Ok, it’s January now.  The plan was to wait for January.  But we still don’t know what’s happening, and I do realize that it’s only the 5th, but still, this stinks.  How long do we wait?  And for what outcome?  I do not deal well with anxiety.  The last few weeks have been hard.  I thought last year at Christmas was difficult – we spent it packing and preparing to move and saying goodbye to people.  Travis reminded me last night that yesterday was the one year anniversary of our last day at our old church.  So Christmas didn’t feel the same last year.  It felt rushed and I remember looking at the decorations and just wanting to pack them up because I knew they were some of the last things to pack.  I couldn’t enjoy the season for what it is.

So now this year… I guess being at a church you know you are leaving is better than not being at church at all during Christmas.  We did a little devotion Christmas Eve night.  But it isn’t the same as sitting in a sanctuary singing “Silent Night” by the light of a hundred candles.  And I know that we can celebrate the birth of Christ in a million different ways, but there is something to be said for certain rituals and traditions, especially for the big church festivals.  Candles at Christmas, flowers at Easter.  While they are a pain in the butt to set up and a mess and all of that, it’s still special and well worth it.

Christmas day ended up being interesting too.  The first leg of our flight was uneventful.  When we landed, we noticed a plane off of one of the runways surrounded by police and fire trucks and all that.  We shrugged it off, must have been an emergency landing of some kind.  Then our next flight ended up being delayed, waiting on “inbound crew.”  Apparently our pilot was coming from a plane from Canada and had gotten stuck in customs during a busy time or some such thing.  At least, that was what the airline personel led us to believe.  Finally got a new pilot (God bless him for taking an extra shift on Christmas day!) and we were on our way.  It wasn’t until later that we learned why there was such a mess – did I mention the airport was Detroit?  But we got to our destination safely and returned home safely without a huge amount of inconvenience.  I can’t imagine if they had shut down the airport over it.

Today our house is in shambles, too.  We have a one-year warranty on our townhome (it was new when we bought it) so they are coming today to fix problems in the drywall.  So our living room furniture is piled up in the middle of the room with sheets over it, and the pictures are off the walls.  The desks in our office is pulled out from the wall and covered as well.  Cleaning up after this will be fun, and he’s not even coming until noon because of the massive snow storm that has hit our area this week.  Hopefully I won’t be doing laundry (for the sheets) and vacuuming (for the dust) all night.

That’s about it.  I’m thankful that Travis is able to be here today to help with this.  I can keep the dog occupied and away while Travis deals with the repairman.  But at the same time I know that this is not where he is supposed to be long-term.  He is a pastor, and he is supposed to be pastoring!  God is working, I do know that.  I just wish He worked faster sometimes.  And yes, I know that His timing is perfect.  We’ve already seen that.  It’s the waiting that’s killing me.