Week 9: Mostly Thoughts

My weeks ebb and flow like an ocean.
Monday (or Tuesday?) I met my British friend, Hannah, for the first time in a few weeks which was really great. She's awesome.
I found myself frustrated with my church a lot this week. I went to a LifeGroup last Friday that was really disappointing as far as the level of relationship that I felt there and even the answers to discussion questions felt very juvenile and shallow even though most everyone was older than me. Then Sunday I sat there in the service just feeling empty. Like I've been trying to pour out of nothing. I was taken in so quickly by these people when I got here. But it's two months later and the relationships haven't gotten any deeper. It's still "How's your Spanish doing?" week after week. And I was so annoyed by that. And the messages have not been remotely challenging. At first it was nice because I was able to get the big picture pretty easily even if I didn't understand all the points. But then it wasn't so nice anymore. It tends to be more preaching on a generally Biblical topic with one or two verses inserted somewhere along the way. And there is no talk of the ugly parts of life. Which just feels fake to me. My faith is not based on the pretty nice surfacey parts of life. It doesn't experience a ton of that. And it's strongest when life is hard. That's when it grows. So the implication that we just need to hope and pray and all things will turn out right and we'll all get new cars and the cancer will go away and people will love us is almost insulting.
But what do I do then? Because just ranting to people doesn't help. Changing churches might be nice for these last few weeks, but it does nothing to help the people that are still there. If I want more I have to do something right? If i want better teaching, a) there's plenty of that online that I can access, and b) if I were being consistent about my devotional time, I wouldn't be feeling quite so empty to begin with. And maybe if the time comes, there's room to address that. I don't know yet.
As far as relationships, if I want deeper relationships I have to be willing to give a little. Thus far I've been mostly copping out. "My Spanish isn't good enough to start real conversations" "I'm the new girl here, they should be approaching me" "Why doesn't anyone want to hang out during the week?" and so on. But the expectation for them to come to me is ridiculous, especially if I don't initiate anything either. Relationships do go both ways after all. So this week, the goal was to have better conversations. And I didn't really. I learned what one guy did for a living. I asked someone a few people how their weeks were. It wasn't a lot. But it's a start.
If nothing else I've been able to invest in one girl, also from America, who seems to be a fairly new Christian and is going through some rough stuff lately. I know I'm at this Church for a reason. Maybe it's her.

That was a lot of rambling on thoughts. But really not much else happened. I had the house to myself for a bit this weekend while the fam went to the mountains for a Halloween party. Dessa came over for a girls' night and then a mini church service in the morning. We watched a service online and then sat in different rooms and had some much needed alone time with Jesus. It was beautiful.

That's pretty much life these days. Only 3 weeks left here. Crazy.