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.

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.