Monday, Again

It's Monday morning, and my thoughts are all over the place again.

My clothing is really cute today, but nobody at the office is going to get to see that for another hour or two.  They tend to turn the heat way down in the building over the weekends, and Monday mornings are always cold.  It'll take an hour or so for the heater to kick in, and the sun to come up enough that it shines through my south facing office window and warms up.  Once it warms up I'll peel off the polar fleece sweater I'm wearing over my top and really cute necklace, and then I'll feel all pretty and ready for the day again.

I was thinking this morning that I'm still in the midst of that weird, off-kilter space that I described last week.  But, I started to learn over the weekend that I don't have to allow melancholy to sink in with it.  I'd describe the way to combat that melancholy is to be relentless, almost vicious, in choosing differently.  In choosing to find joy and to be thankful.  I say almost vicious, simply because that's what it's taken.  An almost vicious refusal to be melancholy.  A very deliberate choice that this is something I'm going to reframe.  (For example, I was exhausted and emotional after attending the house church gathering yesterday, and still feeling the loneliness of being "the new person" but I am choosing not to focus on those things, but rather to remember that I'm grateful that a whole room of people heard about child trafficking, that I had one decent conversation, that I met a girl who is potentially a roommate when my current roommate leaves at the end of February, that I collected a hug, and that the next gathering will be at least a little bit easier because I've gone to one.)  Sometimes this choosing feels a bit like I'm avoiding the melancholy, or the weird off-kilter space.  But I'm not any less aware of that off-centered feeling, that feeling of shift and change in the air.  I'm simply choosing how I'm going to respond to it.  Whether I'm going to let it overwhelm and scare me, or whether I'm going to acknowledge, listen to it, and watch and wait as it moves, but continue to live joyfully and thankfully in the midst of that.  It's a draining process, to be really honest, but one I'm hoping will grow easier, and pay dividends of hope and peace and joy in my life.  Because I'd rather live with those than with melancholy.

I was thinking this morning, too, about little blessings.  I've wrestled with whether or not I was simply "settling" by trying to connect at this house church.  I have a picture in my head of what I long for in a church. I've even been to a church that quite nicely embodies that (and actually formed my picture.)  Unfortunately, that church is on the other side of the country and the commute would make it prohibitive to attend!  I long to be in a space where the Spirit is moving visibly again.  And yet, as I was pondering this morning, that at various moments yesterday, though there wasn't the really outward more visible signs of the moving of the Spirit that I longed for, as I listened to some people pray, and as I watched the room, I felt too the unmistakable presence of God.  Just moments, but enough to confirm again that this is a place where I've been led for this next season.

And with that, I'm off to pay attention to work.  I have a long list of phone calls to make, and conference planning tasks to begin to attack.