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.

I did not end up going back down to the movie. I opted instead to go to bed and was grateful for another decent night’s sleep. Everyone came back a little after 11 and the stirring woke me up briefly but not for long. With it being a holiday most of us slept in. The cooks had the day off and Dad had made plans to grill for lunch. During staff training it’s normal for our family and the counselors to eat together here and there.

The four boys went for a run this morning. The Concordia kids are back to their training plans. They get two full weeks off of running once school is out. The first couple of weeks start out pretty easy and their workouts depend on their eventual mileage number that peaks somewhere toward the end of the fall cross country season. So they only had to run two miles today and did that out on the bike trail away from traffic.

I had breakfast ready when they all came back. Laura is working at camp this summer and she and Ethan have been over for supper a few times. Sometimes the staff goes out to eat or they’re supposed to find leftovers or use the food that’s in the kitchen. They don’t seem to like having to cook for themselves. I’d really like to give the CGC kitchen a good deep clean but did not end up getting over there again today to do that.

This afternoon we worked a little bit on the downstairs. Dad worked on the outside back yard and I was trying to tackle the mountain of laundry after the boys had put most of their stuff there after camping. There’d been a misunderstanding. They thought I’d said everything needed to be washed after being outside. I was wondering why they’d put their stuff there and was thinking that most of it didn’t need to be washed.

I did end up washing most of it. This way it’d be fresh and we all knew next time they wouldn’t have to put their blankets there. It really isn’t hard for certain things to get neglected which is why certain areas end up looking like they do. I really can’t explain why this is but if there isn’t regular purging and getting rid of things we don’t need, then things just continue to accumulate and fill the spaces. I was looking again at the books.

The ones I kept were the ones I was sure I wasn’t able to part with. Just glancing at them again I think I could probably give away about a third of them now. It made me think about how letting go often comes in stages. What was not okay before, or what once seemed impossible, somehow changes and the feelings are different. It’s good to notice how it happens like this because it helps us to have patience with ourselves and others.

Normally I would’ve wanted to go down to the beach today but it’s still been a little bit cold for swimming. Dad and I picked a book for us to read over the summer. We were trying to come up with a plan for us to do to stay connected. It really doesn’t have to be a whole lot, just something that is registering to one another as thought and effort. This wasn’t at all what I was going to write about. I’d try again but I probably won’t right now.

We had a good turnout for the hog roast today. After a while I went back to the house. I did visit with several groups of people and individuals. The people from our church said that church had been almost two hours long that morning, close to an hour and 45 minutes. Everyone thinks that is too long for church but nobody wants to be mean about it or complain that church is too long. I thought it was just me but it’s not.

The woman who helped me with the flowers for outside the office stopped by the house to see how they were doing. They’re doing fine. I told her about the ferns I’d gotten and how when I looked it up later it said they’re supposed to do best in morning light. Right now where they’re at they get afternoon and mostly evening sun though they are always halfway shaded. She didn’t seem too worried about it and neither was I.

Camp had a blow-up movie screen on it’s Amazon wish list and somebody bought it. I was there when they were setting it up. It was actually quite funny because of how it was blowing around in the wind before it finally stood upright. They’re watching Beauty and the Beast down there but I didn’t want to watch it. They had to wait until it was darker outside first. I might go back down there though just to be there for a little while.

My intentional cleaning energies today were put toward working on the front of the house. I started in the morning when the kids were at school. There was a storage bench in front of the house that was old and cracking. Most of the stuff inside of it was also garbage. So I took a wagon and loaded it up and made a trip to the dumpster. Dad and Ethan helped with the bench and put it in the camp truck and threw it away.

I forgot the bigger kids get out of school early this week. Dad was busy getting things ready for staff training which started today and for the hog roast coming up over the weekend. He was going to take both of the kids as helpers but I said I really could use one. Before we headed over to pick up the boys my son came with me to pick out hanging ferns and some hooks to hang them with. He likes these kinds of things.

He hung them up when we got home, after they’d all gone down to main camp for lunch. They brought back a leftovers box with my name and a little heart drawn on it. I like that I never feel out of place with this cook. Later the kids helped with sorting through more of the outside bats, balls, and table things and weeding in the front of the house. We moved one of the other benches so now it’s in the place of the old one.