“But that now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”
~Romans 6:22~

In vain I waited nicely
For all my dreams to go away
For every love to be ordered rightly
For every thought and gleam* to fade

So I threw myself before the Father
Saying please do with me what you will
If only you would cease my torment
He said, “I only love you still.”

I am a sinner dearest Jesus
Writing letters in the night
Please have mercy on me Jesus
He said, “Come into the light.”

No other gods can even hear me
My heart and flesh can hardly move
Please don’t pass me by or leave me
He said, “I will come to you.”

Jesus, no one else can save me
No one else knows how I’ve felt
For only you both loved and made me
All for you and no one else
.
.
.
(*the original word)

I attended a women’s conference this weekend. It was an IF gathering at one of the area megachurches, which I don’t mean offensively. Dad had a work day at camp, so all of the kids who weren’t taking their ACT in the morning stayed with him to clean cabins and rake leaves with the other workers who came to help. There were sessions last night along with this morning and afternoon. It was a good combination of hearing, singing, and interacting with others. Since church a lot of times can be a forward facing event, the leaders wanted to include times where we could break up into groups, turn to one another, and have a chance to answer questions and discuss the speakers messages.

I like how at these kinds of events they assume that God has you there for a reason. One of the questions last night was, “What are you hoping to get out of this?” Our small group of ladies moved to the floor and then went around and shared their answers. Something I’m noticing that is nice about blogging is that it gives me the time to get out what’s on my mind and the things that here and there I am working through. It frees me up to be able to not feel the need to talk as much when I’m with people. Instead I can sit and listen, without that feeling like you’re not getting your chance, which can happen sometimes in groups. The others went around and shared their answers. My answer was short. I said I didn’t know, but was there for whatever God would surprise me with.

There were two breakout sessions, with five topics to choose from. The topics were Take Back Your Family, Embracing Your Emotions, What God Thinks About You, How To Be A Bridge Builder, When You Want To Quit Church, and When A Life of Joy Feels Impossible. For the first session I chose the emotions one, which was good. The next session, When a Life of Joy Feels Impossible, was a video of a 39-year old woman who’d suffered a major hemorrhagic brain stroke out of the blue when she was younger. She found herself with partial facial paralysis, physically disabled, and in permanent need of a wheelchair. Her husband had stayed with her the whole time and they’d even gone on to have another baby. That one was good too and made me cry just knowing about all the hardships people go through in their lives.

After that session it was time to go back into the auditorium. The worship leaders sang a few more songs. Because I was in the front row, and had started to feel an uptick in anxiety since coming back to the bigger room, I didn’t stand up when they started singing. I could still see the singers and words from my seat. I sat with my legs pulled up to my chest, still comfortable in the jeans I found earlier this week, and watched and listened to the beautiful singers. I wished that I too was able to play the keyboard and sing at the same time like the young man with the beautiful tenor voice. If there was one superpower I wish I’d been gifted with, it would probably be that of singing and playing the piano together. I sat in awe and wonder at the different ways God gifts people.

The anxiety was getting worse, and I almost left. I’d already felt it earlier that morning, after spending a little over a half hour watching and cheering for the half-marathon runners. I had a friend who was running, so I before I went to the conference this morning, I parked over at Lincoln Park where she said is a difficult place because of the hills. There were people from her church there too. I was amazed at how many runners actually said, “Thank you” whenever you said something like “Great job” or “You’re doing awesome”. I had to back off after a while and couldn’t clap as much. Something about the cold, clapping, and tightly holding the blanket around my body started to activate that spot in my chest, though it rarely happens anymore, thank God.

I had started to wonder if maybe the coffee I’d had wasn’t decaf, but eventually the feelings of anxiety went away again. We were watching the video of one of the speakers giving her talk on idolatry, and how every idol, being created, has limits but also has no life. She made a comment about fairy tales and romance, how we think we’re going to fall in love with a man who will be the one who completes us and fills every void in our lives and in our hearts. Being ridiculously stubborn but understanding more now, I have to admit that I still kind of think this. In Christ we come alive in God. But to complete means more than just being the black to my white or the yin to my yang. Our completeness comes not just in bliss but in trials. As James 1:4 says, “Let perseverance finish its work, so that you might be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.”

“Every man is just as needy as you are”, she said, I assume knowing that needy is the thing you’re not supposed to be as a woman. To be a created being is to be dependent on our Creator for sustenance. Indeed, to be human is to be needy. Whatever people want to say about what a man or woman’s needs are, I feel like I want to say that none of that matters nearly as much as what God in his heart is fully set and intent on giving to you. It’s like I’m coming back around to this familiar place of settling in after what feels like an incredibly long and exhausting season of wandering, questioning, and relearning what it means to love the ones I love most. I think this is the thing, sadly, that has surprised me most about God and his perfect human love. You can still be happy, like actually happy, when as created beings we look to none other than our Creator, the giver of hope, salvation, and joy.

Tonight the house doesn’t seem so bad. The floors are swept. The living room area is picked up and vacuumed. The mud room is overflowing with blankets from the track meet, that were dropped there as soon as everyone walked in the door. The downstairs carpet is pulled back where the boys stuffed towels against the cracks in the wall where the rain comes in. There are rooms and corners that have way too much clutter, where I don’t even know where half this stuff came from. For supper we had the beef, chicken, and leftover taco shells and toppings we were gifted after last night’s Lenten meal.

Everyone is here. Another baseball game was cancelled this evening. Again I was relieved, as that opened up an entire evening for everyone to be home. I’ve been in one of my cozy homemaker moods today, taking time this morning to do the dishes that have been piling up for the past one or two evenings. Usually this is the kids’ job, but I wanted to do it. I’d tried to sit down to work on homework this morning. Ideally it’d be me and the boys in the living room in the morning, everyone working on their various school things. Sometimes that’s how it is, but today I couldn’t quite concentrate knowing there were other things around the house that could also be getting done.

I did about four loads of laundry washing boys’ sheets and blankets. Something about having boys, especially as they get older, makes me worry about things like making sure they’re at least somewhat prepared for living with any people they might live with in the future, or just living somewhere else on their own. I want them to know how to at least do basic things for themselves. I tend to think one of my jobs as a mother is to teach my boys the concepts and skills of being competent in the areas of women. The thing about that is that women are different, and are going to come with their own backgrounds and personalities.

In other words, they can only learn so much from me. Another downside to this is that sometimes in the big picture of wanting to make sure people are learning things, now that they are older and sometimes doing more, I forget sometimes myself still to find joy in the doing for them. Like, I forget that it actually brings me joy to do their laundry for them, that sometimes it’s just nice to be taken care of so well to the point that you don’t even realize someone is doing it. Clothes just magically wash themselves. Blankets and beds just magically become fresh and clean. Somebody loves you no matter what.

I asked if he’d disown me if I wore sweatpants to the track meet. I don’t remember what he said, but it was something that communicated to me in a quick and believable way that he wouldn’t. We were on our way out the door, and I was readying myself at the last minute making sure I was wearing the proper apparel for the weather. I layered up, with my black leggings underneath, and my grey sweatpants on top for added warmth.

My choices were limited. I could wear jeans as my outer layer and look normal, or I could wear sweatpants as my outer layer and still look just as normal. The difference would come in how comfortable I’d be. This prolonged period of inactivity is showing itself on the bathroom scale. I’m hoping to go shopping this afternoon with the goal of finding some clothes that fit better while also conforming with society’s public fashion standards.

Our friends are still separated. There was a time when I thought that a marriage in crisis was the equivalent of a medical emergency, that the marriage itself was the thing that was needing to be targeted, restored, and worked on. URGENT URGENT URGENT. LETS GO THIS NEEDS TO BE DEALT WITH NOW SOMEBODY NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING.

I’m not sure how many others would agree with this, but something I came across last year while reading was the saying that God does not care more about the marriage than he does about the people in it. I tend to think there is merit to this. She was specifically referring to Christian marriages, where we uphold and care about the institution of marriage as something God ordained as right and good, something holy to be preserved at all costs.

There’s still some kind of tearing, shredding, violent tragedy going on. This goes beyond what human doctors, human lawyers, human therapists for children and grown-ups can repair or revive. I think this is the part where I’m supposed to turn my eyes back to the cross, where the Lord, in one death, somehow makes these situations redeemable. I tend now to think that whether it’s a marriage in sickness, health, near death, or recovery, that God remains dedicated to the good and flourishing of all involved.

The name Lincoln Christian University is deceiving. It’s actually a very small, remote, and cozy feeling campus (in my opinion). It used to be Lincoln Christian College, and being only an hour away from my parents, this was a college I wanted to go to after high school. I visited Moody, Mequon, Lincoln Christian, and Seward. Chicago was too big. Olivette Nazarene where Susan was going didn’t appeal to me. Mequon had the gazebo next to beautiful Lake Michigan, but that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to go there. Josh was in Seward and loved it there. I felt torn and unable to discern what God’s will was. Was I supposed to go to Lincoln or was I supposed to go to Seward?

About this time Josh had taken Psychology 101 with Professor Moulds. From him he learned there was no such thing as God’s will, at least not in the way that I was trying to find it. God didn’t care what college I went to. I could go to Lincoln and God would be happy. I could go to Seward and God would be happy. I remember taking the same class and having my mind blown. I sometimes felt like Dr. Moulds took too much pleasure in disrupting his students’ former ways of thinking. You don’t just go from seeking God’s will to suddenly believing God would be happy with me no matter what.

All that to say, I’m glad I still get to come here. Due to longer standing financial reasons, the school recently underwent drastic changes. They cut nearly all their undergraduate programs, got rid of athletics, and as of next year will no longer have on-campus dorms or student housing. I don’t think I realized at first how serious and devastating this was for some people. Much of the faculty and staff have lost their jobs. Many of the students lives have been upended. As of right now, they say the MAC program isn’t going anywhere, and remains one of their healthiest and most-enrolled in programs.

Last night in class we talked about PTSD and anxiety disorders. I found myself sitting in the back shaking my head along with much of the lecture. My professor specializes in Family Systems Therapy and acute trauma therapy (different from complex trauma, which is trauma extended over period of time as opposed to a major one time event). She said when you first start working with clients who’ve been through trauma, their story sounds more like a box of pictures that’s been dumped out all over the floor. As she works with them and listens, the story begins to make more sense, to where they can tell it in a more coherent way. She says that’s how you know they’re getting better.

A local pastor’s wife friend came over yesterday morning. It was cold enough that we stayed inside, but early enough that we talked for nearly two hours in the living room while the rest of the house was still asleep. She told me I didn’t have to clean for her, so I didn’t, not too much. I did make sure the bathroom was at least presentable and wiped down. I also cracked a window in the mudroom to air out any heavier or more obvious shoe or cat smell, as the family collection of shoes is the first thing the front door opens right into, and I’m never quite sure who can smell the cats or not.

Later I could see where Ghost had been. I took some of my citrus and basil all-purpose cleaner and wiped up his dried sneeze remnants. I love Ghost, which is why I let him come inside in the first place. I told the kids to put him back outside. It’s been chilly, but not frigid, and it’s good for him to get outside in the fresh air and sun. While cleaning the floor I started thinking about how so often I have felt this sense of my living space being “unclean”. Like, it’s this place no one really wants to come to, that I feel is never quite good enough to invite people into, at least not as much as I would like to.

I saw a post on Instagram that said “Perfectionism is often shame in disguise.” I took a screen shot of it. Perfectionism is something that has come up pretty regularly in counseling. I’ll make a passing comment about the house and then she’ll dig deeper. What am I getting or wanting from a cleaner house? Satisfaction. Evidence that I accomplished something. Something I can point to and say, “See? Here’s what I did.” This came up a little bit yesterday too, to which the probing went deeper. “What about attention?” I had to think about it more. The need for attention is associated with negative images. Needing attention is for the slutty girls with daddy issues. Needing attention is for the vain, the prideful, the ones whose fleshly sins need to be mortified.

“Ah, yes”, she said. “You’re a Christian, which means you think everything is your fault.”

I was seen again in that moment.

“Thank you”, I said. “THANK YOU.”

I have thought through these years, that by the time this season of life is over, I surely will have been purged of every sinful need for praise or admiration. I was doing some reading for my abnormal psychology class and came across a section that stood out to me. It was talking about depressive disorders. This isn’t the time to go into every possible reason or contributing factor with depression, but this particular section spoke on behavioral explanations. There were three things which made up the section (taken from Understanding Abnormal Behavior, 11th edition, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, p. 241):

1. A person participates in few events or activities that are potentially reinforcing.
2. There are few reinforcements available in the environment.
3. A person’s behavior and social skills result in limited reinforcement.

This reminded me of my stay-at-home mom days in Hoyleton. This morning I went back and read a post I’d written during Lent. It was slightly amazing to me to see something I’d not remember if I hadn’t written it down: “We haven’t made a single Lenten service this year. It’s too hard to get out with the kids this time of night.  I attempted the afternoon service with the three boys.  But going during nap time didn’t turn out well and we ended up leaving about a third of the way through. The older two kids go. Their dad comes over before church and gets them. I’m not even sure where we are in Lent. I would guess we’re maybe half way through? I don’t pay attention to the calendar.”

I go on to say, “If there’s one thing I’m learning about mothering, it’s that this is not a life of immediate gratification. This is a life stretched out. A slow and steady walk toward the eternal Prize. I look around and if it weren’t for the fact that I actually remember doing things, you’d never know I did anything today. I guess the kids are alive and sleeping in their beds right now, but that is only by the pure grace of God. But I am in this for the long haul, or for however long God gives me.” I have also been thinking recently, “What if I really do end up dying? Like before I can have my forties decade of art, music, and dance? Before I get to my fifties where I will finally write my books?

(Man makes plans…)

I rarely ever think this, but the other day I felt like I’d be okay if I died. Like if God would take me home earlier than I would personally ask or want for him to, I would be okay. The world would go on spinning. My family, in the Lord’s hands, would also be okay. I’m not looking to die. That’s another thing about this in-person class I’m taking. Every week our teacher wants us to practice asking a classmate, “Are you thinking about killing yourself?” She says this is the equivalent of a life-saving skill, a basic question in counseling care that we need to get used to asking. The question sounds too harsh to me, too blunt and direct. I keep wanting to soften the word “killing” with “harming”.

People talk about the need to be seen and heard. There is nothing sinful about this, but is in fact, the way we were made by God to exist and live. This is, ideally, one of the things that makes the person-to-person relationship therapeutic: It gives people a chance to be seen and heard, which gives people a chance to be known. I’ve recently started having the boys write more in their journals again using whatever writing prompt I come up with. The eyes of a child made it all come together. I might be daily being purged and cleansed from sin, but every so often there come along these shining moments that seem to affirm for me that yes, the long-haul was exceedingly worth it.

The neon stage of the spring grass came and went without me noticing. I guess I’ve been preoccupied with the rhythms and daily windows of life. Due to rain, the kids have yet to have a track meet. We’re going on the fourth cancellation of a baseball game, which means they’ve cancelled more games then they’ve played so far. The kids don’t seem to mind too much, and I don’t either. They still keep busy with their after school practices and come home with sometimes hours of homework. This is one of those things in life that never made sense to me. If you’re already at school for 7-8 hours each day, why isn’t that enough time to teach or learn everything that needs to get done?

My sister-in-law, a Lutheran school teacher and assistant principal, says it’s more about giving students the opportunities to practice. If they can learn something once in class, and then go home and practice it again in a different setting, it helps cement the concept or skill in the student’s memory. When she puts it that way I can better understand, though it still doesn’t change this awareness I have of feeling like I’m rarely seeing my kids. Tonight, minus the younger boys, we’ll all be at the high school for a trivia night. This is counting as one of our twice-a-month date nights we started this year. For one we go with just ourselves, and for the other we try to meet up with a couple.

I had another counselor appointment this week, these continuing to be a joy and blessing. I told her I often feel like a chaotic wind blowing into her office, disrupting the peace, calm, and serenity with no intention and no direction. We end up laughing a lot as she ends up mirroring my emotions. I like being able to ask her about school, knowing I can name the assignments without even having to explain what I mean when I say “the 4-R paper”. I told her when we started that I didn’t see this being so much of a time for anymore figuring out what’s wrong with me. Instead I saw it more as a time for building back, for helping me to become myself again. I feel like these goals are being met.

It was the homecoming dance of freshman year. We’d been going out for about a month, which back then felt like a lifetime. Leading up to that night we’d had several dates, only one of them being official. It felt weird to have a boyfriend, and I was embarrassed when people started finding out we were “going out”. Most of my friends thought it was funny, but were supportive. My ex-friend, Kelli, who was one of my best friends all through 8th grade, would never call me friend again.

He and I had a code word, and the code word was “bored”. At the freshman bonfire, this is the word we’d use to describe what we were new then to feeling. It was our way of saying we no longer wanted to be there on the haybale with everybody else. We eyed each other, nodding toward the trees. There were too many of our classmates to just walk away into the woods. There was nowhere else to go, so we stayed there.

It happened again the night our class was working on the freshman float. We left the garage and walked around the back. It was dark by now, though the streetlights made sure we could see each other easily. He was already 6-feet tall by then, 5-10 at least, to where, standing that close to him, I had to look up at his face. Matt came looking for us and awkwardly ruined the moment. I liked him too, but our nights would be different. He’d invite me over to watch movies with his brothers, but never anything more.

~~~

His family raised cattle. We’d broken up not long after the day we kissed in the empty hallway after school, but here he was again, and there I was with him. I spent half that summer riding in his parents van to go to his basketball games. They’d bring food and an extra chair for me, and I’d spent the whole day talking to his parents and Matt’s parents during hours of basketball. I was mostly over the embarrassment at this point, but I distinctly remember a time when before I left for one of the games, my dad asked me a few more questions. It’s been a joke in our family for years, how dad would always ask about our lives when we were leaving. He was never one to hold back his deep life advice. “Just remember”, he said, “no guy has the right to touch you.”

I appreciated that, and never forgot it, though I didn’t feel like that was my problem. What I didn’t know how to tell him then, what I had nowhere near the courage or even remotest first idea how to express or ask, was that it was already too late. My dad knew nothing about the times in this boy’s van, not far from our house. We’d park beside the empty basketball court. My sister knew something was going on, and would dress up in hilarious disguises with sunglasses, letting me know with her hand-motions that she was watching me, and also watching out for me. I never told her then about the details, and because I felt like getting pregnant would be the worst thing I could ever tell my dad, that I could never and would never be able to do that to him, all through those days, in any other times of engagement, he was my reason not to.

I threw out every year book, every dance picture, and most of my pictures from high school one day. The oldest two kids were little and I was going through boxes. Most people probably wouldn’t have thought it was all that big of a deal. Compared to what others were doing, it wasn’t that bad. But I’d crossed something, to an extent I didn’t realize until after he was gone. No one knew, or seemed to notice the depth of the depression I fell into for years. He’d brought me with him where his family was set up for cattle showing. For the entire day we hung out with his parents, scanning the exhibits, petting the fair animals, riding the rides with our unlimited ride wristbands. Unlike the night of the bonfire, or the float construction, there were no friends or sisters keeping an eye on us or keeping us nearby. We disappeared into the night sea of farm trailers. That night, after his dad dropped me off, I woke up at 3AM and threw up my Pepsi.

~~~

“I need to be honest with you”, he said. I’d finally found him after searching through the halls of my old elementary school, looking for his name on every name plate above the doorways. I don’t know what I expected, but I thought that he would’ve been more excited to see me. I’d missed him terribly, more than I could’ve ever put into words in that moment. These are the dreams that you wake up remembering. “You need to be done with this–we–need to be done with this.” I felt ashamed to hear him say that, like what did he think I’d been doing this whole time. He told me I was beautiful, that what I had written was beautiful too. That’s not what I wanted. I’d already told him, this wasn’t about him anymore, that none of this stuff is about him anymore, that I really needed him to understand that, to just let me have my space. He refused to hold me.

Everyone was well enough to go to the game today. Baseball season has started again, along with track, which is a new sport this year. I watched the first game from afar again this year, not because I couldn’t be close to people or walk to the bleachers, but because I wanted to sit by the tree. Last year the kids had gotten me a rocking lawn chair for mother’s day, so I bought that along with a school book to read.

I read for about two hours with the sun on my face. A few times when I picked up my phone to text my tired husband from across the field, I’d catch a glimpse of my reflection in the screen. About a year after we moved here, I started to notice a line on my face, the kind that shows up between the eyebrows. For three years I noticed it anytime I looked in the mirror. The one got worse and other nearby lines appeared.

I still notice it, and saw the lines again today. For the first several years I’d see myself and think, “This isn’t my face.” It bothered me that my life was now being worn for all to see. My husband’s and I’s facial lines match each other’s, something that quiets me but also makes me sad. He says he can’t see mine, even up close, though there is no mistaking mine or his. In the shadows, when the light beams from the side, in brighter sun, when we’re sitting at the table eating dinner, it’s who we are. This is our face now.

It’s been a quieter day here. The big kids are off school for a week, not counting games and practices still going on. The boys are off for the week as well. We’d planned to have a sap boiling day with the kids, but as of this afternoon, three of us are down with a stomach bug. It started yesterday evening with one. By the time the sap was collected and brought back up to the house to start boiling, another one came inside sick.

My spring break was last week, which was nice to have. I ended up with an A in the class, which I was happy with. They don’t give academic honors for graduate students, which I was relieved to hear because it relieved me of a goal I didn’t need to reach. Basically my goal now is to pass the classes while learning what I can and continuing to grow in the areas of organization and time management. The next class, Abnormal Psychology, begins this evening. Our teacher told us this one has a lot more reading and less in-class role playing, as things can get sticky trying to act out mental illness.

I think this is something that’s been confusing for me as an adult. Growing up we were often told to reach for the stars. I don’t want to act like that was the overarching message of childhood, but the motivating messages almost certainly had to do with dreaming big. Once you get to adulthood, it’s almost the complete opposite. Often times the advice we’re given as parents and spouses is to lower our expectations. We go from reaching for the stars to suddenly needing to be realistic, which often takes years to figure out what that means. It used to drive me nuts, because what I thought what people were saying was, “You might as well accept reality now, sis. Don’t even try.”

Well, lowering our expectations, whether it be the expectations we have for ourselves or the expectations we have for others, doesn’t mean we don’t try or hold others accountable. It just means we don’t need to try too hard, particularly for things that aren’t all that important, or in the case of righteousness before God, things that are already ours as gifts. I guarantee I’m never going to fully understand this. To use a more constant and present-life example, I want my house to be clean. I simply cannot accept that this is too much to ask. My standards and expectations for what a clean house is will change and have changed depending on the season of life and motherhood I am in. As of now, clean means that there is more space that can be used and shared when guests come over than there is space that is unusable or kept behind closed doors.

I don’t know if this is realistic or not. Having just come up with this definition of clean yesterday, I realize this is something that might take months or years to achieve. But for every time it seems somebody else or some life situation is holding you back, there are at least a dozen times where that same person or life situation is the very thing in some way holding you up. God is the most obvious example of such a realness.