Spiritual Weightlifting

We were down, our spirits breaking under the weight. It was all I could do to keep my chin up, to keep moving forward, to keep trusting God’s plan, to keep from despairing. It was exhausting.

But then, on top of all that, I had to pick Chelsea up too. She had already begun despairing, started freaking out. It was on me to encourage her, to remind her of God’s sovereign love for us, of His perfect will. It was up to me to tell her that everything would work out and be ok, even though inside, I was hoping someone would ease my own fears and tell me the same.

I thought to myself, why do I keep having to pick her up? Keep lifting her up? And then, it all sort of lined up and came into focus, and I knew exactly why I had to keep asking God for the strength not only to lift myself up, but her as well.

If the main purpose, the primary goal in life, is to continually grow closer to God, to grow closer to perfection— to grow stronger spiritually— what better way is there to grow, to strengthen the fibers of of faith, of spiritual muscle, than through spiritual weightlifting? That I think is a common—and I think fairly valid—explanation often given of why God allows us to endure trials. We become stronger (which in many ways I think consists primarily of learning to depend on God’s strength, but that’s another topic entirely) by bearing the burden, by lifting ourselves up. What I realized then was that this common understanding can be applied in our relationships to other people as well. That is, that God may ask us to exercise our spiritual muscles, in a sense, by lifting others up, perhaps at times even when we’re struggling to stick to the path ourselves.

Of course, by the time I realized all this, I had already broken, already given up under the weight of both of our worries into despair, and by that point it was Chelsea who was getting a workout lifting me up. So things had already gone full circle by that point, and I didn’t really do the best job of applying my new found knowledge to the situation.

So, with my moral epiphany out of the way, I can recount some of the history of last week and how we even came to such a low point to begin with. This might take a while.

We were in London searching for an apartment to stay in for the next year, and even though we got kind of lost for about half an hour on the first night upon our arrival, trying to find a bus from the main bus station to the area we were staying, things had been going really well. Everyone at Rennaldburn had been so wonderful, and we had such a good time. We were able to work out cheap travel from Lockerbie to London, and everything went smoothly. And Ita’s mom, Anita, was letting us stay in her spare room, and was one of the nicest people we’ve met. Here's her place (also our only picture of London, as we didn't really have time for pictures after this):



She made us dinner and a lovely breakfast the next morning. Even though we had walking directions to our first apartment viewing, she even lent us a book of street maps of London. We headed out walking, and the weather was beautiful. We made it there just fine, never got lost. Then we saw the apartment, it was nearly perfect-our own bathroom and private kitchenette, small but still plenty of space-everything we wanted, and still fairly securely within the high end of our budget. And all in a fairly nice area. Things were great.

Then everything else happened. First we tried to find some internet access, to see if we had heard back from any of the other agents about more viewings, and to hopefully look up a few more directions. There was a little cafe across the street that said it had wifi, so we tried that. It wasn’t free to customers though, as most coffee shops are, which was a bit disappointing— so we had to buy 5 pounds of sorely overpriced coffee and pastries that we didn’t really want in order to get access. Then, we spent about 30 minutes trying to access the wifi with the password given to us, to no avail; it never worked at all. The employees were no help at all. So after the wasted money (and time, in a very busy day) we left very frustrated. We headed off walking in the direction of a main strip we passed on the way there, hoping to find a library. We found a tourist board with a map, and found two libraries, each about a 10 minute walk in opposite directions from us; we thought we were in luck. We walked to one though, and thought it looked a bit dead as we approached. Then we read the sign: closed every Wednesday. Of course it was Wednesday. Who closes anything on a Wednesday? Much less a public service like a library. So we back-tracked all the way back, and then the distance again in the other direction, to the other library. Closed Wednesdays. Two libraries in the same part of town, both closed Wednesdays? They couldn’t plan the closings a little better than that? Maybe close one Wednesday, one Thursday? Do libraries there just shut down on Wednesday? It was incredibly frustrating.

Finally, about an hour and a half since the start of our quest for internet, the time till our next viewing dwindling, we found an internet cafe, paid 50 pence, and got sweet, sweet broadband for half an hour. We were able to get some directions to our next viewing, and checked our email— no answer from any of the other agents, so still no other viewings set up. That meant we still only had two viewings total: the one from that morning, and the one we were heading to that afternoon. The one that morning was nice, but it almost seemed wrong somehow, somehow foolish, to go with the first thing we saw. So we hoped maybe the 2^nd one would offer an alternative, a fair comparison, so we might choose between the two.

So we started walking (we were afraid of the city buses after the fairly painful experience with them our first night there, so we chose walking 2 miles over paying 4 pounds for a bus that would take nearly as long as walking, and might not even get us there). We did not like what we saw. We had to walk down a few intimidating streets to get there, general overall sketchiness. And, of course, because it’s London, it started raining. It wasn’t very fun.

Then we got there, and there was a guy there (not the guy we’d talked to on the phone) to show us around. He didn’t speak very good English. The flat itself was on a slightly better street than some of the ones we had to go down to get there, a little away from the scary ones, but not far. Then the apartment: the lock on the door was broken in. His broken English explanation sounded like an excuse but didn’t make much sense. Inside needed work; it was a bit dirty and the walls needed painting. They claimed all that would be taken care before we moved in, and the lock would be repaired. It wouldn’t have been too horrible if all those things were taken care of, but we really had no faith in these people to make good on their word.

So, we had looked at two apartments, and basically had no choice but to go with the first thing we saw. We still had student housing to fall back on (which God was so awesome with; the deadline to decide was going to be before we even came to London, and we would have had to turn it down, blindly depending on finding private housing, but Chelsea got an email saying the deadline had been pushed back, to, of course, the last day we had planned on looking at apartments). But really, the student housing just didn’t seem like a wise use of money; it was a bit out of our budget, and you don’t get very much at all for what you pay. So, we decided the wisest decision was to go with the first place we viewed. It was a bit nerve-racking, but we prayed about it, sent out a few quick messages over the internet (we finally found a library in another part of town that was open) asking for more prayers, and we felt comfortable with the decision. So we called up the agent, Ian, and went to meet him at his office. After another fairly lengthy walk (up to about 6 or 7 miles on the day by this point) we met up, and began going through the details of signing the lease and making a deposit. Near the end of the process, we don’t have any relatives in the UK to act as guarantors for our rent, Ian had to call the owners of the property to make sure that an advance on the rent would suffice instead. Then, all the friendliness that had permeated Ian’s voice suddenly dropped out.

The apartment we were interested in had already been let, “ages ago,” according to the other end of the line. And no one bothered to tell Ian, so he had still been showing it like normal. We were devastated, and confused. Why had we felt so comfortable with this decision? Why had God led us down this path if it was never going to work at all? I put on my bravest trust I could muster though. I just kept telling myself, it was all part of His plan. Ian, clearly upset with the property owners and embarrassed by what had happened, asked us to meet him back at the office the next morning, and said he would drive us around to all the properties he had until we could find something. Very thankful, and having really no other choice, we took his offer. See, I told myself, this is where God is leading us. Something tomorrow will help clear this up, help things make sense. So we thanked him, asked him for directions to the right bus to get back to Anita’s, and were on our way.

In the rain. And we messed up the directions and got lost, and never found the bus. And it turned out that the book of street maps Anita had given us was missing 3 or 4 pages...you guessed it--the exact ones we needed. Somehow, by piecing together the tiny maps of small surrounding areas posted at bus stops, we managed to find our way back, walking all the way. We were physically and emotionally drained and exhausted.

It was at about this point that I had my moral epiphany with which I started the post. This is what we were lifting off each other’s shoulders.

Finally we’re back, make dinner for Anita, as we’d promised her the night before, which, though we were beat, was still very enjoyable and satisfying. We’d finally finished our see-sawing back and forth, one being up trying to lift the other that was down, stabilizing into a sort of uncertain optimism towards the day ahead.

So, the next morning, having been bested by the buses (alliteration win!) twice now, we walked back to Ian’s office, map book sans missing pages in hand, the sun shining, and our hearts just daring to hope that things might work out.

Ian was late, again, by about an hour this time. Truly though, it seems to be his only fault as an agent, as he really took care of us, and really went out of his way to help us find what we needed. I’m not entirely clear on how all the property market works in London, but it was pretty clear that he was able to hold the property owner’s blunder from the previous day against them. He drove us to four different apartments over the course of about 2 hours; he certainly didn’t have to devote that much time to us, especially since we are sort of at the bottom of the property barrel, in terms of how much we’re going to spend (though we did learn why he was always late; he spent a good deal of the time in the car calling people to reschedule, because he was spending so much time with us.) So we felt like God really blessed us with Ian, and really used him to help us. So, we found three apartments we liked, and put them in order of preference, and headed back to the office to try and put a deposit down on any of them and get it off the market, to prevent a wretched repeat of the day before.

We got back, and our first choice was still available, and Ian even talked them down 20 pounds a month off the rent for us, as a sort of compensation for the mix ups. We put down the first week’s rent as a deposit, gave them all our information, and left them to get things set up so we could move in soon. So it was all going great. High point. Rest from all the stress.

Then we found some internet at a library and looked up the neighborhood we were going to be living in. Low point again. It had all seemed very nice in person, when we actually visited it. A quiet residential street, with nice buildings with pretty architecture and middle- to upper-middle-class cars parked along the street. But according to the internet, it’s one of the worst boroughs in London. Chelsea started freaking out again. So I got a bit more exercise again, reminding her that even the most dangerous streets of London aren’t as bad as the lion’s den, and they’re nothing compared to the fiery furnace. And she did better this time, didn’t make me lift quite as hard. And God made it a bit easier on us as well. We did some more research, and found that the area is actually on the rise. Its reputation is still suffering from the reality of 20 years ago that no longer applies today. Crime levels have dropped greatly, and the council is dumping tons of money into the area to bring it up. Property prices are still low (yay for us!) but rising quickly, which is forcing crime out. I found myself thinking that the part of living there that scared me the most wasn’t crime or our safety, but simply of having to tell people that’s where we were living. And that’s when I realized that there really wasn’t any justification in being fearful at all.

So, we had a bit more trials there, a bit more exercise. But we got through it, and even though I spilled chili sauce all over my pants when we bought doner and chips for lunch God sent rain to wash it off during our walk back to Anita’s. We had another lovely dinner with her, and I got to play her classical guitar for an hour or so, which was really fun and relaxing. High point again. Resting.

Then, the next day, we had to take a bus to Dover. We went to another library first, to try and get some internet access again and hopefully use a printer so I could print off my plane ticket information in case I needed it to get back in to England from France. However, every employee at that library was fairly useless, and more than one was quite rude, and getting printer access turned out to be a huge ordeal, and in the end a waste of time, as we never got it worked out at all. So we had to leave, still without a printer, and now running a bit short on time to pack our bags and make it all the way back to Victoria Station to make our coach to Dover. Downhill again.

So we told Anita goodbye, though we’ll be living within walking distance for a year, so I’m sure we’ll see her again plenty. Then we had to take a city bus from near there into central London by the station. An 82 bus. That’s what we were supposed to take. An 82, and you’re supposed to buy the ticket before you board from a little machine. So first, we walk all up and down the street looking for one of those machines. None to be found. Finally we go into a Tube station and ask them, and they say just pay the driver as you board. Even though every bust stop says purchase ticket before boarding, and the website says it, and it pretty much seems to be law there. Apparently on that street they don’t follow the rules.

So we buy a candy bar so we can make exact change to pay the driver as we board. They’re supposed to come every 5-12 minutes, but it’s over 20 before one finally shows up. Time is getting short, and at this point we’ll barely make it with just a few minutes to spare. As we get on the 82 bus, as instructed, we’re trying to ask the driver if it’s ok to pay him, even though all the signs say not to, when he tells us that he’s only going one stop, and then the route ends. What? We have no idea what he’s talking about, or why he’s only going part of the route, but he makes it clear that he has no intention of taking us to Victoria Station. Bus fail number 3. Right as we’re stepping off that bus though, I see a second 82 pulling out of the bus lane from just behind him, with Victoria Station in big letters on the front. I don’t even really have time to think about it, but I know how awful what I’m about to do is going to be. Without waiting another second, I yell to Chelsea to follow as I take off running (yes, with the huge backpack) down the street, hoping to catch that 82 at the next stop.

At first, it’s not so bad. Traffic is horrible, and the bus catches every red. I pass it pretty soon, and manage to stay ahead of it. Then I remember how far it was to the next bus stop, as we’d seen early when we were wondering around looking for a ticket machine. It was at least a quarter of a mile, maybe closer to half. I really started to feel every ounce of that 40 pound pack. The traffic started getting lighter. Chelsea kept slipping a little further behind as I ran ahead. Low point. Low, low, low point.

But I made it, gasping and wheezing, slipping onto the bus right before he closed the doors. I knew I had to stall for Chelsea. I asked him if it was going all the way to Victoria Station, because after the last bus, who knows? He said yes. I asked him if I could pay him for the ticket. He said yes. I fumbled with my change, and handed him the two pounds, thinking he would have to print me a ticket, and hand it to me. But he just closed the doors and started inching back into traffic. But after a few panicked yells of “Wait! That’s my wife!” and some frantic arm waving and pointing, he stopped and opened the doors again. Chelsea literally pushed some lady out of the way and beat on the side of the bus with her hand so he’d stop. It was a proud moment for me.

So, after we’d made quite a scene, we were on our bus. Some guy made a rude comment about how the buses come every 5 minutes (which of course is a lie. That we’ve learned. Anything a Londoner tells you about a London bus is absolutely false), and that we didn’t have to run so desperately to get on. But Chelsea shut him up real quick.

Finally though, on our bus. God had worked it out for us. Given me the strength to make it there just in time, to stall the driver just enough for Chelsea to get there. Chelsea, nearly dead from physical exhaustion, told me, “If we miss our coach now, I’m going to cry.” But we wouldn’t. God was going to work it out for us.

Wrong. We should have known, should have listened to our own rule about Londoners and their buses (all lies). The bus did not, in fact, go to Victoria Station. It didn’t even go anywhere near it. All of the sudden, the bus says that the route has terminated, and we all have to get off there. Where? No idea. Not Victoria Station. And it all happens so fast, that the driver is gone before I’ve even realized that he’s lied to us, before I can demand an explanation, or at least our money back.

So we didn’t know what to do. We certainly couldn’t risk another bus. We didn’t have anymore change anyway; we would have had to find a store and buy something to make more. We didn’t have time for that. Our coach left in 20 minutes. We could only hope that somehow, wherever we were, was within walking distance to Victoria Station.

It wasn’t. For the first 30 or 40 minutes of walking, I kept trying, kept trying to go fast, kept thinking that God would provide a way for us onto that coach. That, as we well knew, coaches could be late. I thought, if we turn this corner, and the station’s right there, the coach would only have to be 10 minutes late, and we could still make it.

But we never turned that corner, at least not for another hour and a half. Our coach was long, long gone by the time we got there.

I’m still not really sure why, but there’s no doubt in either of our minds now that God absolutely did not want us getting on that coach. When we finally got to the station, everything went smoothly. There was another coach leaving for Dover, and even though we had to buy 2 more tickets at three times the cost of the first 2, it still wasn’t our most expensive journey. The timing was absolutely perfect. We bought our tickets and walked straight to the coach, no more stressful rushing, but we didn’t have to wait either.

So we had quite a few ups and downs. Periods of struggle and trial, and wonderful periods of rest. Much like I’ve done in the weight room so many times, stressing the muscles, pushing them and tearing them down, and then giving them time to rest and heal and rebuild, grow stronger.

I’m still not sure exactly all that we were supposed to learn from that last little bus fiasco, and missing our coach to Dover. Particularly the part where we were able to run and catch that 82 bus that ended up taking us to the wrong place; it felt so like a victory, but really was a massive setback. We haven’t quite made all that out yet. But I think perhaps part of it has to do with God allowing us to make mistakes, giving us the freedom, that wiggle room to run the wrong direction. Just like He let Jonah wander off the wrong way for a while, I think maybe He let me catch that bus, not because I was supposed to, but because I wanted to so badly. Because I wanted to be on that bus because I thought it was what I was supposed to do, not because I thought it was what God had planned for me. Like I said, I’m still not sure what to make of all of that, but I think that’s part of it.

The blog is about a destination and a half behind our reality now; we had a great time in Dover, but now we’re already being overwhelmed by Paris. Hopefully we can do one more blog post about our time in Dover around the time we leave Paris and catch things up a bit. But that’s all for now— a long post to make up for a long radio silence.