Yesterday one of the boys had a field trip here. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, like if I was supposed to take him to school, or if I should be hosting the group or volunteering to help. Turns out they had everything figured out, with moms driving and attending along with even some grandpas and dads. I dropped him off at school with the other boys, and then came back home to work on a paper, skipping the pool feeling like I needed to be here if somebody needed something. At 11:00 I picked him up from main camp and drove to church. Dad picks up the boys on his way home from teaching religion at Lutheran High in the mornings. He wasn’t going to be home in time with the other boys for the timing to work for me to leave our other son here.

So I brought him with me to the new mom’s group that was meeting. I’m not in charge of this, I just volunteered to help with it if needed and to come as I could. Two other moms wanted to start a mom outreach for the mothers of children in our church’s preschool. There weren’t any non-member church moms that came, but we did have four member moms there, three of us who had each brought a son. The boys kept busy with their “busy stations”, including mine who even though he was older, didn’t seem to mind the toys around.

The moms called the group A Cup of Conversation. They set it up so that we all sat around in a table with cups of tea or water or special diet smoothie. They had a coffee mug in the middle of the table filled with slips of paper containing questions. For the scheduled hour, we took turns pulling out a question and then going around the table to answer it. One of the questions was, “If you could only have three apps on your phone, which ones would they be?” Since I pulled this question, I also had to answer it first. My mind kind of went blank as they waited. The first app that came to mind was my WordPress app. It’s the one I use to upload pictures. I used to do this on the computer when I used to use my DSL camera.

But I didn’t want to say that, because I didn’t want to also say I had a blog. So I kept thinking and the next thing that came to mind was Goodreads. I don’t even use that app all that much right now but that’s the one that came to mind next. After confirming that texting, emails, and phone calls were automatic, I ended up saying Goodreads, Instagram, and Safari for the internet. I wasn’t at all happy with that answer, as I felt like surely I was missing something more important, something less wasteful, something that would present for the group a clearer picture of who I was.

After my turn passed I picked up my phone. I knew exactly when I saw it the one I’d forgotten. Once the next speaker was finished sharing her apps, I raised my hand and said I needed to amend my answers. Instead of Instagram, it would be my moon app. I only have my moon app because I like having one, and following the days leading up to the full and new moons. Thing is, I don’t even need the app anymore. I’ve watched the moon for long enough to know what phase of the moon we’re in.

Another woman shared that she would keep her plant identification app. She and I have walked the camp grounds together, identifying plants and gathering her flowers. I admittedly have not done much with the plant apps since the days of 2020. She really likes the medicinal plants, and we even had plans to dig up the wild elderberry on the side of the road, though we didn’t follow through in time before the township mowed. The next girl said she’d want a map app. I thought to myself, yes, that’s the one I was missing. After I’d had even more time to think about it, I requested again a chance to revise my answer, finally landing on the Internet, Apple Music, and Maps.

I met with another group of women today. The women I’d met from our IF gathering this spring had planned to get together for lunch. I’d been reading the texts, but not replying to them, figuring a Saturday was probably not a good day for meeting. I’d planned to work on my paper all day, while my daughter was at an event that didn’t end up working out for her to go to, and Josh and the boys were at a shooting retreat. The morning was surprisingly and pleasantly productive, with two whole pages appearing rather quickly.

I decided during the morning that I would try to go to lunch. After pulling over beside the mowed over elderberry to type out a prompt so I didn’t forget it, I kept on driving, my latest Apple Music choice on repeat. I was the first one there, followed shortly by the others. After talking about date nights and pre-teen daughters struggling with anxiety, one of the women pulled out her phone to read us a personality test. According to this test, everybody falls into one of four categories. Following the descriptions, you had to answer if you were reserved or outgoing, then whether you were task-oriented or people oriented.

We had a good time there as well, though after about an hour my heart started racing. I had a paper to work on, a daughter who now was home alone, and the sun on my back reminding me of the lake. After thanking and waving to the ladies at the table, I returned to the van and called the camp phone. I left my daughter a message, just in case she was on the office computer. I told her I’d be home in 20 minutes to swim. We walked down to remember an afternoon at the lake, first with us both on the paddleboard, then with me swimming, her paddling off in the distance beside me.

I’ve been having a harder time settling into this new semester. It’s a couple of things. The first is that the classes I’m taking have more assignments than my previous ones. Last semester surprised me with the relative ease of the coursework and workload, as I had expected the classes at the very least to be moderately challenging. This semester’s classes are more what I expected.

The second is that there are more things going on in my life in terms of outside commitments where I am responsible for doing things. Last night after class, I told my husband when heading to bed, that I wish I would’ve waited to get more involved with church things. It’s amazing how quickly meetings and blocks of time can add up. I’ve known this, which is one of the reasons I’ve stayed out of said committees and commitments for so long. It’s one thing to have ideas. It’s completely another to be the person or part of the group of persons who now must work to implement these ideas.

Last year often felt like I was in a grueling crawl back to civilization. At the time I started briefly meeting with a few others last summer, I didn’t know I’d be going to school. I had a brief thought today of wanting back my old life. The life when country internet didn’t keep me from homework, when my calendar was endlessly open and clear, when I wasn’t driving away from the boys as one was shedding and choking back quiet tears.

And yet I feel in some way that this is the path we’ve been set on, like God is working and things are happening in his time and all of that. To put it another way: I have long prayed for this. Not necessarily these things specifically, but for God to hear me, for God to answer me, for God to do something, for God to keep helping me. I still do say things here that I end up questioning. I hate that feeling like I spoke too soon, of suddenly and intently fearing whatever I just asked God for, like I should’ve just kept that all to myself and let me and God’s business be just between me and him.

All of this stuff just leads to more prayer. Prayer that I can get these papers written, that the pieces will fall into place with these church things, that the boys would find comfort and strength in God, and continue to do well as they grow and adjust. Prayer for good sleep and focused work. Prayer for the mourning, who like the poor, are always with us. Prayer that I would not be anxious, but trust. Prayer knowing God is my shepherd, and ask.

“Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows.”
~C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce~

You know what’s something I never think whenever I hear of actual people who’ve had affairs, either through social media, or with someone they know from church or work, or however and wherever else these things happen? I absolutely never think, under any circumstances, that the people involved in the affair must be meant for each other. There is no thought of, Hmm. I guess their spouses weren’t the rightful people after all.”

Heck, no.

There is no thought of, “Maybe in another life, somewhere down the road, those two people will end up together.” Can I empathize with how relationships can be hard and complicated and how the people involved in them are deeply flawed individuals with their own hosts of problems? Yes I can. Do people have weakness and proclivities that serve as fuel for poor choices that get them into trouble even if they didn’t go looking for it? Yes. But never in a million years does affair equal destiny. The ramifications, the absolute horrors that would have to play out if this were true, is unthinkable to me.

Lord, have mercy.

Adultery and murder always go together.

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”
~2 Corinthians 4:7~

It’s a resting in bed and working on homework kind of day. Sometimes I come down in the schoolroom on the guest bed. There’s more light down here and it’s less secluded than our bedroom. I also like it because it’s the same guest bed I used to sleep on when I was little. My grandma called it the pink room because it had pink carpet and the decorations in the room were pink. When they moved from their house and were getting rid of and giving away most of their stuff, I requested the guest bed. I never did find a new bedspread for it, but instead have been using one that she had.

I did go to the pool again this morning. I didn’t really swim though, I more just danced. That’s what we’ll call it anyway. There’s a water aerobics class that takes place at the same time. I’ve always liked that swimming is a sport that even old people can do. The women who come to this class aren’t old. I would guess they range somewhere between their 50’s-70’s. Beside me in the lanes though were two old men. Another middle aged man came in from the locker rooms, stood there for a minute, then left. All of the swim lanes were taken up. For a split second, I wondered if he was mad that I was taking up a lane with my ballet. I normally would’ve swam more, but was still more tired again today.

Last week I started compiling some lessons I’d been learning in all this. I’m only remembering one at the moment. The lesson is that you can’t rush healing. When I see now where I was over a year and a half ago, I can see that I was trying way too hard to rush and condition my body back to health and normal. While conditioning would work for other kinds of weakness, that’s not how it was ever going to happen with this. Our primary healings only come through rest. It meant I needed, and was given, lots of time for doing nothing, a time for simply laying there and letting God hold me.

A friend asked me how I was doing today. I said I was doing fine and she looked at me like I was lying. I was, but saying fine was easier than saying that the organs in my core were feeling constricted again. Today was our annual chicken fry at camp. Despite the rain, we had a good turnout, and I remember thinking my husband had done a wonderful job with the sermon. Somewhere toward the end of the chapel service, I got up to leave and stand outside. I suddenly felt like I was about to start crying. I never did.

It mostly just feels redundant to talk about. Some of the things I’ve written here have been wildly tame. Anxiety isn’t a sufficient word to describe what this is. No I cannot stand in line for an hour. I actually have to go sit down in the shade. No I cannot be the person to jump into the kitchen fray with the dozen plus volunteers who barely seem to halfway know what they’re doing. I actually should be going to lay down. I carried a friend’s baby from main camp to our house and hours later still feel like I am trying to catch my breath.

The boys had friends who were visiting for the weekend. Their mother is a woman I met during the days of my first blog. She and I and another mom had a fairly regular email thread that lasted several years before life just continued to get busier and busier. At the time we all met, one had four kids, I had five, and another had six. This weekend the one with four came and visited with her ten. My boys and hers have been pen pals for several years, though now they tend to email more and have times for approved and limited online games. She and I have gotten together a handful of times, and this is the second time our boys have been able to play together in person.

We had a wonderful weekend. I have to say, five kids isn’t nothing, but ten kids is a whole new thing entirely. Absolutely delightful, every single one of them, and it was a joy to finally meet them all. The only way I know how to befriend a mother with ten children is to make myself useful however I was able and not be offended when she couldn’t really talk. When I needed to sit down, and left her standing with her tiny group of wonders, I wouldn’t have known how to even begin to explain.

Again, so much more than I could’ve done a year ago. I do continue to thank God for that. I keep thinking how homeschooling the boys had been easy, even though I’m seeing the needed good in this change. The other night I asked my big kids if they thought I was old. They said no. I asked if they thought I was different from before. They said yes. I asked them how so and one of them said, “You don’t do anything”, then added, “I mean, you do things, but not like before.” Yeah.

“To wait for moments or places where no pain exists, no separation is felt and where all human restlessness has turned into inner peace is waiting for a dreamland.”
~Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life~

Penciled into the margin where I first encountered these words are an asterisk and the personal note “Not true”. It was my knee-jerk reaction, my displeasure made manifest, my un-slowness to speak, my definitive statement in response to his. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had something more to say, like the kid in the back of the classroom whose hand and voice rises to challenge the beloved and seasoned teacher.

That’s not what the Bible says. “But the new heavens, and the new earth, that’s not a dreamland”, says the child, “It’s real, every last bit of it, and that’s what we’re waiting for.” Of course I don’t believe the author would’ve disagreed with that. He wasn’t talking about the coming world. He was talking about this one. Prior to the above quote he says, “There is much mental suffering in our world. But some of it is suffering for the wrong reason because it is born out of the false expectation that we are called to take each other’s loneliness away. When our loneliness drives us away from ourselves and into the arms of our companions, we are, in fact, driving ourselves into excruciating relationships, tiring friendships and suffocating embraces.” He’s saying God is the dream we will never wake up from, and when we do, we’ll find his love is even better than life.

It’s hard to be a dying romantic in this place. It’s even harder to be a cynic or a skeptic or any of those other aggravating words that take us away from the heart of God. I was a little annoyed by something I said yesterday, when I talked about the fondness I had for the homeschool years and the people who filled them, as if a mere sentiment is all I’m walking away with. If fondness had been my only reward, my only great possession in exchange for youth and time, what a colossal waste of life and energy it would’ve been. But as it stands, I was given something more, more solid and stable. I was given the door that swings wide open, handed the shores of the kingdom of God.

“When we say that ‘God is love’, we do not mean that God’s love is the same as any earthly love that we have known…We are saying, though, that there is a reality, love, that exists; it is the most precious relation in the world. It is what we are like if we are ever at our best–what we should dream to be.”
~Steven Cone, Theology from the Great Tradition~

I don’t know any other way to say this, but for a long time, homeschooling really was kind of the dream life. The journals I kept remind me that it wasn’t always, but the fondness I hold for our homeschooling years and the people who filled them is something that can never be taken from me. It’s funny, even leading up to the week before, I would run into a pile of math books and think, “You know? Maybe I really could do this again.” As I type, the book piles remain as a work in progress in the schoolroom. Again, the week before school, when I had yet to fully decide in my heart which path we were taking, or to fully accept the path already laid out for us, I came across The Epic of Gilgamesh. I started a new pile, designated as “Books We Are Going to Read This Year.”

But every time I tried to take that path, it was like an image appeared in my mind of a door. I somehow knew that the door was for homeschooling. Taped across the door was a sign with bold letters, with a single word: “No.” In front of the door, as if I was watching myself from an outside place, was my body on its side, curled up in a ball. My head rested on a rock as a pillow. It was like the part of me that had always said, “I can do anything, I will do anything…” had laid down in front of the door and said, “I can’t”. The other parts of me looked around. They said nothing to each other and nothing to the part of me curled up in a ball. It was no use trying to tell her to reconsider or get up, not that anyone tried to do so. They stood there in silence and said, “Ok”.

This morning I went to the Y and swam. This was the second time I’ve gone this week. The grade school is only a few miles away from the Y, which is a different one than I have gone to in past times. Even more than walking, where my legs and heart must carry the extra weight of my upper body, the non-weightbearing activity I’m allowed in the water feels to me doable and healing right now. The paddle-boarding has also been good. Overall school for everyone here has been going well. I’ve got an assignment due this weekend where we’re supposed to use our readings and scholarly articles to write a 5-page paper about self-care. Five doesn’t seem like enough pages to cover that, but I’m also glad it doesn’t have to be any longer. That’s what I’m needing to get started on now.

When our oldest son was a baby, he had a babysitter named Jennifer. She was a seminary wife and mother of four who lived on campus. She watched four babies during the day, one of them being her own. The babies names were Madison, Judah, Ethan, and Anna (her baby). Even though I would normally think that one woman watching four babies would be way too much, I felt better in knowing she was an experienced mom.

Josh was a student and I was a student. When we first started dropping him off, he was still refusing to use a sippy cup or bottle. On the longest day, he would be with Jennifer from 7AM-5PM. I remember wondering what I was supposed to do regarding him drinking. He was an older baby, eating a diet of ham, cheese, green beans, and peaches nearly every day off of the baby lunch plate we sent with him. Because he was getting food, I knew he wasn’t starving and wouldn’t starve while I was gone. I was worried about him being thirsty.

In the afternoon break between classes I’d drive the 20 minutes back to Jennifer’s house and nurse him. I also wondered whether or not this was going overboard. With Jennifer not being a first time mom, I was certain this was something she would not have done. Ultimately my concern for his welfare overruled any concerns I had about whatever someone else might possibly think about me. Eventually he began drinking water out of a sippy cup. In the evenings when I’d be watching him from the couch, he would toddle up to me saying “muck, muck”. Once he started standing up and leaning over my side-laying body to nurse, I decided it was probably time to wean him.

He nursed for 22 months, the second longest of all my kids. The longest was the youngest who weaned at age four. On his third birthday I told him that he was big enough to not need baby milk anymore. “Baby milk” is what he called it. This is the one who I never needed to potty-train, because he learned by watching his older brothers. He would take his diaper off in the morning and leave it next to his potty in the bathroom. Then he’d put on his underwear and walk around in that for the rest of the day.

The ones in the middle received their attention too. My daughter nursed for 15 months, my next son for 18, and the next one for 20. Weaning my daughter when I did was something I ended up regretting, having done so hoping I’d get pregnant sooner, later feeling as though we had missed out on bonding time. The other two were weaned after I was pregnant, when something about the hormone changes made it too painful to nurse.

“Instead of bombarding us with everything that needs to change, God shows us, piece by piece, where growth is possible.”
~Skills for Effective Counseling: a Faith-Based Integration~

This year the boys are enrolled at one of the local Lutheran grade schools. Earlier this month I went and toured the school and met with the enrollment coordinator and principal. If I had more of a story or a reason behind why I did this, I’d say so, but I don’t. I was mostly just exploring an option, wanting to see what the options even were, and find out whether or not the financial requirements would even be an option for us.

I’d heard this school was good about accommodating homeschoolers. I had originally gone to inquire about working out something for the afternoons where the boys could come for some electives. I asked the principal to be honest with me about how they feel about having homeschoolers come part-time. She said that while she could see where it’d be fun to come in the afternoons, for her money, she’d rather see students come for the mornings when the core curriculum classes take place. Using a block schedule, the core classes are Religion, Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies.

Today was their first day. They are signed up for the half-day mornings, 8AM-12PM, five days a week. I think we’re all going through our own adjustments, but overall everyone is on board, and they had a good day. In many ways I see this simply as a continuation of the learning we’ve been doing: “Okay, boys, this is what school is and this is what going to school is like.” I continue to be grateful for this journey we’re on.

“In that day the LORD of hosts will be a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people…”
~Isaiah 28~

Toward the end of St. John of the Cross’s work The Dark Night, he writes about the three faculties of the soul being acted upon by God. He identifies these faculties as the intellect, the memory, and the will. Through the soul’s dark night, which can also be representative of the Christian’s earthly pilgrimage to his eternal belonging and reunion with Christ, and which was suffered most acutely by our Lord himself on Calvary’s cross, the intellect becomes faith, the memory becomes hope, and the human will is transformed into love. The theological virtues of faith, hope, and love are our present partaking in Christ by which Christians are given victory over every earthly enemy.

He pairs the heavenly gifts of faith, hope, and love with the Christian’s enemies; the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh. Against the devil we are given the gift of faith. When describing the armor of God, St. Paul identifies the shield of faith as the element by which we extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one. Faith comes by hearing the word, and the word of God is divine power to silence the devil in his temptations, words of condemnation, and terrors. Hope is the strength by which we now face the world. Looking beyond it’s meager pleasures and enticements, still residing in a world where death, decay, and corruption would only lead us to despair, hope is the turned renewal of forward vision toward the God who rich in mercy has promised to love us all the way home.

“This is the ordinary task of hope in the soul;” he writes, “it raises the eyes to look only at God…” He is the only one whose grace is sufficient to sustain us when life’s storms would swiftly destroy us. He kneels there beside us in trials and sorrows, and opens his hands to collect every tear. To look to God is to behold again the one who loves, knows, and created us, who does not hide his face when we need him but holds the treasures of life and peace before us of remaking and restoring our innermost being and raising up our flesh and bone. In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, a nightless hope laid up in heaven, a home in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.