Week without - A painful noise

I think this may be the hardest day of this week on my journey to help raise funds for CAP Canada during our Week without ( see previous blog for details). I knew it would be difficult to be isolated from my husband and my daughter here at home on a day to day basis but I forgot about how hard it would be on our traditional Monday night spaghetti night when our eldest daughter, our son-in-law, Granddaughter all of their friends, our "wooden" children and grandchildren come over for spaghetti. I didn't realize how painful the noise of their laughter, giggles, conversations, disagreements and stories of their days would be........isolation is hard, isolation within earshot of the noise of life is deafening.
Every noise is painful....the sound of the plates being filled with food, the babies screaming and "chatting" to each other, the sound of dads "greeting" their waking babies that they haven't seen all day, the sound of mums encouraging the use of sippy cups and eating "all by themselves", the sound of my husband "hosting" everyone and laying down new rules about EVERYONE cleaning up their mess, the sound of one daughter teaching her little girl to play nice with her friends and the other talking about how she is helping Dad this week because mum isn't around.  The sounds that bring me such joy are so hard to hear but a wonderful lesson for me not to ever take for granted the incredible family and friends that I have. I miss snuggling with my granddaughter and tickling her until she giggles out loud, oh my heart I miss her so much. I miss watching our eldest daughter be an incredible wife and mother, watching her in those roles is one of the most incredible things to watch. I miss looking at and touching her tummy that is hugging our third grandbaby for a few more months until we can hold them ourselves. I miss being in the middle of the friendships in the room.I am so grateful to God for not giving up on our family many years ago, I know without Him none of the blessings of this life are possible.
The house empties as the "kids" go home for the night and my husband takes our youngest to coach her hockey game.....I cant go ....I wish I could .....I even wish I could keep score, a job I normally hate to do. I will miss listening to my husband play 90's rock music in the truck to "pump up" our daughter before the game ,I will miss seeing her excitement and commitment for her team, I will miss watching her team greet her with big hugs and "another goal tonight for you I can feel it!", I will miss cheering her on from the stands but most of all I will miss watching her Dad cheer on his little girl from the bench.
 I thought the noise was painful but I was wrong the silence is far worse. It makes me long for the noise I use to wish would stop. It makes me understand why many of our clients don't want to give up their cable, I turned on the computer to find videos I could watch just to fill the silence, so I didn't feel so alone, for some people the only noise of joy they hear is the one played out in a sitcom on late night T.V......forgive me Lord for judging people for wanting "company" even if it comes in the form of actors, scripted lives and snippets of "life" played out in a 30 second commercial.  We do not appreciate the painful  "noise" of silence unless it's all you have. We do not understand the need for artificial family and friends until we are without them. We do not appreciate the noise of life that we sometimes long to get away from in the beautiful mess of family and friendships until it is gone.
God forgive me for the deafness of my own ears to the beautiful noises of my life.

Please visit your neighbor who is alone, say hello to the person you pass on the street and pray for those who do not have the rich blessings of family, "wooden" and real.
Please go to www.capcanada.org/blog and donate to #Weekwithout  so we can continue to provide real tangible solutions to debt, poverty, unemployment, addictions and isolation.
***For those of you who do not know "wooden" family refers to people who are not related by blood but are your family just the same****

Week Without - There is so much more to this

Yesterday was night one of my Week Without Fundraiser with my new job with Christians Against Poverty Canada. Each staff member is giving up something for the week that many of the clients that we see have to everyday. Someone is giving up their vehicle for the week, another living off of the $11.30 per week for food, one is only getting food from places that provide it for free in the city, another their warm bedding and soft surfaces to understand what it is like to get rid of everything in a bed bug crisis and another is limiting the items they are allowed to have to function for the week.......I choose physical isolation and confined space.

For a week I will be sleeping, eating and living out my day in a 10x10 room. I have a kettle as my only source of "cooking" as many people who cannot afford a good apartment will rent "space" somewhere in order to have money left over in their cheque to eat even if that space does not include a kitchen. I will be sharing a washroom with my 17 year old daughter but only having access to the shower twice this week as many people have to go through a sign-up process to use a free shower at a local shelter. I will also be confined to this room in my house and cut off from all physical interactions with anyone, speaking to them face to face, having to listen to "life" going on all around me but not being permitted to join in because many people are living in isolation due to their poverty,unemployment, addictions, mental health issues and a society that has forgotten to personally invite our neighbors instead relying on the growing movement of "everyone is welcome events" to draw people out of their spaces and into a social setting. These events are not something bad , they just create another excuse for us to not have to do the hard job of invading our neighbors lives and loving them in their spaces, finding out who they as an individual are and making this more than a visit around Christmas, Easter or other big holidays........wow I just realized how cheated God feels about that too when we visit Him on holidays and think we are doing something nice for Him.....no wonder He wants us to love our neighbors on a deeper level, it just might draw us closer to Him too.

In fairness I know my Physical isolation is not a true "experiment" of sorts as I do have the privilege of going into work everyday where people have to speak to me about something but as I entered into my first night I was struck already by how difficult it is not to be "seen".

When it was time to go to bed and I walked down the other end of our hallway into my space I already felt a sense of disconnection from my husband. I already felt "cut off" from him and started to miss him even though he was only a few feet away. As I climbed into my single bed I started to realize I wouldn't have his body to keep me warm, someone to laugh with or chat too and I would be waking up alone. The irony about all of this is that there were early years of my marriage PJ ( Pre-Jesus) when I did everything I could to get away from my husband, separating myself within the home, finding excuses to be out of the house and away from him and my children and being miserable enough to make sure I wasn't the kind of person you would want to spend time with and now here I am one night, just down the hall longing to be near him...Praise God for the reminder of how our marriage has changed and the heart that only Jesus can give you for your spouse!

I was struck by the noises i could hear like my daughter giggling on her computer but that I wasn't allowed to join in on it as her mum. I was also struck by how cold this room actually is and we should have believed our 5 year old when she told us her room was cold.

When I woke up this morning alone I was convicted by the times I have privately "dismissed" the single women in my life with the idea that its not so bad having the bed to yourself or the independence to do whatever you want with no one else input....to all of you I am sorry. Waking up alone is not fun, I even miss the jokes my husband and I make to each other about our bad breath and this is only day one! Oh Jesus help me get through this because apparently I am more of a princess than I thought! I am sorry for dismissing your single girl loneliness , 

I hear my family walking in the hallway chatting and getting ready for church.....I cant go. The amount of Sunday mornings that I have grumbled about getting up and having to get my teenager out of bed for church are too many to mention and I am immediately convicted by it this morning when I am not allowed to, the worst part is she got up a little easier for her dad too which is driving me crazy! God is using this week to absolutely reveal to me the places and spaces and people in my life that I have some to take for granted. I am excited and a little nervous about how He will continue to teach me this week.

I know this is only an "experiment" and not one that is completely accurate because I know if I was truly alone and completely isolated I would not have a husband who sorta cheats for me.......yesterday when we were talking about what this week might look like we both said at the same time "what about our devotional time?" and my heart sunk. Tom and I have been doing a morning devotional and prayer together now for over a year no matter where we are we make sure we do it as it has become something so rich to our relationship its just too bad we waited until he was on deaths door to start it but for two stubborn people like us sometimes it takes that for God to shake us into doing what we needed to do a long time ago. My heart was so filled that he was worried about it too as I sometimes wondered if he was doing  just to keep me quiet some mornings. He sent me a text message with his prayer for me today and yes I cheated and sent one back to him.

 God forgive me for not seeing all that I have in front of me and realizing the richness of it all.God forgive me for forgetting about how even the heart of someones prayer for us is something everyone needs to hear, forgive me for the nudges you have given me to pray for a stranger and I have been too busy to do it. God help me to see what this week is going to teach me, not just what I was trying to get out of it but what your greater purpose is in all of it. God I pray for all those who are lonely and isolated today I pray they will get a knock on their door with a friendly invite, a prayer and a smile from a stranger. Go i thank-you that in knowing you we are never alone. I also thank-you that you have created us for community with one another so other people can help remove the things about us that are ugly and we don't stay stuck as the people you never intended for us to be.

****Please go to https://capcanada.org/blog to find out more about #WeekWithout  and please donate to CAP for this cause so they can be used by God to  continue to do the work they do to help people out of poverty, debt, addiction and unemployment AND loneliness. God bless you all!