Switch

I have lived in the same apartment building for six years. For the first five I lived with my wonderful, crazy, beautiful roommate Christina. (For those of you who know her, you know just what I mean. Spending time with her is always a delight.) When I got married in 2005, I moved across the hall to be with my husband. Yes, I married the boy next door! We are contemplating doing a little moving this weekend, just within our current apartment. I have tried in the last year to be comfortable, to get used to, our bedroom. Yet I still feel ill at ease there. So, we’ve decided to take the smaller bedroom for our own and use the larger bedroom as the office/storage/gym/Bella’s room. I know that might seem crazy to some, but I think that I will end up being happier that way. Interestingly enough Chris and both sets of our parents see this as a good and advisable idea; I didn’t see that coming. However, with Chris starting his own business, he will need more office space in the apartment, so there’s really more than one reason to switch rooms. I truly wish and fervently pray that soon we will be able to move out of this apartment altogether, but I also realize how many blessings have come to me from living there.

Those blessings are:
•I met Christina who has become one of my best friends and was able to stand up with me at my wedding.
•I met Chris. We never would have met otherwise, and he has been one of the most profound, beautiful, and unexpected gifts I’ve ever received.
•I would have died. Strange statement I know. But I wanted to stay in the apartments I was in before I moved to the ones I’m in now. I tried to stay. God wasn’t allowing it. A few months after I moved, a raging fire burned my old apartment building burned to the ground in the middle of the night, a night that I happened to take a sleeping pill, a night that my old roommate would have been out of town. I would not have wakened; I would have died. There are blessings in disguise.
•I really like the pool. It’s rarely busy; there are usually only a couple other people there. Often we even get to have it to ourselves.
•It’s only eight minutes away from my work.
•We live in a great neighborhood for walking, either in the neighborhood or in the park across the street from us.

We are looking forward to other blessings, specifically the blessing of a house. I have a picture of a cottage on our bulletin board. It’s the perfect little house for us, enough space to entertain in and grow into should God bless us with children and a big front porch to put rocking chairs on for cool spring and fall evenings. Apartments have always felt to me like transitional places or like a small cage for a bird that must keep her wings tucked. She can flutter from perch to perch, but there is no real freedom. So, I pray daily for a new home for my little family. Another dream of mine….