Being without internet at home has left these blog posts few and far between. It doesn’t help that working part-time creates this feeling in me that I actually need to work while I’m at work (novel concept, I know). I do apologize for those people who enjoy reading my thoughts. I enjoy posting them too… and have recently begun composing novels in my mind due to the lack of expressive writing I’ve been doing. That said, there is much to share.
We are continuing to love our house. The main floor is painted and pretty much set up. We got furniture last week and are working on getting things on the wall. We’ve had people over pretty regularly which is something we all really enjoy. We do want there to be a feeling of hospitality and welcome in our home and I hope people are experiencing that. I don’t think that happens through anything we necessarily do but we’ve been praying a lot that God would make our house a warm and welcoming space for people. A couple of the neighbourhood kids have come over, and others keep asking when they can come by to see the house. It’s been fun to have a place where they can come to and we haven’t had any problems with boundaries as of yet.
Perhaps the highlight of my last two weeks has been the treasure I received when we picked up our furniture. I came home with vegetables to a living room packed full with couches, chairs, lamps and end tables. Buried in the midst of all of this was a sparkling white bread maker. Now, I have wanted a bread maker for a very long time… likely since I first tasted the delicious bread my grandmother makes in hers. I’ve always assumed it is a completely impractical purchase for a single 26-year-old female… but as a gift… well, I was pretty darn excited to see it there. I’ve been a bread-making-machine ever since (to be fair, I don’t actually do all that much in this machine process).
Other than that things are moving along at a steady pace. Things got busy this week with our junior high event Monday night and our Halloween drop-in on Friday. Halloween is an evening that will never cease to stump me. Why is it suddenly okay for children to go door-to-door to people they don’t know and accept edible products? Nevertheless, I enjoy it thoroughly! Again this year the church bought mass amounts of candy to give out and planned some games for the trick-or-treaters to participate in if they so desired. Our numbers were done… we probably only had about 30 come in to play games… but it looked like a lot less kids were out on the streets in general.
This weekend I’ve been in Sarnia visiting my parents. It was dad’s 60th birthday on Thursday so last night the whole family went out for dinner and then came back to our place for cake. There is much excitement amongst the cousins for the family trip to Florida that is happening in March (for those of you who haven’t heard, my entire extended family is traveling to Florida together for 10 days in March). I will head back to Hamilton tonight after a deliciously home-made meal. I’ve spent the afternoon sending many emails that I can’t do in Hamilton due to lack of internet (hopefully by the end of the week we’ll be wired).
October/November/December are always strange months for me. They seem to be times to stop and reflect, although they are also generally fairly busy. I sometimes experience this sense of my life just being completely unconnected from actual lived experience… kind of like the feeling you get when you have a bad head cold and you just feel really out of it. I’ve been thinking much more about the future lately than I normally do (which is generally never since I am much more someone who tends to live in the past than the future). I think I am entering a time of re-assessment where God is asking me to take a look at various things in my life. That is simultaneously exciting and terrifying. I will attempt to keep people posted on how that process works itself out. As part of that, I’ve been trying to figure out new ways to get back into working with kids with intellectual disabilities or behaviour disorders. I sent off a bunch of emails this afternoon to various agencies in Hamilton that I might be able to connect with. I think this re-assessment period has to come before I can move on to the next thing in my life (which won’t be for a while… I’m pretty happy in my two-year contract at the church) and I’m pretty sure I want that next stage to involve working with kids with some sort of behaviour challenge. We’ll see what happens with that.
That’s pretty much the update. As always, thanks for reading.
