Dad texted to let me know they were in the parking lot. The plan was to pick me up at work and then head over. While out in Nebraska I picked up a day shift on Spring. Because I have to say no so much, I try to say yes on the rare occasion these days when I actually can. But it was under the condition that I’d be able to leave a tad bit early at 2:45. She said that’d be fine and came down at 2:30 to get report and finish things.

I’ve been a little shocked by these grown-up skills I’ve been learning. Knowing when to say no, having boundaries, being able to negotiate with another person regarding your needs. It feels like a totally different way of life. Any time it “works” I am always like, “huh??” But there is the other aspect too where it’s not all about you and whatever needs that you have. The point of working with others is that both might benefit.

The kids had a meet in Bement. There was something charming about the podunk town that almost seemed too far of a trip to keep on the meet schedule. Their skies opened with a magic rain beforehand that got you wet but didn’t soak you. Their bathrooms were the kind where they gave you a key to a rusty old door in the back. I didn’t know they still had those, just like I didn’t know the surprise joy of these days.

The kids had the day off school for Columbus Day. Elianna is on her way home from Nebraska and the boys spent the day working out in the woods. One of the former directors had made wooden platform for his kids. At some point since then it was destroyed by a tree. They disassembled everything and made a pile of wood in the yard. I’d periodically go out to check and see how things were going.

I spent the day inside. The weather has turned to the chilly kind that sparks holiday inspiration. My special Christmas cleaning mood music was on while I spent much of the day sweeping and putting out fall decorations in the front of the house, cleaning the bathroom and Elianna’s room, and jumping back in to the laundry cycles. Elianna cleans her own room but I swept and vacuumed and changed the sheets.

Dad told the boys they had to come in at 3. “I wish I could get them to channel that energy toward the things I would actually like for them to do”, he said around lunchtime. I said, “Oh I know.” He said I should make the boys fold the remaining baskets downstairs. I’m torn. I like folding it myself and having the neater end product, but it does take time. I left a basket half-folded for whoever gets to it first.

Dad and I went for a walk to find Casper. He disappears when we’re gone and doesn’t know when we’re back. He worries me sometimes the way he goes out in the woods and lately he’s been farther and farther past the lake. The one fall when one of our cats disappeared we’d started seeing her across the lake. We looked for her for two months but she never came back and we never found her remains.

We didn’t find him. We got back around 2PM and the food bowls were empty. On the way past County Market we stopped for a giant bag of cat food. Two to three days isn’t long to leave cats. Thankfully there were a few people around who could get in through the office and let them in and out while we were gone.

After the meet we drove to Forest City where my brother and sister-in-law live. We’d never been to their house and figured while we were out there we should take advantage of the chance to go see them. It was a fun time and there was plenty of room for all of us. I always feel bad making people wash sheets either before or after we come or maybe even both. You just hate to be extra work for people.

But I think it’d be even weirder to be like, “Hey, I’m just going to bring my sheets and put them over your bed so you don’t need to clean up from me.” When we were helping after the knee surgery, the daughter-in-law and I did just that. They had this guest room with an Alexa hooked up that functioned as an intercom system throughout the house. That’s how she would get a hold of us and let us know from the other room.

That wasn’t weird though because we just decided that’s what we were going to do. After all was said and done I don’t think a soul thought twice or cared. There is the work of hosting others but there is also the joy in it. I felt again inspired to come home and clean and make my house a sanctuary. There’s a reason hospitality was emphasized so much in the Bible. But what that reason is I do not think I’d exactly know.

I know it’s a way we care for others and a way God cares for the world. Sometimes we’re the hosts and sometimes we are the travelers. The hotel where we stayed on Friday was nice and a nice one always feels like a blessing. We had a “suite” with pullout couch and two queens, with a kitchenette and extra floor space. No need for pack-n-plays or crunched quarters, I thought of the days when they again were all young.

While out walking the course I overheard a couple not talking. She was on the phone with someone on their way to the meet, giving them directions on where to turn and what it looked like. After hanging up she said out loud something like, “To think that someone would call and ask me something about directions, it’s so crazy. I am definitely not that girl.” I kept waiting for the response but it never came.

I looked behind me. He was looking straight ahead, expressionless. Had he not heard what she said? They looked to be in their early seventies, still mobile and able to walk. The silence went on and I turned back around. How many times had she said things with no one there hearing? I’m not saying it was the kindest thought but it’s the one that I had: “What makes a person turn so dull?” I meant the man.

Oh geez. It’s not easy. These relationship issues that we encounter on occasion. How quickly things can turn from, “We’re good, I’m happy”, to “How is it you’re still not understanding my needs?” I recently read the concept of needs being challenged. If I remembered where I would say. It isn’t so much that needs aren’t real but that we put too much emphasis on them, and I almost said I’m not that girl either.

We’re out in Iowa for the weekend. A meet was planned in Sioux Center which is in the top northwestern corner of the state. We had originally planned to come for the one in two weeks until we realized Elianna’s regional meet was the same day. The college meets come to a total of five, not including the team 5k they run at the start of the season, or the conference meet where only the top 8 runners of the season participate.

I’d come to every single one if I could, and am still bummed about missing the Augustana Invitational in Sioux Falls. It’s worth it to me to be here for them especially knowing how fast it all goes. Even now we’re already at midterm, and before you know (Lord-willing) two years of college will be behind us. Elianna is on a college visit to Concordia Seward with one of her friends. She doesn’t want to go there but went for the trip.

A policeman pulled me over not long after I’d started to drive and gave me a speeding ticket with a fine for $175. I took it stoically and didn’t say much about it at the time or later and neither really did anyone else. My aunt and parents said goodbye to my grandma and began their travels home from New York. We’ve been keeping each other informed with a group text sending flight info and driving times and pictures of the trees.

I had a dream that my father-in-law died in my arms. We were walking in a parking lot and I started walking a different direction. He started to stagger like his legs were giving out. He was a wearing a blue shirt and black suit pants, and I wondered why in the world he was wearing those clothes in these warmer temps. He collapsed but thankfully fell softly not hard. I ran to him and placed my arm underneath his head to block the asphalt.

He started turning a yellow color, saying “I don’t know what’s going on here.” And then he lifted up his head, and looked at my mother-in-law standing at his feet and said, “Pray for me”. She said “I will”, not knowing what else to say or do. I couldn’t tell if he meant inside or if he wanted to actually hear it, so I put my hand on his chest and spoke. He was dying, obviously, thinner in the face than he ever was to see in person, and then he fell asleep and I woke up.

His death is not like ones whose dates are seared in your memory. Because it was gradual, because the surrounding days were full of losing track of the time, it’s more like “What day was that again??”, or was like that at first. I sometimes think of him there (in heaven), but more often than not I think of him here. The days we had of us all together or what it’d be like to have him still. Angels do know more now what it is he thinks about.

You never know what people are going to say when they start talking. It’d been a week since I had been at the homeless shelter and I sincerely missed it. I’m glad they have put me in the temporary housing section because the people there don’t change as much. I actually love showing up and seeing the kids in the dining room. I’d like to have more time for the moms so I didn’t do the younger groups. Mondays I can do that.

The supervisor at Thrive had asked me, “Who is your ideal client?” I still don’t like the word client but I also didn’t know the answer. He further explained. There are the ones who energize you and the ones who deplete you. The little kids aren’t my ideal for groups, but I do still like to be with them. Over the supper hour it’s usually chaotic and crazy as to be expected. I like to walk from table to table and talk to them as they eat.

Particularly with the kids, this doesn’t really get or even need to be about addressing everybody’s anger issues or going into their personal trauma. Sometimes little bursts of happiness are just as important for human growth and wellbeing. That’s how I see these groups, as a way for little bursts of happiness to be part of their life for a time. The abuses and the rapes and the stealing, all of that needs greater care than I can give.

“…to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night.”
~Psalm 92:2~

When we were with Grandma Sunday morning she wanted us to go around and share our testimonies, the stories about how and when we accepted the Lord. My sister and I were in our room for rest time and I told her I was going to ask Jesus into my heart. We were on the floor with our pillows next to each other. This seemed like something that was intimate and private so I put my head under my pillow and prayed.

I was four. She was three. Later around age five I wanted to ask him again. We came home from Vacation Bible School and I told Mom this time. She prayed with me and it was kind of a big deal. She told Dad and he was happy and there was a family meeting on the couch. I never doubted my salvation. The repeated askings were only feeble attempts to get me closer, to bring me nearer to this one I loved so much.

Like it was the only way I knew how to express it, this come to me, be with me that God had awakened. Like a breath is not enough and the exhale takes longer. About every 10-15 she would ask us again, wanting us to share our stories. This is new, but it is not, and we loved her more and more because of it. And she was satisfied with our answers because answers weren’t the point, only God unending who fills in the gaps.

The boys made a scarecrow last week to scare campers and school groups. I think the only one it’s really scaring is me because every time I’m in the kitchen and catch the window in my eye there’s this black figure in the field that isn’t normally there. I kept thinking it was an ostrich. The big kids came home from practice later one night once the sun had gone down and they asked, “Who is that person standing out in the field?”

A picture doesn’t do it justice. They never do. Every time I tried to take a picture of the river, or of the sky in the early morning as we took off from the plane, I kept thinking, “But that’s not what it looks like, that’s not what it looks like…” I saw an Instagram reel once that compared this phenomenon to pictures we see of ourselves. I don’t think guys care as much but for girls you can often think you don’t look good in pictures.

And this reel said it’s the same way about pictures of you as the ones you take of the sunsets when there is no way to truly capture their fullest essence and beauty. This was me as a forty-something reading this and I was absolutely floored. I’d never put those two phenomenons together. If that’s true and that’s what it’s like then I can hardly believe it, how wrong we can be, how so much time is wasted on whatever isn’t true.

I keep thinking I need to make a writing goal, to commit myself to writing one smart sounding paragraph a day. I can read a page of something, then try to carefully explain whatever it is I just read, and then not only that, but then share my thoughts or voice some kind of conclusion. It bothers me so much to be stuck like this, to not be growing and developing my brain in other ways. It’s like I can’t or wasn’t meant to sound smart.

Dad is at a pastor’s conference in Carlyle. When we were plotting out our calendar and trips it was realized that I would be gone and then he would be gone and the opportunity see each other would not happen in between. He dropped the boys and their schoolbooks off with Grandma around 9AM. I was home around 1:30 and went straight to bed. After that I went to the store and the boys were back here around 4:30.

At first I was disappointed that he’d be there without me, not that I’m sure I would have gone. Going to these conferences together used to be our thing. Grandma would come down and stay with the kids. A couple of times, maybe only once, I brought two of them with. I love Carlyle Lake and wanted to be there with him when he saw it too. The kids and I used to come here and play, half of them I don’t think would even remember.

Actually, he’s coming to the meet. The kids have a meet and then he’ll be home on Wednesday. The kids and I went to get ice cream in the evening. One wanted to drive and the others just wanted to go out and do something. One of the former counselors who is currently living at camp came along. I was still in my green pajama pants from the night/morning before. I woke up and thought they’d be great for the day’s travel.

They could almost pass as those kinds of sweater-like outfits you see in the stores now. I think they look both pretty and cozy. It’s like a matching knit shirt and cozy looking pants set. I stayed in the car and gave the kids my debit card. Elianna knows the PIN. Before long they were back enjoying their blizzards and we drove home singing familiar songs. Before that the kids played volleyball outside and we ate supper at the table.

I’ve never seen her this excited about a man. My aunt, almost 70, has never been married, thought it hasn’t been for lack of chances. She’s been engaged twice. Once to a man who they were supposed to go and be missionaries somewhere. After their couple interview, an old man told her it’d be best if she didn’t marry him. He wouldn’t treat her well and she wouldn’t be happy. She took the advice to heart and never looked back.

Then there was Tim. They dated, were engaged and then were not engaged, and remained friends for a long time, but he was also an alcoholic which was why it didn’t work. There was always a reason, something wrong with whatever man had liked her or pursued her. When she was 33, she and Muggs walked the property of Grandma and Grandpa’s land. We followed them around as they decided the fate of their relationship.

It wasn’t to be. And it’s hard to wonder why when he went on to marry Janie who he was happily in love with and also had two children with. Even when I’d see him in pictures through the years I would wonder why it wasn’t him. They were childhood friends and had grown up together. What was there not to love? In our 20’s there was Carl from her church and he seemed nice. We asked, but she didn’t like him like that.

There were others. But one I’d never heard about was Tim from her high school class. About a month ago (tomorrow) he reached out to her over text and they’ve been talking ever since. They’ve talked on the phone and texted pictured. They haven’t yet Facetimed and I told her that was the next step. I can understand the hesitation but all it’s going to take is one time and she’ll be used to it. We could practice if she wanted.

We’re all just like, “Why not?” No one she’s told so far has raised any red flags. Grandma, of course, has been praying for her to find a husband for many years. And even I now feel car. She gave us all a little booklet that her pastor had written about marriage and the fruits of the Spirit (let us not become conceited, provoking one another…) All of us are married (me, my sisters, my parents). There are things to learn.

Mom reminded us girls that our awake time was early, and wisdom recommended sleep. We listened, said our goodbyes to Mom and Dad, and moved next door to our room. Our aunt followed us in, for there was more on her mind and of course we had to hear it. She has listened to us, prayed for us, been an aunt to us for all of these years. His long-time wife, gone almost a year, was a Methodist pastor. And we all said, “And??”

Not those exact words but that was the attitude. There are things as time goes on that seem like not as big of a deal as maybe they would’ve been five or ten or twenty years ago. Christian women can get worked up about the idea of following a man. He has to lead me, this is what the Bible says. Somewhere I’m sure it does, but following a man can be rejoicing in who he is, being happy with this person who has come into your life.

Yes there are other things to talk about and she will have to do that too. I’m looking forward to getting home and being again with my family. There was a team dinner, Dad preached, and Liz’s girls are supposed to wear yellow tomorrow for Yellow Day. But in the meantime we just took it in and shared in the stories, the journal entries from long ago, the gratitude notebook marked for nearly a year with T.C., meaning “Tim called”.