And the band played on
It’s been a very strange couple of weeks. For a start, Steve’s been in Chicago so I’ve been trying to sell the house myself. And I did last week - only to have it fall over the next day. (The sale, not the house.) In the middle of this the hearing for the neighbours happened - and they were allowed to stay, as long as they “keep the peace of the neighbourhood”. At 5:30pm on Saturday I went out to the opera, and someone in that block of houses had their music up loud, not sure if it was the ones we’ve been complaining about. When I got home the next morning at 6:20, having picked Steve up from the airport, they were still going. I called Noise Control at 11am.
I can’t quite explain what this is doing to me, but it feels a bit like I’m living in a nightmare. Every moment of peace in our house is only a fallacy, because the noise will start again. And the problem neighbours have got their heads around it - they no longer play their music, but they still drink and scream at each other in the back garden, about three nights a week. But you can’t call noise control about that. What are they going to do, take away their voices?!! It makes me so angry and so upset. Security is everything to me, and I feel like I’m completely adrift.
Part of the problem I think is that I have such a strong sense of justice, and this is so unjust, and I can’t do anything about it. I can’t fix it. I can’t change it. I can’t even move until we sell the place. And, worse, we have people who are interested, but they’re young women who want to live alone and who are attracted to the lovely open space in the house, the decks and garden. But there’s absolutely no way we’re going to sell the house to a young single woman without telling the truth about the neighbours first, and that will probably lose us potential sales.
The one good thing about all this is that it’s brought us closer to each other and God - we’re totally helpless and have to rely on Him. Despite the stress and fear and the exhaustion of having to run around organising everything, I have felt the most amazing sense of His presence in the weeks Steve’s been away. And all the Psalms about "making the Most High your dwelling place" have come to mean a lot. It has been worth all the drama and upset, just for that. Plus we can’t expect to get everything we want right when we want it. I’ve been given so much in my life that it’s probably about time I had to wait for something, and have faith that it would happen in His time, not mine. And so we wait on.
I can’t quite explain what this is doing to me, but it feels a bit like I’m living in a nightmare. Every moment of peace in our house is only a fallacy, because the noise will start again. And the problem neighbours have got their heads around it - they no longer play their music, but they still drink and scream at each other in the back garden, about three nights a week. But you can’t call noise control about that. What are they going to do, take away their voices?!! It makes me so angry and so upset. Security is everything to me, and I feel like I’m completely adrift.
Part of the problem I think is that I have such a strong sense of justice, and this is so unjust, and I can’t do anything about it. I can’t fix it. I can’t change it. I can’t even move until we sell the place. And, worse, we have people who are interested, but they’re young women who want to live alone and who are attracted to the lovely open space in the house, the decks and garden. But there’s absolutely no way we’re going to sell the house to a young single woman without telling the truth about the neighbours first, and that will probably lose us potential sales.
The one good thing about all this is that it’s brought us closer to each other and God - we’re totally helpless and have to rely on Him. Despite the stress and fear and the exhaustion of having to run around organising everything, I have felt the most amazing sense of His presence in the weeks Steve’s been away. And all the Psalms about "making the Most High your dwelling place" have come to mean a lot. It has been worth all the drama and upset, just for that. Plus we can’t expect to get everything we want right when we want it. I’ve been given so much in my life that it’s probably about time I had to wait for something, and have faith that it would happen in His time, not mine. And so we wait on.