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.

We watched the race from our couch. The heat index in South Dakota was high enough that the races were shortened, rearranged, and pushed out to later times. So Ethan’s race was at 9:45 instead of 9:15. and instead of the men going last the college women raced at 10:15. Instead of a 6K for the men they shortened it to a 5k. Call me crazy but I’m always a little jealous of the women for getting to run shorter races. I forget what they run but I think they do either 5k’s or 6k’s instead of 8.

After tonight I realized I was going to have to switch mindsets. I’ve been thinking senior year is the year to peak and do your absolute best after getting the hang of the training and having multiple runs on all of the courses. But it makes no sense to add an infant into the mix and think things aren’t somehow going to be affected. Even without a baby, there doesn’t seem to be the ability to move beyond a certain level where everything finally clicks and moves forward. I want to just enjoy this.

And I want him to as well. It’s the whole thing that they talk about with the 18 summers as a mom. Yes the time is slipping away and you only get so much time when they’re young. But hopefully, God willing, there are summers beyond that, and races, times, and teams we’ve not yet lived or imagined. September summers are my favorite for swimming, truly the absolute best. The sun still warms you but does not beat down and heat the earth. Augustana comes and goes and returns again.

I’ve been tripping over heart strings that have been needing to be cut. Luckily those things seem to have a way of taking care of themselves. I’ve been trying to get him to come with me to this South Dakota meet for four years, with this being the last one. We had it scheduled early in the year even with the baby being due. I’ve had it marked on my calendar for months. Somewhere in the blur of life it was talked about that this was something that needed to be cut out of the plans.

I’ve been fine until things came closer and started up again with trying to figure this out in my head. I could break up the 10 hour trip over three days, stopping along the way at a different sister’s house. We had a conversation on the way to my mother-in-law’s house after Auburn. “It’s not logical”, I said, at least being able to see that much. But why these fantastical actions for just this one and nobody else? Why defy my limits and exert such a force for something that does not add up?

So that was enough to get through some of them there. The rest of them were taken care of when I told my son I for sure wasn’t coming. We had a conversation about the understanding of the matter. That would’ve been a ridiculous amount of driving, he said. I typed out some words about how this isn’t about me or us anymore, that he’s not three anymore and still my mind finds it hard to switch gears. He reminded me that I have another son in his senior year and another running too.

I feel in some way like I have been redirected. And I’m tired of being the one who bears the burden of the emotions and the people who don’t understand them. I am tired of feeling alone, like my force and my love is so unseen or unknown. I wish someone would see my passion, my strength, my perseverance, love, and tenacity and gosh dang it, what good did wanting this ever do me? So I don’t know, that was actually pretty rough even though I know that this was being said in love.

But anyway. Today was kind of a recovery day, at least for me. We went back to the beach in the afternoon and this time Dad came with us along with Zorro. We played for a while. The boys came home from school and we had supper. All of this happened after supper so I have still been adjusting and just letting all this settle. But I do get it, driving up to Minnesota tonight, staying overnight in South Dakota tomorrow, and driving back the next day is more than what is needed now.