Well the track meet did not go as any of us had hoped. He was hoping to stay and finally PR in the 800M after nearly a year of college training. Instead his time was even slower than his best time junior year in his first year of high school track. This is pretty consistent with how things have gone this year, with some good and exciting moments, but overall just a lot of wondering on why things are not going better than they did.

Many other teammates met their goals. The one runner who’d tried to break the 5K school record during the last meet we were at ended up with another chance and set a new school record (now 14:39) by 3 seconds. That was very exciting. Ethan and another teammate also did the triple jump like they had done in high school as something fun and different for the end of the year. After the second jump his nose started bleeding and he ended up scratching the event. I was right there in the lower stands just acting like it was the most normal thing in the world. I eventually did bring him some water and tell him to stay sitting down. The more you move the more the heart pumps.

There were about three hours between the two events so after the triple jump my younger son and I went back to the hotel room. I needed to fall asleep for a while. We left here again a little after 8 to be there in plenty of time before the running event at 9. There was hardly anyone in the stands where we were because we sat on the opposite side of the main ones. We talked a little bit in the parking lot and said goodnight until morning.

St. Joseph was too far away so we’re stopped in Chillicothe, Missouri. It’s about half-way between home and Nebraska. Josh is taking his mom to the airport tomorrow or more of us probably would have come. They had sectionals tonight and Elianna did well. I can’t believe we’re basically done with the season already. It seems like we were just getting started.

Ethan is running tomorrow as well. He stayed an extra whole week just to run in this one. The cafeteria has been closed this whole time so I’ve tried to keep my balance between being curious as to what he’s eating and wondering if he’s eating enough and just figuring that he’s going to figure it out. He and another guy have access to a stove and a fridge so that helps.

One of the boys came along with me. We figured this was about his sixth or so trip out. Two of others apparently would’ve rather gone to school and another wanted to make sure she was there to watch the weekend school play. They have a pool where we are staying and we have plans to try it out tomorrow. The meet isn’t until later. We had a nice supper together.

Josh’s mom took us out to supper tonight at MCL. Tomorrow night is the girls’ sectional track meet and the next day she leaves to spend some time with my sister-in-law and her family. They are working on trying to move closer. My sister-in-law has had about five different interviews in the past several months and it’s looking she’s going to end up somewhere close to and around St. Louis.

After supper Elianna and I went to senior awards night at Trinity. I’ve kind of enjoyed reliving all these end of the year senior moments. Afterward we talked to Miles and his parents for a while. We drove home and played music from my phone. We checked on the river before going back home. It hadn’t changed much since she and I had checked the last time. We stared in amazement at the grown tree being carried along.

The schoolroom and boys’ room flooded again. The fans and the dehumidifiers were going and need to be checked. I spent the morning with a woman who I asked if she could help me put together flower pots for the camp office door. The flower pot by our door morphed into a container for the baseball gloves and baseballs. I do like it for now. I still need to sweep, but the flowers are there.

Well I wasn’t catatonic but I did spend a majority of the day resting in bed. I don’t think it was the exercise, it was being out later last night for a track meet. After waking up and spending time together this morning, I fell back asleep until it was time to take the boys. I usually eat breakfast after returning home, and once I’d done that, I was going to drive to the river to see if the rain had caused it to rise any more.

But then I realized I was exhausted. I’d started to feel it about halfway through the meet. I remember lying in bed and feeling like I wasn’t colored in. Like if you had a coloring page with the lines but there was no color. Every time it started to come back, if I did even something smaller, the color drained out. It was like it was leaking out because there was nothing there anymore that was holding it in.

This is why swimming is still able to work. It’s because something holds my body up. The same thing with the bike. This is why running won’t work anymore, because with that you are the one who is holding up your body plus the other stuff you’re trying to do. I started a yin yoga video for stomach and spleen. I was just picking something. But I didn’t like it as much because it didn’t have the affirmations.

And she didn’t hold the movements long enough in my opinion. So I searched for Yoga with Kassandra who is the girl I’ve come to like. I found a new one I hadn’t done, Yin Yoga for Healing or something like that. The affirmations are statements she makes that you say as you begin each position or pose. I like them because it gives your mind something to focus on and think about while you’re being still.

There were several affirmations that stood out to me with this one. The first one was, “I treat my body with love and respect.” I have mentioned before that my body would have different reactions to some of these statements. With this one I was perfectly still and calm, nothing happened. But with the next one, “I allow all parts of myself to be expressed”, both my upper body and lower body shook again.

I’ll say it couple of times just to see if it does it again. It did. Here’s the thing with all this, I have not personally experienced yoga to be a cure. Obviously I’m still dealing with the effects of whatever it was that happened now over three years ago. I have my ideas, understandings, and hunches about some things, but other things are still unknown to me. I accept that there are mysteries and unknowns in God’s hands.

But it did something that somehow helped. So I’m a believer in whatever that something is that involves the bodily stretching and turning of the mind toward guided words. It gives me a chance to feel like the color is being given a chance to be colored back in. After doing the healing one I went back to the grief one I used to do. I wanted to hear again what the affirmations were for that one. I just listened.

“Today I choose to heal”

“I am willing to let joy into my life”

“I let go of my resistance toward this situation”

“I am surrounded by support seen and unseen”

“My heart opens up a little bit more every day”

“My tears are holy and healing”

“I trust in the goodness of life”

“I relax and allow feelings to move through me”

“I show myself great care and compassion at all times”

I’m still stuck on this river thing. Today I did look into it more and I feel like this is something that maybe actually could happen. After reading through some info, people’s opinions, and stories, I looked up the place where on the river we used to swim as kids. It’s a little over 1000M wide, probably closer to 1100. That’s not that far, and unless I’m completely underestimating or off about something, an hour seems like a good guess.

It motivated me again to move more today at least. We put air in the tires so I biked around for a while and down to the lookout tower and back. Some people had come to fish. I saw my daughter on a walk and asked her where she was going. She was heading down to the beach but didn’t have any shoes on. So I parked my bike and walked with her but we had to walk slow because her feet were sensitive on the rocks. By then the sun had set more and it wasn’t particularly warm so jumping in was not appealing.

“Well don’t overdo it”, he said, “We don’t need you catatonic for the next three days.” I was lying on my back on the floor in our bedroom, pushing an 8lb weight into the air. It was the one that was close. I admittedly have never swam in prolonged open water currents, so I do not know what that would be like. But that’s kind of what I’m wanting to know. What would it be like to swim across a running river? It’s at least fun to dream.

Yesterday I said that about wanting to swim across a river then later remembered I swam across the Rio Grande once. I’m not in the mood to write about it. But the part where I swam was never over chest or waist high. I am talking about a wider river that I estimate would take about an hour. That’s taking your time and not trying too hard. I was thinking about this last night when I was awake, how some people train for half or full marathons for whatever reason and how there’s no way I would ever do that.

But swimming across a river you wouldn’t even have to train for. You’d just make sure to have your boat alongside and the lifeguard tube attached to your body. I’ve never even researched if there’s a right way to do this. This afternoon I went down and jumped in the lake. This is the time of the year we’re getting around to our first swim of the season. Miles and Elianna had gone swimming down there earlier and said the water was actually pretty nice. I didn’t stay there long, just enough to be submerged.

And then I walked around for a while. I also tried to bike but it had a flat tire. There was nobody out at camp today which is odd for a weekend but also nice to have it quiet. Dad and the boys had gone back out to Grandma’s to finish mowing. A storm blew in not long after they arrived back home. It came down heavy for a while and has rained on and off for the rest of the evening. I can’t think of anything else to write mainly just because it’s getting late. We had a nice supper together and Saturday evening at home.

This morning we took a drive out toward the river to check for flooding. One of the groups had called and said they thought the back road was blocked off. It was, but not because of the water. The river was still contained in its banks but barely. I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to try and swim across a river. They used to have to cross rivers when traveling from the center of the country out West.

Sometimes men would be washed away while they crossed. And there would be no burials or searching for bodies. The rest of the travelers would just have to go on. The currents, even in a small river, seem like something you wouldn’t want to get caught in. It seems like it wouldn’t be that far or that hard, but all it would take is an invisible tree passing by underneath and the whole thing would suck you under.

Later when the boys were home we checked out the creek. It rained last night. You could tell by the mud and the puddles and foam. The windows were open which always makes the best sound. We looked at the water but didn’t stay long. I followed them all out of the woods into the wellfield, and then through the tree-line to approach the hill. The boys ran. We walked up and I raised my arms and took a breath.

I’ve been following a couple of pregnant women on Instagram who were due around the same time and have all had their babies in the past month or two. One of them is my age and this was her ninth baby. The other two are in the later half of their 20’s. All three of them had homebirths. I’ve mentioned a couple of times here how I have not ever really had that baby fever that you hear women talk about.

Today might have been the closest I have felt to feeling something like it. The mom was nursing the baby while recording a series of Instagram stories. She was holding the baby so chill-like and has pretty much been holding her baby whenever you see her since the baby has been born. And I smiled and thought to myself, “That’s how I’d do it too”, where you and your baby are basically together all the time.

Not because of some kind of parenting method you are trying to follow but because this is just what comes naturally to you. And how after doing it at least a couple of times like all of these women I’m referring to have, you know more how fast things go and how changing your life for a little while to hold your baby is just one of those things that you do and truly cherish. The baby looked so cute cuddled up and nursing.

This afternoon I asked my son if he felt like I was distracted last night when he came in to ask me about his homework. “No”, he said, clicking away at his game. We were sitting on the couch, me with a Mary Oliver book I could not get into when I suddenly looked up and over to my left. “I thought I was maybe distracting you”, he said. I told him he wasn’t, meaning, I wasn’t mad at him. I’m glad we got that settled.

After that we went to the store to fill in the rest of the lunches and food things. Dad and another one of the boys were out mowing. The two of them then headed out to his mom’s to mow there. When we came back I noticed the grass and thought I should say something. “The house looks nice”, he said, “or the living room at least”, sometime after they were home and we’d eaten. He was trying to be specific. I’d forgotten that I’d cleaned it, that I’d straightened up, swept, and vacuumed the cat hair again from both of the sofas, and by then there were already cords, books, and laundry baskets filling the space. “Thanks”, I said, “The grass looks nice too.”

It’s gotten to this point where not writing here is worse than writing something here that is seemingly pointless. Like it will torture me all day tomorrow if I don’t take five, ten, fifteen minutes tonight and type out something. I had more energy earlier to do it, and had myself situated on the couch with my computer, when I decided to Facetime Ethan instead. With it getting toward the end of the college school year, I’ve been thinking of him often and feeling eager for him to come home.

Dad and Elianna were out at different things. There was the high school board meeting and Wednesday night youth group. The boys and I hung out. I worked a day shift today so before supper I was resting in bed after picking up my son from practice and starting the rice. Josh had gone to the store earlier in the day and picked up a few things to have for supper for a few nights. We ate together in the living room and talked for a while on Facetime. It was nearly 8 o’clock and they were getting ready to go bowling.

We talked about the meeting for a while and he said he got fiery when it came to the proposed name change discussion. One of the boys came in and asked me for an idea of what to write in a card he has to make for school. The kids are making the pastor cards. He’s already left the room again and now I feel sad because I was distracted and had to try so very hard to engage. I’m going to go out now and spend a little more time and then kiss them all goodnight with me at peace with the day.

Casper had been missing for at least two days. Today I would’ve likely had the boys go out and look for him, but one of the cleaning girls brought him to the house this morning. She had found him in the Retreat Center when she went in to clean. He went straight for the food. There’d been a school group and then another group here toward the end of last week and then over the weekend. He loves when the groups come.

We have a new loveseat in our living room now. Yesterday morning the teacher dropped it off. He helps with a small country church nearby here and was going to be in the area so he brought it on over. I wished I could’ve shown him around the camp but he seemed a little rushed and pressed for time so I didn’t offer. I worked on my paper for most of the day and turned in at 9:30. The UIS summer class doesn’t start until June.

I was thinking the other day that I might have been being just a little bit greedy when talking about what I could do more for school. To have gone and finished once was a gift in itself. To have gone back a second time and had this experience was something I don’t think I’d ever even thought to do. Not recently. I’ve been feeling slightly emotional today thinking about it being over. I am grateful for the time that I was given at LCU.

The baseball and track kids had their senior night tonight. Last year I don’t remember why, but I didn’t go. It’s crazy to me how fast this time of year has come around again. It truly feels like we were all just doing this. I know I sometimes complained about the schedules but in my deepest of hearts I truly loved it. It was just enough crazy to be right on the edge. I was looking forward to a home game tonight but it was cancelled.

After senior night we went to Culver’s to support whatever sports team was having a fundraiser. I got water instead of soda just to try and exercise some kind of balance. French fries used to be my junk food of choice where you could never go wrong, but even those are not as delicious as they used to be. It was food though and everyone was fed for the night. I saw a couple of parents out with their little kids and watched.