Ally & the Israelites

The first week of school always has me like

simultaneously...all week. Mountains of paperwork...and we only have one kid. But blissful peace and quiet for 6 hours everyday. The hurry and scurry routine of breakfast (Throw away your trash, please), brushing teeth (I don't believe you, let me smell your mouth. No, go do it again.) and getting shoes on (they go on the other feet). But blissful peace and quiet for 6 hours everyday.

Wait. Did I say that already?

Blue talks a lot. And at one point over the summer if he said, "Hey MOM" one more time, my head was going to shatter into a million tiny pieces all over the driveway.

So, yes. Peace and quiet. At the Commissary. At the dentist. While I write blog posts.

I miss him a little. But mostly I'm super excited to see him at the end of school everyday, which makes me feel like a better Mom. And less like my entire body is burning after being peppered with the same questions all day.

But at the same time I feel like the summer flew by. Like flew. I do usually feel that way after a summer when we move, but we arrived in May. There's no reason I should feel like we were shorted a summer. And yet the barely touched bucket list says otherwise. What the hell did we do all summer? I don't even know.

I think, maybe, I've spent a lot of time complaining.

Have you ever sat through a sermon on Sunday morning and thought, "Well, that was uncomfortably relevant to my life right now?" I don't know if that's a God thing or if pastors are taught to preach on wide-ranging topics that could apply to 90% of their congregation on any given Sunday, but that happened to me this week. We weren't going to go, but we had skipped 2 Sunday mornings in a row and I was feeling guilty. So, I dropped Blue in child care and found a seat in the middle of the middle.

I like our pastor. He reminds me of Nadia Bolz-Weber. On our first Sunday his sermon included a reference to wham bam thank you ma'am and while I was sort of appalled at first, I decided that his preaching style is a mix of relaxed Californian with the filter switched off. I think he's the type of person who is honest and sincere, if not always totally politically correct, and I'm good with that for the next 2 years.

Anyway, this week he talked about the Israelites...and how they loved to complain; in Exodus 5 (when they blamed Moses for how Pharaoh was treating them), in Exodus 16 and 17 (when they were hungry and thirsty), in Numbers 14 (when entering the Promise Land looked too hard) and then more about no water, Moses sucks as a leader, etc, etc, etc. Our pastor encouraged us to trust God and to trust the journey. He suggested we stop grumbling and start living.

I think I've been grumbling. If not on here, at least to everyone around me. It's hard to imagine a more drastic change than from the fertile fields of Dutch Amish Pennsylvania to the concrete jungle of Los Angeles. And we had ranked this duty station somewhere near the bottom because I've never had any desire to live in L.A. Visit? Absolutely! But I hate crowds. I consistently choose national parks over Disney World because...crowds. For the love of all things Amish, please don't make me move to L.A.

And yet...here we be.

So, yes...there has been some (or a lot of) grumbling. The traffic. The cost of dining out. The crappy service we've gotten every time we've eaten out. The wall-to-wall people regardless of where you go and when. The homeless on every corner and everywhere in between. The trash on freeways, in yards, in parking lots, on the sidewalks. The cost of gas. The high crime. The "all-about-me" attitudes of the natives in this area. The air quality. The water quality. The quality of life.

Grumble. Grumble. Grumble. Grumble. I am an Israelite.

In my spiritual life I do believe that God has a plan for me. Sure there is some free will, but for the most part, there is a reason why things happen. Lately, I have spent entirely too much time fighting when I should be following. Neal will tell you I've always had trust issues. He would probably be the least surprised by this sudden lack of faith in the future. God brought us here for a reason. We are going to the Promise Land, but we are going to be "hungry", we are going to be "thirsty" and there are going to be challenges. For the record, I have no idea what the Promise Land looks like. If it's just a bunch of milk and honey, I will probably complain about that, too. I would like some sweetened almond milk with a dash of locally sourced honey, please. But maybe it's retirement with a higher rank pay, maybe it's living in a historical home in a historical city. Maybe it's simply being able to look at Neal and know that we did the best we could with what we had and we tried to help others along the way. Whatever it is, God is taking us there. I just need to stop complaining about the trip.

So, beginning next week, I will be reviewing some of the activities we've done so far. I will focus more on the positives with a sprinkling of keepin it real for good measure (y'all should know that something is only 5 miles away but it will take you 30 minutes to get there and you're going to have arm wrestle some guy named Bobo to get a parking space). I'm done grumbling. I'm ready to trust.