So far we’ve been receiving daily pictures of Lila. Laura seems to be taking to her new role as mother and enjoying all the skin-to-skin contact, outfit and bow changes, and trying out all her new baby things. I’m not sure how she’s going to get her homework down and I don’t know if she is either. I feel almost overwhelmed for them at the idea of fitting this new baby into their life of school and running. I think this early stage by far has to be the hardest in terms of physical and mental taxation.

We celebrated Josh’s 44th birthday this evening. We went to the farm to have a picnic since it was so nice. The boys and I spent the afternoon getting ready for that. We went to Walmart for gift shopping and Aldi for picnic shopping. In between those two things we drove through the car wash because I was serious about having a clean and well maintained car that stays looking nice like when we bought it.

They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. That’s what I told him when he came back from swimming with Zorro and found me in the kitchen constructing giant Italian subs. I didn’t follow the directions with the dessert and spread the topping before it had cooled. When I opened the lid later it had melted into a topping of clear liquid over everything else. I don’t know how one little direction could make that much of a difference. The subs at least were okay and the chips and grapes too.

The pastor talks in church about “the suffering Jesus” quite a bit. It’s like he doesn’t want anyone getting any wild ideas that you can have a Jesus or any kind of relationship with him that does not involve suffering. It slightly grates on Josh a little bit because he says that along with the suffering Jesus you also have the resurrected Jesus and those two go together as well. My favorite thing about imagining a life being like resurrected Jesus is that we are immortal and incorruptible for eternity.

Today in Bible class we talked about Jacob, Laban, Leah, and Rachel and when Jacob marries the two women. Boy does that grate every time when I read it. At the part where Jacob agrees to work seven years to get Rachel and it says, “and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her”, he doesn’t think it means that time flew by. He said it was more that the seven years seemed like nothing to pay, and seemed a very low price because of his love. He would’ve given way more.

So after that we drove Danny home but his garage code was not working. So we all went to Country Market to get toilet paper and I picked up some pretzels. By the time we got home Danny’s mom was waiting for us in front of the house to pick him up. She’s one of the preachers in a nearby town. We had lunch and a restful afternoon and the boys were good and took naps. For supper everyone made their own thing and met back up in the living room for us to have some evening family time.

The boys had a cross country meet in Rochester this morning. The temperatures continued to climb through the morning girls’ race to where they were one degree away from cancelling the meet minutes before the boys were supposed to begin. My boys each ran about a minute and ten seconds slower than the last race and remained about a minute apart from each other. I did not have the energy to move around to different stations, so I stayed in a place where I’d see them twice.

Their team scored fifth overall out of 14 teams. They are hoping to have a scoring team this year and make it to sectionals. My Instagram feed after this morning has been full of not only clips from this race but also reels of cross country meet starts and how the kids or parents are “built different”. I mean like every single time I was opening the app. So that has replaced all the marriage and relationship posts and reels for the time being. I think I’m going to take a break from there for a while.

We got to Facetime with Lila tonight. She is opening her eyes more and eating really well. Laura’s mom left today and said her milk is coming in well and that her body is starting to feel better. One of the boys went out on a date with a girl he has been talking to since the end of camp. They played pickleball outside, went out to dinner, and then walked around somewhere in a park. Elianna is up dog sitting for my sister and her family while they are on vacation. Zorro and Shadow got into it tonight.

We watched the race from our couch. The heat index in South Dakota was high enough that the races were shortened, rearranged, and pushed out to later times. So Ethan’s race was at 9:45 instead of 9:15. and instead of the men going last the college women raced at 10:15. Instead of a 6K for the men they shortened it to a 5k. Call me crazy but I’m always a little jealous of the women for getting to run shorter races. I forget what they run but I think they do either 5k’s or 6k’s instead of 8.

After tonight I realized I was going to have to switch mindsets. I’ve been thinking senior year is the year to peak and do your absolute best after getting the hang of the training and having multiple runs on all of the courses. But it makes no sense to add an infant into the mix and think things aren’t somehow going to be affected. Even without a baby, there doesn’t seem to be the ability to move beyond a certain level where everything finally clicks and moves forward. I want to just enjoy this.

And I want him to as well. It’s the whole thing that they talk about with the 18 summers as a mom. Yes the time is slipping away and you only get so much time when they’re young. But hopefully, God willing, there are summers beyond that, and races, times, and teams we’ve not yet lived or imagined. September summers are my favorite for swimming, truly the absolute best. The sun still warms you but does not beat down and heat the earth. Augustana comes and goes and returns again.

I’ve been tripping over heart strings that have been needing to be cut. Luckily those things seem to have a way of taking care of themselves. I’ve been trying to get him to come with me to this South Dakota meet for four years, with this being the last one. We had it scheduled early in the year even with the baby being due. I’ve had it marked on my calendar for months. Somewhere in the blur of life it was talked about that this was something that needed to be cut out of the plans.

I’ve been fine until things came closer and started up again with trying to figure this out in my head. I could break up the 10 hour trip over three days, stopping along the way at a different sister’s house. We had a conversation on the way to my mother-in-law’s house after Auburn. “It’s not logical”, I said, at least being able to see that much. But why these fantastical actions for just this one and nobody else? Why defy my limits and exert such a force for something that does not add up?

So that was enough to get through some of them there. The rest of them were taken care of when I told my son I for sure wasn’t coming. We had a conversation about the understanding of the matter. That would’ve been a ridiculous amount of driving, he said. I typed out some words about how this isn’t about me or us anymore, that he’s not three anymore and still my mind finds it hard to switch gears. He reminded me that I have another son in his senior year and another running too.

I feel in some way like I have been redirected. And I’m tired of being the one who bears the burden of the emotions and the people who don’t understand them. I am tired of feeling alone, like my force and my love is so unseen or unknown. I wish someone would see my passion, my strength, my perseverance, love, and tenacity and gosh dang it, what good did wanting this ever do me? So I don’t know, that was actually pretty rough even though I know that this was being said in love.

But anyway. Today was kind of a recovery day, at least for me. We went back to the beach in the afternoon and this time Dad came with us along with Zorro. We played for a while. The boys came home from school and we had supper. All of this happened after supper so I have still been adjusting and just letting all this settle. But I do get it, driving up to Minnesota tonight, staying overnight in South Dakota tomorrow, and driving back the next day is more than what is needed now.