This morning we left the house around 8am to leave for Nebraska. I had not slept well in the night and had left to go out into the living room for a while and then eventually to another to try and get some sleep before the 6am alarm. Some nights I just cannot get back to sleep. So Josh let me sleep until 7 figuring I’d have wanted to have the extra time for the sleep since the night had been rough. I had compassion and did not get annoyed since I’d been counting on him to wake me up at 6.

It’s so ridiculous those things. We had a good trip in the van. We tend to stop about three times now on average. It’s helpful and needed to stretch the legs. We grabbed some gas station food to keep on moving so we could get there. The lady at the local motel recognizes me now. She gave us our room code and we unpacked and the boys grabbed their running things before we headed over to the apartment. The uncles had their turns holding Lila and getting to meet her.

The boys left to run ten miles. I was thankful they were getting it done before suppertime. The weather had that beautiful fall coolness to it today which made it very nice for running. We spent some time with Laura and the baby and rested quietly while she was feeding. I love how their apartment has the fullness of kids now, where baby things are scattered everywhere. We met up with Laura’s parents and siblings and spouses for a very nice family dinner out to eat. It still looks like her.

My sister called me in the early evening to check in. We hadn’t talked in a while and I’d been MIA in the sibling chat. I told her my messages there had been being getting flagged and going undelivered for whatever reason. She asked if I’d tried restarting my phone, which I hadn’t. So I tried that and to my delight and surprise it worked. She didn’t want to talk up too much time since I was visiting with Elianna on the couch. But she wanted to tell me she’d gone back and read some of my old blogs.

Pretty soon the two of us were getting emotional and tearful. I had a way of romanticizing, or not even that, but of bringing beauty to the forefront. And she was remembering how I was in a different season back then and how I have kids out of the house and that I’m a grandma now.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts lately about beauty and gifts and what to do with them. I’ve had some conviction along the lines of “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing”. Like certain gifts are to be used to point others to God and not to be talked about.

It’s when that quiet intimacy between you and God becomes enough.

I saw a lot of pain that I couldn’t fix today. Before that I spent my homeschool hours writing termination notes and reaching out to people I hadn’t heard from for a while. I was trying to clean up my patient list and move out people who were no longer part of it. Somehow in the process of this I also felt strong, empowered, and confident.

This job seems to be becoming my whole personality more than I would have liked. It’s not the whole personality but it is definitely a part of it. There has to be something else to write about.

Today I challenged a client by asking her if she’d be up for planning in our next session to go 20 minutes without complaining about her boyfriend. Like, who is this person when she isn’t ranting over and frustrated with him? You earn the right to say these things after hours of listening. She agreed to at least try it so we’ll see in two weeks.

There was a man who brought up the book Wild at Heart in his session. I told him I was familiar with it. Quotes from that book were seared in his mind, over twenty years later, including something along the lines of how a man can die in his 20’s but not be buried until his 70’s. I didn’t recall ever reading that part. I wanted to say something about how Jesus can resurrect the dead but then I didn’t. It seemed it might be too soon.

People keep asking me what it was like to become a grandma. I keep telling them that there was still that draw toward my own child and being attentive to his needs. That was one of the first things I noticed. People would ask about the baby and I was shocked to realize it had not been something I’d already mentioned. I appreciated their genuine happiness.

I legit can’t remember what was going on last night or why I would’ve made the decision that I was too tired to write. Today it was back to work after a nice and actually really needed break. The week the baby was born I only had a day and a half of sessions scheduled which I cancelled since we would be in Nebraska for most of that time. The rest of the week had already been blocked off to go to the meet in South Dakota. We had a staff meeting at 9 in the morning. Nothing too new to report.

To meet the credentialing qualifications for certain insurance companies, it is required that counselors with lower level licenses have supervision once a week. This is an unpaid hour of meeting one on one with the supervisor to talk about whatever we need to talk about for the week. I really wasn’t thrilled about it because it seems very inefficient and creates a greater tax on the supervisor’s time since there are four of us. So now I’m meeting with him every Wednesday afternoon.

I told him I felt like I’d turned a corner with the discouragement I’d been experiencing. I’ve condensed my schedule to only be there for six hours instead of seven on my long days. That feels more doable for me. I originally wasn’t going to block out a lunch and just count on a cancellation to have a break or do some charting but I decided not to do that. On supervision days I do not block out lunch because I consider that as the break time between sessions. It’s been working okay so far.

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.