home.

I'm with the children in Missouri, cut off from communication with husband because of very rather dodgy internet reception (and a jacked-up phone). The internet has been this way for months now, and makes working and communicating with coworkers and friends a world away quite impossible. But every day, we try to again, because we want to go home.

The children are rebelling against me. They know the disciplinarian (and also the fun one) has gone missing, so that leaves me - the weak one with the short fuse - attempting to hold things together. The girl screams at me from time to time, the boy looks at me so disappointingly when I've let him down (most recently because of a forgotten darth vader mask and light saber on halloween), and the baby follows me from room to room crying and hanging onto my leg because I'm all he's got left. Add to this no-sleeping and a bit of bed-wetting, and we're all suffering the ill effects of a change in routine. They feel encumbered by our current living and working and schooling situation, because they too want to go home.

A distant family member continues to try and sabotage our work by communicating with our organization - this time with the president of the organization - over an issue she has which is actually quite important: a tattoo. She makes phone calls, writes letters, and makes terribly loathing insinuations about us and our calling - and even our ethics - to anyone who will hear her. Happily, I think people are done hearing her, realizing that she's fighting for the losing side in a battle of spiritual nature. But still, the pettiness and sadness and humiliation over the whole things makes me want to run away, straight back home.

And finally, this teeny tiny computer I'm typing this on. Not my computer, but the man's (who has mine to wow the important people with in WI). It's small and slow and every once in awhile a new window pops up or a search engine - I'm fairly sure I didn't do that. Or it goes to sleep, or beeps at me. The text on the window randomly gets bigger, or smaller, or disappears altogether. It's driving me crazy! Unfortunately, it's an inanimate object so can't long for home, but it does allow me to blame one more thing on being here.

In spite of all this, I'm glad to have my family. Loving a new church. Glad to have fall colours in a familiar place. Happy to shop and eat wherever I so choose. Blessed by things all over the place. But there's an Irish weight hanging over me. It follows me wherever I go, hovers around whoever I'm talking to. It sleeps in the bed between me and the man and whichever little person is there for the night. It sits in my Bible when I open it, echoing every word.

It says, "You are not home."

*rereading this I feel like I complain too much and praise too little. I hate this about my writing, feel like it's a recurring theme. These, however, are my feelings, true and raw, today. Tomorrow, hopefully, prayerfully, I will write of the praiseworthy things I often forget to mention. Thank you God for letting us complain to you, and forgiving us of our selfishness. Teach me how to praise.