LA Revisited

Kind of in limbo right now. I've finished with all my interviews, and now I'm just waiting to hear back from places. It's kind of an anxious waiting, because I know this is a major cross-roads in my life, and will have a profound impact on how the rest of my life turns out.

Having spent some time this past weekend in LA, I got a taste of what it might be like living down there. I had forgotten just how horrific the traffic is down there. We went to visit Riverside, and I think it took us 2 hours to drive 30 miles. Ack, definitely not pleasant.

I also got a taste of what it might be like having to live near both my and E's parents. Now, in the long term, I could definitely see advantages for having parents nearby. But in the short term, as newlyweds, I could foresee much possible strife.

It became quite evident this past weekend, that E and I were raised in very different backgrounds. I think this past weekend, I finally began to see that these different value systems and ways of thinking are neither right nor wrong, better nor worse; they're just different. Ironically, these differences, which may have initially attracted us to each other, are now causing sparks now that we're closer.

If we can learn to work with our differences, without judgement (that's the hard part), I actually can see how God intends this to be a way in how our differences would act to complement one another. Working this out between the 2 of us would be difficult, but would bear much fruit. However, with both sets of parentals within 1-hr striking distance, constantly interjecting how anything different from their way is *wrong*, well, it could end up ugly.

I can see it from the parents' point of view, too. Starting a new family, with new ways of doing things, is hard. They just want to spare us that pain, and have us adopt the final model that worked for them, that took them decades to perfect. Of course, they forget that every new family is an entirely different organism, and every new family needs to find their own unique model, just like they did when they were newlyweds.

So the way I see it, if E and I were to move to SoCal, I think the parents would have to be given strict boundaries. (Haha, here, I've imagined myself talking to my parents, like a teacher setting boundaries for an over-eager school child.) Or else the fledgling family would be smothered ere it had a chance to grow.