how hard can it be to find a church?

Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), we were spoiled by being able to attend really wonderful churches in Brazil. Both of our churches in Brasilia and Sao Paulo were led by people who were good ministers and faithful believers, and who also happened to be just really nice, approachable people who welcomed you in as if you were family.

When you're from a small town and you're raised Methodist or Baptist or Presbyterian or whatever, you just go to the church of your denomination in your town. There's no choice as there is just one option. Then when you move overseas, you just hope and pray to find a church that speaks English and doesn't practice chicken sacrifices or some weird something like that. The denomination really doesn't matter so much as the fellowship of being in a body of believers.

I really didn't give a second thought to finding a good church home when we returned to the motherland. I knew we wouldn't attend our childhood church to which Jimmy and I still maintain our membership, but there are a lot of churches in the close vicinity, so how hard could it be to find a church that's more contemporary, has some younger families in it (and yes, I'm considering us as a younger-ish family), and doesn't dumb down religion?

Very hard is the answer to that rhetorical question.

On every available Sunday since we returned in June when we weren't traveling, we have been to a different church or a different service at the same church. We have been to traditional services at big Methodist churches and little Methodist churches. We have been to contemporary services at both of those churches. We have been to our childhood membership church. Nothing has been quite the right fit.

So today we branched out and went to one of these campus churches of a big network of planted churches. I honestly didn't know if I was at church or a nightclub or a rock concert. Mac was insistent that he wasn't going to the children's program but the greeter insisted on giving us a tour of the facility in case he changed his mind. So by the time we entered the "sanctuary", they had dimmed the lights so that only the band was lit up. I am not kidding you when I tell you that it was a little like entering a movie theater after the movie has started and you have to feel your way along, squinting around for 2 seats next to each other.

The music was good, but loud; the sermon was good, but impersonal (delivered by video from the main church in Charleston), and the people were very friendly (which is a plus because at some of these churches we've been to, nary as soul has spoken to us). Mac was hooked. I'm willing to give it another try for the promise of another good sermon. But note to self for next time: less church-y clothes and more concert-ish clothes!

A little P.S. - in his sermon, the minister said that between all their campuses across the state and in all their services at these campuses, some 11,000 people attended this church last weekend. They are definitely getting the message out to a lot of people.

it was a short-lived career

After a VERY stressful week last week trying to juggle work (full-time for the first time since Mac was born), a child and life without Jimmy, I was ready to go to Bull Street. If you're not from South Carolina, that reference will mean nothing to you, but Bull Street is where the state psychiatric hospital is (or at least was). In short, I felt like my child was getting shortchanged and I came to the hard realization that he needed a parent more than I needed a job.

Last Thursday night I couldn't sleep and wrote a resignation letter. Jimmy noticed I was online at 2am and talked me off the ledge from afar. He's good for that from afar and aclose!

After a lot of soul-searching and prayer over the weekend, I decided to see if I could go part-time (up to full-time as necessary for travel and post-travel work). I sent the email to my boss in DC on Monday explaining everything to him (I've worked for him before and he is a reasonable guy), but he was away until today. I did get an email yesterday from him saying that he would call when he was back in the office. Which turned out to be today.

So we talked this afternoon and he said since I'm hired as a contractor, I can't go part-time but that he'll hire me for short-term gigs as they come up. We'll see if they come up. He assured me there were no hard feelings on his end and that he understood family had to come first especially in this situation.

I definitely feel like the monkey is off my back, but I also feel a huge sense of failure because I just gave up what had the potential to be the best and most interesting job I've had since I started working and maybe I should have been able to do it "all".

Next time I'll have to order a bigger-sized Superwoman cape.

the feeling of accomplishment

I will admit in 11+ years of marriage, I have learned to hand off the heavy lifting to Jimmy. Got a piece of furniture that needs to be moved? Before marriage, I would have shuffled it across the room by myself. After marriage, I would wait for Jimmy to help me if not watch him move it by himself.

I was a VERY self-sufficient girl before marriage and I'm having to grow my self-sufficiency legs back. I'll give you a couple examples, since I know you're a captive audience.

1. We have a queen-sized mattress on top of split boxsprings. Why might we have split boxsprings? Because we learned the hard way in Baltimore that a queen-sized boxspring does not turn corners to get up tight staircases. The problem with the split boxsprings is that our metal bedframe was missing that reinforcement leg in the middle that provides support from the floor up to the frame so we had some major sagging going on. Jimmy and I noticed before he left that we rolled into the middle, but it seemed easier to roll than to fix the problem. Until yesterday, when I got fed up and called the mattress store, asked for the best solution and was told what to buy at Lowe's. Then I went to Lowe's and had them cut the wood into the right size slats. Then I came home and heaved the mattress off and lifted the boxsprings off and laid down my wooden slats. And guess what? Last night there was no rolling, no distinct sagging, no hanging on to the edge of the mattress.

2. My bedroom in this rental house looks like a warehouse. Oprah says your bedroom is supposed to be a retreat. My bedroom is a retreat only if you like communing in Sam's or Home Depot. I have a dresser, a bed, two mismatched bedside tables (that aren't really supposed to be bedside tables so they're entirely too large for the space), a file cabinet, industrial shelving (that I was using before the dresser got here from storage, but now realize that I need at least a couple of the shelves), and a closet door that won't close because I have hanging shoe racks on either side of the door. In other words, it's a mess. But today I decided that if I moved the dresser over some, I could put a couple of the shelves on that same wall, cover it with a table cloth to hide the junk on the shelves and it wouldn't be quite so heinous. The problem is that there's a 26-inch television (the big, fat, heavy "old" kind and not a sleek flat screen that my 6 year-old can pick up) on top of a 5-drawer dresser that's packed to the gills. The dresser is sort of tall and I was scared to risk lifting the tv for fear that I'd drop it or get it down and not be able to get it back off the floor. So I did what any sensible person would do. I tried to push the whole combination. And guess what happened? NADA. That's right. It didn't budge. So I walked away and gave it some thought. And decided to wait until somebody stronger could come over and help me. And then the self-sufficiency thing kicked in and I decided I was not going to be beaten by a heavy dresser. Women lift cars off of their children nearly everyday, for crying out loud. So I kicked off my flipflops, squatted a little bit, put some shoulder into it, and the whole thing moved. I was able to push it about 3 inches before it (and I) just refused to go more. It still needs to go a couple more inches, but I can live with it the way it is for the time being.

So there is a feeling of self-satisfied accomplishment for getting some things done around here, but what I wouldn't give to have Jimmy here to do these things for me. And this time, I wouldn't take his muscles for granted nearly as much...

is it a sign that your child watches too much tv...

... if he tells you something comes on at "8pm Eastern/7pm Central"?

I'm gonna get spoiled

Apparently when your war zone-located husband thinks you're losing your marbles, he sends flowers and lots of them. Look what came yesterday!
If I'd known it was this easy to get flowers every week, I would have lost my marbles a long time ago!

where did the last 20 years go?

This past weekend was the dreaded (by me) 20th class reunion from Berkeley High School. That's right. Class of '89.

Jimmy and I missed the 10th reunion because we were in Guadalajara at the time and didn't have money just to fly home for the weekend. So we promised ourselves that we wouldn't miss the 20th, no matter what.

No matter what.

Unless Uncle Sam intervened.

Which he did.

Which meant I had to attend the class reunion by myself. It's one thing if you've never gotten married or you're happily divorced and you have to attend these functions on your own. But if you are happily married and have to attend the reunion from a high school from which you and your spouse graduated and the aforementioned spouse is missing... well it looks bad. I was already paranoid about how I looked with all these wrinkles (really laugh lines, but who can tell the difference except me), so to go solo was just embarrassing. I Skyped Jimmy earlier in the day on Friday and asked him if he thought I could get rid of some wrinkles between then and 7pm. He said I could but we couldn't afford what it would cost last-minute, so I had to go with wrinkles and graying hair - all without him.

I was originally going to boycott the whole thing because I wanted them to have it in July when Jimmy would be home but the people on the committee chose to have it in August. Which I guess is their prerogative, but whatever.

The festivities included a meet and greet at the Dock on Friday night, a family fun day on Saturday at Short Stay on the lake, the reunion dinner and dancing at the country club on Saturday night, and a worship service on Sunday morning. Until about Tuesday, I intended to attend the Saturday night function only.

And then I had a dream early in the week that I missed a lot of good stuff by not attending the meet and greet. I know. It's pathetic to dream about your class reunion. But that shows how pathetic my life is right now and I've been an insomniac since I started work last Monday, so quite frankly I was happy to be in a dream state, no matter what the dream.

After the dream, I talked to my posse to find out if any of them were going to the meet and greet. The Coxes were so I knew there would be people there I knew and recognized. Then on Thursday, our friend Dara connected via email and we decided to go together, which meant I had somebody to walk into the room with, which is a big thing for me. You know that instant when you walk in and you don't know if/when you're going to see a familiar face? I hate that instant. So the two of us braved the instant together and recognized a few people, but really questioned who the majority of the people were and if they were even in our class because their names didn't ring any bells. A lot of those folks have either improved dramatically or declined dramatically; shockingly nobody looks the same as they did 20 years ago.

As planned, Mac and I skipped the Short Stay event. The last time I heard about Short Stay was a year or two ago when a man got his arm bitten off by an alligator there. That made the rounds all the way down in Brazil. No need to tempt fate with alligators or quite frankly see anybody or be seen by anybody from my class in a bathing suit.

The next event was the dinner and dancing on Saturday night. I went with the Coxes after which we met the Ackers at the event. I had a GREAT time and just wish Jimmy had been there because he would have loved catching up with all those people. I recognized a few more people than the night before but gosh, it was hard for a couple reasons. One was because they all looked different. And secondly, the sweat was dripping in my eyes and causing me not to see so well. It was about 110 degrees in the country club. Honestly, if I were a July bride and had my reception there, I would demand a refund because of the extreme discomfort caused by their poor air conditioning system. It was H-O-T but such good fun.














And finally Mac and I went with niece Hayley (who was with us for the weekend along with baby Blair) to the church service which was led by members of our class who went into the ministry. It was a lovely ending to a great weekend and - not surprisingly - not nearly as well-attended as the party events.

So as our alma mater starts out, "Here’s to thee, our alma mater, dear old Berkeley High, ever shall we cling together as the years go by." I can't wait for the next reunion. Maybe I can even bring Jimmy next time.

2nd day of 1st grade...

...was proclaimed by Mac to be "the best day ever at Pinewood", which is saying a lot since he's had two whole days there!

The teacher came to the car at pickup and said that he behaved beautifully. Yea!