The kids had a track meet in Mt. Zion today. The boys and I left around 9:15. Elianna and Grandma met us there around 10:45. We stayed the whole time because I wanted to watch Miles run the 4×400 which is always the final race of the track meet. I really do think they’re fun. Another mom and I were having to figure out who the new runners were. You learn to know the shapes of their heads and their bodies and how they look from far away.

When my new runner had lined up on the track for the boys 800 in Athens, I didn’t know who he was. Ethan asked me to Facetime when the race began. I called him and said they were getting started but that I didn’t see Judah. I didn’t know where he was but he must not have been out there yet. It wasn’t until he was a third of the way around that I figured out he was out there running. The stocking cap he was wearing had thrown me way off.

The next day Grandma met the kids at school in the parking lot and dropped off some new clothes to wear under his uniform when its cold. So he wore those today. The sky was perfectly clear with no clouds and after awhile it was no longer cold. All of us have red faces from the sun. I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather for the eclipse day and it keeps changing. In order to actually see it you can’t have too many clouds. I did pray it’d be clear.

Dad wasn’t at the meet this time because he was giving a talk in Champaign. I don’t know if this was the official name or not but he kept calling it the Martin plus Katie conference. It was a Lutheran singles get-together of men and women from age 18-35 who are interested in marriage or actively looking for a spouse. There was a men’s talk and a women’s talk and he gave the men’s talk. Two times recently I’ve looked for “Dad” in my phone to call him.

We arrived home from the meet around 4:30. I laid down for a while and drifted in and out of dreams. Elianna came in to tell me Miles was coming over. Josh called to tell me he was on his way home. I don’t remember what I dreamed about but it was the kind of peaceful sleep where you come away rested. I had two blankets on me because one is not enough heaviness. I started supper. As soon as Miles was here I had to ask his take on the races.

There are times in life when the people you reached out to for help over the years, the ones you thought for sure could or would help you, were not the ones who ended up doing so. It can be a terrible and bewildering thing to experience, and I am sorry for the times–I can think of at least one now–when the Levite or the priest passing by has been me. I will take this as the Lord’s reminder to text and check in.

The younger boys had a field trip today. The teacher who arranges things is always kind of enough to put them together in the same traveling group. I’ve never asked her to do this, but whatever she sees apparently prompts her to give them choice of being with a brother or being with classmates. One is doing fine with school, but I do wish the less happy ones liked it more. They went to an engineering display.

We had our Friday coffee/tea at Hae’s. Afterward we went to a Treasure Hunt store. I had no idea this was a thing. People were lined up for twenty minutes before it opened. Inside were tables of what looked like junk, returned merchandise that people were filling their carts and bags with. He found a gaming headset and pickleball paddles. I remembered crazy places I’d taken my kids. If only I’d written it down.

The kids had their first track meet today. Two previously scheduled ones had been cancelled due to weather and this one was scheduled in attempt to make on of them up. It was colder than I was expecting but I had brought water, snacks, and two blankets. Josh had a meeting this afternoon and wasn’t able to make it until midway through the meet. I met up with his mom and the boys who had gone over to her house this afternoon after school to watch the Cardinals home opener.

I accidently drove to PORTA high school instead of Athens. The kicker is that you have to drive right through Athens in order to do that. Several of the track and cross country meets are at PORTA, which is only 10 more minutes away. I’ve never actually been to Athens for a meet because it was one of the many I’ve missed. Why my brain did not alert me sooner that I’d gone to the wrong place, I don’t know. How I do these things so fairly often, I don’t know either. I really wonder sometimes.

Earlier during the day I’d spent some time writing prayers. I rotate through the same themes pretty frequently. I have felt the urge lately to just come out and say, “Look, I’m depressed, it always gets this way now, we’re just going to have to deal with it and it’s going to be the way it is.” I think I might have actually said it but sometimes I just don’t know. Today one of my prayers was asking the Lord to help me continue to function and to keep making progress. I guess I just meant in normal life.

I also prayed about the meets. I get very severe health anxiety when it comes to them running. It is not for completely unwarranted reasons, as things have happened here and there at various times that have given me cause for concern in past and present. At some point it is just all out of my hands. The fear and the worry can be such a hard cross, and I don’t know at times why this has to be something so strong in me. I would love to just sit back and relax and be a normal person and enjoy.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled to go into work for a couple of hours. They had a shorter, three hour afternoon opening that I signed up for. I’m feeling better after being away though I do still have a lingering sadness, and I wouldn’t even say it’s about anything specific. Life just effects me. One of the boys is currently needing help with math homework so I need to wrap it up here and focus. One day at a time is all I can do most days and it’s enough as God is true to give us strength for each one.

The boys wanted to go down to the dining hall to play ping-pong. They had their cleaning time, reading time, and then it was their skill time. I folded laundry during reading time while all the boys read in the living room, Dad included. I’d already had some reading time during piano lessons.

I had all these thoughts I was going to write down about the Mary-Martha energy balance, about striving and performance, and the need to come back to center after periods when you’ve been going and going. Now though I’m just tired, and struggling to come up with any words to go deeper.

Here are some things I was glad for today: A warm house to come home to after being out in cold weather of rain and sleet. Food in the house that I’d planned to have here so I wouldn’t have to worry about shopping this week. Waking up in the closeness of spouses. Evening drives in the wind.

I was 15 miles outside of St. Joseph, Missouri when the Fairfield Inn called and said someone had turned in my purse to the front desk. They’d found it out in the parking lot. I turned around and picked it up. The lady apologized for it being wet. I was glad I hadn’t spoken my full mind when she’d asked how everything had gone with the room. It was good, I said, and it was, but I’d wanted to say before that, “A little pricey, but…”

$348 on a weekday, and I could’ve taken a whole other cat to the vet for that much. We’d planned ahead of time for me to stop, and I was just going to find a place, which 95% of the time is a reliable system. I wanted a place with a pool and the Holiday Inn had no rooms. There were two other options. The Candlewood Suites had rooms but no pool. I thought, “No problem, the YMCA is right across the street.” But when I called them asking if my out-of-state-membership would be accepted, and then asked if they had open swim hours for the evening, they said, “Oh, we don’t have a pool here. I’m sorry.”

So that left this Fairfield place which I’d already left once. I called Josh and told him and he said to go ahead and get it. It was a good stop. They had a Target and a Kohl’s and TJ Maxx and Chick’Fil’A and all kinds of other restaurants. I’d brought homework along thinking I’d knock out an assignment or two. I wasn’t expecting the stores, and thought maybe I could just take the time to look for nice spring clothes. I checked in and slept.

By the time I woke up it was dark and I had that feeling that I’d slept for too long. I felt like I was coming down with some kind of fever and I thought, “All that money, and I’m not even going to swim.” I texted Josh again and he said to just try it, even if I’m just soaking in it, and then I could swim if I felt like it. I’ve been craving being the water again and once I was in I remembered why. Yoga and swimming are the only two exercises where I ever wonder why in the world I ever stopped. When I woke up this morning I felt the way I used to feel when I was coming down with mastitis, but there was no milk.

On the way home a classmate texted and said the teacher had decided to drop one of the papers and have us do a discussion in class instead. This was great except for that we’ve kind of had these long-standing plans for the solar eclipse on Monday. I emailed the teacher and asked how big of a problem it’d be to miss again. They really all should be going. I still don’t feel all that excited about it which kind of surprises me but oh well.

My son and I left at 5 this morning to head back to Seward. For the first two hours he fell back asleep. I had the Peace album playing by Bethel Music. I wanted it to be like lullaby songs where he felt safe and nestled under his blankets. You get those moments as a parent where you start to think, “Okay, at some point you’re going to have to know what it’s like to endure discomfort, to go the extra mile for somebody else.”

But today didn’t have to be that day. We stopped probably 3-4 times to stretch our legs, go to the bathroom, grab a snack, and fill up the gas tank. We picked up something for lunch in Lincoln and had to stop by Walmart to look for a Garmin watch charger and also a phone one. I ate my lunch in his room and didn’t finish it all, but didn’t offer him the rest. There were only one or two bites left and by then it everything was falling apart and spilling out of the hamburger bun. I crumpled up the garbage and asked him where he’s supposed to take all his room trash. I guess they have a dumpster.

And no I wasn’t going to offer to take all the boxes or hunt down a vacuum from the cleaning closet. I had already suggested on one of the last trips that they just bring our vacuum along, run it real quick before leaving, and then bring it back home. I stood up and felt the tears starting to come. He stood up. I gave him a hug. I walked to the door. Love you, I barely said. Love you too, he said, then I walked away and left.

After church and Easter breakfast we came home for a little while. I changed clothes and took a nap. I wasn’t asleep the whole time but stayed in bed for the most part until we were supposed to go to my mother-in-law’s house. During that time my husband came in asked what it was we were supposed to be bringing. I told him corn casserole which is like the easiest thing in the world. I told him the ingredients and the directions, which is basically just to mix all of the ingredients together.

He said he’d make it. I said okay, but don’t say anything about you making it while we’re there. I feel like every time we go over there he’s the one who ends up making the food dish. Over time I’ve learned through observation that when you’re going over to somebody’s house for a bigger meal you’re supposed to ask if there is anything you can bring. She asked if I could bring corn casserole or a salad. I asked if she needed me to just bring both and she said she thought one would do.

I used to ask them to bring drinks, but lately if she comes over I’ve just been saying, “No, just come on over” or something like it. The new house still has a whole second fridge in the mud room that’s full of drinks. People have made comments to her about the house being too big for just one person or talked about her downsizing and moving back into something smaller and closer in town. Today she said, “Nope, I’m staying.” At least for now, she did add. She says she’s getting used to it.

This evening I was going through my pictures from last Easter. I have one of my father-in-law when we were sitting together on the old house’s porch. I was on the porch glider and he was sitting on a regular chair in front of me. As people were leaving from last year’s Easter dinner he said, “We’ll do it again next year.” We did do it again next year, with all of the same people, minus him. The kids had their egg hunt outside in the yard. Josh and I hid the eggs and the kids found all 100 of them.

At my father-in-law’s visitation someone commented about how his death probably came as a kind of relief. I did not fault them at all for saying that, but I didn’t agree. Honestly we were just glad for every day that we had him. He suffered especially in the last several months, but he was here, and up until the very end he hoped to get better. But I am grateful for the times that we did get to spend him with him. I wish he was here to still share in the new times. I know one day he will be.

“All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive.”
~Psalm 22:29~

Work went well today. They did this thing where they switched up the Summer shifts in order to hopefully solve some of the staffing issues. One nurse comes at 7-3 and has the whole floor for two hours. Then the other nurse comes at 9 and stays until 5:30. Then she takes eight of the residents and is responsible for all of the treatments. This way there is some overlap for her to be there to help with the evening med pass and treatments before the 3-11 nurse is there for the rest of the night with CNA’s.

This was my first time doing the 9-5:30. I’m not sure how I like the new system yet but I can understand what they were thinking when setting it up. Today anyhow it was nice to not have to go in quite as early. I can go to sleep in peace feeling like tomorrow is a normal morning. I was a little worried about my energy levels and not being able to feel okay for the shift, but God provided what was needed and I typically still seem to feel better as the day goes on. I came home and finished our Good Friday supper.

The rest of the family went to church which was the arrangement ahead of time. We usually have some kind of special meal for Maunday Thursday or Good Friday where we have lamb and other things that make it seem more like a passover meal. There’s no meaning attached to it, other than the visual and experiential act of drawing the attention to something different and remembering when our Lord underwent his own day on our behalf.

Last Sunday when we were Facetiming we said, “Well where is your meet at?” It was in Pella, Iowa on Thursday. That’s how things went from it not looking like he was coming home for Easter to having an extra whole day because someone could go pick him up from the meet. Dad and the boys left this morning shortly after my sister and her girls took off. The driving directions said Pella was only four hours away.

I had all kinds of crazy things to do here, including hopefully resting up for one of my scheduled days tomorrow. I had to go in and work on my continuing education videos for a couple of hours. After that I went to Aldi and filled the cart. Holiday times are special occasions and I really do have to have lists for then. The meals for the next couple of days are planned out. Elianna came home and helped me.

The food hustling and bustling for the weekend should mostly be over. I do still need to sew a button on the cassock hanging in the doorway so I don’t forget. They stayed to watch a few teammates run their races and should be home somewhere around 1AM. First I said I probably would not be awake, but later said I would wake up to see them. My daughter and I went to church this evening for Maunday Thursday.

My sister and her girls are coming tomorrow to visit. It’s their spring break this week so she came down yesterday to stay with my parents. They’ve spent the past two days there hanging out with them. This morning I called my dad back because he’d called a couple of days ago just to see in general how things were going. This evening I called my sister again to see if they’d be here tomorrow for lunch. “If we are, is that a problem?”, she asked. “No”, I said, “that’ll be fine.”

Tonight I’m working on a list of food and tasks. Holy Week is a little like the Christmas stretch where there are meals that need to be thought of ahead of time, something to bring somewhere and everything interspersed with church. It’s all fine as long it’s planned and you have the supplies you need. It’s a delicate balance. My mother-in-law is hosting again this year and is looking forward to having more space for tables. I don’t think I’m going to worry about dressing up.

Rest is the constant return of my life, trying to conserve and restore energy for the week’s activities. I wished I could go back into work today, but I have to just trust that God’s will is being done in their lives and mine. If it’s his will, then in time, I will be able to do more. And if not, or until then, there are still plenty of things to do here, and still much more than I could ever have before imagined. Dad and the kids went to church tonight. One day at a time is still a gift.