cassette tapes

About four weeks ago I told you all of what I planned to fast from during this Lenten season. You must all now be wondering how I'm doing with this.

I find that not skyping with my parents, my boyfriend and my friends is finally catching up with me. Obviously it's hard, but as always, you never know how difficult and in what ways something is until you have tried it. I've been having to deal with college loan stuff, I've been battling a cold for I believe what is the fourth time this winter, all without the reassuring faces and voices. I never really realized what an important factor these things were in my life. Tonight I was looking at an album of photos of my new niece that my sister-in-law had put on facebook. There was a particular picture that drew my attention. My Aunt Donna was standing in the dining room of my house with the kitchen behind her holding Ashlyn and swinging her about. It brought on a large wave of home sickness. My niece is the sweetest and cutest infant, from what I can tell from pictures, and I can hardly wait to meet her. My Aunt is wonderfully warm and loving, and the most hospitable woman I know, and I haven't seen her since the middle of summer, and I don't know exactly when I'll see her again. Furthermore they were standing in my kitchen/dining room, which I haven't been in since, the end of August, and everything was the same. The same odd-looking, square shaped clock, boxes of tin foil and saran wrap and other things crowded on top and around the finger-smudged microwave, perched above a yellowing dishwasher. Tupperware and rarely-used, odd kitchen appliances preparing to topple off the top of the fridge. Cassette tapes, an over-stuffed pencil holder and random trinkets clutter the blond-varnished wooden divider between the kitchen and dining room. Everything is as it was before.

So I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to say here, besides that at this particular moment in time, I'd rather be in the tiny kitchen there than the to tiny kitchen here. I guess it's that not having immediate communication with those whom I love most and left at home has caused me to appreciate it more. While it's been difficult to communicate with colleges, and other urgent emails, it's been freeing to not feel the pull to check for messages when I've told myself I can't. This whole experience so far this year has been a big breather for me, a time to get away, to de-stress, to be rather than do and to thoroughly think through things. Lent has given me more space to do this without the distraction of being online all the time. This week when I was feeling particularly discouraged at not being able to skype, I told myself that I should go read my Bible, and I would feel better. I scoffed at myself, as this seemed like a particularly straight-laced, Sunday school answer. Then I reminded myself that it's worked for me before, that I've been able to find calm within the Word at time of distress, so why shouldn't it work now. And it did. I think I read parables for close to an hour this morning, and I was really relaxed when I finished. I don't know why I don't remember this more often. But maybe from now on I will. Psalm 15 stuck out to me just prior to Lent, and I've been reading it since. I've found that I find it helpful to read a certain scripture over and over again for a period of time. Also, that reading over scripture I've read loads of times before is calming, maybe because of the familiarity of it. So, that I guess, is how I am doing with my fast.

God Bless,
Rebecca