My mind has been a mashed up conglomeration of memories, my emotions a slow and pretty swirl of bright colors. I want to write about them all, go back and clarify them all, make sure no one who would read here is misunderstanding. I can’t do all that. So I keep documenting the journey in the hours that come, the moments that come, the stretches of time when I am home enough to write.
I will say that I somehow kind of forgot that most major life changes include a time of transition. In my mind I went from thriving here to hopefully thriving there with nothing too significant or hard in-between. My purpose in writing certain things down is not to drag other people into my drama. Nor is it to tell of our past family struggles. But this is the life I am living, a life that daily includes other people.
A part of being a family in Christ is that we wouldn’t go through our struggles alone. Yes my kids are my kids and my husband is my husband, but they are also a part of my family in Christ, a family that I have been part of for much, much longer. If things were up to me I’d keep grasping for pleasures and insisting that all we needed were hacks to bring happiness. Heaven really will be better than this.
The older two for years fought bitterly. Sibling bickering had to be some of the worst times of mothering. No amount of teaching, or trying to painfully hear both sides, was enough for them to finally get along. I think they grew out of it. He went to school and the hours apart seemed to calm things, though it had started to settle down by then. By the time they were riding daily in the car together to and from school, and to and from practice, and to and from Wednesday night youth group activities, you’d never know.
The younger boys were different. They didn’t fight, and still don’t. They may have fought when they were little, but it was never like the first ones. As a mom you just want your kids to be happy and the best times were when everybody was together. The younger boys and I went to pick up the middle one from town where the bus drops them off at the other local Lutheran grade school. I had my reasons for choosing the school I did. One seemed more private, the other more parochial. None of them are ever perfect.
On the way home from the bus stop we stopped at the store. I wanted to pick up something for the circuit pastor’s cookout/potluck. Josh already picked up the meat but I wanted to add something else for the table. He’s down in St. Louis for the day with his dad. My mother-in-law has been at the hospital with him for over a week and needed some time to come home and do things. They’re hoping to move him back to a closer facility soon for rehab but won’t be able to do so until at least the first of next week.
The boys came in and picked out their drinks. These are kind of moments I feel like I missed with my older son. I know we had them, especially with the homeschooling. On one of the days we brought the kittens with us to the coffee shop drive through. He loved those kind of spontaneous adventures. I did too, and tried to provide them whenever I could. Of all of them he was the hardest to homeschool which surprised me because I thought by far he’d be the easiest. He was in many ways, also freeing me up.
I’d give him work to keep him occupied, and he would speed through every page. The mistake I often made was then to try and give him more. He’d get his work done fast so he could do other things. I insisted that someone with his abilities and intellect needed to be learning as much as he could, taking advantage of this unique and fleeting period of time when he currently had nearly limitless opportunities. And then we would fight ourselves but at the time I couldn’t see it. He wanted to be a kid, not a scholar.
When we stopped having kids it felt like I was finally able to start catching up. The big kids just continued getting bigger and bigger. But with every baby I was locked in time, getting farther and farther away. I was starting all over. He always liked to play with the babies and was affectionate with the little ones. He was the one who suffered most when we moved away from his school. I knew kids grieved, and that he was grieving. What I didn’t know was how to give it time and be patient. To be his mother even now.
The younger boys and I went down to the lake this afternoon. Prior to that I’d taken some time to start sorting through school papers and getting a feel for what I’m supposed to be doing. We had our first class on Tuesday with the very nice but harder professor again. The others will let us out usually by 9:30 or 9:45. She informed us all of what we already knew, that she keeps everyone there until 10 each time. This way we are getting the most of our tuition dollars.
Water has a similar effect as the sand. It always amazed me how you could take kids to the beach with a bucket and a shovel and they’d stay busy for hours in their own little worlds. When it comes to sand kids seem to know what to do. I would say the same is true with water. Of the three of us none of us were “doing” anything. We were being. One went in right away and the other stopped by the shed for a recently donated swim board. I followed close behind for who knows how long.
Swimming in the lake here never gets old. You would think that it would. I always think of Colorado or somewhere up in northern Canada where surely there have to be “better” lakes. The scenery is surely more breathtaking and the pine trees and mountains make even more of an impression with their shades and hues. And even so I could still be happy. I can still think, “This is such a beautiful place, and I could need nothing more” like I do when we swim here.
This morning I met with a friend for breakfast. We’d planned to get together several weeks ago for a time not long after the boys left for school. Our boys have been friends since the summer we moved here and have continued to be friends through summers at camp. It is a comfort for me as a Christian parent when my kids are able to find those kinds of solid Christian friends.
This is her second time going through the process. It really is amazing the things we learn with others simply from taking the time to get to know them. Women are missing something these days, she said. Our grandmothers used to get together to snap beans or can vegetables and all the while they’d talk. It’s where we found our encouragement and those to share the days with.
I’ve been thinking more lately about how our culture deals with parents. At some point during the summer I was doing an investigation of trying to get a hold of one school and find out something from another. There was this sense of, “Wait, am I meddling in my son’s life?” I didn’t think so. He was a counselor at camp and I was playing catch up on the ways we were behind.
There was something where they were not able to do through my email, they had to hear directly from the student. She was apologetic and said she hoped I could understand. I did understand, and yet, it still hurt. I choked back a tear or two and later told my son that he was going to have to find a time to come back home and use the computer. We had a few times like that.
And of course in all this I seem like “the nag”. Or at least that is how I felt I seemed. And that’s just it, there are way too many negative archetypes of mothers out there. We’re either neurotic and nagging, or we’re abusive and toxic, or we’re cold, distant, and unavailable. It can really make you wonder if your mother or your father at any time did anything right.
I can think of times when I have been all of those things. And I am not discounting by any means that our parents are flawed people who have caused pain in our lives. At some point, however, we have to see them for who they are, and who our parents are includes a mixture of virtue and vice. Each of us comes from a unique set of parents and through them we were given the gift of life in this world.
Being with others has this way of cleaning out the spiderwebs that have formed in our heads, these thick strings of lies influencing the way we act and think. Solomon wrote an entire biblical book whose purpose was to give “knowledge and discretion to the youth.” In the Lord’s mind parental teaching and influence is valuable, described as “pendants for your neck”, that is, something to keep with you.
So with all of that this morning, and with conversations we’ve had in the past, she gave me the courage to continue reaching out. At first I was mad that this was the way it had to be. I’m supposed to be letting him go and letting him find his footing and just forgetting he’s this person I’ve nurtured and loved for 18+ years. I wasn’t even going to text him. Texting too soon would be just me being “that mom”.
That mom who what? Loves her son? I’d asked her a few weeks ago how often texted and she told me every day. My mouth dropped open. Even if they don’t say anything, or she would just say goodnight, or send a daily verse in the family chat. With one of them she’s doing a 10-day devotional about transitioning to college. I read through the sample and then downloaded the app to access the others.
The weirdest thought came to mind somewhere in the early morning. I starting thinking about a show I’d watched when I was little about Siamese twin girls who were joined at the head. I remember thinking how completely awful that would have to be. And then I started thinking about my son out in Nebraska and how it’s almost like my head needs to be closed up somewhere.
The thoughts of him are always in the left side of my head. It is becoming more common now for therapists to say things like, “Tell me what is coming up for you in your body” or “Where in your body do you feel that?” I’ve never really noticed, however, where in my head my thoughts are.
Whenever I have ailments like this it’s always the left side that’s affected. And now I’m imagining myself with those bandages around my head like the separated twins had. When I was sitting in class last week I started wondering where my daughter was. I hadn’t heard from her lately.
And then I thought, “Dear God, no, I’m not doing that again.” The constant fearing, wondering, worrying. It doesn’t even have to be constant, even a little is enough to drive you insane. I’m not saying as parents we’ll never worry. I’m saying that in that moment I felt power over my thoughts.
I know it isn’t right for me to compare my life with others. When I picked up the younger boys today, who are still going half-days, I felt guilty when we were walking away like I was deserting the teachers. I did last year too. The seventh and eight grade homeroom teachers supervise noon recess.
On the sidewalk and driving away, it’s like I’m getting away with something that I should not be getting away with. Why I am not involved more? Why isn’t it me helping? They’re going to have to go to school full-time at some point, but right now it still is working out both money-wise and time-wise.
God calls us to the lives we live and he equips us to live those lives in the moment. The life that I am called to as a mom is ever changing. As we pass through more of those seasons I see it. Babyhood, childhood, homeschool, it was a wonderful and special time but wasn’t meant to last forever.
There’s a man named Wayne here doing some work on the beach trail. It looks and feels completely different, and I have to say, I’m not sure I like it. When you walk a trail so often and for so long you get used to where you put your feet. The beach trail is actually a road that forms a canyon in the middle whenever it rains and washes away dirt and rock.
So he’s trying to build up the road, the trail, so that the middle part is higher than the rest of everything else. I have to say, it looks awful, in that it is just so different from what it was. Last summer my father-in-law came and widened the trail by plowing over the honeysuckle on either side. I liked that change because it opened things up. You could see into the woods more and it just felt less claustrophobic.
I don’t mean to bash his work. He’s a nice man and does a lot of volunteer work around camp. He lives in another one of those giant RV’s with his wife. They’re both retired, him being a retired pastor. She quilts in their RV while he does projects. He’s fixed another road that had the same problem with the rain and rock erosion, so I know he knows what he’s doing.
The kids all started school today. One in college, two in high school, and two in middle school. I pretty much had zero feelings about it. I think I had basically exhausted all of that and the day was as normal as any other. Everyone got something to eat in the morning, and the one with cross country practice afterward was sent along with a snack and two bottles of water.
The younger four only had a half day. The high school cross country practice was cancelled due to heat. My daughter said she wanted to go swimming when they got back from school. I went back at around 11 to pick up the youngest and the other three came home together around 1. Dad and Elianna went and ran a few errands not long after they all came home.
The boys came in and told me more about their day. The one who didn’t like school last year is doing better, but now there is another one who doesn’t really like it. Both times what they didn’t like was the other kids. I tried to bypass junior high for as long as I could but eventually I wasn’t able to keep that up. We continue to pray for their school years and each situation.
After that I took a longer than usual nap. Through the summer I didn’t feel as much extra need to rest but this week things were definitely starting to catch up with me. I get this feeling like there’s an electrical charge that needs to come out. I went to the Y this morning for the first time in months. There were flaky particles I’d never noticed before in the water.
Apparently they’d just cleaned out the pool, so I don’t know if that was just debris they’d missed in the cleaning or part of the cleaning itself. I’ve been thinking about needing to start some different kind of strength exercises again in the near future. There is a yoga studio in town I used to go to with heated yoga classes that I think might be good for what I am wanting. I get impatient with my body at times and forget how far things have come and how much progress has actually been made.
I woke up when Dad and Elianna were back home. We all went down to the beach and played. Dad stayed with the boys and I took the paddleboard out to ride with my daughter who decided to swim for her running workout. She swam to the far side of the lake and back and then we stayed in the swimming area a little longer. It really didn’t seem too hot.
Coach Beisel out in Seward rescheduled practices for 5:30AM. They’re that way now for the rest of the week. That’s when they were having their workouts before so I guess they are getting a little more used to it. Today was the first day of classes there too so I am curious to hear how all of those went. Monday seems to be his busiest day of the week, finishing off with an Astronomy night class that I was quite jealous of (which means super excited about).
My normal class schedule starts back up tomorrow. Since I am starting my practicum this semester I have an additional time that I have to be on campus. They have what they call “group supervision” for 90 minutes each week. It’s where the practicum and internship students are divided up amongst the professors and we talk about how our experiences are going. I like the one I have and would’ve been happy with any of them.
I don’t feel ready for the school groove yet, at least not in terms of starting myself. I wonder sometimes why it seems like my capacity for doing things just isn’t what it used to be or never was what others seem to do everyday without problems. There are people who go to work and do all kinds of things with school commitments. I simply can’t imagine having to keep that kind of schedule. I truly couldn’t do it and never would want to.
We stopped by the farm on the way home from the meet. One of the boys is running cross country this fall. They had an early bird meet up in Bloomington this morning. We left here at 6:45 and were there within an hour. I was excited to go. These meets have always felt like ways we get to spend family time together.
Ethan facetimed in with me and the other boys. He had a break from his orientation activities and wanted to cheer for his brother. For as much as the boys were good sports with his sporting events, it made me happy he was showing support for his brother. He was playing Minecraft when I called and was playing the other night when the boys were on. Josh wanted to know if he’s actually getting out and hanging out with other people or if he’s just been playing Minecraft the whole time. He said he has been getting out.
He and Laura have their own Minecraft world now. I don’t know if he was playing with her or someone else from camp or school. The coach sent out an orientation week schedule where it shows everything the team is doing from when they arrived to when school officially begins Monday morning. They’ve had workouts and meetings, as well as team bonding and travel activities. I am assuming that a college level coach has been watching the weather and is well aware of the 100+ temperatures next week.
I was hoping that things would settle down after his actual launch day happened. It seems to be so, at least so far. A girl in my class last year said she cried every day for two months after taking her first son to college. I’ve probably cried every day but after the first night it hasn’t been bad. I stuffed a lot down during class this past week but had car rides to make up for it and “Love Is” by Vanessa Williams and Brian McKnight. I feel like they pretty much nail it as far as love goes except for one line that almost ruins the song.
They say: “And it fades away so easily.” That is the most untrue thing I’ve ever heard sung about it. I still wouldn’t say that the years went by fast. Some definitely seem to go by quicker than others, and when I look at pictures of the kids from past years I can hardly believe how much they have grown. It does seem to happen in ways only seeable when you look back in time. In the moment they’re just with you and you’re eating and drinking and living your days.
The house is coming along quite well and they’ve started in now with the electrical wiring. Watching a house go up has actually been quite incredible. My father-in-law has been in the hospital since the night of our 20th wedding anniversary. I still want to write an anniversary post but haven’t had the chance to be in that space yet. I’ve started two so far but they weren’t the right ones.
They moved him to St. Louis a couple of nights ago. He’s now on the oncology floor and being tended to by the doctors down there. The tumor he had surgery for back in June is growing back and causing paralysis in one of his legs. This whole cancer thing with him truly came out of nowhere and it doesn’t seem possible that this is the position we are currently in. My mother in law says she wants him to be able to live in the house. This house has been around for as long as I’ve known them.
We went out to lunch together once we came back into town. We were celebrating our son’s first meet and doing something fun before kids start school. Dad and the kids had their waterpark day yesterday, with Miles and his younger brother Graham taking me and Ethan’s tickets. My daughter commented that we’d hardly gone regular grocery shopping all summer. That’s something we’ll be needing to get to again but today we were soaking up summer days.
The deer ran away again. I keep telling them that I’m not going to hurt them. I keep thinking it’d be nice to pet them like you would with a cat or dog. I came around the corner and was startled first by the rock and the tractor head in the middle of the trail. At the entry of the woods were four deer grazing. They looked up and saw me and we did the thing we always do where we stop and freeze and stare at each other.
I didn’t bother to go any farther. I wasn’t really feeling all that up for a walk anyway. On the way back one of the cats came up running with a hummingbird. He dropped it in front of me. I had to take closer look because I couldn’t tell at first if it was a bird or a cicada. It was upside down and struggling to breathe. I’ve told him before he’s supposed to leave those ones alone but it’s almost like they’re just toys to him.
We’ve got one more half-day of our intensive class tomorrow. Thankfully I was scheduled to not have to do any presentations or article reports until tomorrow. I really need to stop putting off this kind of homework. We were saying today that our brains were tired and our professor said it was time for a teaching moment. There are going to be days when you’re falling asleep at 3PM and you’re still going to have to do your job.
I don’t know how people go to work every day like this. You come home and there’s basically no time left to do anything, and if there was you wouldn’t have the energy to do it. Josh asked about going to Knights Action Park tomorrow to try to still get our waterpark visit in. I want to go but I want to go at a time when I will have enough energy. He took the kids to the fair today and they did their normal state fair things.
All this stuff with Jeremiah got me thinking about how much people die every day without fanfare. You wonder why God would take someone like him but that assumes that his life was somehow more valuable, like he was somehow more important than the ones who never were homecoming king or loved by so many. Most people in life never win a single thing and yet God cares about and values their lives just as much.
During the sectional boys track meet junior year the meet was delayed for over an hour. Right around dusk the electrical system quit working. The meet could not continue until whatever they used to time the events started working again. There was hardly any communication about any of this. We just hung out in the bleachers and walked around.
Jeremiah stayed and waited to watch Ethan run his 800. He was hoping to PR and ended up getting 6th which was better than he’d hoped for. For some reason I was able to watch that one and I’ll never forget them coming around for the final 200M. The boys were 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 in a row, one in front of the other with equal space between all of them. I remember thinking then if he could just hold on…
He had to be tired. I was amazed at their speed and you could tell he was running with all he had. He PR’d and after that Jeremiah left. It was dark by then and the meet wasn’t all that close by to home. I remember thinking that I admired his parents. They seemed so free with his driving, letting him go from this place to that, all the way out to camp on some occasions late at night.
Jeremiah was faster in the beginning. They met during the second year of high school when Ethan was a sophomore and Jeremiah a freshman. We told him he might enjoy trying cross country. His friend Elijah, one of his first new friends at the school, was also on the team. He said he thought he might want to give it a try. That was the year with the most boys on the team. It took a while to learn their names, but I finally figured out that Jeremiah was the one with the bright orange shoes.
One time, during the beautiful meet at Pittsfield almost two hours away, Ethan and Jeremiah were coming in neck and neck. Ethan had decided he was going to try and beat him. This was the same meet when teammate Zack Fales had his epic 1st place finish that set the new meet record. This was when I was still running around, and when I saw him and Jeremiah that close, I didn’t know who to cheer for.
So I stopped where I was and watched. Afterward Jeremiah put his sweatshirt on and put the hood up. He pulled the string tight so you could hardly see his face. He was trying hard then not to cry. Ethan gave a devotion about it last year at camp. Not the crying part, but about sports and teams. How Jeremiah had helped him be better.
The next year Jeremiah didn’t run. They’d recently found a brain tumor and he was going to start treatments. The brain tumor was inoperable and incurable. The team made t-shirts with Jeremiah’s name on them. Jeremiah responded well to his treatments. Besides cross country that year, he did most everything the other kids did. He was on the basketball team and was top in his class.
Jeremiah had a lot of friends and each one has their own stories about him. During his funeral service they had four speakers from varying youth groups and peer communities he was a part of. He was homecoming king his junior year and went to nearly every dance with his steady girlfriend of well over a year. No one was ever able to tell me where she was from.
I could tell that Ethan loved Jeremiah very much. Last fall he told me that Jeremiah’s parents had gotten a spot with something with the Make a Wish foundation. The wish was to throw the first pitch at a Cardinal’s game. Ethan asked if we could go and watch and bring friends. Of course we could, we just had to know the date. It took a while but we finally found out. I asked my daughter if she’d come along.
The rest of the van was filled with boys. Miles and others. It was a school night and we were going to be out late, but it was worth it. It poured as soon as we pulled into the parking garage. We stood there and waited for the rain to pass by. It never fully did so we had to get wet crossing into the stadium. We went down to our seats after having to wait a while because there was still some occasional lightening.
There were actually like 10-15 first pitches that night. Jeremiah was toward the end of the lineup. The boys asked if they could go over to where the basketball boys were sitting on the other side of the stadium. I said they could but to stay together. They watched Jeremiah from over there. I’d run into a couple from Hoyleton, so I was talking to them. I had to excuse myself to go back down to our seats to make sure I didn’t miss the whole reason we’d come.
For the visitation Ethan wore the team shirt from junior year. In the week before Jeremiah died, there’d been many friends coming and going at their house. When Ethan and Elijah went to visit, his dad told them that this past year Jeremiah didn’t really want to run. He was burnt out on running, but he had wanted to be with Ethan and Elijah for their senior year.
I forgot to mention prom when they all went as friends, when Peter didn’t know they were supposed to show up dressed. Jeremiah was a sophomore that year, but was able to go with the group of juniors. I don’t even know who took him officially as their date. He was very well-liked and loved at school that I doubt it even mattered what person he went with.
Jeremiah had to leave school toward the end of the school year. His tumor had started affecting more things and prom was the last major school event he’d been to. He came to graduation but I hadn’t seen him. I didn’t see him that day until he came for the party, rolling up in a wheel chair. He could not push himself, and he had on a hat and sunglasses to shield his eyes from the light. I hadn’t realized he’d been declining and was taken back.
But the boys went right up to him and made their adjustments. Ethan didn’t see him again until the week before he died. Rumors had been coming that he was fading and was now on hospice. His friend Noah had told him that if he wanted to come then he needed to come soon. They went the next night. The next day Elijah’s mom asked if Ethan would go with Elijah. They went back again that afternoon.
Yesterday when he left for school, he was wearing the same purple shirt that he’d worn for the visitation. I didn’t ask, but I wondered if this was his way honoring his friend whose funeral he wouldn’t be going to that morning. Throughout the day, at various times during class, I was wondering if we all had made a mistake. I should’ve gone with them. He should’ve stayed another day. Eventually I realized I was probably just sad.
I told Elijah not long ago, when driving him from camp to the school where his mom works. When Ethan was sitting alone at the lunch table, he was the one to come over and ask if Ethan wanted to come over and sit with them. Later I learned that he too had been a new kid, as he’d started a new school the year before in 8th grade. I told him thank you for being his friend. If I could I would say the same thing to Jeremiah.
thislittlelight.blog 