I love my apartment! Wait....what?
Not really. I do not love the idea of living in an apartment. I do not love having sometimes noisy neighbors on top of me, behind me, and next to me. I do not love that there is a sidewalk just a matter of feet from my bed, and I do not enjoy listening to peoples loud personal conversations. I do not enjoy not having a yard. I do not enjoy lack of space indoors. I do not enjoy the maze that my oversized-for-an-apartment furniture creates throughout my living space. I do not enjoy the barrage of bumps and bruises that I occur on a near daily basis from bumping into something that is wedged into an awkward space. I do not like not having a yard for my Fiona to run around in, and instead having to take her for walks. I do not enjoy the dog walking area that is a mine field of dog poo. (I truly believe we are the only family in this complex that actually follows the rules and cleans up after our dog!) I do not like having carpeted floors throughout my living space. I miss the pergo of my home, and my pantry, and my kitchen and my...
So, there, I've listed some of the many things I do not like about apartment living. Basically, I do not enjoy apartment living. However, I love my apartment. It isn't a house, but it is my home. It may seem like a step backward from home ownership, but it is where I hang my head, where my heart is, and all of those other cliches. I love that I have the opportunity to live so close to Mr. Cat's school. We have only one vehicle. When we were living with our friends, we were an hour away from campus, and Mr. Cat had to take the van every day, which left me without a vehicle each day. It also meant him spending a minimum of 10 hours on the road each week, just traveling back and forth. I am so lucky that if I want to use the van, I can just drop him off 5 minutes from home. His school is right on the way between our home and church (which it seems we are always going to or coming from). It is perfect. I was so shocked to see an apartment complex out here in farmland, Florida. But here it is. We looked at other complexes, but they would have been further drives, and the car swap thing wouldn't have worked nearly as well. They wouldn't have been convenient to daily Mass either, which is something that is important to our family. Where our apartment is located is just absolutely perfect for our needs. It opened up at a time when we really needed it to, and even though I literally cringed when signing the lease for another year, I am so thankful to be able to live here. It is well-maintained, and I have the comfort that if something breaks or malfunctions, I can just call the office and maintenance will come and repair it, at no additional cost to me. The office staff is nice and friendly, and so are most of the people who live here.
It is so easy to overlook where you live as a blessing. There is the always the: "It could always be worse." "You could be homeless." (been there done that) "You could be forced to live in a place that was unsafe." Yes, those are all true. One thing being an Army wife taught me was that you have to make the best of your circumstances. If you find yourself in a situation that is not ideal, you first have to ask yourself, can you change it. If not, then you have 2 choices. 1) You can complain about your situation on a regular basis, and be miserable constantly, making others in your family miserable as well. or 2) You can choose the relish the good points about your situation, and take the focus off of the negatives. You can be positive as much as possible, you can find little things to add enjoyment, or make your situation bearable. You can fake the funk, or "fake it til you make it" if you have to. There is a lot to be said for the power of positive thinking.
All that being said, it is easy to overlook where you live on a deeper level. I look at the conditions Our Lord was born in. I have a booklet entitled "Praying the Rosary Without Distraction." It has ten points for each mystery to meditate on as you pray. In the Joyful Mysteries, the third, The Nativity, one of the points is: Jesus enters the world in poverty to teach the lesson of detachment from earthly things.
Wow. That really speaks to me. How often have I complained about wanting to live in a nicer area, a bigger house, have land, etc. etc. What I am really saying is that what God has provided me with is not good enough. This is not to say I plan to go sell all my worldly goods and move into the neighboring farms barn. However, this encourages me to look at what I do have, and realize that it is just stuff. Yes, stuff gives us comfort, it can bring us happiness, joy, peace, it can give us lots of good things. But it all comes down to just stuff. If there were to be a fire, and all of my worldly possessions get burned to cinders, would I still be happy? Without a doubt. I would be sad, sure, I would miss things that were treasures, things that I cherish, things that I love. But my true happiness is not given to me by anything of this World. It is like the time our hard drive fried and I lost years and years of pictures of the girls. I broke down crying in the middle of the Apple store when I found out everything was gone. I will not lie, it was heart-wrenching. But it wasn't a life ender. It took my personal emtional happiness away at the moment, but it did not take my eternal happiness away. (Keep in mind, I am not saying it's wrong to be sad, or it's wrong to suffer from depression, or it's wrong to be upset. I am talking about a deeper sense of happiness than the here and now.) When my father died, I was crying about his things, and not having them, or being able to see them anymore. My oldest, then just 4, told me, "It's okay Mommy. You have the important stuff right here." And she laid her chubby little hand on my heart. She was so right.
Stuff. Happiness. Right now, I am wearing a shirt that belonged to my mom. It isn't any style of shirt I would have gone out and chosen for myself. If anyone else gave it to me, I probably would have passed it on. But it was my mom's, and wearing makes me feel close to her. As morose as it might sound, knowing that the fabric that touches my skin once touched her skin gives me so much more comfort than I can describe. Stuff is important, even to mental/emotional health. But stuff is not the end all/be all, which is what most of society tells us these days. My happiness, true happiness, comes from something not of this world. It comes from God, and no earthly person or event can take that away from me if I do not choose to let it.
So, while I don't love living in an apartment, I love living where God has housed me. It is right where I am supposed to be.
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