I have some decisions that need to be made regarding school. There are a number of us who are close enough to graduation that there is the possibility for us to graduate this May. For me this would require doing a full internship where I do all my hours in one semester instead of spread out between two semesters. I would also have to take the spring intensive and another class that I would take whenever the professors can work it into the schedule along with the two classes I was already taking.

For the next quarter I added a class just in case I decide to do this which would eliminate me having to take a May intensive form of it. I honestly do not know what the right thing to do is. On one hand I’m kind of intrigued by the challenge and excited about the prospect of graduating early. But on the other hand cramming that many classes along with an internship into one semester seems to go against everything we’ve been taught in school so far regarding self-care and burn-out.

I’ve also been applying for nursing jobs. Part of me just wants to take a break from the school meaning that I just let whatever I have left be spread out and end up taking probably another semester or two longer. That way I can get a part-time job and start generating some income and building back some work experience. One was a hospice nurse position and another was a position at a senior service facility. I need to pray about it and ask God for guidance. I’m asking for family opinions too.

It’s not that I am against work. It’s that I am against unnecessary work. As a pastor’s wife for now over 15 years I have gotten very good at identifying where there is excess work happening in the church arena that at least in my opinion are things that could be pared down or eliminated. One of these things happens to be the way our church does their Christmas Eve services. In the past there is an evening children’s program, a regular Divine Service evening program, and then a midnight service.

Christmas and Easter seasons for pastors are like their big times of the year where they get to give it their all and be proud of how much work they are doing. I don’t mean that in a bad way or think that is something that needs to be taken from them. Those are particularly busier times for them, and sometimes busier is good. You get a rush and high from it and find purpose and joy in it. But when your children’s program is designed for a 30+ children Sunday School and yours currently is much smaller, then it’s time to reconsider the way the church does things. When your program in the past was directed by an elite musician and paid DCE, and now what you have is a volunteer mom and a handful of volunteer teachers, it’s time to consider changing things.

We had another meeting at church tonight. I have told them that I am not going to continue on the board after my term ends at the end of the year. I also brought up that I do not want to be the one in charge of and organizing the Christmas program this year. I did it last year, along with the breakfast in Bethlehem event that I was not fully on board with, and in the month of December along with everything else, I was so completely stressed. I still want to have some semblance of peace and enjoyment in the holiday season without it being completely overtaken by parts-assigning, practices, and paper writing overload. I am trying to speak up and communicate my needs but it seems like I sure do have a lot of them. I need margin and space in my life.

My mother-in-law was listing off all of the area widows that she knows. She mentioned how it’d be nice to have some sort of support group where they could meet once a month and get together. That is the kind of church work I would have no problem doing. One of the local churches used to have a parish nurse who was involved in creating these kinds of support groups. She visited sick members and was very involved with ministering to individuals and families. This again is the kind of thing I’d like to do. At the funeral luncheon a friend and I were standing there peering into the church kitchen admiring the women hard at work with the food. Not everybody in there loves what they do.

Our time will come, she said. The time for us to be the church ladies. When we are the older ones scurrying around on a weekday afternoon. I do want so much to be more involved in ministry work but my life right now seems to allow such little time for it. You keep thinking there will be a better time, when the kids are older, or older still, or life isn’t so busy, or when I’m more healed. It doesn’t seem from what I’ve heard that life really slows down all that much. People are always talking about how busy things are and how much is going on in their life even as their children are grown. And yet I know there has to be space that comes somewhere. It’s not that I want to get out of work. It’s that I want to be best spent wherever it is being done. There’s always work to do here.

My mother-in-law took everybody out for supper tonight. One of my flaws is that about half of the time when we go out to eat I get annoyed by all the cars in the parking lot and start to judge all of the people who are too lazy to stay home and cook. Really, on a Wednesday night, I have no idea why a restaurant parking lot would be so full.

My brother-in-law and nieces are heading back tomorrow. Josh takes Ethan back to school tomorrow as well. He’s planning on dropping him off and coming home in one day. I told him I didn’t recommend doing that but he’d rather do that than pay for a hotel. My sister-in-law is thinking she will buy a ticket to fly home this weekend.

Toward the end of last week I received a text from one of my classmates saying that our school is closing at the end of the school year. They’re working to figure out transfer arrangements. It has taken some of the wind out of my sail as far as school goes so I’m not looking forward to starting back up. It’ll all work out how it’s meant to.

Today was my father-in-law’s funeral and yesterday was the visitation. Josh preached the sermon for the funeral and it was as close to perfect as one could get for a dad’s funeral. I wondered about him preaching at first but when I asked him about it he said he thought his dad would have wanted him too. I think there was also a little bit of wanting to make sure the job was done right and with both things I can understand.

His dad was proud of his son being a pastor. It still feels just so hard to believe that we will never again see him alive on this earth. I keep thinking he’s still around somewhere, like it just can’t be real that his voice, his body, his walk, his everything is going to be so much different. We know that things like this happen here, but it wasn’t supposed to happen for at least another 20 years. At least in our simple, finite minds it wasn’t.

I know this new normal will come again in it’s time. Everyone from church has been very kind and supportive, multiple churches actually. There were multiple members from our current church family, a select closer few who came up from Hoyleton, and also many from my in-laws church. After the funeral luncheon we went home for a while before coming back for a home cross country meet. After that we all went home again for the evening.

This evening we took the kids out to visit the farm. After that we went back to my mother-in-law’s house for supper. We’re already finding ourselves tripping over words and catching ourselves wondering what the right thing to say is. After church we had plans to attend the annual brunch for the high school. In the church parking lot I asked Josh, “Are we meeting your parents at their house or just…” We met his mom and sister there.

Both my husband’s parents have large extended families that live in the area. People have brought over plenty of food on and off since hospice started so that no one has really had to worry about cooking. After eating we went to Kohl’s to try and find clothes for the kids to wear for the visitation and funeral. We did an inventory earlier this afternoon and made a list of who needed what. I told my mother-in-law that we could tell she had been busier lately because most everyone was in need of nicer pants and shoes that fit.

She said she misses all that and I said we did too. After Kohls we went back to the house to wait for my brother-in-law and nieces. They left Dallas this afternoon and flew into St. Louis. His brother works at a rental car company so they got a discount on a rental car. We waited for them to get there but didn’t stay too much longer after their arrival. I was ready to be home and settled in for the night. I wanted them to have their time together too.

It’s been a busier past couple of days with Josh’s dad. Wednesday we picked up the boys and then went over to my in-laws house. I was leaving that day to pick up Ethan from school. He had his fall break this weekend and the plan was for me come out Wednesday, spend the night, and then drive back Thursday after his class was over at 11. But when we got there Wednesday Josh’s dad had taken a notable turn.

I have been around a lot of dying people. There’s a look people have when they are nearing death. I told Ethan I didn’t think we’d have enough time to get back. I’ve been keeping him updated through the hospice process and he’d already planned on bringing home his books in case he needed to stay a little longer. One of the boys and I left for Nebraska around 1PM and we got back to Springfield just after 2:30AM.

One of Ethan’s teammates was able to drive him into Lincoln which helped tremendously to shorten the trip. Josh was sleeping in the room with his dad that night and I asked if he thought we would make it back in time. He said yes. The rest of the kids were also staying the night that night at my in-laws house. After Ethan had some time with him he came to bed where several of us were sleeping in the living room.

Three of the kids went to school the next day. The rest of us hung out and my in-laws house and spent time in and out of my father-in-law’s room. Josh, his sister, and his mom went to a gravesite service for a long time family friend at 1:30. The boys and I stayed with John and were there when the nurse and bath aide came. One of the pastors came over at 3PM with his guitar to sing songs and to pray. I had originally thought that we were past the singing hymns around the deathbed point, but I turned out to be wrong. It was a beautiful time and the pastor was breath of fresh joyful air.

The big kids left for cross country practice around 3:30, right when the pastor was leaving as well. Ethan went with his sister to run with the team. The rest of us stayed in the room and were just sitting there and visiting. Around 4:23ish my father-in-law opened his eyes very wide and looked up and to the side. I stood up and went over closer to him. For a split second I was thinking he was looking at the pictures on the wall. I left the room to get Josh who was resting on the couch. I couldn’t find his sister at first, but then my mother-in-law suggested the front porch, which is where she was.

He died around 4:25 on Thursday afternoon. In the room with him was my mother-in-law, my husband, my sister-in-law, my father-in-law’s sister, myself, and the three boys. I knew the other two wouldn’t make it back in time but I texted my son say that Papa was moving to heaven now. They were back about an hour later. People stayed in the room for a very long time and some never left it until the funeral home people came around 7:30PM. I’d never been there for that part. They were not in there very long before they rolled him into the living room for anyone who wanted to say goodbye.

We slept at the house again that night. My mother-in-law mentioned the idea of putting the floor mattress in the room where my father-in-law was just so it wouldn’t be so cramped in the living room. I don’t normally have much disagreement with her suggestions but this time I did say that I thought it was too soon. Five of us slept in the living room, two in the back bedroom, and my sister-in-law with her mom in her room. I actually liked all sleeping together. One of the blessings of this new house they’ve built is that it will have two floors with ample living space for the entire family to spread out.

I was realizing this at some point over the last week. I’d been more upset and bothered about how he wasn’t going to be able to live in his house even though this had been his dream and so much a part of what he worked for. But it occurred to me then that even this likelihood and possibility hadn’t stopped him from building it. He hadn’t build the house for him. He’d had it built for all of us and he has a much better house now than we do. Yesterday all of the kids went to school. After some time apart with everyone busy doing their separate and different things, we will gather again for the feast of God.

The skies are pretty blue in October as well. There’s this tunnel underneath the camp road that can’t be more than a foot and half in diameter. The kids told me once about how they used to try and crawl through it while playing out in the snow. One of the little boys crawled all the way through it and I was appalled when I heard that because I could hardly imagine to think them being stuck in their snowpants.

The teacher just sent out our grades for the presentation and paper. I thought they were graded together but they’re separate. The presentation was a 90. The paper was an 84 which a B-. If that was your grade in the class you would have to repeat it because in order to pass you have to have at least a B. I absolutely cried when I saw the initial grade and had finished reading through her rationales.

I thought we had actually done pretty well on it and graded everyone with A’s on our individual evaluation. The theological integration section I wrote scored the lowest percentage of everyone with a 70%. She marked the part that said “largely opinion based”. Since I am not a biblical scholar, I have to give more examples of other people saying what I am saying the Bible says. I won’t make that mistake again.

They took my father-in-law today out to the farm to see the house. They used the camp’s backboard from down at the beach to make a stretcher that they could carry him on. My husband’s uncles came and helped with the carrying. They put the seats down in one of the vans and drove him out that way. He isn’t able to get out of bed or to move that much on his own.

I wasn’t there. But it reminded me of the story where the men came carrying a paralyzed man to see Jesus. They carried him around the house and went inside. About a week and a half ago the uncles and local farmers came and harvested his crops. The neighbor at the end of their lane has been mowing the lawn and the ditches. He chose who he wants to rent the land to.

At my practicum today there was a woman suffering from postpartum depression and anxiety. My supervisor asked if I could look up some resources that we could pass on to her. They already had a standard list for childcare assistance, but I looked up more information about the crisis nursery in town. It seemed like there ought to have been something more for me to give her.

The psych rotation during nursing clinicals was my least favorite. It was the only one I didn’t like. It seemed so foreign to me and I was still thinking that everyone with schizophrenia was merely demon-possessed. My first patient was a girl with borderline personality disorder. They’re supposed to be very untrustworthy, so the whole time I was wondering whether or not she was lying.

I knew what the answer was. I was going to pray with her and I did. I remember feeling like I had somehow rebelled, but in a good way. Now they give you this list of what is considered to be the least risky/inappropriate types of spiritual practices all the way down to the most risky/inappropriate. All three of the teachers at different times have highly discouraged praying in sessions.

I don’t totally get it, but I guess I’ll listen. That is one of the things that’s hard about being a Christian in these kinds of environments. Not only do I wonder why the church can’t do more, can’t somehow being more involved in meeting people’s most basic physical and spiritual needs, but I wonder why we can’t just heal each other anymore. I now there are other ways that healing comes.

So that’s where I’m at. I wish the church was perfect but one day we will be. I know God uses us to love people in ways larger and small. In my own life personally and publicly I know he still works there. And I’m thankful that he does for however long these days are written. Whether we’re out and about in the world, or safe at home nearing heaven, at daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place.

He was on his way out and I was on my way in. The kids and I didn’t go to church this morning. Two of the kids were out late last night for a dance. That would not have stopped us if I’d really wanted to go, but I didn’t. Dad had to preach in Waverly, and I think he’s accepted my sometimes odd church ways. I had to teach Sunday School so we couldn’t skip entirely.

“Hey, Slim”, he says in that happy way when he sees me. For as long as we’ve gone to this church it’s what he’s called me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him actually call me by name. I am also pretty sure that addressing a woman in such a way which also involves commenting on her physical appearance is something that is and is generally considered inappropriate.

But for whatever reason it’s never bothered me except for today. He’s called me Slim all these years but I have changed since we moved here. “Slim? Still?”, I said, thinking that was enough now. I was serious. I could see slim then but would not say that now. “Oh come on”, he said, “false humility is just as much of a sin as anything else.” You can see why I like talking to him.

“No, I’m serious”, I said. Just last night I’d been thinking about my body, this cursed and ongoing struggle with being okay with what it looks like. “This whole past week I have actually been depressed because of these ten pounds I’ve gained that I can’t seem to lose”, I said. “Where?”, he asked me, wanting the evidence. I put my hands over my waist and held them there.

“Right here.” He said something that I cannot now exactly remember. The conversation gradually moved to school and how it’s going. I told him he could be one of my first clients if he wanted. “Oh no”, he said. “You wouldn’t want to know what goes on inside here. I’m pretty dark.” Well, I am too, I offered, it’s why we go into these professions. Dark would be no new surprise.

And in that moment I wanted nothing more than to prove him wrong. To go out for lunch or a drink and say, “Tell me all about your life.” He seemed sure his dark was beyond human telling. I felt pretty certain it could not be that bad. He finally agreed, but only if I told him my secrets first. “Well we couldn’t be professional then if I did that.” That’s what it says in the rules.

I actually wanted to say something else, but I refrained. I am still thinking about the body thing and I don’t think depressed was quite the right word. More like tired but faintly hopeful. “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart”, God says. And here man does not think in the way I once thought him to. God is the one who needed perfection.

I was in bed last night when one of the boys came in and asked if he could talk to me about homecoming plans. It took a few seconds for me to register what was going on. Why was he asking about the dance? At what point did he become old enough to do this? It all fell into place and I thought, “Oh ok. That’s right.”

Some freshman boys are going together. Elianna is going with Miles and they’re meeting up with another couple. The younger boys were off school today. I also did not have to be anywhere in terms of outside commitments. We went for a walk this morning and they played on the swings. They commented on how peaceful the mornings were without school. Don’t you miss this, Mom? I do.

In Nebraska they’re having a low tomorrow of 36 degrees. I thought about it on and off through the day, wondering if I should mention the need to dress warm. I’m not going to say anything, I said, but by the evening I reached the point where I decided just to speak my peace. I said something. He said don’t worry I’ll dress warm.