Missing Chicago

Ezra is standing in his crib, his crazy hair darting in every direction, looking at me with his huge one-toothed grin, laughing every time I look at him. Keziah and Elias are in the other room making snowflakes. They come in every few minutes to have me fold the bright green paper they are using, as well as to show me their finished flakes, laden with holes and holding in their folds the mystery of symmetric circles and triangles and squares. Christmas is in the air, as the red lights continue to glow on our tree and more and more presents pile in its lap. Mary and Joseph and Jesus sit there too, dressed in porcelain and donning bright childlike colors, trying hard to remind us that this season is so far beyond our fascinating traditions.

My sister just returned from her job at Starbucks with a "sorority drink" just for me. It's a sugar-free vanilla non-fat decaf latte. Elias has drank about half of it already. I'm trying hard to think on all that is good in this moment. I have found myself sad today, realizing for the first time that a chapter of our lives has truly ended. I have thought today of all the wonderful things of Chicago. More than that, I have ached for some of our "family" there, particularly our community where we were living. Just the other night, we sat in Mike and Ronda's kitchen, sipping drinks and teaching them how to play Euchre, a Mid-west card game. We laughed at ourselves and each other, as our conversation took many twists and turns. Our kids played in the other room, soaking in each other's presence, pretending to be dogs and moms and bad guys, acting as though they had never missed a beat with one another.

And it was just last weekend that Brenton and Amber threw us a going away party at the building where we were living. So many dear friends came to say goodbye. The playroom was filled with crazy three year-olds, all screaming and laughing and running while all of the parents stood in the other room, laughing and conversing, not distracted in the least by the chaos of little ones that we have all learned to ignore for the sake of having adult interaction. It seems like it was just yesterday that we all sat in the backyard talking at the picnic table, discussing our plans for the future, questioning what God was doing in each other's life, wondering how long we would live in this community...not knowing that those few moments were a glimpse into eternity and that it was indeed a season that will not be given back, not with those particular people and those particular children. Not in that particular city or in that particular building. Yes, the chapter has ended. And until now, I haven't mourned the end of so many life-changing events.

I could even taste the winters there today. And for the first time, I didn't have disdain in my mouth when I thought of cold, windy, dirty Chicago. Instead, I thought of the windows at Macy's and hot chocolate at Amber's...of Elias and my walks in the snow and how good the heat feels when we walked up all the stairs into our apartment. I thought of the man on Logan Boulevard whose house looks like it belongs in Whoville with all its lights and Santas and reindeer in its front lawn. I'm thinking of how we got out of the car last year on a night like tonight just to walk around the house.

I don't have any regrets, not about our time there or about the decision to leave. I'm thankful for that three-year season of life. I'm glad we experienced the zoo, the museums, the bathroom of the John Hancock Building (it has the best view of Chicago), tapings of Oprah, incredible Thai restaurants, the "L" (the subway), Ikea, the parks, the public pools, Elias' preschool, the beach, Dunkin Donuts, Michigan Avenue, and El Cid (our favorite Mexican restaurant). I'm glad I know the woman who works at Dominick's Grocery late at night and that I know she is a breast cancer survivor. I'm happy that the lady at Seven Eleven asks about my baby, as she saw me throughout my pregnancy and the day after Ezra was born. And I smile when I think of the ladies at Foodsmart and how I got to practice my Spanish every morning as I purchased a Diet Coke or an iced coffee from the cooler. And I sigh when I think of all the moms I met at Elias and Keziah's gymnastics class and how I never followed through in pursuing them but how we had such wonderful conversations when we saw one another.

So now I am sitting on my parent's big red couch listening to Thomas read "The Night Before Christmas" to the kids. My imagination just messed with me as I thought that the rain that just began pouring outside was the train going by our house in Chicago. It's another Christmas. I'm learning that the embroidered sign I used to see at my friend's house when I was little, the one that read "Home is where the heart is," wasn't so cheezy after all. And it certainly isn't far from the truth. It is my hope that even though I feel displaced and unorganized this season, that we will pull together as a family and enjoy one another's laughter and the fact that Jesus has given us one another, that He truly "sets the lonely in families," as the Proverb says.

Diet Coke, Sermons, Mallhopping and a Crazy Lady

Click on the picture to see us even bigger!

I find it ironic that I'm sitting here listening to a podcast sermon on "My Body and Sustainable Living" while eating potato chips and drinking a Diet Coke. Yikes, and I should probably mention, for the sake of my confession to the internet, that it's 12:22 a.m. There. I feel better. Dang, these kettle-cooked potato chips are good.

I'm trying to get out Christmas letters/pictures and I'm finding it to be such a process. Our addresses are in Chicago and my old database is somewhere in cyberspace. So for the sake of all people who may not end up receiving a picture, I'm going to post it here.

Indianapolis continues to have its perks. We have grown accustomed to "mall hopping" as a form of entertaining our children. The malls around here all have these little play areas, so we let the kids run around and do a little window shopping ourselves. Other than that there is the Children's Museum where we have already been four times. Every night, right before Keziah falls asleep she asks to either go to the zoo "in the morning" or to "go camping."

Thomas is now in physical therapy twice a week. He is doing great. His depression has subsided quite a bit. As for our future, we are in the process of looking for jobs, housing, and oh yah, a rental truck (do you know anyone with one?). We'll be moving our stuff from Chicago to somewhere in Indy next weekend and then we will be going to training with Avant in January. On a good day, I know Jesus is going to take care of our needs and am excited to see how it will all unfold...almost like my son when he thinks about Christmas morning, opening up what he hopes will be Megatron, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee (those are all Transformers). But on a bad day, I get down and start frantically trying to make things work on a practical level. The problem is that God typically supercedes my practicality and ends up answering those prayers that Thomas assures me he is waiting on Him to answer. Thomas is much better at the "waiting" than I am. I'm learning though, that to move forward as the stubborn and strong-willed one, without Thomas having peace about the decision, is a mistake. It only took working for a 70 year-old crazy woman for a year and a half to realize this. Let me explain...

Thomas knew it wasn't a good idea to move into that apartment to manage the building. But I saw the practicality of living in a bigger apartment and having a nice backyard for the kids to run in. The woman we worked for was controlling, manipulative, and dishonest. She would come in our apartment while we were gone. She was downright mean to her tenants and at one point, we found a man dead in his apartment and called her. This about sums up her insanity: Because she didn't follow the building codes correctly and couldn't get to the building to fix them before the coroner came, she said, "I think you should just go to bed and call the coroner in the morning." What in Sam's name? We obviously didn't listen to that advice. The fire department came, pronouncing poor Lester dead of natural causes. She was one of those ladies who I wouldn't put anything past. I think perhaps she had multiple personalities. Or dimentia. hrm.

Well, I'm done rambling. My Diet Coke is gone and I've eaten one too many potato chips and listened to one to many sermons...to the point that they are all sounding the same.

Ciao.