Rest of the weekend

Sunday night was fairly weird. We walked in the door at church and I was welcomed by Scott asking me whether I’d received an email about doing the bible reading this week. The new roster was done last week but not sent to anybody. So that was a slightly annoying start to the evening, it’s not the first time admin things like that have gone wrong or just not gone at all.

The reading was Ephesians 4:1-16, it talks a lot about unity among believers as “the body of Christ” and how that leads to being mature in faith. I was unsettled about reading this and hearing a sermon on it because there is a lot of disunity at our church at the moment. I can’t say much about it, nor do I want to, I’m not really a part of it, but it’s upsetting that it’s happening because it affects us all in some way. Last week the sermon was on Matthew 18, how to deal with someone who has sinned against you – how to approach them about how they’ve hurt you and how to forgive them. I believe these sermons are a filler series (after Christmas before the official year program starts) about how to operate effectively as a church. It’s difficult to listen to because I know that these things haven’t really happened the way the bible prescribes and since I’m not directly a part of the bad things happening I really don’t know what I can do about it. So far I think the only thing I can do is not perpetuate the cycle of gossip and misinformation that seems to be happening.

Church ran later than usual, rather inconvenient as we had to go to FIL’s for dinner. On the way I was upset because of church and hubby told me to forget about it for now, not to let it spoil a nice family dinner. So I did, I managed to put my feelings away for later. When we got there there wasn’t any parking so I got out and hubby went to find a park. It took a while and when he finally got back to the house I’d nearly finished my food. He seemed okay despite being sore from karate and touch footy at the bucks party and only getting five hours sleep, but it seemed as soon as food hit his stomach it was all over. He couldn’t make a facial expression, he could barely speak to people when they spoke to him. He just sat with a deathly look on his face that I know was exhaustion, but someone who didn’t know him as well might have thought it was dislike, anger or just plain disrespect. Most people moved from the table to watch the cricket and we had to go. Jennifer was annoyed and I’m sure the faces that I couldn’t see in the dark were fairly unimpressed. I was more than unimpressed – so much for our “nice family dinner”. I drove home despite having had a glass of wine (it’s illegal in NSW for P-platers to drink anything before driving), I thought it was better to break the law than risk dying, I guess we did risk dying but I was more functional than he was, he fell asleep nearly the moment he sat down in the car.

When we got home I couldn’t help crying, it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming, it actually hurt my throat to hold in my cries. I was upset about church, upset that I felt my husband didn’t appreciate me playing guitar at church, upset about some other controlling thing that I won’t talk about, upset that he might get picked for jury duty and not finish his PhD, that the CEO and CFO of the company he works for (part-time and was going to start with full-time when finishing his PhD) have left and they’re now “restructuring” the company (his friend from uni was fired), upset that everyone has left or is leaving work and now not only do I not have uni friends but there’s no one at work. I guess tipping the scales was that we’d just had a confusing and unpleasant time with family and left them annoyed. Also annoying was that I’d left my camera on again and run the battery all the way down.

I stopped crying and updated my photoblog and changed the songs on my iPod. I didn’t dwell on things and I actually slept the night through. I’m not annoyed anymore, just sad – I began this year with such positive thinking and expectations. I even started this weekend with a positive outlook (I think). I’ve had strange and unexpected pains, I’ve had incorrect, or disturbing, or both, rumors flying around me, everything I thought this year would be seems to be turning on its head.

I have a husband, a place to live and a job; even if one or more of those things stress me and make me cry I guess it’s better than not having them at all.