Planes, trains, automobiles and shopping bags

I was going to say that I haven't actually been on a train this trip but then remembered the monorail between the terminals at Newark so in fact the title is very apt.

So it is my second full day in the US and my first evening in my house proper, having stayed with my landlords for the first two days. That was lovely and they were happy for me to stay longer but I knew I wouldn't be able to settle in here properly until I was in my own place.

Actually I suspect there is more than a little pride involved in that desire to move into the rented house. I am discovering that I have a strangely (as I am quite a lazy person) independent (pride) streak in me, whilst it was fantastic to be cooked for and have everything provided part of me didn't like it. I like to be the one doing the serving and helping, I don't like needing help. Too much not paying my way, or not helping out just makes me feel uncomfortable.

Two incidents have brought this home to me, both involving the aforementioned modes of transport especially automobiles. Yesterday (wow it seems longer ago than that) I spent over an hour waiting at a bus stop in sub-zero temperatures for a bus that I now know was not going to come, before walking half the way home and catching a different bus.

As I stood there in the bitter cold I lost about 20 years of ‘maturity’ ending up in the horribly familiar mode of whining at God for not immediately answering my prayer as I wished, over a frankly stupendously trivial matter ( I was wearing a snowboarding jacket – there was no danger of hypothermia!). It happened again today as I trekked home in the cold and growing dark overloaded with shopping in bags designed to withstand the weight of…oh at least the weight of a fully inflated helium balloon. Inevitably the bags broke one after the other in a well choreographed comedic sequence. Leaving me cursing and whining on the side of the road again as no bus turned up. A text to the ever helpful landlord resolved the problem with only a further 15 minute wait as he sped across to pick me up.

Now both of these things were stupid small inconveniences coming right on the heels of perhaps the most concentrated and sustained series of obvious answers to prayer I have experienced. To put them in context, in the last 8 days God has orchestrated me (not the most organised person in the world to understate it massively) to move several thousand miles to a different country. He has made packages move faster than they should, synchronized multiple events, pointed me very pointedly to the most enormously helpful landlords I have ever known (they seem to have made a wonderful confusion between the definitions of landlord and friend, because their attitudes and actions have nothing to do with the images with which ‘landlord’ is loaded). He has sorted out all the complications of organization and travel that my diabetes brings. He got me hitch free from car to plane to monorail to plane to car (the latter being my landlords’ – they picked me up from the airport which is on the other side of the city of which they live outside!!!).

And yet one nonexistent bus is enough make me feel that God has let me down! Putting aside the fact that both the situations that undid me were entirely of my own making – I didn’t make sure I had accurate bus times and I chose the quantity of shopping and bags with which to carry it – why did these silly little things bother me so? I realized as I waited for the landlord with the car that the answer was both the aforementioned pride and faith with arm bands. In both situations I felt helpless and vulnerable. Stuck in a strange town in a strange country on another continent with none of the support networks I am used to having (in uni or at home I would have had any number of friends and family to call not to mention my own car). I was helpless and needed to rely on people who had no reason to help me, no history or relationship with me to compel them to help me, no history of favours exchanged to assuage my ego at having to admit my need. My help credit history with them was all in the red and my ego hated that. But it wasn't just pride - although in the last month I have time and again had to put matters related to my time here and future in general in God’s hands (and seen Him sort them out) all the little leaps of faith have been with a safety net. If this trip hadn’t worked out I still had funding to finish my Phd until March anyway, if my Phd fell through I still had a masters and ultimately parents and family who would catch me when if it all fell through. So even though the stakes were so much lower with the bus and the bags (I could have just dumped what I couldn’t carry after all) I had no safety net that wouldn’t hurt my pride to use.

Perhaps that is the first lesson He is teaching me here (the first answer to the title of the blog), that trusting Him means trusting Him not just saying I do and adding on “and if not I can always…”

The other thing I am learning is that you really do need a car to live easily in the US. Everything is set up for driving, things are just that little bit further apart, so walking anywhere useful is just a bit further than you would want to walk. The sidewalks (as opposed to the more usefully situated entities to which we are used that are called pavements) appear and disappear (mainly the latter on dangerous blind bends) and meander in vaguely the same direction as the roads. You can even see it in the shopping bags here, they seem to have been beautifully designed to hold together just long enough to make it to the car but to explode if you attempt to walk them home.

Tomorrow I start work proper (an admin error had the computer sending me to Colorado and it has taken this long to get that sorted – well hopefully it has) so I should get an early night (cue the laughter) and I think that is enough soul baring for one post (rather more than I intended in fact).

Missing you all, but knowing I am where I am supposed to be even if I have no idea why
Love
Dannie

P.S.
I really am not as negative about this whole thing as the above may suggest, it is worth repeating, God has very obviously gone before me. The people are really friendly, I forgot to say that after I had contacted my landlord to pick me up with the shopping a couple of strangers stopped in their car and crossed the busy road to see if I needed help!