There's seriously no shortage of stress these days. Yes, I'm preaching to the choir over here, but good Lord.
Saint Anne the Wife and my mom are back to school for the fall. The students aren't back just yet, but will be next week. Our little one is back at the preschool we'd left before moving to New York and I've been schoolmarm'in with our older boy. Seriously it's a hot mess seeing the two teachers in my immediate family crashing into their additional responsibilities as web programers as they try and build websites for their remote teaching classrooms. My simple Squarespace site is the Tesla to whatever salvaged title Ford Pinto their schools are having them use. To say it feels like schools are seemingly on their own and stumbling around in the dark in working out how to handle all this is absolutely an understatement. There's also the recent report about how "At Least 97,000 Children Tested Positive For Coronavirus In Last 2 Weeks Of July."
"If there is good news in such a report, it's that, in spite of the uptick in child infection rates, the data also show that most children do not get critically ill with the disease and that, among the states that reported hospitalization data, the current hospitalization rate for children remains low, at 2%. What's less clear is how effectively children would spread the virus in a classroom setting, not only to friends and classmates but to teachers and school staff." - npr.org
We're also in the process of buying a house here in Oklahoma City. No question buying another house here was no where in the plan five years ago – or even April 2020 – but things change. Still, that doesn't make the process any less stressful. If there's any kind of silver lining, interest rates are ridiculously low. I'd bought my first home in 2008 and thought I was king of the world with a home loan at 6.5%. That bone swinging monkey wouldn't know what to do with himself seeing the 2.5% (and a bit lower) space stations of today. Still, we're staying a bit grounded after being pre-approved knowing that we'll need to put off buying a second car till we close on our loan.
Another close to home train wreck from this past week was thanks to a collision in Portland of my current and past lives. I'd connected with a photographer at a coffee shop in Portland while on a job last year. She'd posted a link about a Christian leader holding an event in her town dubbed "Riots to Revival." Turns out to be Sean Feucht, the same dude I'd known and toured with way back in the day. Even in trying to write this I'm nearly boiling over at how selfish, self-centered, and self-destructive this whole thing is. What is happening?
I'm incredibly embarrassed knowing how deep I was in this wretched Christian world at one time. The last few years has had me furiously wrestling with my faith knowing how the loudest voices with the biggest soapboxes in Christianity by default represent the rest of us. Stoked to know other believers weren't having it with this nonsense in their city.