“Honey, when I’m above the trees
I see this for what it is”
~Happiness, Taylor Swift~

It was a good week with my family. Last night we just stayed up sitting in the living room. The kids were playing video games. No one was having any grand conversations. My sister and brother in law had gone to Casey’s to get pizza around 8:30. Their small kids were tired and needed to go to bed but when you rarely get a chance to just sit and hang out with family what is a set of parents supposed to do? Leave to go put their little kids to bed? They fell asleep in one of the bedrooms.

I had morning clients the past two days and that was it. Because I am a glutton for futility in this certain situation I asked my Thrive supervisor if we could try again to have a closing discussion. You would think that two therapists would be super great at communicating and working through conflict and hurt feelings, and it’s completely true. “Feel better now?”, he asked, and I said, “I think so”, but it was happening so fast that I didn’t get a chance to tell him that it isn’t able to feel better.

I picked up my keys to give him his key back but he didn’t want it. He couldn’t guarantee he’d be here on the next two Tuesdays. The woman at the new place has a whole box of key sets that she gives out to her people. What if none of this even works out with the other place? I know it’s a possibility and it wasn’t something I could handle at Thrive. I was too afraid to fail in front of him. I thought at first that was my growth or thing to get over. I probably could’ve but that isn’t the point.

I was embarrassed in front of the music teacher. I was embarrassed in front of the basketball boys when I didn’t play. I couldn’t handle being so mediocre in track where you had to run past people for four miserable laps. I’m actually really great at creating entire narratives in my head about what other people might be thinking or about what I wish that they were thinking. I saw a lady yesterday who I thought would’ve been a great character in a C.S. Lewis book. She would not get on the bus.

And this was one of the most Christian ladies in motivation and dedication to truth and righteousness. I didn’t realize how much of this job would include not changing people, but truly meeting them where they are at, I completely forgot about that part.

When I was a girl I was very flexible. I can still feel the muscle memory of running down the yard and bursting into a front handspring. If I’m not careful I could probably delude myself into thinking such a thing would still be possible, except to do so now would only be a cause for serious injury to my back. The arch ability needed to do such a thing is not there. I knew I’d never truly be able to make it as an Olympic gymnast, not just because I missed the early years of training, but because I was tall.

I’m in one of those weird reflective places where I don’t know what I am looking at. I don’t mean the outer appearance. I am used to the changes that have happened to my face and body. People talk about looking in the mirror and not recognizing the other person staring back at them. That’s kind of what it’s like but in the metaphorical way. Is that me? What about xyz? I don’t know this person.

Because something is different. It’s an acceptance of my tiredness and a walking away from the pastor’s family who is here for a week. It’s Wednesday and I still haven’t been in the right place to go talk to them. It’s the hum of God’s comfort as my background noise while I play other songs. They talk about women being invisible after a certain age. Truly worse things have happened. I think I now think those people who get all bent out of shape about navel gazing really ought to try it sometime.

Today was a rougher day at Hope. A couple of these couples are really struggling and I’m still trying to sort my way through the best way to do this. If I had to really break it down as to what needs to happen it’d go something like this: Heal from past things. Stop doing bad things. And start doing good things. All these things are happening at the same time but sometimes you have to give more attention to one of the things. And there is no order or linear path to follow with this, as they say.

I can’t remember if I said that me and the other marriage counselor are at some point going to put together some kind of screening tool for the website. It makes sense to me. Couples counseling, I think, is a form of group counseling and with group counseling they teach you to screen the members to see if they’d be good candidates. I’ve had my doubts about this one couple who was switching from a retiring counselor but after years is still limping along in a seeming crisis.

There are currently twelve on the waitlist. As much as I sort of dread taking on new ones and going through the whole learning and intake process, I do feel like overall I like the couples counseling better than the regular. I seem to struggle most with people closest to my age. Like there is not enough difference. I feel like I need to keep plugging along and being patient with myself and the process of learning. A major positive thing I feel I have going for me is that I know it can be done.

Yesterday I met with the supervisor of the group practice where I was asking about working one day a week there. She showed me around and we talked more about how things would work. I really love how organized she is and how official she is about everything. She just seems really flexible and willing to figure things out with me in terms of what I want to do. She sent me a letter via email and so now I’m officially an employee there at this other group practice with plans to work on Tuesdays.

I have two more Tuesdays at Thrive before I’m done there. I don’t know why I keep on doing this, why one place is not enough. I’m just happier when I feel like I can round out my experiences. This newer place has group supervision and for the summer I’ll be with three other people from my last internship group class. The other person would’ve helped me too but it just wouldn’t have been able to be the same because of certain dynamics. Now I do not have to be distracted with all of that.

It still makes me sad though. The rest of the day was good and I’ve just been concentrating on hosting family and doing my self-care and staying with it with mom and wife things. We had our date night tonight and took everyone with us to get ice cream. This morning I made the boys eggs and waffles since two of them didn’t want to go down for oatmeal. Nothing crazy but still enough to keep life full. I’m going to say goodnight to and hug everyone and then get ready for bed after a nice day.

My family is visiting for the week. Today my parents were here who brought my brother who is staying until Wednesday. My sister and niece are here for the whole week along with many other cousins who are attending camp. Over the weekend we bought a giant cowboy hat floatation device that I saw hanging in Sam’s when we were there last week. I saw it and thought it might be nice to have as another fun thing we can do in the water. The green flag was everyone was on board with it.

We tested it out on Sunday to see what exactly it was going to take to inflate it and get it transported down to the beach with no electricity. It was an ordeal. Today we planned to drive my van to the beach and use the extension cord with the outlet in the van. I think that would’ve worked except at the last minute I had second thoughts about making a big fuss around the beach when the campers were there. I didn’t want the counselors to have to deal with the distraction and hubbub of it all.

So we didn’t do that. Everyone was still fine to go on paddle boards and hang out in the deep end while the kids did their swim tests. It’s nice having all of the kids around (my kids). People have asked if it is weird having them living in the house and I don’t think it’s been weird. It helps having camp going on so everyone has their things to do. I took a PTO day for state and signed up for two PTO half days this week so I’m only mostly working in the mornings. It’s nice to have that for things.

My aunt came with us one time on a family trip to Maine. My grandparents were also there and paid for most of the things on the trip. Maine was a few states away from New York so it was neat to have to travel across states we’d never been to before. The car ride was cramped with five of us kids in the backseat, but nothing uncomfortable or unbearable to deal with besides not sleeping in the car.

My aunt stayed with my sisters and I in a hotel room. The three of us girls were in sixth grade or younger. She liked to have talks with us and so much of her advice sounded like it always came straight out of a self-help book. Looking back I can see different things that she struggled with and understand them. What still gets me is how or why the less positive traits could not be overcome.

One of the pieces of advice she gave on the trip was, “Don’t get married just to have sex.” She knew that we were Christian girls and what came along with that was the teaching that having sex was something that was supposed to be saved for when you were married. It created a barrier between your personal wishes and opportunities. Marriage was the only thing that could remove the barrier.

So that’s what I did. I got married so I could have sex. I pushed for marriage. I planned it out in my head. I told him that lack of money was not a good enough reason to wait. He wanted to be more financially secure. I was trying to follow the Bible and not be burning with passion. Sometimes it really haunts me that I had to convince a man to marry me. What would it have been like to be the one to be convinced? What if desperately wanting to have sex could’ve had nothing to do with it?

“Beck! You didn’t listen to Aunt Susie!’ One of my sisters and I were talking about this a couple days ago while I was walking. It made me smile because that was obviously then something that had impacted her too. I miss my aunt more and think about her quite often. Her words, Her laugh, Her openness to talk about anything. I might not have listen to her but I have heard her words over and over so many times now that they’ve finally helped me to realize that I played a part in this story too.

The Auburn boys won the IHSA class 1A state 4x400m title. Not only did they win, but they also set a new state 1A record that had been standing for I’m not sure how long, 20 years. After running 3:22 something to win the state title last year, and running 3:22 something in Rochester, and 3:22 at their sectional to win first, and then running 3:22 something and having the fasted preliminary time this past Thursday, they finished today with a time of 3:17:79 to be the old state record by over 2 seconds. Two of their runners ran 48 second splits. It’s like they’d been saving it up all season long.

So that was incredible. I feel so privileged to have stood inches away from, to have witnessed two of my sons run in lanes beside these legends. I will miss them running so much and at least two of them are going on to college to run track and cross country. When they were freshman boys they sat next to Laura’s senior girl table and one of them said to her one time that he was going to beat my son. Three of the four also ran in the 4×800 and they finished in fourth place and ran amazing as well.

I feel like I can let them evaporate up into the air now. When we were out to eat with Grandma tonight they had the state meet highlights on the news. I had my camera ready for when the legends were shown as the last part of the segment. I snapped my pictures and sent them to my mother in law who sent them who her cousin who I am really hoping eventually sent them to James. He had to know he was on tv with his name there and everything. I don’t even know what to do now. They were already looking up the lowest team last year that was able to qualify for state in cross country.

I’m coming to see more and more that people choose their own crazy. Not all the time, but a lot of times, and those are the ones that I struggle with and want to fix and make better. Just stop doing xyz and half your problems would be solved right there. But this is not how people work. You have to sit with the baffling nature of addictions and how the brain is their worst enemy because it will not let them have relief from the urges and the cravings no matter how much they want to be free.

That’s the part I do not get and why I think it only happens because of miracles. There was an addict I wanted to fix today or find some way to soothe and comfort him in all of his anxiety and numbness. Two other women finally opened my heart up to where I finally gave in and said perhaps I need to be more sympathetic with these women instead of trying to get them to see the ways they’re making themselves crazy. Another made my heart hurt because of what she told me.

As in everything she’d been through. So I come home and try not to cry and complain about it. I can usually tell when it’s a futile endeavor so today I did come home and cry and complain about it a little. One person asked me to pray for friends who’d lost their 29-week old baby. So I did. And then I spent about two minutes afterward wondering if I’d gotten the couple’s names right in the prayer. I just want this marriage to make it and for the man to stay sober and for the baby to be okay.

Today we had the preliminary races for the state track meet. They got 19th place overall and PR’d by finally making the state qualifying time by .1ish seconds. The race itself was kind of a blur and went by fast. Judah had been in a funk all week being very quiet and full of dread. I tried to tell him that he’d already done the big hard thing by getting to state. I was glad when it was all over too because my nerves did hit once they started lining up. Later after the race he was back to his normal self.

Two of the boys and I arrived by noon to watch the 4×8’s. We hung out under some trees and squinted through the banners which were covering the fence to the track. Those were not part of our viewing plan and had not been there before several years ago. We had planned to also watch the miles and 800’s but ended up being caught up with the team tent activity of everybody staying shaded to avoid the sun and heat. A friend from Hoyleton met us there and she and I visited.

Dad and the rest of the crew came around 3. The boys ran around 4:15 and we watched from the stands. There is something super cool about being at state. We drove home in our respective cars and I told the boys we can come back for state for the next three years now. One restarted the playlist that we’d listened to on the way there and another re-watched some of his races from their YouTube channel I stared. When I was uploading them I thought, “gosh, I should’ve been doing this (getting videos from our life) the whole time.”

I’m rethinking a couple’s session where the guy was falling apart and using words like “anguish”. It really makes the concept of being secure make more sense. But how do you explain that to somebody, and even more so, how do you help someone start to become more secure? In other sessions when I’ve tried to describe it I’ve used words like “being secure means that you know it in your heart”. What did the one today need to know? Something like, “I’m okay. I’m not bad.”

So if I could go back I wish I could say something like, “Let’s try to find something sure to go back to. What truth can each of you return to during times when you feel this hopelessness and despair?” About themselves. About their relationship. And then they can practice remembering and returning to those truths. Instead I ended up giving two takeaways. The first was being able to mutually hold each other’s pain. To grow their capacity to sit with the other’s feelings without it being so personal.

The other was to find those little things like he had mentioned, the hug from her that felt amazing. Or for her, the family time. Being secure helps when it comes to dropping defensiveness. You don’t have to fight to be fill-in-the-blank because you can know in your heart that it’s true. In this case, these people truly are dear and loved.