What an upside down world we now live in! As we were driving back to NOLA this morning, Linda commented that she feels like she’s going on vacation. She’s taken a week off from work and is going to stay in NOLA, in our house. It’s a sad state of affairs when staying in a hotel is like home, and staying home is a vacation.
It’s still a dirty city. The highways are littered and unswept. Garbage remains evident everywhere.
And it’s like coming into East Texas, if you look at all the license plates as you drive around town. Did you ever notice how cities, or different areas of cities, have a certain flow to the traffic? It’s different in different parts of the city, and even in the same place, but at different times of day. There’s a rhythm to it, and a certain quality of driving etiquette (or lack of). That rhythm, that etiquette is gone from the traffic here. It’s as if the city is full of drivers who don’t really know where they’re going, and aren’t aware of others around them. Driving in NOLA these days is a lot like one of those arcade driving games.
Today is also the election, so it wasn’t surprising to see that campaign signs, like dandelions, have popped up all over. It looks like most candidates don’t have as many signs out as in previous years, but there are so many more candidates that there as just as many signs.
The silver lining in all this is, of course, the time I get to spend with my sweetie! We talk and talk and just sit and enjoy each others company. That, to me, is one very positive outcome of this otherwise very negative experience.
Another is getting more in touch with nature. Watching the changing of the seasons, seeing the fields of white cotton, then watch as they are harvested, then barren fields and trees, then snow covered, then the glory of spring and the blossoming of the Bartlett pear trees, followed by dogwoods and azaleas. That, too, has been a wonderfully positive experience.
The downside is being away from home, family and friends, of having to drive six hours each way from Memphis to NOLA and back, of not being able to serve every week at my church, and losing our pastor to another parish.
Still, the blessings will always outweigh the “curses”. God is like that. Sometimes we just have to sit quietly and think about what we need, what we want (not the same thing), and what we have. God gives us what we need, not always what we want. Everything we have is a gift from God. It is what we do with those gifts that really matters.
You are all gifts, and we love and cherish you and pray for you. Take care, and may God’s blessings be yours in abundance!!
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