Tom and Shadow found me over at the Retreat Center deck. I wasn’t up there very long, just long enough to see the woods and beach trail from above.

So I walked some more and they came along to where I stopped at the indoor chapel and sat down. After sitting and thinking for a while I went home.

The Lutheran High kids had a Christmas choir and band concert tonight. Along with that the piano students from our church played after their concert for a mini-recital. The younger boys each played a song. My back today has continued feeling better and better so I went along.

Before we left I was finishing up straightening out my reference pages. I’d finished the writing part around 5PM but waited to turn it in until after 9 when we were home. I turned it in three different times trying to get the formatting situated. Sometimes when you turn something in it changes.

The other one I turned in yesterday, so those are done now, thanks be to God. Tonight after the concert we stopped by Baskin Robbins since one of the kids asked. Grandma came along as well. We also stopped to pick up lunch food. On the way home we listened to some radio music.

Josh and the kids were busy over at the CGC this weekend. This year the camp put on an overnight Joyful Hearts Christmas reunion. It was meant for the adult campers with disabilities to be able to have another option for camp time. Full-time caregivers also expressed their delight in being able to have a day freed up over the holiday season. Our new program director Lauren thought of this and it seems to have gone over well.

Today was another writing day. It really is crazy how much time this all takes. I could definitely cut out some distractions, but overall I like to have stretches of time to go at my own pace which is typically pretty slow. There’ll be bursts of time where two or three pages can get done in two hours. I think the most I’ve ever written in a day was eight. The one I’m not currently is at that many. I plan to keep working through the evening.

My back throughout the day has been gradually getting better. It’s hard because when this initially happens I am not able to sit, I can only be on my back or side or walking very carefully. This afternoon I spent some time tracking the indoor meet going on in Nebraska. Ethan ran the 600M for the first time which he seemed to like. The cook brought over a bunch of leftovers which was nice. I need to keep making some progress now.

“For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.”
~Ephesians 5:8~

All I did was try to stand up from the place where I’ve been sitting for most of the day. With that I’m pretty sure I threw out my back again. It doesn’t seem to be as bad as the last time, but whatever I did, I’m in bed now, with my pajamas on and computer and articles close. Last time this happened I had to type a book report in bed for my Stone-Campbell Movement class. The whole thing was a little ridiculous but we made it.

I was dancing earlier. Between that and the sitting something probably got loosened up and weakened so that the right twist or bend would be the thing to make it happen. My chiropractor says that people only throw out their backs when they’re emotionally stressed. How many times a day do you bend down and take something out of the pantry, he asked. I did feel stressed then but I had not been feeling stressed now.

He’s good but I didn’t always agree with his philosophies. I do need to finish these papers this weekend so that is important. When I get like this I want to act kind of silly and don’t like being serious. And then I’ll think, “Hmmm, really? Maybe don’t say that. There are so many serious things going on in the world…” I’m not dismissing serious things. It’s okay to be silly at times. But it’s not always a bad thing to second-guess.

It was almost warm outside today, with a high reaching almost 60 degrees. I texted Ethan to see if this would be a good night to FaceTime. We never have gotten into a schedule with calls. I’ll think everything’s fine and that we’ve all just adjusted and then I’ll think again that maybe I need to be being more intentional. It’s like that with relationships, where you tend to drift without the efforts to keep from drifting.

So we talked with him for a while tonight. He was playing his game with other boys from back home. Fortnite just came out with a LEGO version. I can’t believe it’s taken them this long to come up with something like that. There are other things I prefer more than video games as far as activities the boys can do. I’m a little scarred from some of the Facebook group posts I’ve read from wives who are at their wits end with the gaming. You wouldn’t want that for them.

But I do like that they at least can be social with them. The other paper I’m working on is about disorganized attachment. I have to start out by writing what conditions are necessary for healthy human development starting with infancy and across the lifespan. So reading about that too has had me thinking more about the ways I am interacting with my kids. The nice thing about brains is that they can be rewired.

The papers are coming along as needed. I am almost done with the bigger one, and started today on the smaller one with three pages so far. I have the next couple of days to finish them, one by the 10th and one the 11th. After that I will just need to do my power point which is supposed to be on treatment plans written out in the paper.

I haven’t written about my aunt here yet. Earlier in the year she was diagnosed with stage III cancer which they think originated in the ovaries. When they went in for surgery and removed the cancer-filled omentum lining in her abdomen, they found a different type of cancer underneath that had not previously been visible on scans.

So she is on my heart tonight, along with the many other pains of the world. My grandmother many months ago moved back to New York upon my aunt’s diagnosis because she wasn’t going to be able to take care of her while undergoing chemo treatments. She is living with Tony and Darlene who are very much like family.

My grandpa used to say that God had blessed him with a son in his old age. Tony lived with my grandparents for several years when he was an immigrant from Brazil hoping to gain United States citizenship. After many years he did. While he lived with my grandparents he began going to church and came to faith in Christ as his Savior.

Life really is just hard sometimes, often much of the time, and sad, and depressing. It’s not just life, it’s me often too. But I do remain thankful for the hope God gives us in difficult times and the ways he still allows us to know joy and even exuberance. He didn’t have to do that for us but he did. Thanks be to God the true redeemer of all things.

This morning the sky was clear but then later it rained. I stepped outside for an afternoon walk and turned right back around. It was misty, gray, and cold. It stayed that way into the evening and was that way when I left for school.

I started looking looking up Illinois State and their nursing degrees while I was there. There are two programs, one for Family Nurse Practitioner and another for Leadership and Management. Neither one sounded like what I was looking for.

One of the teachers emailed and said that UIS will be one of the schools to accept transfers. With these agreements they accept all the credits. I was it hoping that would be one of school options since that one too is very drivable.

There’s a state in-between awake and asleep where my mind often wanders and thinks of my kids. Today I heard a voice when they came home from school. I was sleeping in bed, having come home from partial, eaten an early lunch, and put on the YouTube crackling fireplace sounds. I miss them there, feeling like they’re far away.

When I woke up I went downstairs to the boys room. They were in their beds reading. I remember this stage, it’s the same stage the others have gone through when they without you even noticing become more independent, not having to be watched every minute like every minute when they were young. Years and years go by like this.

I sat on the edge of one of the beds and the two of them told me about their books. Dad made a schedule, their daily routine of cold-weather activities. Piano. Chores. Today the three of them cleaned the garage. When I followed them I thought I counted 13 bikes and counted again. I took down the fall wreath and put up the next one.

This morning we went to church as a family. Dad did not have to preach anywhere. I was supposed to teach Sunday School but Josh said he would cover for me since I wanted to leave early to go home and continue working on my multicultural paper. I would’ve just stayed home altogether but he didn’t seem to be in favor of that. After church I took him down to the Sunday School room and showed him the book we use.

Then I came home. For the past day there had been a raccoon curled up and sleeping in one our old cat houses that stays on the deck. He was still there. Usually when a raccoon doesn’t run away immediately when it sees us it means there’s something wrong with it. With this one you could open the window and talk to it, knock on the glass, knock even louder, and it stayed where it was. He would occasionally look up.

Josh tried a little harder to get rid of it once they got home from lunch with Grandma at IHOP. He came out and put his face on the glass and you could see blood on his nose. I cried because I knew he was hurt. He ended up back in the woods. Josh then cleared off the cat houses so that no more raccoons come up and take shelter in them. They needed to go as they’ve been around for at least five or so years and were pretty grimy.

I spent most of the day working on this paper. I emailed my other professor and said I was not going to be able to get the power point done by tomorrow that is due in the other class. She said that was no problem. Tomorrow isn’t my scheduled day to present so I was hoping it wouldn’t be too big of a deal. I was going to work until 11 tonight but by about 8PM changed my mind. I’ll still read some more but with the writing I was done.

Josh and two of the kids went to the store later this evening to get ice cream to go with my birthday apple pie. I stopped what I was doing to come to the table for a little while. During the birthday song I started singing happy birthday to myself at first by accident. I blew out the candles and we ate pie and ice cream. I opened a few cards and thought they were nice. My parents called earlier in the evening so I talked them for a while.

(*Cereal: No clue what I mean, just a word that came to mind)

We picked up the kids around noontime today. Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus were out on the porch. Inside you could tell they had put out more Christmas decorations since we left. She doesn’t want to put out too many this year. With all the packing that is needing to be done and has already been done, she doesn’t want to unpack all the Christmas things only to have to turn around and pack them back up again.

It was good seeing her again since it’s been a little while. Toward the middle of November, she left to spend almost two weeks including Thanksgiving with my sister-in-law and her family. It looked like they had a good time from the pictures. My daughter was in need of a Christmas dance dress. While we were out to eat last night they sent of pictures of several dresses she’d tried on. I felt then like I had forgotten about her.

But I also know shopping is one of the things they do together. My daughter wasn’t totally sold on the dress she bought, so she would still like to check out the consignment store in Sherman. That is usually something she and I do together. We found her homecoming dress there for $10. Before we left, my mother-in-law said she could take my other son shopping for clothes sometime after school this week.