We had a good rest of the visit with my sister. She came to church with us and then left after that. I can’t believe I’m going to complain about this but I’m not sure if I’m liking the new summer schedule with church. They are doing the thing where instead of two services they are only having one at 9AM. Instead of alternating communion at the different services they are doing it every week. So church always takes about an hour and 15 minutes at least plus then there is Bible class afterward.

We didn’t get home until 12:30 today. So I am not a huge fan of that part but I don’t think I’ll complain about it too much. I filled in this morning for one of the pastors who is on vacation and taught the junior and senior high Sunday School class. We talked about (OT) Joseph. The nice thing about covering is that you don’t really have to follow a plan and can just pick something. I wouldn’t want to do it every week because I like our Bible class. I’m supposed to do it again next week too.

I took a nap before going to work. We’d made our plans to have our Father’s Day celebration once I was home from there. So at about 8 we gathered around the kitchen table. My watch is supposed to get here Tuesday. We had a cake and ice cream and everyone had to go around and say something about Dad that made him a good dad and then we did something similar for Ethan. My things were that he was competent with kids no matter what age the kids were and that his organization with our chore charts over the years and writing out the family calendar every week makes things better.

Several ladies from Auburn threw Laura a shower today. It was actually really nice. She looked like a fairy with her pastel pink dress and then this garland wreath the ladies had bought for her. Her mom though she was being a very good sport by wearing the wreath on her head and also wearing the sash that said mom-to-be. It looked like she had planned the entire ensemble. She didn’t realize how much stuff they would get and they wondered several times where they would put all of it.

I remember how much of our first apartment was taken up by baby things. The wall was lined with everything you could need. There’s a part of all this start still has not quite taken hold as something real. I’ve mostly been fine with all of this but today I did get a little emotional. Josh’s mom bought them their car seat/stroller set which was the biggest gift of the group. It just blessed my heart that she is still loving her grandkids and doing so now by helping them get the bigger items they need.

I’m just eager to drive out to Nebraska and be there. To bring them diapers and help to change them. I remember with Ethan wanting so bad to see his face and wondering what he would look like. I still remember the first time I saw him when whoever was holding him held him up. It’s been a tiring day and we never even made it down to the beach. The boys are also very tired from being up so late for two nights in a row. I told them everyone was going to bed early. They need their rest too.

Today was a better day at work. I feel like I watched a relationship end but I do think it was probably for the best. At the very least I decided we needed to end the session. I’m starting to get a handle on when it’s productive and when it’s not. They lump couples and marriage counselling together like they’re they same thing but in my experience at least they are definitely not. In couples therapy there is no God element and typically they’re younger. The marriage ones have something different.

Several shifts came open this weekend. I’m working 3-7 on Sunday and maybe would’ve taken more if my sister hadn’t called and said she was coming down for Laura’s shower. She’s trying to be a good aunt and said her sister only becomes a grandma first once. I was really happy to hear she was coming. We’re going to have a sleepover in the boys’ room because they have plans to camp out in the hayfield with other camp staff and friends. I’m anxious about it but it’s just one of those things.

Laura’s mom and sister picked her up this afternoon to take her back to their house and have a sleepover themselves. Josh told me he ordered a watch for his father’s day present but I still want to get him an actual present. I don’t know what it would be. For mother’s day I had asked for another chair that I could sit in outside. They got me a camping chair that rocked. I haven’t used it yet but definitely think it’d be good for cross country meets in the fall. It was either that or a chair to tan in.

I love the extended daylight of summer. These days you can walk home from outdoor chapel and still see the road after 9 o’clock at night. Tonight was underground church and so I walked down to the dining hall to make an appearance and see what was going on. The staff was getting ready to start out into the woods. Josh was the jailer and Laura and I sat on the dining hall porch and wondered how long we should stay down there. Eventually she and I walked back to the house.

She was going to change and get ready for the devotion. I changed clothes and got ready for bed. They had a baby appointment today and everything was going well. I think she’s a little frustrated with the simplicity and briefness of the visits. It does sometimes feel like a total waste of time. But those uneventful and routine visits are always something to be grateful for. She is 31-32 weeks.

This summer is going a lot slower than last summer with the wedding. I knew those days would fly by and they did. This year seems to be dragging on a bit more and I suppose that is something to be grateful for too. To my husband’s utter dismay I’m sure, I can’t seem to get through summer without becoming down, depressed, or lonely. I do my best to connect with the kids when they’re around. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know them anymore and I have no idea how that happened.

Today was kind of a bum day at work. I had two sessions in the morning and then the rest of the afternoon ones were cancelled due to threats of severe weather. The one I could’ve had was a no show. When I called him he was at work and said he’d completely forgotten about it. We have a policy where we technically can change $60 for a no show and we get half of that once it’s paid. The way I’ve been doing it is that everybody gets one freebie where they don’t get charged.

Some people have gotten two but those were extenuating circumstances. The couple I had today was a little more challenging than normal. Here’s the thing that I’m not quite sure how to deal with. You can have hurts that are so deep that people become almost validation vampires. When it gets to be that bad the validating and empathizing is certainly helpful, but it isn’t enough to start to fill in that gap. There has to be conscious decision on the vampire’s part to do some of it.

That’s a really hard thing to say to a person. It doesn’t absolve the other partner from doing things he should’ve already been doing for 28 years, but it helps to keep the process moving and needs to happen in order for them to keep moving. So I don’t know, maybe I’ll say it to her next time.

I gave him back his books and key and that was basically it. I did kind of think there’d be a little bit more but there really wasn’t much more to say at this point. I said “if you ever need anything, I don’t know what it would be”, and he said ditto, and that was it. I was talking to a client this morning about her struggle is being made worse by the fact that she is still holding out hope that she can drink in the future. The thought of being able to drink again is what motivates her.

So we talked about the white knuckling needing to be balanced by an opposite force, the letting go. The one alone is not enough. I didn’t know how that looked for her beyond the theoretical but I asked her what she would thank the alcohol for if she could thank it. For helping her become more confident. For helping her enjoy her life. And those are all fine and good. But now we’re going to make a different choice than the one to drink. Alcohol will somehow always be in her life.

But her relationship with the alcohol is needing to change. I don’t know, I don’t totally get it. So anyway, I’m just saving myself some misery and just accepting that this particular phase of the journey is over. Moving on to the next thing. It’s been my primary prayer throughout much of my time there, “please keep moving me into what you would have for me”, not the thing that I am wanting, not the thing that I am forcing. I leave a more secure and healed person.

My Garmin watch lasted less than a month. At the end of our staff meeting today I walked outside to our van. I had an arm full of stuff like my planner, a pencil, my watch, my phone, my keys and those sorts of things. I thought I heard something drop but didn’t think much about it. As I pulled out of my parking spot I felt and heard a crunch. I drove a little ways and stopped to look behind me to see what it was and sure enough I saw my aqua watchband on the ground. I went back to pick it up.

So that was disappointing and I was kind of mad at myself. Josh said now I know what to get him for father’s day. I thought he was being super romantic and saying that me buying myself a new watch would be one of the best father’s day gifts he could get because of how happy it’d make me. I think that’s sort of what he meant. He said he meant I could buy it for him but then I would just take it and use it and eventually keep it for myself like I do his other things, like his laptop that I use for work.

The summer is moving along. It really is kind of crazy to have the kids all in the house again. This will probably never happen again to have them all here this long. Besides being extremely grateful that Laura is not allergic to cats, and having to deal with the basement that finally flooded again after rains of not doing it, I think it’s going okay. The boys are staying busy with their brotherly fellowship. It warms my heart to still see them playing (not video games as much) and spending time together.

Today Elianna and I filled out an application to the community college. The online program she’s been doing has not worked out. It’s been such a pain in the rear to get an internship figured out that she’s more than decided that she doesn’t want to do that anymore. After several months of shadow days she doesn’t think she would enjoy working in a veterinarian’s office. Now she says she wants to be a dog trainer. That is what seems fun to her and like something she could imagine herself doing.

As much as I’ve had a few rants here and there about the college systems and prices, I really had to fight with her to get her to see the value in still completing some kind of degree. I was struggling to come up with a good reason other than it just seemed intolerable to me that my intelligent daughter wouldn’t finish at least some college. We finally explained it in a way that made sense, that an associates degree would preserve the credits she’s already taken before and in this other program.

During the meeting the new supervisor started talking about wanting to hire a psychiatric nurse practitioner. For a second I felt so disregarded as far as what I could bring to the table. I was thinking that maybe I should try to get my NP degree so I could partake in this particular stream of income potential. For a few seconds perhaps. But managing people’s psychiatric medications would be so far down on the list of enjoyable ways to spend my life, there’s no way it would even make the list.

So I am not going to do that. I made my first student loan payment today and I’m going to work on that instead. I really am just in a natural state of accepting everybody.

Lately I’ve been feeling like there’s some hurt between me and my mother-in-law. I’m not sure if it’s mutual, but it’s definitely there on my end. It started a few months ago where something inside of me shut off and stopped seeking. Seeking connection through conversation. My father-in-law was always much easier to talk to, partly because he would just keep saying things to fill space and expand on whatever it is he was talking about, even if it was just something that didn’t seem small.

One time he told me I was an astoundingly beautiful woman. That is not quite the adjective, but it was something of that nature. We were sitting in his pickup after I’d met him early in the morning trying to reach out for some kind of help. What I wanted him to do was to grab his son by the scruff of his collar and tell him to shape up. But for 45 minutes we sat in a parking lot somewhere in Springfield while he listened to my woes. If he wouldn’t help me then what actual hope was there?

So with him at least it felt like there was somewhere for my soul to go. The way I looked like this withdrawn and reclusive person to many other people because of other family dynamics is something I’m still coming back from and am mostly (finally) not angry about. Life is too short too miss out on these moments and gatherings. I’m trying, slowly, to connect where the events are, the 70th birthday party, the family reunion for an out-of-town aunt. But I still do want to talk to her about this.

I used to look for you
in public places

wondering what it’d be like
to see you

Would we be like the couple
behind us?

Lost in a lover’s gaze
sharing chips

Or would our conversations
also grow old

The man in the front pews
the dad in the stands

One time it really was you
I kid you not

I stared longer knowing
you had changed

But now we just go out
the same couple

No longer looking for love
or for you

Josh texted me a picture of our son driving home from getting his driver’s permit. I’d been aware that this was happening but with other things going on in the day I had forgotten. I was fine with the third one but the fourth one seems a little outrageous. It’s like when they all get up and leave the house to go running. What am I supposed to do about it? It’s too much to fight anymore, either to fight for my way or for even for my own self to be understood and hear “that makes total sense”.

Some people say in therapy, “So I guess I just have to deal with it”. It always makes me pause in that “not so fast” kind of attitude and have to say, “Well, maybe….what do you mean?” What you don’t want people to be doing is resigning themselves to some sort of internal or external situation that perhaps could actually be changed with the removal of a limiting belief. But as much as I don’t like it, and have to practice saying it non-bitterly, there are things in life that we all just have to deal with.

I feel like working in this field forces me to be daily immersed in what it takes to be healthy and whole. It’s like I need those kind of all-consuming reminders. So that makes me happy because it keeps me so grounded. I know I should be getting that from God too and from his Word every day. How much more it could be! But even when I’m not he has preserved his Word inside me and somehow that helps. The nurse and I talked about reading Ecclesiastes again. It’s not that long.