apartment 60 C

 Six months ago, my roommate and I were several weeks deep into mandatory quarantine. Today, Tanner and I are only a few days into yet another forced isolation.  We, thankfully, remain healthy, but our reality feels like a strange limbo.  It seems like every day we are hearing from missionaries who deeply desire to be overseas to begin or continue ministry and they can't go. Travel is apparently virtually impossible in light of Covid. In my small, human mind, the present and future of overseas ministry feels impossible.  People say things like, "When this is over..." but where is their guarantee that this will ever truly be over?

And then our house fills with the light of the rising sun, and a friend tells us that we are going to receive a financial support from their parents this month, and the coffee tastes amazing, and there are so many blessings pushing us forward into ministry that I have to call to remembrance what I know to be true. God has called us to be trained now, not five years past or future.  He cares for every "little picture" detail I notice and controls every "big picture" stroke I cannot fathom.

It is time to be comforted by my inability, rather than pretending I am able on my own. It is time...and yet this change of perspective is overdue. It is time, though I wonder if I will remember tomorrow? God is able to hold me in a place of dependence, I am not.

apartment 15B

What do you do when media and politicians push their agenda to convince you to see a changed world—a world transformed for the worse—yet aside from arrows on the ground, cancelled appointments, and moderate mass hysteria, your world feels very much as it always has?  It stings, maybe just a little, the first time someone mentions this will most likely affect the most important day of your life. But maybe you’re an optimist and “logically” this can’t go on that long. We’re not experiencing the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death here. But then the unrest continues and more people, more friends, more family lose hope that everything could possibly turn out okay. So what do you do?

The eye twitch that left in February is back.

There is no gym to burn off steam at.

America’s Next Top Model can only distract a person for so long.

So far, a total of three mail-ordered bras will not work for under a wedding dress and cannot be returned.

Who knows if a July wedding in New York will even be possible?

Who knows if going to school in September will even be possible?

There is only a certain amount of sanity a person can maintain while locked inside a studio apartment for over a month.

So Tanner and I take turns reminding each other that we’re staying in motion. That we are getting married in July regardless of whether or not it’s a party. That we have done every step we can do for school this fall.  That every aspect of our lives right now is a firm reminder that God is the only one who actually has a say in where we go and how and that’s what we want.

My sister reminds me that it’s still okay to cry and be a little stressed and not always feel peachy.

My best friend commiserates beautifully.

It’s going to work out the way it’s supposed to.

But that doesn’t mean my eye isn’t going to twitch for the next two months.

And that’s okay.