Today was a decent day. My 9am appointment texted me on my work number around 6 in the morning to say she had to cancel again because she’d been up all night with terrible pelvic pain. I actually did have more compassion since my daughter has gone through this. The nice thing about it being my first appointment and with her texting that early is that I had time to know to not go in until later. It gave me time to do a math problem and fold an extra load of laundry.

We talked more at Hope about “cancelling the debt”. It’s one of my favorite things to teach and talk about with people. The other is talking about love and how the loving thing is always the loving thing for every person and how true love cannot help but move and ripple outward. I love talking about that and I feel like my voice cadence changes and I light up like I have never before been so inspired.

And I can still come home and somehow feel depressed after all of it. I was tired and went to bed until supper. I slept through the bell and barely heard one of the boys asking if I was coming to eat. Not right now I think I mumbled half asleep. But then I woke up and came out.

I haven’t been in the headspace to write much lately. Today I reached out to a neighbor who has attempted multiple times to invite me to do things with her, with the most recent being to join a legacy board for the Lutheran High School. I went over a week and did not reply to her text or to her email. Earlier this morning when I was awake again, I emailed her back telling her I did not want to be on the board. It hit me though that I’d been ignoring this woman who lives very close by to us.

And I really didn’t know why. So I wrote her back and sort of apologized and basically said that there is really no good reason why we couldn’t get together more, and that I know the fact that we haven’t is on me since she has reached out several times. I asked her how her back was doing and if she is able to go on walks. So she has not written me back but I am not expecting her to too soon. I started thinking that it might actually be fun to have a fun happy friend who lives so close.

Lila turned one month old today. I keep wishing I could call my own grandmother and tell her. It piles up to where I keep collecting things to tell her. By the time we see each other next I don’t know how that is going to work with my pile. If I will have it all there still or if we will just be so happy to be reunited and to live in the eternal present that none of the things that happened here will even matter. I could be fine with either way, or whatever way I haven’t even been able to think up myself.

Today was an overall good day. It started out very early when I could not sleep past 3am. I was in the mood to write but I had already written here. So I got up and wrote Josh a letter since he has written me several things lately including typing out 23 strips of paper for our anniversary that he wrote on gave me for 23 days. I basically just typed till I filled a page. You’re supposed to direct your energy back into the relationship whenever it’s been closed off or unused or being put in wrong places.

It’s good to have those refreshers and tune-ups. After that I drafted an email that I decided later in the morning I will never send. You basically get a once in a lifetime chance to be a screwup and after that you just don’t have the same excuses. You have a little more insight into how things go and how your own brain works. And you just have to believe people when they tell you that something is not a good idea, no matter how much they may or may not understand. I don’t know why it’s so hard.

My craziness is not for everyone is what I’m saying. I’m sorry it had to be for anyone. So then I got most of my modules done to where I could come home and finish the videos and test after work. I had a really nice work day with all individuals who I really enjoy seeing. Tomorrow is more couples, an individual, plus a new family intake. Laura sent a video of Lila this evening of Ethan reading math gibberish to her as a bedtime story. She smiles more now and I told everyone she understands him.

Sometimes there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done. That’s how it’s felt the past two days. I feel as though I have nothing for energy even though I have yet to have my harder work days. The boys had a meet in Kickapoo Park. My one son is feeling more himself again and had a much better race though still 40 seconds off of his best time. My other son had a personal best. It was a smaller meet and not a very spectator friendly course. But I still got to see them two times.

Today was a nice day of catching up on some house chores. I redid Elianna’s room and made up her bed. I still want her to have a space that she can feel is hers. There were several loads of laundry to be washed and dried and folded and then also put away. My son and I keep joking about this pair of snow pants that keeps showing up in the laundry pile. It doesn’t have straps so it is not the same as the others that can be easily hung up from the basement ceiling beams. They keep getting washed.

At Thrive he used to say that you don’t always get to know how much or how deeply a person was impacted by you. I woke up from one of those peaceful dreams where we were standing on the side of the Thrive building with our heads nuzzling face to face like Simba and Nala in The Lion King. My hands were on his arms or waist, I can’t remember now. He told me he was moving and that for the rest of his life he would never limit himself in the ways he had done so.

The building is for sale and he is moving to another place. Arya reached out to me today and checked in on how things were going. She has two jobs now too after going through a turnover phase with her clients. I’m still trying to hold on to my nursing job and worked on the hours of training videos that need watching. In my dream there were people on the steps I didn’t know, all a little rougher looking. They had each taken a turn. Behind me I could see the door was nailed shut.

I’m just over here continuing to be sanctified. We had our Night of Hope conference tonight at the Auburn church. We were on the set up and clean up crews and Josh and I shared a table for our places. The director from Hope also joined me for the evening which was nice because I got to learn the speech and mostly learn how to set up the ten feet tall banner. She and I learned a little bit more about each other. She is almost seventy and started doing counseling work in her late forties.

Back at church this morning the sermon was titled, “Life Together”. The pastor has this pretty far fetched idea about the body of Christ living life in deep relationship and community. He said the whole thing where 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work which means that our current local body is living more similarly to a stroke victim with way over half of the body just living as blobs. He’s very against individualism and for living life together in a deeper way that involves the whole body.

So I don’t know. He already seems pretty frustrated with how things are around there. I keep feeling hesitant to get involved because 1) I like being present for adult Bible classes, 2) my kids have youth group somewhere else now, and 3) I don’t want to overextend myself beyond my margin needs. But I did volunteer to be on the childcare rotation for the MomCo moms group that meets one Wednesday morning a month. I wouldn’t mind doing some more but it has to be the right thing.

The boys had a meet at Lincoln Park in the morning. One of the boys is still sick so he didn’t run. But they both left this morning and I told them I’d be there later. Josh and my other son had the shooting retreat that they were getting ready for and Elianna was cooking for that. My mother-in-law was in St. Louis watching my niece run her cross country race. So I was the only one going. Luckily the meet is local and I am so familiar with the drive and coarse it was no big deal to do it alone.

My son also had his homecoming dance tonight. A friend and his date met my son and Ellie at camp in the evening for pictures. I had never met her before and she looked adorable in her dress. I can see why my son really likes her. We did the awkward picture thing and she had brought flowers for the two of them. Her parents and younger sister were also there so we met them as well. Her parents seem nice. I told them I couldn’t work tonight because I wanted to be there for all of this.

She just better not break his heart. I don’t know why my mind always jumps like this to the worst possible conclusions. I forgot to mention the boys did really well for Lincoln Park. We came home and I tried to have some discipline and clean. I didn’t have much for lunch and the spaghetti and meat sauce was not enough to lure me out of my house mode. I got into it slightly with my son over not wanting him to stay over night at some guy’s house I didn’t know. I don’t know. We survived.

Ethan had a meet in South Dakota this morning. While no one was particularly thrilled about another long travel day, I was grateful the couch rescheduled something. These guys work too hard to miss out on a chance to race, especially since they already don’t have that many. There was a whole confusion on what what had happened with the time clock and why it looked like 13 teammates had not finished. But it was just an odd and long delay and everyone was just fine.

So I was happy that he did well and shaved off nearly 1 1/2 minutes from his 8k time. I don’t think it’s necessary to rank his fan base in any order, but I would say I’m the one who is most familiar with his details. I imagine that he likes that he has someone he can talk to about his races. He does that with his brothers too so I know it isn’t just me. But anyway, I don’t want to say I’ll be glad when this is over because I don’t think that’s it. But I will not miss the ups and downs of sitting on the edge of your seat and waiting for numbers, wondering if it is going to be a good race day or not so much.

I came home from work and I think I fell asleep. I went for a walk later and had to dodge the Mennonite group that is here. They were playing on the road. We’d ordered takeout for supper because no one had it in them. There was another group of people here who we used to go to church with. They were having a 40th birthday party for one of the dads. People always think it isn’t busy here if it isn’t summer, but you know how that goes, I had to tell them it was otherwise.

Laura sends pictures of Lila nearly every other day. Today she sent one in the morning saying that Lila had outgrown her newborn clothes and was now wearing sizes 0-3 months. She had the emoji with the face and the eyes welling up with tears. Of course I shed some myself thinking of her growing up and already getting so big. The other night I was looking up apartments in Seward and part time jobs I could get so I could be closer and available to watch Lila with everything going on.

The thing that kept me from thinking it was a very good idea was that I would still have kids here. Right now I’m making them breakfast and going to their meets and making sure they have food and hanging out in the evenings sometimes. Before leaving for work this morning I hugged my youngest son goodbye and then sat back down on the loveseat. I needed a minute. He looked at me with concern before I got out the words, “It’s just that everybody is growing up”. He got up and came over to sit down next to me.

We were side by side on the couch. An hour earlier we’d been working on math and magic circles and laughing about the “common daily pains” of trying to find a pencil that works. I had gotten up two different times and the first time the mechanical pencil barely had any lead. The second time the pencil tip broke as soon as I started to write. I told him I was going to write that phrase down. Back in the present, I had my arm around him. I eventually had to get back up but I was calmed.

Today I officially ruined my chance of doing any future retreat sessions with my Thrive supervisor. After about two days a couple of weeks ago of one of the most intense experiences of hunger and desire that I have ever felt, I resisted every urge to make the call, write the email or text, or march right up to his desk and demand we end this painstaking nonsense right now. It was utterly awful. And then I woke up the next day and it was like a fever had passed. And I was back to myself again.

So I ruined my chances by coming clean and telling my husband that the reason I left several months ago was because of some kind of attachment that was messing with my mind and getting in the way of me and him. I told him that I loved him passionately and didn’t want anything else in the way of that. That I am sorry I am such a failure at mastering my demons.

He said that he loved me too and we’re both slow.