Needless to say its been busy. save spending a million characters explaining all that has happened to me sense July I will just say that I've successfully relocated to the UK and gotten married... and married life rocks!!!

Steve (my new hubby) and I have joined a prayer community here called Colchester Boiler Room. After our wedding I've pretty much just slowly eased myself into the Colchester or 'Chester-ville' (as I like to call it) lifestyle.

The hardest part of this transition has been the slowing down. There is something about being in community that slows you down about 100%. All of the sudden my skills that got me through days of working full-time, being in graduate school full time, volunteering with my church leadership team, helping organize a local community, and being engaged/planning an international wedding... just didn't seem to matter.

It's as if the people here function by a different code of survival. And man do they utilize the spiritual gift of lingering. By the end of my first week I was so frustrated with how little was accomplished each day that I just sunk into an attitude of reclusion. I figured if going out was going to result in so little being accomplished then I might as well stay in.

That didn't help matters either.

Days seem so long. Nights even longer.

Who knew facebook had an actual limit to how much time I could spend on there??

So after I refreshed my facebook and twitter pages for the millionth time I decided maybe trying things a different way might be better.

So I woke up one morning and did something I haven't done in ages... I only put two things into my diary for the day.

1. Go visit Colchester Boiler Room

2. Read Red Moon Rising

My day was amazing. I had time for people. Suddenly I was hearing peoples stories. I was able to settling into the life that was around me AND ENJOY IT! That odd guilt sensation of feeling rushed or that I had to get to my next meeting was gone and there was just this comfortable sense of being.

I was reminded of this book I had read "Radical Hospitality" by this Benedictine monk. He had reminded his audience that living a lifestyle of simplicity didn't just mean wearing a straw hat, carrying a pitch-fork, and making lots of bread... but it also meant simplifying your life schedule by actually scheduling in space for nothing.

In just the last couple of weeks those spaces of nothing have been the times that I have most genuinely experience the community and relationships I so long for. All the sudden I'm wondering, What if while I live here I make it my goal to do more nothing?

haha as a good friend sat on couch in my brand-new honeymooning flat and said "Remember Tina, its quality not quantity".... my newly married, newly communal, and newly Chester-ville self would have to agree! wink wink....