Yesterday one of the boys inhaled a bug during cross country practice. He said he was running by a bean field. The bug flew up his nose right as he was breathing in. For a while he could feel it moving around until it finally died. For two miles he ran trying to blow it out or somehow move it to swallow it. He came home and ate supper and was trying to blow the bug out of his nose. He tried flushing it with nasal spray and spraying water up his nose at the kitchen sink. The bug was not coming out.

He said he wanted to sleep on it and see if it somehow came out in the night. This morning the bug was still bothering him and now he was sneezing every few minutes and blowing his nose to clear it up almost constantly. So I took him to the local urgent care hoping they would be able to do something. The doctor came in and then left and then returned with his gadgets. He tried to pry his nose open and look up there with a light and with some special goggles. He couldn’t see anything.

My son was very uncomfortable at this point. I told him if the tongs and probes were too much it was okay to say that. The doctor didn’t feel comfortable trying to do anything more and sent us to the urgent care plus. He said they would have more equipment there to possibly numb things. So we drove over to the other urgent care and they took us back to a room. The entire place looked like an abandoned ER. It was the same format and setup. We waited for a while until the doctor came in.

She looked up his nose and said that basically there was nothing they could do for him there. She explained the anatomy of the nasal cavity and told us to go to the drug store to get a neti-pot. They didn’t have any there. She explained how to use it and I tried to ask some questions just to give myself some reassurance that this hadn’t been a total waste of our time. We walked out with my son still blowing and sneezing. He was more disappointed then. I told him I was just happy he was alive.

We talked about whether or not he wanted to just get his car from the doctor’s office and just go on to school or if he wanted to try and see if the neti-pot helped. I felt like we at least should try. So we found the neti-pot at Walgreens and just went with the purified water because I could not find any water distilled. Way back in the day I had read some frightening thing about neti-pots which is why I hadn’t gone to get one the first time. We brought it home and filled it with water and the salt packet.

He used about half of the water and then blew his nose. I had been starting to lose hope when I did not see any bug remains draining out with the water. But when he blew his nose an intact grasshopper about an inch long flew out onto the bathroom sink. We both stood there in shock, wide-eyed in disbelief and amazement. I couldn’t believe the bug was that big. He almost instantly felt better and the draining and sneezing in that moment ceased. My other son came to see the bug.

And then we showed Dad who was on his way walking down to the kitchen. He was impressed as well. Somewhere in the ER I had prayed for God to help this bug out, so I thanked him again that he had answered this way. Eventually my son went back to school and I sat down with the other one to review what he’d done for the morning. We went over his math problems and then over his reading. He told me what he’d read and it intrigued me so much that I read the 2-page short story aloud.

A friend from Hoyleton recently had her 70th birthday. I had not remembered this was happening or send any messages to acknowledge it. She sent me pictures of her and her husband with their grandkids. We both were traveling and had a little more down time to engage beyond whether or not there had been any baby news. Looking back, I wanted to know which decade milestone stood out to her as the most significant or impactful. She reported back that it was definitely this one.

She’d slipped past the others without much reflection. But now there was the awareness that she had much less time. It was very strange to hear or think of an event happening 20 or 30 years from now and realize that she likely will not be around for it. I tried to put my mind where hers was because I had a difficulty comprehending. What would one have already heard was going to happen in 20 or 30 years? The only thing I could think of was the 2044 next U.S. solar eclipse in Montana.

But that was only 18 years away I told her. The thought has not escaped me that will all these births, weddings, and baptisms, that it only stands certain that at some point there are also funerals. At the baptism we had two great-grandmothers. Laura’s mom’s mother and my mother-in-law. When we were starting to have children all of them were the grandparents and the great grandparents were still alive. They were next in line to pass on, if everything progressed without a death out of order.

Boys, we’re all going to die someday, I sat on the couch and told them as I reflected and shed the tears. They were present in the moment but there was one who could not resist quoting a line from some Avengers movie, “We’re all gonna die!!” Every so often I do remind them that we need to stay on the serious topic a little bit longer. I feel the shortening of time in the morning wakeup without sun, in the homeschool day that I was not present for due to other responsibilities on my time.

We never reconnected after the airport conversation. “Talk soon” was the last thing she said. Even today it slipped my mind to get a card sent. Why I have not driven down there more times since we left…has it even been a handful? I remember when my “old” friend turned 70 and that was ten years ago. I’d racked my brain for anyone else I could think to tell about the baby and still had forgotten her. It was only a minor lapse though. It doesn’t take long and the memories of care are there again.

Lila had her baptism this morning. It was actually a really beautiful service. The church in Seward has a lot of people and good acoustics in their sanctuary. The hymns are played and sung with zest and it seems whenever we attend there is choir in the balcony leading the people in four part harmonies. It was emotional to see my son up in the front holding his child. It was one of those moments that I did feel a part of but there was that expanding realization that this is so much bigger than me now.

The pastor had an excellent sermon on forgiveness. He pretty much nailed every nuance and caveat to the extent that any human speaker would be able to do so. I also realized something about forgiveness that I do not recall every truly understanding or thinking about before. The biggest thing is that forgiveness is not possible and is something that on our own we are unable to do. I had heard/somewhat understood this in terms of the doctrine that we cannot pay the debt of our sins.

So Jesus had to step in and actually pay the debt for us. Jesus on the cross cancels the debt we owe in our accounts and then transfers the debt to himself and then actually pays it. This is something we are not able to do and therefore we need God’s mercy. But forgiveness is equally something we are not able to do. I typically thought of it as something that is expected of us since God has forgiven us. It is part of the arrangement. It was this incredibly difficult thing but something we still had to do.

He never actually said we were unable to do it. He told his own parable that kind of highlighted the absurdity and cost of forgiveness in a way that almost made you feel like there would be every perfectly justifiable reason why this certain person would not want to bother forgiving. When we repent and believe the Gospel I hear the voice of Jesus saying “your sins are forgiven”. That same voice passes through us and is spoken out to others like God saying to them “your sins are forgiven.”

So just like we cannot pay the debt of our own sins, we also are not able to cancel the debt of another. There are far too many for us to pay for and far too many for us to cancel. It is something only God can do and also does when he dies on the cross for us. “Your sins are forgiven” is heard and spoken as the incredible truth that it is. It’s like it fills me with a giddiness and makes me want to just keep on saying it. We had a lunch afterward for Lila and the family and friends who were there.

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.

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.