sunday.

I tried to write a blog post today.

I sat on the sofa and thought and wanted to put into words this welling-up feeling of frustration I’ve carried around the past week, and then today’s bursting-forth irritation and tears and fights with my husband.  I tried to explain just what exactly it is about living here that gets under my skin so much and makes me snap at my children and blame David for every little thing that goes wrong.

I thought and I typed for awhile, and then I closed my laptop and went into David’s office to have our first ever finance meeting.  And today, which was already a bad day, got a lot worse.

Even now, two hours later, I can’t really explain why it went so badly.  I was trying to help him.  He was trying to help me.  But we were missing.  And it ended in stony silence and a flood of tears on my part.

How is it that we always end up against each other lately?

We finally went out and sat together on the sofa, a growing pile of wadded up tissues next to me.  We talked about our day.  I talked about the noise outside, which makes me want to scream, and which makes even the quiet babbling from Amie in the next room grate on me.  I got up and shut the windows.  I could still hear the noise – the construction work and the shouts and temple music and insistent mooing of a cow, but it was all muted, and it made me feel a little better.

When the kids got up from their naps, we had house snacks of fresh sliced, juicy pineapple and peanut butter crackers.  Then we went out to the playground.  It is a cool, breezy evening, and the playground was empty until Jonathan and the girls appeared a few minutes later.

I played for awhile, then, when the kids were content and David and Jonathan talked, I slipped away and came back upstairs, to the evening quiet of an empty apartment.

I cleared a stack of clothes from the surface of my writing desk, shoved all my papers in the drawer, and moved the over-flowing laundry basket to another part of the bedroom, out of sight for now.  I lit a candle and turned on some music and brought in a dining room chair, and then I did something I should have done weeks ago: I sat down to write.

Sometimes I wait for things to be perfect and complete before I enjoy them.  I have been waiting for pictures on the wall.  And lamps so that I don’t have to use the fluorescent light.  I want a framed picture of Owen within my sight.  And some candles.  And my own desk chair.  All of this so that I will feel really inspired.

I shouldn’t wait.  Our apartment, this bedroom, may never feel completely complete the way I want it to – or at least not for months.  Even if I had the money, I certainly don’t have the energy for all of it at once.  But right now I can sit and write.  And it feels good.

I don’t know why exactly I’ve been so frustrated this weekend.  I think it has something to do with our broken circuit breaker, which has kept me from doing the laundry for four days and from taking a hot shower.  This morning I took a cue from David and heated water in the electric pot and on the stove for a bucket bath.  After lunch I heated another bucket and shaved my legs.  It was the first time in weeks.  And, I realized in that moment, that it was worth the work it took to heat the water and worth the pools of water it created on the bathroom floor.

Three weeks’ worth of unshaved legs because there isn’t enough hot water during my shower – even when everything works right – stresses me out.

Constant, unrelenting noise stresses me out.

Seeing a growing pile of laundry in the corner of my bedroom and feeling helpless to do anything about it stresses me out.

There is no explanation for why one moment I am sailing along, taking these things in stride, loving our life, and then, without warning, something within me snaps and I am angry with everyone and everything and want nothing more than to go home.  I want our Waterway apartment and a car and hot water in my kitchen faucet and carpeted bedroom floors so bad it hurts.  I want to be in Lititz, where Judah can run free in the field by his grandparents’ house, or in Blythewood where he can roam in the quiet, clean woods at Nina and Papa’s.  I want to lay in bed at night and not hear one single noise except the whir of the fan.

I wish I could say that my first response to this stress is prayer.  But it isn’t.  It’s anger.  It’s sudden, broiling, irrational anger – at my son for making me carry him the whole, sweating, walk home from school, at my husband for not calling the electrician sooner, at the electrician for standing there staring at the circuit panel when I want him to just get moving and do something to fix it.

This anger catches me off guard.  Where does it come from?  How can I be perfectly fine one minute, then livid the next – over nothing?  Over the cow mooing down the street?  Over people moving furniture in the flat about us?  Why do my kids get under my skin constantly?  Why do David and I fight so much more?

Last night as I stumbled back and forth from kitchen to bathroom, carrying hot water for the kids’ baths and crying in frustration, I told God, “I know I should ask you for grace for this moment, but I don’t want it.” 

I was just so frustrated.

I’m not frustrated right now.  I’ve cried.  A lot.  I’ve talked to David.  I’ve written.  I’ve felt so homesick for my family my heart feels like it’s breaking.  I’ve sat here at my little writing desk for a half hour and stared into the flickering light of the candle and felt a small measure of peace at the end of this striving weekend. 

Maybe God is giving me the grace even when I am too stubborn and ungrateful to ask for it. 

That is a gift.