a more coherent mind purge than previously

Lately, the random tendency to burst into tears and feel a bone-crunching despair is starting once again to interfere with how I take care of my son and husband. I took to re-reading A Praying Life by Paul Miller and then took a bus to a bookstore in Hangzhou that shares my son's Chinese name. For one, I love bookstores and the outing helped to cheer me up a little (yay, new place to visit! On my own - while ergo-ing my son) = independence. Joy!) and, for another, I was able to get a prayer journal. If any time is most suitable for constant prayers, it is now.

This is what I have realized about moving from the U.S. to China: life in China is harder on many basic levels, and freedom and civil rights no longer shout out in my consciousness on a mostly theoretical level. It has been easy for me to live well in the U.S. and not have to remember the suffering in the world if I didn't have the time or energy that day. It is less easy to avoid when the population is so dense and I see so many people from all walks of life simply by riding in our apartment's elevator. Or going to the canteen to eat. Or trying to get procedures approved by the government or basically any administration here. Or hear about friends who have to either get an abortion or deliver in hospital staircases because doctors weren't willing to get in trouble for helping to deliver babies without permission-to-birth permits. My husband says it leaves him drained, feeling helpless and angry. He says he is starting to understand why God cares so much for the oppressed.

In this weakened, sad condition, it is impossible for us to function without praying every time we feel the power drain. The impotence to do more. Because of this, I find myself now praying all the time. In a greater context, it is a huge relief to be struggling so much now. I had struggled in the U.S. too, before I left. That struggle was against complacency, the opium haze of comfort and (what I now recognize as) luxury, and my own inability to always remember the poor (of every kind). Now, the battles are clearer; the enemies are out in the open and I feel like it's a more honest fight. Like when one of our church friends get passed over in work because he doesn't want to lie for the company and shortchange clients. Like how my husband and I resolved to take significant financial loss instead of performing some shady exchanges as his department suggested in order to claim the promises his boss made.

Now we're in Beijing for the week. My husband will attend a math conference. We need to get our marriage certificate notarized in order to continue another ongoing bureaucratic nightmare. And in the meantime I will walk while carrying our son through the historic campus of Beijing University, the epicenter of so many civil uprisings in the past. Where my great aunt taught as a humanities professor before she and her husband committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution.

Time for bed. Signing off from the new Mac computer my husband got via his grant money. Whee.