Becoming Analise

Staying in a hotel has a way of forcing you to simplify your life really quickly. It would have taken too much time to take everything we wanted from the apartment and transplant it to our hotel for a few days, so we packed the bare minimum. Normally, staying in a hotel is not complicated. However, we hadn’t stayed in a hotel since Riley Grace has been born … I think Riley Grace had the most stuff out of the three of us! We were all crammed into one room, with Riley Grace’s pack-n-play at the foot of our bed. Our kitchen stuff was lined along the bathroom counter, and our clothes were draped across the spare bed in the corner. Patrick packed his school bag, but didn’t actually get to accomplish any schoolwork because we had to turn the lamps off at night in order for Riley Grace to lie down. After Riley Grace finally fell asleep on Sunday night, I couldn’t fall asleep. I had packed my Bible and journal, and I felt the Lord prompting me to turn on my lamp and start reading. Genera

  So, it was last Thursday afternoon at 3:15pm, and Patrick was late for our afternoon coffee break. We both work on the seminary campus, and one of the perks is that we can take morning and afternoon breaks together. And even more conveniently, there’s a tiny caf é on campus with inexpensive coffee! These breaks together are a treasure. Nevertheless, he was late last Thursday. I’m only allowed fifteen minutes, so of course I texted him 10 times to say, “Where are you?”, “I’m going back to work so my break isn’t wasted!”, “Is everything ok??” Well, he finally texted me at 3:30 saying that he was “here”. I jokingly stormed up and asked why he was late. Then, he said, “The housing office called me … ” My first thought was that we hadn’t paid our rent, but I knew we had. He then proceeded to inform me that the apartment above ours had a kitchen fire a few minutes ago, which was why he was late. Our apartment had water in it from the sprinkler system that wouldn’t turn off. We didn’t hav