Something I said
didn’t sit right with me
but I didn’t have the energy
to rethink the words

It was the part about trying
and being intentional
setting goals
to walk three miles

Some intention is good
yes, don’t give up fully
but any more than that
you’re living life on the edge

That place
where you
are not able
to see

From now on you wait
until something can be
for the most part
effortless

My sister-in-law and her family are moving to St. Louis sometime this summer. The synod job I mentioned at one point didn’t end up being something she wanted. In the past three years she has probably had at least ten calls. Maybe right about that many, including one to come and be principal at one of the grade schools here. She ended up taking one at an early childhood center with a bigger church in Des Peres.

I feel sad we never made it down there to visit more often. It was one of those things where their free times for travel were always during the times when we had to be here. And then when we did travel we would either go down to Florida or over to New York. As far as I know we’re still planning on going on this South Dakota trip at the end of the summer. I’ve been thinking about this mountain we’re supposed to climb.

I wasn’t going to try to really worry about doing it, but I was thinking I could maybe make some goals like walking three miles a day. I checked my phone where I see my step counts and I’ve averaged 1.8 miles daily over the past half year. I really can’t tell how much is simply being out of shape and how much is something I can’t break through because it’s not going to get better. When I walk up hills I feel very heavy.

It’s hard for me to stay motivated with exercise when I don’t experience the kind of results I want fast enough. The yoga I can do because I feel results with it. I wish I could ask God, “Could I look better than this, or is this just it now?” I’m not content here though, and I do think I could make an effort to be more consistent with something, even as the routine will get thrown off here and there with other things going on.

It’s not even about looks at this point, it’s about comfort. It’s uncomfortable carrying extra weight and wearing pants in the summer. Your breathing is different. Sitting down is different. Diet is not the main thing going on, it’s the yo-yo effect of feeling good and okay some days and completely not on others. I don’t know what the answer is but I also know it’s okay to go slow and take your time. It’s the only answer I have right now.

I need to figure out how to get into my campus email. Of course there are emails I have already missed and while I did take a screen shot of my NetID, I did not write down whatever my password was for this one. They keep changing the security standards so that you can’t just use the password that was perfectly fine without having to add an uppercase number or special character. It’s the first day so thankfully they give you some grace.

And a printed out 27 page syllabus. They have to have all of the standards and school rules. I didn’t think they did that for students anymore but I was happy to finally hold it in my hands and get right back to sitting in my comfortable back row seat. I found a notebook, pencil, and my backpack, then map-quested the way to the school and left. I’d written on a card the number and building and thankfully did not have too much trouble finding it.

Besides the beginning chit-chat and introduction time, we talked about the syllabus for the entirety of the class time. The first assignment is writing a self-care plan paper. The phrase self-care in these classes is about as common and accepted as the plain word “the”. It didn’t seem to bother people and never became a big deal discussion. I tried a couple of times to bring it up (at LCU) and ask how to explain this more in Christian terms.

It’s because I read Twitter posts where people get upset about it. And Instagram too where the idea is somewhat mocked. I know you’re going to have that there but I legitimately wouldn’t mind putting together some kind of visual presentation where I am making the case for “self-care” in Christian terms. This is not something that is even an option anymore. It is something I have to do and make time for in order to be able to do anything.

The past few days have left me quite exhausted by the end. Joyful Hearts week is always a little more overstimulating because you have so many people in one room with the echoes. I’m struggling even now to come up with anything to to say, there’s just nothing left, or nothing in there right now. Lucinda, the nurse, is here for this week and when she comes is always such a highlight of the summer, for the year even for me.

I had to help cook supper. The normal evening cook was sick and the others couldn’t fill in. One of the LuHigh boys is working in the kitchen along with another who has been here with the boy scouts. They both are good workers. The cooks all have their own ways of doing things. I told them they could use a clean dish towel to dry dishes with but when it’s the other cook then you have to do it however she says to do it.

What we’ve really needed is someone with OCD to come in and run the kitchen again. I shouldn’t say that’s what we’ve needed because God provides for our needs and the people he has provided aren’t ones with OCD. It really is hard to not compare the camp I remember with the camp I am living with and working at now. They were big on working. If you were a good worker it would stand out to them, same if you weren’t.

Everyone had their quirks. I personally was a little terrified of the main cook and cleaning lady because she had very high standards and always seemed to favor the male staff over the girls. You can’t flirt with young women or earn points with extra pieces of bacon. I’m not saying she did that. But her way has been what I have had in my mind when it comes to how a kitchen can actually be run. We both miss her.

It’s different when you’re a grown up. It’s actually a good system they have right now so I hope it works out. Miles is another person they’ve hired to help. He needed to make $2000 for college. Laura has a camper where you have to puree her food. She’s the only one like that where you have to feed them. I am grateful still that I am able to work. I could not see once how I would ever be able to. It is payment enough.

It is just as much of an indictment of myself to concede the point that marriage is hard. I will wake up in the morning or have random times here and there when I am inwardly mad about something again. Nothing even needs to happen other than a memory that floats by, or a social media post that you read. I finally did unfollow a couple of accounts where the posts chronically produced in me an annoyed and disagreeable response.

It’s like I’m staring down into the water when I see it, the hurt, and I try to catch it with my hands and cup the water so I can throw it up into the air. And quickly move it along. It’s like an offering, where I say, “By his wounds I am healed”. I just keep offering them up because God is the one who can do something with them, who has already.

So anyway, it’s a practice, a life-long one I suppose. Because the way of peace is truly much better and that is the gift that God is wanting to give me, that he pours out and fills me up with every single day. The ones that most upset me are those with the words I once lived by and believed and told others myself. I keep trying to tell them you almost never hear older women saying these things. It’s the ones who are still learning.

Laura’s parents invited our family and another family over for supper. It’s funny how a relationship between your children opens you up to another whole household. They’ve been at every camp function since this relationship started and have plans to come visit the camp on Monday. Because of circuit events over these years, her parents aren’t total strangers. They are ten years older than us and all their kids are out of the house.

The other family has two sons who are also currently working at camp. The kids wanted to play indoor board games after supper. They’d already played a very intense frisbee game in the yard. I only say intense because everyone was sweating, even though the temperature was mild and the rain drops only small. Board games are one of those things that I don’t enjoy all that much because I feel blocked off from people’s minds.

Laura’s older brother, who was visiting from California, suggested that the married folks play the game Spouse-ology. It is a couple’s game that was developed and sold by Family Life ministries. This sounded fun to me and the men endured it with good attitudes. You had to pick a card and answer questions based on what you thought your spouse would choose from the options. We played a couple of rounds and I would play it again.

The theme of today was bodily ailments. This morning I met with a woman who has been in my life for many years. We started stretching together a couple of years ago. It became a thing for us to get together and catch up on the various things in each other’s lives, while we sat on her living room floor with my apple piano music playing.

So it was lovely to do that again today. I wish I could go into more of the details of the story and the conversations that have come from it. It would make me happy to compose a case study for the sole purpose of showing what the average person is going through. Very often it is more than you think. It was the same with another I talked to today.

Sometimes it feels like God has got me on a leash. I get these chances again to do things here and there. The nursing. The classes. These conversations with others. And when I do it’s like I’m filled with this rush of desire, like oxygen once cut off is free-flowing again. Let me out, my heart says begs, let me out. Let me out and I will run.

“Here in flesh and blood was a truth which I had long believed in words, but never met before. The creature we call a gentleman lies deep in the hearts of thousands that are born without chance to master the outward graces of the type.”
~Owen Wister, The Virginian~

Despite today being more of a rest day, I still ended up with over 7,000 steps. I’ve watched the averages slowly go up. All I did was walk down and back to the dining hall a couple of times, plus once in the evening just to see what was going on. Elianna and I spent some time in the CGC kitchen. Afterward she went to the hammock and asked if I wanted to join her. We sat squished side by side watching the kids on the athletic field.

I was very tired today and slept. The boys had to mow and help Dad with some things but they also had time to play their games too. I half-way cleaned out the fridge. A load of laundry was started for the oldest one who I will do things like this for as one of the few and quiet ways left that I can show love without argument. The younger boys had piano this morning. We didn’t hit a deer this time on the way into town like we did last week.

Tom had another day inside on the furniture. He’s not bad when he’s in here, he just sleeps in different places. Right now he’s on the smaller sofa. The other day he was downstairs and slept all day on the guest bed. This afternoon he was curled up on my pillow. He opens his eyes half-expecting me to be mad at him because I will ask others to put him back outside. But lately they’ve all been more like inside-outside cats now.

Yesterday was what people called “a day” at work. It’s when there’s a steady stream of people acting different, needing things, being a down an aide, and just a general state that leaves no room for any kind of sitting around. One of the cooks came out of a resident room and commented about it being a full moon or something. I’d thought the same thing but I knew that it wasn’t, and told him it was still a whole week a way.

Which I’m only now realizing wasn’t right because we’re already past it. I had a med error that I had to write up which thankfully was not catastrophic in nature. The medication time had recently changed but the dose itself was still in the pharmacy packets for the old time. I didn’t catch it. So when 1PM came around and the dose wasn’t there, we had to figure out that I’d given it in the morning instead of afternoon.

But anyway, the boys were at Grandma’s so I picked them up when I was finished. She’d picked them up to have them help her clean up in the front of the old house. A few bushes needed trimmed and she had some outdoor decorations that had not yet been moved. They went out to eat for lunch and then watched the afternoon Cardinals game on TV. Matt Carpenter hit a home run his first time at bat. It wasn’t at home though.*

*(the fans would’ve loved that)

Last night I was going to try and write about chastity. Obviously having children who are currently in opposite sex dating relationships has got me thinking about this more. And as it seems to go, the stages they are currently in seem to stir up thoughts and memories from when I was their same age. So all that being said this is not a commentary on anything going on with any of them. It’s just the thoughts I am having.

It does make me wonder how God originally designed things to go. Through various ways as a teenager, I picked up on the fact that sex was something reserved for marriage and that sexual activity outside of marriage was sinful. But it also seemed like such a natural way. I would watch Dawson’s Creek on TV where Joey (a girl) and Dawson were best friends and neighbors who often ended up in the same bed together.

Being a teenage show, I’m sure they had sex, but that’s not even the part I remember. It was just the two of them, with their bond and closeness, and this seemed like a most desirable thing. Later I’d hear that rom-com’s were like porn for women. I have looked up porn a couple of times just to see what the big deal is about it. I thought it was gross, and it actually made me a lot less afraid of porn because to me it was so unappealing.

Not too long ago, I watched The Notebook with my daughter one evening. This was supposed to be one of the classic girl-porn movies and I told her we were engaging in some cultural education. It wasn’t an ultra-deep movie, but I actually liked it. Sometimes I cannot stand all the kissing. But this one was sweet. And whether or not it’s girl-porn can be argued, but there was something there in the movie that I felt they got right.

These types of movies, for the most part, follow the natural progression of things. The characters had sex with the person they loved. It was not a random person. Allie and Noah played, fought, got to know each other more, and made up. And this is where the question for me comes in. How long did God mean for two people to wait? Before cultures came into play, and high school and college, what was the intended time?

I think back on those days and would never want to go through that again. I sometimes wonder, “Would’ve it have been so bad?” That is, would it have been so bad to just go ahead and do it and not be constantly fighting temptation? What would the temptation have turned into then? And could things have been done differently to not put yourself in such vulnerable moments, or is this just the way of the world that we all must walk?

At camp we used to say, “Leave room for the Holy Spirit”, whenever we thought a couple was sitting too close. I am shocked when I remember some of the things we used to do. I believe that God’s ways in this area are for our flourishing and edification, but yet why did he make something so like this with such extreme forces to render will-power useless? I would like to write about this more as I continue to ponder it.