We got some more snow last night. There’ve been enough snow days in the school year now that schools don’t call snow days as quickly. Josh had another chapel service this morning, this one also being over two hours away. He called to let me know the roads were slick, and to have the kids drive slower and leave earlier. I left home about quarter to seven this morning to walk over and cook for the quilting group that is here this weekend. The big kids texted me around 7:40 to let me know they’d made it to school. The ladies began coming out of their rooms around 7:45. The boys came over around 8.

Dad had told them to shovel and salt the sidewalk, so that’s what they did. For breakfast the quilting ladies had scrambled eggs, bacon, muffins, yogurt, and fruit. I had all kinds of thoughts this morning about the food service industry, everything that’s wrong with our camp kitchen, and why I don’t cook for camp on a regular basis anymore. But at the end of the day, none of that seems important. My food manager certificate is good for five years. It comes in handy on days like this, when the other two cooks were unavailable. The boys came in for breakfast, went home, then came back for lunch.

I finished watching City Lights last night. I didn’t have much of a reaction to it. I was waiting for the woman’s reaction, which I don’t feel like we fully got to see as the audience. When I searched online to read some reviews, as expected, I apparently missed a key point to the story. Charlie Chaplin’s character is poor, but the woman mistakenly thinks he is rich. I hadn’t noticed he was poor. I also didn’t realize that the woman all along thinks the man who’s helping her is rich. I’d have to watch it again to find where exactly that happens. But overall I enjoyed the movie and am glad to have watched it.

The sap is still flowing. Monday afternoon we drove down and collected another couple of gallons. It does make me wonder how much more we could get if we tapped another forty trees (right now there are 12). Out past the giant sycamore there’s a grove of maples whose beauty takes my breath away. It made my brother gasp too in the first year we saw it. I don’t know if anyone else would find it incredible, or if my brother would even describe the grove as a breathtaking beauty. But it’s amazing to me to see the open wood floors, with the bare trees glowing with a tint of red from the sun.

It only happens in the evening. The photographers call it golden hour, which I find to be quite the appropriate name. The morning has one too, though it’s only a few minutes. In terms of color, March is about the brownest, muddiest, ugliest month there is, though I’d forgotten about the way the rising creek turns emerald green. And yet I still find it fascinating, still don’t care that it isn’t quite spring, when where I’m standing by the creek will be completely under water. In the summer, when it’s dry, the camp kids play here which is something I don’t enjoy thinking about. I’ve changed some way in adulthood, as creek-walking used to be one of the few camp activities I actually liked.

Months before Covid a man from church let me borrow a movie. A year or so before that, we’d been in a church book club together. During one of the meetings he somehow started telling me about a movie called City Lights. Anytime someone tells me something is amazing and that I’ve got to see it for myself, they catch my attention. I told him I’d have to check it out, and I intended to do so. Months later we ran into each other at the library. He asked me if I’d watched City Lights yet, which I hadn’t.

A few other times when I saw him in church he would ask me. He finally brought the movie to church, along with a typed-up note of interesting facts about it. This silent black and white film, which stars Charlie Chaplin, was also written, produced, and directed by him. The part that had caught my attention is when he said the final scene of the movie is said to be one of the greatest closing scenes in the history of cinematography.

I have never finished watching the movie. Through months of covid quarantines, countless free evening hours of reading, innumerable Saturdays with time where I could’ve watched it. I tried to watch it once and decided to try again later. The movie sat in our house, the cardboard slip-cover gradually becoming less and less new-looking. I put it in the place where the outgoing library books go, so I’d remember to bring it to church and put it back in this man’s mailbox. I came and went, day after day.

Today when we came back from gathering sap, I asked the boys if they could help me straighten the mud room. There was a bag of clothes and a pile of books that’ve been sitting there waiting to go to goodwill. When I picked up the book pile, there was the City Lights movie, with a dry yellow stain on the cardboard. I smelled it to see if it was something other than what I knew it was. There was cat pee on the cover.

It was bad enough when I would see him here and there throughout covid. It was even worse when we ended up in the same pew one Sunday. There was absolutely no reason for not having watched this movie. I finally just looked over and told him after church that I hadn’t finished the movie yet, and that I was sorry I hadn’t yet given it back to him. Again he told me that the ending was good and that he thinks I’m going to like it. But now that I know that there’s cat pee on the cover, that I still have not watched the movie, that now I’m wondering what I’m supposed to say if I don’t even get or like the ending, I’m not sure how much more this man can take.

I say I don’t care that it isn’t yet spring, and I don’t, though March is that month where I start to run out of juice. I’ve basically been loving every month since July. I got up at 5:30 when Josh’s alarm goes off. He had to leave early for a chapel visit a couple of hours away. This was the big kids’ late day, where they don’t have to be at school until 9. They left around 8:20 because they like to be there early. With the boys settled and working on school, I went back to bed and fell asleep. I woke up when Josh got back a little before lunch. We talked about a marriage situation happening with another couple we know, as everybody made and ate their lunch. After that we all went down to the woods to collect sap. I couldn’t hear the creek like last time. When we drove back over to look at the creek, it made us stop to not only hear but to see the difference. The rapids had become a calming green.

We’re back to our it’s-still-winter-here weather. Yesterday’s temperatures peaked above 70 degrees. Today we’re hovering in the lower 40’s, with winds that feel bitter and harsh after yesterday’s warmth. The boys spent the morning with Dad outside. Tuesday and Thursday this week we had classes from one of the local schools come out for a morning sugar-tapping field trip. Josh took the parents, teachers, and kids down to the woods where the maple trees are. The boys stayed up by the fire, adding wood when needed and charged with the task of occasionally stirring the pot of boiling sap. I wasn’t completely comfortable leaving them like that, but if I were to wait until I was completely comfortable before I let them go again, all three of them would still be nursing at my breasts.

Sometimes this sharing of children creates conflict. While I have my adventurous side and want my kids to be free and have experiences, I also tend to be more protective and worry more it come to their safety. Dads don’t seem to worry as noticeably, or in the same ways. They have different ways of parenting their young and introducing them to the ways of the world. In a perfect world these differences create a vibrant life, an entire family and community of harmony and balance. Even in an imperfect world this oftentimes happens. But in an imperfect world, we have to hurt a little more.

I had a chiropractor appointment this morning. Right now I’ve only got one more scheduled on the calendar. There are things I’ve liked and haven’t liked, which maybe I’ll write more about another day, but there is something to be said about the hope and belief that you are being helped, particularly in times of great desperation. It’s not just the adjustments, but the insights that are gained through the regular interactions. You learn a lot about healthcare when becoming a patient, one of the things being that consistency of care within the provider-patient relationship is in its own way healing.

The boys and I went down to the lake again today. Right around lunchtime they asked about fishing. One of the boys got a fishing pole for his birthday. This led to another searching the garage for any kind of usable broken one. They asked me again through the window if they could pack their lunches and go fish. They had everything planned. I said they probably needed to find some worms first, thinking this might give me some more time to decide whether or not the answer to the fishing request was going to be yes.

On the way down the beach hill one of them said, “You just gonna tan, Mom?”, to which I replied, “Nah, I brought my homework to read.” In a way that made wonder what’d connected in his mind he then asked, “What if we get pulled into the water by a giant fish?”, to which without even thinking I said, “Eh, I’ll come and save you”, (though I’ve thought about it considerably since.) Thankfully the only saving that needed to happen was that of a bobber and line that got caught in a shore tree. Since I was the one in the most transition-able clothing who could also reach the tree, I pulled up my leggings, slipped into my sandals, and walked to the edge where the beach becomes water.

Since it was outside of the swimming area, I was not thrilled about the prospect of walking on the lake floor thick with months old leaves that were homes to who knows what. I said out loud, “Maybe we need to wait until we can get one of the boats…”, to which one of the boys and I realized nearly simultaneously that we could just get one of the kayaks out now. He and I walked up to the beach shed and carried the kayak back to the shore. He got in, fully clothed with shoes, and paddled himself over to the tree. He tried at first to use his knife but ended up having to break the branch with his hands. They fished for nearly two hours, didn’t catch anything, but also enjoyed the wide afternoon.

This morning the boys and I cleaned the dining room windows. While they were working on school, I spent time cleaning up the kitchen and wiping down the counters and cabinets. It’s a satisfying chore that I try to do weekly. Earlier this year we went to Target so I could resupply the house with cleaning supplies. For years I have used essential oils mixed with water and spray bottles. There’s nothing wrong with that, and the scents are still better than any store-bought cleaning products. But I wanted something that was ready-made to make the cleaning supplies more available for kids to use.

So I use my sprays on the counters and the floors. For a short while the house looks as though part of it was cleaned. I didn’t clean the floors this morning and it was good I didn’t. With the boys and I coming in and out the back door, in and out of the kitchen to refill the buckets with clean water, there was quite the trail of dirt and mud. While we were outside I had them rake and dig out leaves from the side of our fence. They wiped down and sprayed off the screens while I wiped down the window sills and the siding that surrounds the windows. They definitely look cleaner and better than they did, but since the windows are older, the glass parts still have a fogged up shine.

It felt good to work. I didn’t get any kind of outside spring cleaning done last year. The potato gardens we planted the year before grew completely back over with grass. Each year I look out at my back yard area and think about how much potential this space has if only I knew what it is I’m supposed to do with it. In addition to having new windows, with new siding if I was really dreaming, the outside landscaping seems like something it would be nice to pay somebody to think up and do. This is one of those things about living in a house we don’t own, but is owned by a not for profit ministry. Money is something you don’t spent loosely, so you can’t get too ambitious about making any kind of major or solely aesthetically based changes to the house that you’re living in.

I finished my paper over the weekend. I ended up having to take my computer up to my mom and dad’s over the weekend. It was my grandma’s 90th birthday, so we had a party for her, which was a wonderful time. All I had left was to write a conclusion and then finish proofreading, and that took me three hours. I don’t know if that’s normal or if somehow writing papers will get faster with practice. Anyhow, the paper got done. I turned it in on Saturday night.

I’ve had some deeper thoughts about life that I haven’t been able to sit down and write about. I come to these places sometimes where I start to wonder what the point of everything is. Like, if I were to die tomorrow, is this what I want to be doing with my life? I have lived a lot of my life this way, basing my choices on who and what is most important in life in light of dying tomorrow. On the other hand, I’ve also recently thought, “Let’s say I’m still alive in 20, 30, or 40 years. What do I want to have done or be doing with my life?”

There’s this saying out there in inspirational Instagram land that says something like, “If God puts a dream in your heart, it’s because he’s going to bring it to fruition.” Well, that’s not exactly true I’m realizing. Not that I haven’t realized this before. But every so often things happen that bring that reality back into the forefront. There are plenty of people who had dreams that did not come true. Let’s take Jane Marczewski, the singer who became famous last summer after her memorable appearance on America’s Got Talent. Well, her story was supposed to go like this: Jane wins the Golden Buzzer on America’s Got Talent. She gets to compete with the rest of the amazing singers and wins. Throughout this time she continues to get stronger and beats the cancer odds.

That’s not how things went. She won the Golden Buzzer, and then had to drop out of the competition because her health was declining. She continued to get weaker and weaker for months, until she died. It didn’t matter what her dreams were. It didn’t matter how strongly she believed or how rebellious her hope was or how hard she fought to live for her dreams. I know death for the Christian is not the worst thing, and from what her family says, Jane died with the hope of knowing Christ as her deliverer. This doesn’t stop me from wondering why God heals sometimes but then doesn’t heal always.

The friend I mentioned several posts ago is doing better as of late. She’s started doing high dose Vitamin C IV’s. Her family also arranged for friends and relatives to be able to call or facetime on a regular basis because she is so uplifted by fellowship. I have different thoughts about health these days. While there are a lot of things we can do to promote health and well-being, there really is only so much we can do. I used to want to believe that every situation, problem, and perplexing question is figure-out-able. I want to believe the answer is in the tree sap, a juice fast, or in some kind of life hack that can be figured out by human beings, and yet, I can’t think of anything farther from the truth than this. God is the keeper of all of our days. Ultimately our lives are in his hands.

We didn’t end up with the 8-10 inches of snow for today that was first predicted. This morning the boys and I walked down to the beach to check out the lake. It had melted enough and gotten cold enough again over the past several days to be covered in flurries and a thinner layer of ice. The boys were light enough to be able to walk and slide on it and not break the ice. The difference in weight between me and the boys was just enough so that any ice I tried to walk on cracked or broke through.

I’m taking a break from working on my paper. I had to stop this afternoon to read the biblical book of Esther for a discussion assignment due by midnight. Our assignment was to share our favorite or least favorite theme or event from the book and why. I took the more negative route and shared how almost immediately I felt anger toward King Ahasuerus for making such a rash judgement call following Queen Vashti’s dismissal of his request. Not only does his personal request seem selfish, but when the queen does not do what he wants, she is swiftly removed as queen. One of the king’s advisors, Memucan, imagines and fears an extreme scenario where word will get out about the way Queen Vashti refused the king, which he says will then lead to women throughout the kingdom holding their husbands in contempt. Instead of any self-reflection of his own behavior and motives, or working things out between him and the queen (probably a naïve proposal for those times, I admit), the king clamps down on his own power and strengthens the kingdom-wide grip of men as rulers over their wives. 

“Not only against the king has Queen Vashti done wrong, but also against all the officials and all the peoples who are in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus”, Memucan says in the presence of the king and his officials. In the king’s humiliation, a woman is blamed. I’m not saying Queen Vashti wasn’t somehow in the wrong. Whatever her reasons were for refusing his request, she likely could have done so in a less humiliating way for her husband. But it is the king, in this story, who is sinning left and right.

In a lot of the Christian resources I have read over the years about the relationships between men and women, I have typically seen it described how one of women’s chief sins and desires is to rebel against male authority. This isn’t just in books I’ve read. At a pastor’s wives conference last fall I listened to a deaconess speak about how women have trouble accepting that they are not in charge. We all have an inner feminist inside of us who wants to rebel against the divine order and grasp at male authority.

It came up in Bible class a few weeks ago when the pastor was talking about laws being passed for sex education in the public schools. He said we can’t just speak out about what is wrong. We also need a picture of what is right. He then went on to describe God’s design for marriage and the way God created men and women, as well as the ways that sin has distorted it, including a woman wanting her husband’s position. I sat through a pastor’s conference just a few years ago where a loved and respected seminary professor taught a room full of pastors and a few present women that Genesis 3:16, which says, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you”, means that women will desire to control their husbands. I learned quietly and remained silent, without so much as even raising my hand to ask any questions (For the pastor’s conference. This past recent time in Bible class I said something). I used to hope my husband and the other pastors would notice how feminine and godly I was, as that is what I thought the good men cared about and praised. I was afraid of what men might think of me or my husband if I raised my hand to speak. I didn’t want to humiliate my husband in front of these peers of religious men for having an unsubmissive wife.

I used to believe this about myself, that I wanted to rule my husband and that in turn I needed to submit to his authority, which I didn’t think would be too hard since the desire to usurp his authority wasn’t something I felt. I believed that any dissent or disagreement rising up in me was simply my Genesis 3 tendencies coming out to rear their ugly heads. I interpreted my actions and desires by filtering my life through the lens of this long for me intriguing verse. The solution was to deny my thoughts, my feelings, my own rebellious personhood and unsubmissive voice. All of this I put on myself. This belief was a double-edged sword that resulted in more and more self-denial and a stunting of my growth toward relational health and wholeness. In books, and blogs, when it would talk about a women desiring to rule over her husband, I wondered if maybe I just had it easy and didn’t feel this desire to usurp and rule like other women. I was proud I wasn’t rebellious like apparently the rest of the women of the earth were. To control and rule over my husband was not my desire at all. I wanted him to love me and I wanted his heart like I had it once before.

I have issues with the complementarian interpretation of Genesis 3:16. One, I don’t like it because it makes women look bad. Two, I don’t like it because I’m 95-97% certain it’s not true. Kevin DeYoung, pastor and writer, and one of the main supporters of complementarianism in online circles, wrote an article back in 2013 responding to women who at the time were respectfully challenging some of the popular complementarian teachings and beliefs. Their Genesis 3:16 interpretation was one of the main issues of these women’s contention. In his article New Wave Complementarianism: A Question and a Concern, Kevin writes:

(In order for the next quote to make sense it’s important to know that Susan Foh is the woman who wrote the article What is the Woman’s Desire that states that a woman will desire to dominate her husband, and that the husband, in turn, must rule his wife. The first time I read it I had an extremely strong urge to stand up and scream, “LIAR!”. Links/parenthesis below are all contained in the original article. I added the bold).

“Susan Foh – Her argument that the “desire” in Genesis 3:16 is the women’s desire to domineer over her husband makes sense to me from the parallel passage in Genesis 4:7 (cf. Claire Smith’s excellent post defending this view). Alsup believes this is an entirely new interpretation that was never before heard of until Susan Foh argued for it in 1975. Even if this were the case—and my quick perusal of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture shows that Johannes Brenz (1499-1570) wrote about “when women aspire to dominate their husbands in running the household” in his commentary on Genesis 3:16—it doesn’t do much to alter the central point; namely, that the blessing of the male-female relationship has been twisted into a burden by sin. Husbands, who can be tyrannical, need to love their wives; and wives, who can chafe at submission, need to respect their husbands (Eph. 5:33). This basic point is hardly dependent on Foh or her almost 40 year old article, which no one but a handful of scholars has heard of or references. “

The point I’m trying to make is that the way people teach and interpret the Bible matters. If Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood had said, “You know, this is a difficult passage to translate, so we can’t say for sure what exactly it means, but the general idea is that the blessing of the male-female relationship has been twisted into a burden by sin”, that would be one thing. If Johannes Brenz or Martin Luther or John Calvin or Kevin DeYoung or any of these men with more authority had said, “I wonder what the women would say, it might be worth at least asking them…”, then we gladly would’ve had a deep and loving conversation. But the way it stands now, there is a very specific belief being taught to women and about them. If I am wrong and this view of women taught from the Bible is correct, then I trust the Lord will work in my life and show me I’m wrong. If it is the actual interpretation and teaching that is wrong, then I would argue that this greatly matters. It means that pastors, teachers, and men and women in the church have been bearing false witness against women for years.

The kids had another day off school. This morning we walked down to main camp. Dad had left us buckets in the dining hall for collecting the tree sap. For the past three years, my brother has come down to tap maple trees. The first time we did this was in March 2020, right before the shutdowns. He has a friend who is skilled in identifying the state-wide trees. He knows them simply by looking at the bark, which is a useful skill to have in a season when trees have shed their leaves. The first year, we caught the tail end of the tapping season. We yielded just enough sap to make a half cup of syrup.

Last year he came with more friends, wives and children included, to make a weekend out of it. I wasn’t healthy enough to do anything except stare at my brother while he stood in the garage vigorously explaining the collection process he’d set up. Josh and the kids did the collecting during the following days and weeks. I’d drink the pure, unprocessed sap, hoping it to be a kind of magical mineral elixir to heal and cure me. It’s like drinking crystal clear water with a noticeable but light refreshing sweetness to it.

We picked up the buckets then drove down to the bottom of the hill where the kids and I collected the sap from the ten tapped trees. So far we’ve stuck to the trees on the edge of the woods, simply because they’re most accessible. The yields have never been extravagant. If we were hoping to store quarts and quarts of homemade syrup to last us year round, we might by this point be looking deeper into the words for different trees. What we do get is enough to know the lavish experience of gladness in February.

I didn’t go to class tonight. Josh is gone for most of the week in North Carolina. Once a year they have this February week-long gathering for camp people. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the kids alone for that long. Since we’re allowed to miss two classes in an 8-week period, I figured this would be my time to miss. We walked down to the lake this evening and amazingly the lake still had ice to walk on. The snow we received in the recent snowfall has nearly melted in the past few days of fifty degree weather.

We had a wonderful day, but I wasn’t productive at all in terms of any kind of school work. I have a paper due this weekend which I have yet to start on as far as actually typing out words. I’m hoping tomorrow brings more focus and productivity. This one is on Feminist Therapy applied to the case of Stan. Stan is the fictional character in our theories textbook. Every chapter has two or three pages of the chapter’s theory being applied with Stan, based on his biography. Stan has a fear of women that he is hoping to address (among other things). I’m planning to look over a few pages again after getting the kids tucked in and settled, hoping the time I have is more than enough.

The big kids had another snow day today. They called off school last night following inclement weather forecasts. This morning when we woke up there was nothing on the ground or falling from the sky. The freezing rain scheduled to begin shortly after sunrise did not appear until the early mid-morning. Since then the snow has fallen swiftly without mercy.

This neuroscience thing is still in my head, but not as much. I decided not to take the class. I still have to tell the teacher, but at least my mind is made up and can thus return to a state of peace. From the very hour the thought first entered my mind several weeks ago, I didn’t know whether or not the presentation to add more classes to my schedule was a temptation to resist or an opportunity to embrace. There’s another one I could take on Tuesdays.

The thing is, I like my schedule now. I like being able to focus without rushing. I like being able to absorb more of the material. I like that I still have time to read other things of interest. Going back to the reality therapy, I ask the question, “What do you want?” The answer is easy: I want to take the class. But even if I could end up managing the paper, I don’t want this class enough to believe it’s realistically beneficial or wise to think I can get through all those quizzes before class starts in two and half weeks, which the teacher has been encouraging students get started on since fall semester. I opened my student portal to take a look at them. They’re not the kind of answers you can know without studying.

When it comes down to it, there are other things in life that I want far more. I recently finished a book called The Sexually Healthy Man by licensed counselor Andrew Bauman (weird jump, I know, but I’ll try to connect this.) One of the things he talks about is facing the arousal that comes from encountering beauty. In his chapter Face to Face With a Dying God, he tells the story of a time he was participating in a group training session. The attendees were asked to pair up with a partner for an exercise to quickly bring them into their shadow. This exercise required the partners to hold uninterrupted eye contact, with their faces approximately 12-inches apart. After holding eye-contact for several minutes, he says they were asked to complete the following sentences “without thinking, from our gut”.

I love and I have never loved

“I see in your eyes…”

the one I cannot ever love

I feel shame when I…”

remember the ways I didn’t love you

“My fear is that you will see in me…”

that I wasn’t as good as you thought I was

to fall in love with you
was to fall in love with me
a grace that I might see
again
for if you could love me
so could I
old love so true
we never die
quiet
hell
Love breaks the spell
all falsehood slain
the Lamb will reign
my sun, my star
falls down before him

Andrew writes about being paired with a woman who he also found to be incredibly attractive. His heart started to pound as he looked into her eyes. Shame overwhelmed him as he remembered his past years of objectifying and devouring beauty rather than honoring it. Thoughts and fantasies bombarded his mind to be pushed away as soon as they entered. In the past he’d have used her to seek pleasure for himself and numb unhealed wounds. The dying god was an illusion that women were the answer to his life’s deepest pains, that a beautiful woman could save him from his heartache and traumas. Andrew writes, “I no longer wanted to engage with her in a degrading way, but I also didn’t want to ignore what was going on inside me. In my experience, the more I try to push uncomfortable emotions away without properly acknowledging them, the more power they have to control me.”

Several paragraphs later, he continues on, “When facing my deepest shame and terror, I had to answer my deepest question and greatest fear: Am I a good man, despite the evils I have perpetrated? These complex questions are typically the ones we most want to escape, but what if we decide to no longer judge them? What if we pay attention to these uncomfortable emotions and arousals? What if we could practice being with them, instead of attempting to annihilate them? What if we could stop naming them “good” or “bad”, and simply see them as an opportunity? What if we were curious about their unexpected arrival? Is it possible that they are here to help cleanse us, teach us, and foster redemption and wholeness? What if we could bless, rather than curse, these emotions? Within this posture, no matter what comes up in us, we can give ourselves permission to work with, instead of against, our pain, moving through it and into healing. Nothing is so vile that Love cannot redeem it.”

Somehow by reading his story, I was healed by it. Not completely, not everywhere, but somewhere in the fabric of a quiet heart, a part was mended. I cried when it happened, but I didn’t cry too much. The pain was different, less severe than before. I wouldn’t even say I completely related to what Andrew said, but in other ways his words were like the ray to shine a light. The sexual side of my humanity would not have been the first thing I could’ve told you was broken, not that you can so neatly divide the human being up into sides.

Which is why this still somehow is all connected to the class. The vice of the enneagram 7 is gluttony, which means the corresponding virtue of mine is sobriety. They say happiness isn’t everything, and I get what they’re saying. I can even accept it without the urge to fight back. Two days ago I knew and believed that I wanted this class to be more fully happy, which is the same thing I wanted for the stranded man on the moon. Today it’s beautiful to see the earth is turning again.

I added another class this semester. I’ve been going along fine, thinking the course work and work load hasn’t really been too bad. Multiple times I’ve thought I could do more. But I ended up registering today for the Neuroscience intensive that’s being held over Spring Break. We’re required to take two electives, offered on a 3-year rotation during break times. Neuroscience is a class I would really want to take, and since it only comes around once every three years, this semester is more or less the one time I could take it. Last night in class I overheard classmates talking about how they have required readings and 29 quizzes that need to be completed before class even starts. I contacted the teacher this morning, trying to get a better idea to see if this was something I could realistically do.

She sent the syllabus and I instantly thought, “Nope.” Over 1,000 pages of reading for the quizzes, plus a case analysis due at the end of the elective week, a lab report from a sheep brain dissection, plus a 15-page research paper with at least 10 scholarly sources in APA format. The class is held during the day for a week, and then you have to turn in your paper two weeks after that, so by March 25th. It’s not even the daunting prospect of trying to cram in, take, and pass that many quizzes, or writing that long of a paper that bothered me most. It was the realization that taking this class is highly likely to diminish any chance I might’ve had of meeting my goal of graduating summa cum laude.

I was explaining this at my counselor appointment this afternoon. Not being that far out from completing the program herself, I was interested in her input. She said this particular professor was tough, which I’d gathered. The rest of the electives aren’t that different, with most of them requiring prep work similar to what she was asking. I’d missed a meeting earlier in the semester where I probably could’ve learned some of this information sooner. All this to say is that I am trying to be mindful not to overdo it or pile on too many new things at once. I want to get done with school faster if I can, but I also don’t want to be overly absent from my family or set myself back with unnecessary stress.

I’m positive that at some point I’m going to end up regretting this. Nothing is set in stone so I can always drop it if I need to. The problem is I’m fairly interested in neuroscience and really want to take the class. I ran past my husband the idea of auditing it. Because this professor requires any auditing students to still complete the required reading ahead of time (speed-reading would surely have to count in this case), and since I’d still be gone for that week during the weekdays attending the class (8AM-12 or 8AM-4), he didn’t think it made much sense to not go ahead and get the credit for it. “That means you’d pretty much just be doing it for fun,” he said. “Yeah, basically”, I said, unashamed and perfectly sure of my thoughts and beliefs.

It’s been a busier past couple of days. Nothing out of the ordinary, just enough extra outings and commitments to keep me from the normal space and time to settle down. I called off school today to give the boys time to sleep in and rest. A few kids have had low-grade fevers here and there. Four of the kids and three of the cats have colds.

But also, the off day was for me to catch up. If the weekends are fuller and the weekly reset doesn’t happen in terms of clean-up and down time, then Mondays become the catch up day. That’s what it was today at least. My sleep hasn’t been the greatest this past week or two. Anymore it doesn’t take long for lack of sleep to catch up with me.

The big sigh of relief I was waiting for after finishing last week’s presentation came this afternoon when I realized all I have to do for tonight’s class is show up. Three more weeks of classes and this first 8-week session is over. The major thing I have left to do is write a ten page paper due on the 26th. We’re supposed to pick one of the textbook’s theories and write a paper on it. It can’t be the same one we presented on.

I’ve been thinking about over-explaining, which is supposedly some kind of adaptive response connected to times in your life of not feeling heard. I feel like God is bringing peace to this long-held inner needing to be heard and understood. I’m hoping that as these inner parts of me continue to heal, God can take the over-explaining, opening space for time and words where I am also able to explain other things.