I'm discouraged. I've only been at this whole raising money thing for a solid three weeks and already I feel like giving up. I went to another church this last week and, after pouring out my heart and soul, left feeling like no one cared. No one really listened. They were too wrapped up with their own lives and their own concerns to hear me. But I guess that's how it is. I'm wrapped up in my life too, and yet I expect them to have the decency to step outside their life and look at my cause. Maybe what I need is more empathy for them. We just all are where we are, so much that it's hard to see beyond.

Something that I saw today that cheered me up was a refrigerator poem that one of the girls I'm staying with wrote. I love fridge poetry. The baffling imagery leaves my mind spinning in an attempt to uncover the ever illusive true meaning.

the silent nights
hot black rain sailed from the moon
when will joy come?
it dances gently in my dream

Something about the second line grabs me, but I especially relate to the third line. I've been asking that question for the past few months. Joy seems to have been drained out of my life. Last night as I walked across the campus of my old college, I wondered if I've always been so joyless. Eight years ago, walking those same paths as a student, I felt desolate and alone. Sure, I've felt joy in small doses since then, but the only large island of respite has been the two years I taught at the international school in Korea. I was happy then. I had a joy that I've seemed to have misplaced. It leaves me whispering to the emptiness inside--

When will joy come?