Teething pains

I am playing the role of housewife now, which is a strange place to be. The past few months have been a flurry of activity, and from in the space of about 2 months I have gone from being an engaged, stressed and burned out Oasis volunteer in Bristol to a married Criddle living in Buckingham, waiting to start a job with paperwork that never seems to come through. After months of waiting, I am still on the end of the phone, asking HR what the cheese is going on with my paperwork, and whether there is any end in sight and projected start date for when I will be able to start my job, to no avail. My occupational health paperwork is still being processed, and I am still here in limbo, with no idea when my job will properly begin.

In the meantime, I am finding it lonely and a bit empty where we currently are. Dave has been working for about a month now, so he is in the rhythm of employment and we are feeling the real pull of not having enough time together. Me being at home all day with no work really just compounds the lack. We love being married, love being able to wake up and go to sleep lying next to each other, love being able to share every detail of life with no sense of rush or pressure like we did when we were doing long distance. We are growing in what it means to share life together in marriage. But I think I understand now why people advise that in the first year of marriage you carve out lots and lots of exclusive time for your spouse; because you need that time, and you need to focus on your marriage, and you just miss each other and want to be together a lot! As a church employee, I feel like those boundaries can be blurred for Dave, and we are feeling the weight of the evening meetings, the long clubs. I guess it would be the same no matter what jobs we had, but I suppose it is difficult not to miss your spouse and wish you had more time with them.

I am remembering that settling into a new area can be difficult and exhausting, especially when there is no obvious social grouping that you can tap into to make friends. I have made a few friends at church but most of the people are church are demographically and personality-wise not really on the same wavelength as Dave and I. So we are missing the sense of connection and community we had each in the respective places we previously were. I miss my friends dotted all over the place, I miss Bristol, Oasis, the vision and drive we had there. It was hard and so flawed but I find myself missing it, and missing a church that was all about mission to the lost, through and through. We fight completely different battles here and Dave and I are finding the traditional, inward-looking, affluent middle-classs swathes and trends of the church here difficult and stifling. I know that change is on the brink of happening, and God brought us here to be agents and movers of that change, and I know that we are not meant to settle comfortably into a church that suits us just because it is easy. But sometimes I wonder whether this is a fight worth investing so much time and energy into, when there are so many other fights in the world that are lacking soldiers and that I would more naturally associate myself with.

I think it is all just teething pains, because some things have got easier, and we are gradually meeting lovely and like-minded people. I think it is just the sense of confusion and ennui that I have been feeling, the sense of malaise, uselessness, stasis that I have got myself into from being at home all day. I find it hard not to feel discouraged and empty, wondering where I am and what I am supposed to be doing myself. I find myself batting off feelings of worthlessness and lack, teetering on the edge of destructive self-loathing. Yet, such a call to action, such a call to being the change, to showing God's love, to fighting for those who have no voice. Such a clear call to what we are supposed to be doing as followers of Jesus. And still I cannot stand up against the yearnings and falterings of my own heart.

It is a strange place to be, but some things remain so clear. That God loves, and that love in unconditional. That God does not call us to be passive consumers, embedded in our cultural and demographic framework, but active championers of those in need, proclaimers of the good news that Jesus came to share with all people, the ones the world esteems and the ones the world despises, the ones on the right side of society, reaping its benefits, and the ones on the wrong side of the tracks, marginalized and disadvantaged by the system we are all born into. God is here, and God became flesh to come and bring hope to us all. And we are to follow Jesus into those places, in the hope of transforming and inspiring others to do the same, to walk the road of freedom and justice and mercy, of service and footwashing. We are to love God and wash the world's feet in love.

So, every day is a day that tries to make the ideal meet the reality. Onwards.