The kids said something to me this morning about going to church. I’d already been resolved and had reminded myself last night that we were going. We pulled into the parking lot at 9:02. The plan today was to meet Grandma and Dad at MCL after church for lunch. I braided my hair in the van before walking in, already internally feeling the shame that it really is me that causes us to be late. I don’t know if lateness is a moral deficiency worth feeling shame over. There are by far worse things I know. But it’s interesting, even when time itself has adjusted around us, just how much we are creatures of habit.

We celebrated All Saint’s Day today. I know this shouldn’t be anywhere above Easter or Christmas, but today it felt like my favorite Sunday in the church year. Every year it comes around I feel this way. And again, with all the hymns that exist praising God and telling his wonderful, beautiful story, on this day For All The Saints is once again my favorite hymn. Not only is it beautiful in lyric and song, there is no other hymn that makes me feel so seen and full of hope. It perfectly tells the story of us. Most every other Sunday it’s Jesus’s story told, as it is only perfect and right for that to be the case.

But on All Saint’s Day, it’s like Jesus says, “You know, you all are important too.” And of course we are. For as the church we are the bride of Christ. He loves us. Everything he went through down here was for us. Just as in this song, we get the small feeling that everything we went through down here was for him. Every time we persevered, every time we said no to sin and evil, every time we felt like there was no point, or hope, or much time left in living, the Lord was reminding us it wasn’t for nothing. It all had a purpose and it all still does. The living reigning others say it’s true. He has lifted us up.

Today was a longer day of finishing writing assignments due by tonight. We had a 3-5 page reflection paper due for one class and 5-7 Image of God essay due for another. For pretty much every class we’ve had to write something about the image of God. I even started looking through my google docs to see if there were any past paragraphs I could just stick in there toward the end of this last one. And then I was just like, “Oh whatever”. It was easier just to write the paragraph and that point.

It feels nice to have this other more laid-back teacher again. I have missed her quirky realness that pretty much goes on through the entirety of the class. I remember the first time I had her. I can’t remember what she said or did but I distinctly remembering being slightly taken aback, maybe even disappointed, thinking to myself, “Wait. No. You’re the one who’s supposed to have everything together.” She just makes me laugh with her verbal processing and occasional oversharing where she just tells us things.

Dad and the kids had a work day today. There were picnic tables to move and woodpiles to replenish. Several others showed up to help too so that was good. I took a break around 11AM to take a walk and see what everyone was doing. They were over by the CGC. One of the boys was holding Casper who was playing and hanging around with the others. Another started making a fire in the firepit. I was feeling rather somber for a lot of the day. I was thinking about how God is in charge of our health.

Besides the research papers which I find to be more difficult, some of these assignments I actually somewhat am excited about. One of the things we’re supposed to for our Multicultural Counseling class is write a 5-page essay on an Ethnographic Observation experience. We are to show up in a place that gives us the experience of “other”. It also cannot be a place where we would be in a position of power. All of this needs to be approved by our professor. I first asked if I could visit the local public high school. She said if I was visiting a public high school in Chicago that might work, but in a school around here I would have a position of power.

So then I started looking to see if there were any nearby monasteries or convents. I found an event that is happening next weekend at a local convent in Springfield. It is an opportunity for single Catholic women ages 21-45 to come and see what the sister life is like. My professor said this event would work as long as they would be okay with me coming. The event organizer said there was only one other woman who is registered so far and that it would be okay if I came.

For this same class we watched a movie called The Color of Fear. It was a gathering of men including white but mostly non-white men. During the movie there was a heated exchange between one of the black men and one of the white men. The black man had spent a significant amount of time trying to explain to the white man the way the white man benefits from being white, as well as the black man’s pains that come from the color of his skin. The white man kept trying to reassure the black man that he as a white man did not look down on the black man for being black. He didn’t see himself as having any unfair advantages or positions of power because he was white. “I see you as human”, he kept saying, “there is no difference between us”.

This enraged the black man. And then I learned something. An attitude that I had always thought was one of respect, the idea that “you are no different from me”, is one that the other can find deeply hurtful and inaccurate. The black man wasn’t satisfied with simply being human. He wanted to be more than that but also never anything less. He wanted to be seen for who he was and not have differences swept under the rug by well-meaning generalizations like “human”. I’d never heard anyone say that before.

So while I found myself empathizing greatly with the white man, and felt like he was being unfairly ganged up on, I could also dimly see the point of the other man who felt like being called and seen as human was a devaluing of his identity and status and not an elevation of it. He wanted people to see his color, because to him his color meant something about his life and existence. And so I grew in my compassion, for the black man, for the white man, and for every other man who never meant to misunderstand.

It probably wasn’t realistic to say I wouldn’t talk about school. I kind of have to talk about it because it involves so much of what I’m doing right now. I think I’ve kind of downplayed the space this has been taking up in my life. At times it really doesn’t seem like that much. I consider it to be something that is feeding me and contributing to my health and well-being rather than something that is taking from it.

But there are times when it seems to be taking up more space, time, or energy than I currently have to offer. I felt a little validated when I added up the hours of weekly practicum and on-campus class time and it comes out to the close equivalent of a part-time job and that is not counting the outside time spent on homework. So I would say that especially this semester school has been between a full and part-time job. It helps to see it in that perspective and that the time I’m spending is contained in something.

I do still feel like I’m having some kind of increased “flare-up” of fatigue and the nervous symptoms. I just limit my activity and stay where I can rest. It still seems strange to me that these weird health things are even still something I’m dealing with. I’ve forgotten what it’s like now to have been the other way, where I didn’t think about and have to manage it daily. But even so there is blessing and I’m thankful for that.

Casper is still hanging around the outside of the house. Today he came with me for a walk. He likes to be held and picked up and fed. He let me hold him all the way from the house down the camp road and back. The other outside cats have their routines where they disappear and go do things but Casper doesn’t know his way around as much yet.

I took him down to the beach. He seemed interested in the canoes but I wasn’t in the mood to stay down there very long. It’s sad to me when the beach turns cold and we aren’t able to swim in the lake anymore. Until the ice returns there doesn’t seem to be much point in being down there.

Cats really are cute. They have brought us so much amusement over the years of living here. When we homeschooled there was always some kind of cat drama happening during school time. The two sisters would be fighting up in a tree. Our neighbor’s dog would be chasing another one. Kittens joined us while kids worked in the schoolroom.

Today I spent some time going through my assignments and combining them into a single list with due dates so I can see what is going on and what needs to done when. I’ve concluded after doing this that the rest of the semester is pretty much going to suck. I’m not going to talk about it. I’m not going to complain about it. I’m basically just going to try and do something each day to contribute toward getting everything done.

There’s this woman whose blog I used to follow who writes on Substack now. At first it seemed like kind of a new and rarer thing but now I can’t even tell you how many people’s Substack letters I’ve subscribed to and it really isn’t all that many. The only ones I regularly read are moms from Instagram or moms from blogs.

I don’t like writing blogs when all of my kids are not at home. My daughter was out tonight for a youth group meeting with Miles. They don’t understand the whole mom/parent thing where you can’t really relax and be at peace for the night until all of your kids are home from wherever.

The kids said they had a good Halloween. Josh is typically the Halloween person who gets the kids excited and works on finding costumes. He hadn’t really had much time or energy to do that this time, so he bought a bag of candy and last night took it out into the athletic field and was tossing it up into the air for the kids to catch.