It’s funny how you can get to the end of the day and not even remember what it is that happened. I was up. The big kids went to school. Dad had to go somewhere. I read on the couch for a while in my pajamas drinking coffee. The boys slept in until a little later than usual. Usually when they get up they get some breakfast then play with the dog.

We did our Bible lesson again and then I worked on cleaning my room. I had to put away some clothes and hang up the new one I’d bought. Everyone took care of their own breakfast but I made some kind of enchilada tator tot dish for the boys to have for a real lunch. We took the dog for a walk and Ethan did his speed workout on the hills.

After lunch I said, boys, I need to take a short nap now. If I really want to make sure I will sleep I put on a podcast that I have no interest in listening to. It works just about every time I would say. I read again then fell asleep. I woke to Josh calling and wondering if there was anything else he should pick up for the birthday dinner meal.

He listed off the things and I couldn’t think of anything else. I looked at the podcast time stamp and it’d been playing for 18 minutes. But that was enough to revive me and take away the sleep from my eyes. So I got up and told the boys it was time to turn off their game soon. I tried out some of my clothes and wrapped the presents for the evening.

While I was wrapping I decided I wasn’t going to go into Contact. There was too much going on in the evening and everything would be easier if I didn’t try to go. Alexis said she wasn’t going in either. She just moved to a new apartment and wanted to get things settled in. I texted my mother-in-law also to see if she wanted to come over tonight.

Ethan and Laura had their engagement photos this evening at camp. She came over about two hours early right as I was about to go to County Market to get chicken. Dad hadn’t got any because he thought we would use the rotisserie chicken from the fridge. I told him I had used that for lunch. I bought a few other things for snacks and meals.

We had a nice time around the table for supper. The pictures got over around 7 which is about when we started eating. We started a new tradition where we go around and say something we appreciate about the birthday person. I appreciated how everyone appreciated people. We tried on Zorro’s collar and it looks really nice on him. She held up the smaller one and we couldn’t believe how little he was before.

Our school is on spring break this week. We can still be at our sites getting hours but there are no classes. If you can even believe this, I still need to turn in my social justice project proposal. It was my plan to get it finished over break and to work ahead on the power point and cultural identity scrapbook assignment that is due at the end of the month. I decided I’m doing my advocacy project and presentation on homelessness.

Today was technically my most free day. The boys did school in the morning and I read their Bible lesson to them. The other day Ethan said something jokingly to one of those boys saying, “I’m going to need to talk to your math teacher.” He replied, “I am my math teacher”, and it kind of made me sad, wondering what it would’ve been like if we had kept with the Algebra lessons together.

I made the boys eggs and heated up rice. Ethan had to run four miles and then Dad gave him a haircut in preparation for their official engagement pictures. Laura and her mom have already been shopping and filled two carts full of flowers and decorations at JoAnn fabrics. She was buying things to decorate the cross and the outdoor chapel. The colors are going to be shades of pink and coral. They’re storing it all in their basement.

They met each other for lunch and then looked around at wedding bands. Laura’s ring is just a tad too big so they stopped by the place where it was originally purchased and found out they she can get it resized for free. They didn’t buy anything yet. I told him that we can give him money to put toward her wedding ring so he’s going to think about it. He paid for the engagement ring himself.

I left before lunch to shop for Elianna’s birthday. She wanted a bigger dog collar and a dog tag that was etched with Zorro’s name. So I found that and a few other things. While walking through the checkout aisle they had a display of coffee mugs. I looked until I found a pretty spring one that I liked. I looked for jeans and tops as it’s time again to have something a little different to wear. I found a few things that can work for now.

Our pastor had a hemorrhagic stroke while we were gone over the weekend. It was like ten o’clock and his wife called Josh asking if he could come to the hospital. We were still up in Wisconsin so he texted her a bunch of numbers of other pastors in the area. I guess she’d found a replacement for the next day’s Sunday service. He was in the ICU with a feeding tube but thankfully was okay.

So Josh is picking up his Wednesday Lenten services, most of the Sunday services, and Holy Week through Easter. I think they will probably end up ditching the Saturday vigil. Laura was over this afternoon when they came back from shopping. I didn’t know she was coming over so there was some spontaneous cleaning that needed to happen. I took a nap and made supper then left them after the prayer to go into work from 7-11.

I feel like I’m currently back in a “life sucks and is hard” mindset. Yesterday we had the memorial service for my grandma. We left around 7 for the three hour trip north. It was nice to have the kids home and able to come. Zorro came with for his first bigger trip since the time he was picked up. I don’t have much to compare it to be to me he seems like a good dog and that he was really enjoying the ride and different activities.

I sometimes find it painful still to be around my family. As much as I love when we get together, I feel like we’re reaching this different state where the individual families are becoming more solid and set in their ways. I don’t mean stubborn. I mean set in the ways and paths that God has for them and those paths are crossing now less and less. My parents are the set of grandparents now but we will be there before too long.

Or could be anyways. And there are still those insecurities that arise from old wounds from the past that are still filling in. In group it is talked about this way: you could’ve been loved and cared for, AND there were likely still ways that your primary caregivers could not show up and meet needs, sometimes deep ones. It seems to happen this way with spouses as well, where you are loved still and yet some terrible hole remains.

They swear that this is the way that it is. I think I would almost believe it. Admittedly I doubt when I read posts from this younger millennial woman in her early to mid 30’s. She divorced her husband last spring after years of being unhappy. She’s now dating a firefighter and keeps posting things about how happy she is with her new guy, that it really was just a matter of finding someone more compatible who truly adores you.

This isn’t even about my family or my marriage or whatever else to which we pin our longings and desires. I tried to say this a few weeks ago but it was too much to go into. But we were talking in group about the egoic mind. The lower self takes its wants and attaches them to lower people, places, and things. Those desires can lead to more pain when we keep seeking after the same things that do not satisfy because they can’t.

“Marion is now more wonderful than when she lived on this side of life, which when here showed Christ’s love to me and many more.”
~J. M.~

From Darlene:

What can I say about Marion?

She gave grace and love to those who unexpectedly but by God’s sovereignty, crossed paths with her. She left a legacy of providing for those in need oftentimes by way of housing them or adopting them as her own. I will always be amazed that God saw fit to bring her and Ken into my life through Antonio.

We shared the majority of our holidays and birthdays together over the 14 years that I have been married to Tony. 

Marion left a legacy of nurturing and caring for women. She had an ability to see when someone just needed a friend or to be mentored and led to Christ and she filled that role.

She wasn’t only Grandma or Mom but she was a dear friend to me. We often would get together on a whim when I would stop by with some pizza hut and just spend time talking and sharing life together and we treasured those moments.

When she left NY we found ourselves traveling to see her and I would joke that we were her groupies.

Let me tell you why we loved her so much and why we would travel the world for her and why we took her in to spend her final two years with us.

It is because of her heart, her love for Jesus, her generosity in every way, and the way she loved us as if we were her own. She loved my kids like they were prized possessions who were worthy of her love. She loved Tony and I without hesitation and we loved her so much.

In her final weeks and days she had episodes where dementia had taken her mind on adventures and I never once heard a bad word from her or anger- I heard her giving Bible studies, organizing missionary conferences, making sure her grandkids weddings were done well, her dinner parties were organized, etc, which truly reflected her life of service.

Though we mourn not like the world and we rejoice for her to be in her heavenly home we can’t help but feel a huge loss. We are so grateful God gave us Marion even though we wish we had longer!

Elianna had an indoor meet in Charleston. The boys and I spent much of the morning doing house chores. Dad left around 6:30 to drive to Nebraska to pick up Ethan for spring break. He was finished with his final class at 2:30. They’re supposed to be home around 11 tonight. Every time he makes this day’s round trip I am just in awe.

The meet was so fun. Miles came along since he’s still home for spring break. We picked him up on the way out to Grandma’s where I dropped off the boys and the dog. Then we drove to the high school to pick up Elianna which wasn’t too far away. I asked if she could give Judah the phone since he was going to have to drive himself to practice.

She said she’d already done that. So we drove the two hours to the indoor girls’ meet. It brought back memories from driving Ethan to the boys meet and being there when he ran. We found a spot in the bleachers and watched through the heats. I Facetimed Dad and Ethan and Miles recorded. She ran a personal best. I was happy we’d gone.

“For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source…”
~Hebrews 2:11~

I’m really enjoying having Alexis at the Contact site this semester. It’s one of those things where “she was a godsend” feels like an appropriate statement. It just makes it more fun when we can both arrive around the same time, catch up in the side room, go over each other’s plan for the evening, talk about class or whatever else. Then in between sessions we catch up again and talk about how things went.

Sometimes I think I’m resilient enough for counseling work. I don’t feel like the work come home with me or that I spend large amounts of time thinking about what happened in session. But sometimes different sessions get to me where afterward I get strangely emotional. One time I bawled the whole way home. All I could think was that for one inkling of a microsecond I felt the love that God feels for a person.

I haven’t had exactly the same experiences at Thrive. I’ve felt more disappointment there, either from not getting clients or feeling disappointed with myself for not opening up more in group. I finally prayed and asked God recently to help me open up in love, to come out of my shell. He says it’s just a matter of jumping in. That’s easy to say when you’re the one used to talking with everyone already listening.

I don’t know where the shyness comes from. There was a guy in group who said he didn’t have any trauma. We had just watched a video of Peter Levine and Gabor Mate.’ I used to watch their YouTube videos in bed. He said it’s a block for him, the whole talking about trauma. I told him those blocks are often the places that hold the keys to our deepest healing, and that we cannot heal what we don’t acknowledge.

There were a few other things I tried to say as my voice became weaker and the lump in my throat grew. So I counted that as hours because I actually talked to a person. And now I’m crying thinking about him because over the past several months of being together in that room we’d looked at each other enough little times. I’d heard enough about him and knew this was the time so in that moment I loved him.

Man is like a breath;
his days are like a passing shadow.
~Psalm 144:4~

The past couple of days the weather has been horrible. It’s been rainy, windy, snowy, with even a mixture of icy. We still had class though because it wasn’t enough to shut anything down. So that’s where I was on Ash Wednesday, in Brookens Library, room 369. We do our check-ins and then bring up any issues we are having at our sites. I didn’t have anything to report. I feel at peace with each one.

Dad had to preach in Delvan. It’s a smaller church up north that is in a vacancy so they’ve been calling him more. He had to be there for church at 6:30. The older kids were back from track practice in time to see him before he left and to play with Zorro before putting him in his cage while they went to the Lenten meal and Ash Wednesday service at Good Shepherd. She texted when they’d gotten there.

I wrote (and then deleted) that for Lent I’m repenting of my slothful tendencies. I keep thinking of that verse, “the last enemy to be defeated is death” with regard to this, except the word death is replaced with sloth. It’s like for whatever reason this is the one that saved for last. I still get tired and I still need naps, but it’s everything else. It’s everything else that is calling out to me saying I can do more.

Tom is a good cat who doesn’t bother anybody. He knows he is privileged to get to sleep inside and when he comes in he does his best to find a quiet spot. Sometimes when he’s in the living room he gets this look on his face like, “Really? I’m in here? I don’t know how this happened but I’m not going to say anything. I’m just going to sleep right here and be on my best behavior.”

He used to be scared of getting in trouble. Sometimes I think he still is, but I like to reassure him that nobody’s mad at him. We do have one cat who doesn’t like him inside. Cats can be fairly territorial but they don’t mind sharing as long as everyone respects everybody’s space. I don’t know where he goes to the bathroom. I’ve never seen it.

One of the boys shares an affinity with Tom. He said to us one time, “See? I’m just like Tom. Nobody cares about him but he still survives.” It made me laugh to hear him say that but it also made me sad because both are true in some way. But I know lots of people care about him and I know at least two of us care about Tom. Since God is love’s source, there is always enough.

‘…he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and fathered twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters.”
~2 Chronicles 11:21~

Rehoboam ticked me off the other day. I feel like with Solomon you can kind of understand how having 700 wives and 300 concubines was in some way a formality and just part of being a famous king who had to make treaties and alliances with foreign nations. He didn’t really care about most of those women and there was no way he could actually be having sex with that many.

But then comes Rehoboam whose numbers when you read them seem to me as equally as outrageous and then some. I have never liked it when I read about these men and their multiple wives. It’s not that my blood boils, but it starts to get warm. The boys were at the table and Josh came in from the office and when he walked into the kitchen I said, “Hey, do you have a second?”

I started to talk but then stopped and whispered, “Is anyone in the office??” The amount of times I have humiliated myself because our house is connected to the office door is enough so that I can barely even look at the office secretary anymore. We used to talk and gab until time got away from us and once I broke down and got sick that all stopped. The counselors, the LCMS legacy guy…

Ugh. Lauren was in there but I didn’t care. She’s a grown up and a woman and can handle these things. He grinned while I ranted and he stood at the stove. Why is it the men can have multiple wives, indulging their desires for multiple women, while the women are afforded no such luxury. Why was it alright for them to rot away in harems with no further chance to find actual love?

He said it probably had something to do with women not being able to reproduce as quickly. But I’m not sure I buy that argument either. I have mulled this over in my head many times trying to figure out the answer to “Is monogamy natural?” Like how do you argue from science that it is? So Rehoboam could father many children, but there’s no way he could’ve been a good dad to that many.

Good dads are part of a thriving society. If something is good, it has to be good for all parties. Fathering children as a man is not beneficial unless he can provide a steady love throughout their lives. It was bothering me so much I asked my own dad about it. I texted my mom to see if either of them were free to chat. I heard back pretty soon that they both were there and we talked for a while.

My dad said we aren’t being conformed to the image of Rehoboam.

I can hardly believe we’re already in March. It seems like not that long ago that we were in February or some place else. Dad and the boys had their woodcutters retreat. The dying pines trees on the way to the retreat center were finally cut down. It made me happy to see the X on both of their trunks. They weren’t even green anymore.

Elianna had a track meet so I was home with the dog. It went pretty well. I am still kind of scared of him and don’t like trying to put on his leash by myself. So we didn’t go for any walks, plus is it was cold. He was very excited when the boys came home in the later afternoon. The track meet went well and she was happy with her times.

I told my son we were postponing his birthday until Monday when we’d be more free. When you’re 12 that’s kind of what starts to happen with your birthdays but he handled it well. I’d rather do it right than throw it together and then the moment passes us by with no effort. We’ll bring mashed potatoes to Grandma’s and a birthday dessert.