I think this is the longest I have gone without making an entry since I started this thing. It has just been crazy and if I have five minutes to get on the internet, my connection is down. Wireless has its advantages, but reliability isn't one of them.

Last week was mostly getting ready for our newest addition to the family. Nestina spent her first night in our house on Thursday. She went with my wife and I to my immediate family's Christmas on Friday morning, then the three of us went home for a little Christmas with just the three of us. Debbie and I drove down to her mom's house Friday night and stayed until Sunday morning. It was good to see everyone. Nestina spent Christmas at her mom's place. Her and a friend stayed at our place Saturday night, so of course there were all sorts of strange power problems that I have never had. They were able to get things working well enough to keep the heat going through the night and we left for home early Sunday. I still don't know what started the entire failure cascade, but I changed one setting on the inverter and checked everything out. It all looked good to me and I was able to fire up the generator Monday morning with no problems. I guess the house was just mad we left it alone on Christmas...

This will be a slow, boring week at work. Large chunks of the medical center are off for the week between Christmas and New Years, so any attempts to get anything done results in a voice mail message or a Groupwise auto-reply that states the person you need to contact is out of the office having fun, while you are a lifeless smuck for being at work. So I'm blogging instead of working.

We don't really have any plans for this weekend, other than working on the house. The church is having its annual New Years "bash." We will likely attend, and I'm encouraging the teens to attend as well. We'll leave the old people in the gym and we can go into the youth room and play loud music and act goofy. Besides, I'd like to have someone to talk to. I find I have less and less to say to the majority of the adults in the church. I'm not sure why that is. I feel I've become more of a spectator than a participant.

It's becoming more and more apparent to me that I am not where I belong, church-wise. I have no idea where I do belong, but I am certain of where I don't belong. Even with the deep theological disagreements I have with the Roman Catholic Church, I felt more at home in Christmas Mass (I know, that's redundant) with Debbie's family Saturday that I do at our current church. Maybe it is all just a phase, or maybe it is just me, but this has been building for some time. There is so much I would like to do, yet at every turn I feel constrained and boxed in.

Maybe the New Year is a time to strike out in a new direction; cut ourselves loose from our current congregation and go it alone for a while. I would like to stay where we are while starting something new, but I am sure that would be a no-go with our current church. There is simply no way I would be allowed to stay on in any leadership capacity while doing what would amount to a church plant. Unless that church plant was a GARB church, of course, but then I would be right back in the box that I am currently in.

I guess I don't know what to do at this point. I'm just thinking out loud.