“…but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.”
~Hebrews 7:19~

“Dear God, help me to to be satisfied”, I prayed in the morning. Last night while I was sitting in church my mind started wandering to all the wrong places. Must be nice to have a stroke and get a free pass out of Lent (God, I’m sorry). They were going to need help once he was out of the hospital. Someone to sit with him when his wife wasn’t there. Meals would also be nice.

God, please, this is not me asking for some divine retribution in order to purge me of sin and humble me with your tragedies. I don’t need to be blown away as your people show up magnificently in the face of the heartbreak. But can I just say that it hurt that I was alone for so much, that no one really knew the true depth and the pain I had.

Was I on the prayer list at all? Not that I saw. But was there that lady who texted me almost every single day? Was there that one who brought over five meals early on? Was there the collection of cards from the women’s group after I’d not been in church for several months? I texted the food lady this morning and thanked her. It was a sign to me that yes, someone did really care.

I’m trying to think if there are any exceptions, but besides certain people in my immediate family, anyone I have ever even attempted to let into the darkness of my mind and certain painful experiences has either not understood or ended up distancing themselves in some way. Even if they helped me, the relationship was changed.

But not always for the worst. No, I don’t want a stroke, I want a cleansing of the mind, a divine reworking so that, frankly, I do not become pissed when I remember the past. I want the church to be healing place that people recommend to others, and if at all possible, I want to be a person who helps to make it that way. The satisfaction is in the Savior who took away all our sins.

Today in group we watched this video of an alcoholic man in end-stage addiction. They built it up to the point where he made the choice to go to rehab after a medical evaluation revealed his internal organs were already in shut down. His name was Ryan and he had a mother, ex-girlfriend, grandfather, and brother who all cared about him.

He ended up dying. I didn’t think that would happen. His mother had talked about his smile and how he had a beautiful smile and how she couldn’t wait to have him back. I was thinking, “Oh wow. This is going to be great when he goes to rehab, gets better, and we get to see his sober smile.” The supervisor said interns don’t usually like that one.

I wanted to cry but there was nowhere to do so. We went back upstairs and the four of us processed and asked our questions for not quite an hour. I’m getting used to having the other students there and like them. It was awkward when he told them to email with their availability in order to meet and go over a video of their individual sessions.

They each have two now and I have one, a guy who first started today. I have yet to have just a normal time. The initial session is supposed to last for two hours but he said when he got there that he only had 45 minutes today. So I didn’t even end up doing the assessment part. I thought it was more important to let him talk than get that done.

So I didn’t try to do it. When he started telling me his problems I was like YES in my head. Like I was so excited to be able to deal with them. That probably sounds completely weird. But there were also those nagging fears involved like, “What if he decides he doesn’t want to come back?” We have to wait two weeks for the next time.

It just seems like so long. He can only meet on Wednesdays and the next Wednesday I was busy. We were standing at the desk with the secretary and the supervisor asked how it went. I was still processing and in the moment said, “I think okay??” He’s got us trained to talk to him after group but that’s not how it works with individual sessions.

Like you just kind of have to chart and keep going. So that doesn’t feel right but I shut my computer and sadly walked out the door. I wanted to be there longer but had nothing productive left to do. In church tonight I kept thinking about Ryan and the video and wanted to cry again but couldn’t there. Instead I just stayed for the whole service.

My new summer project is going to be getting the downstairs ready to be a bridal suite for the girls. With the CGC booked, and the guys and girls both needing a place to get ready, I’d already been thinking about how this might work. It came up again during our birthday supper and dessert. And I became even more excited when I realized this could be the catalyst I needed to finally be able to get some new carpet down there.

The boys said we’re going to need a lot of Febreeze. I don’t think we will if we clean it up really nice, and like I said, the carpet will help. Ethan asked what was going to happen to his room. Considering he barely ever used it, and that the only practical purpose it serves is to store a wall half stacked with stuff, I said he was going to take his stuff when he moved. I don’t really have a set vision for the room.

Josh and I already talked about making Elianna’s room a guest room. We’re going to have more guest room and space than we know what to do with. I haven’t really thought about the truths of her leaving. When the boys and I were out for a walk with Zorro this morning I said we were probably going to end up dog sitting a lot. If she’s going to be in school while also working, somebody is going to have to help watch him.

Laura looked so pretty tonight for their pictures. Bless her heart. Something about her white dress and her hair and the effort she put into finding someone to take pictures. It just makes me want to cry for some reason. Girls put so much of their heart into these things. She truly is such a sweet and beautiful person and I don’t know why I’m worrying so much instead of radically thanking God for this gift.

I’ve told my brother before that he should come live with us. Save some money. Finish school. They have a Target down here that he could transfer his job to. I remember feeling proud of myself when I would stock up on diapers. Something about bringing two boxes up to the counter then unpacking them into their spots in the changing area gave me a feeling of gratitude and security for having been given such a wonderful life.

It’s funny how you can get to the end of the day and not even remember what it is that happened. I was up. The big kids went to school. Dad had to go somewhere. I read on the couch for a while in my pajamas drinking coffee. The boys slept in until a little later than usual. Usually when they get up they get some breakfast then play with the dog.

We did our Bible lesson again and then I worked on cleaning my room. I had to put away some clothes and hang up the new one I’d bought. Everyone took care of their own breakfast but I made some kind of enchilada tator tot dish for the boys to have for a real lunch. We took the dog for a walk and Ethan did his speed workout on the hills.

After lunch I said, boys, I need to take a short nap now. If I really want to make sure I will sleep I put on a podcast that I have no interest in listening to. It works just about every time I would say. I read again then fell asleep. I woke to Josh calling and wondering if there was anything else he should pick up for the birthday dinner meal.

He listed off the things and I couldn’t think of anything else. I looked at the podcast time stamp and it’d been playing for 18 minutes. But that was enough to revive me and take away the sleep from my eyes. So I got up and told the boys it was time to turn off their game soon. I tried out some of my clothes and wrapped the presents for the evening.

While I was wrapping I decided I wasn’t going to go into Contact. There was too much going on in the evening and everything would be easier if I didn’t try to go. Alexis said she wasn’t going in either. She just moved to a new apartment and wanted to get things settled in. I texted my mother-in-law also to see if she wanted to come over tonight.

Ethan and Laura had their engagement photos this evening at camp. She came over about two hours early right as I was about to go to County Market to get chicken. Dad hadn’t got any because he thought we would use the rotisserie chicken from the fridge. I told him I had used that for lunch. I bought a few other things for snacks and meals.

We had a nice time around the table for supper. The pictures got over around 7 which is about when we started eating. We started a new tradition where we go around and say something we appreciate about the birthday person. I appreciated how everyone appreciated people. We tried on Zorro’s collar and it looks really nice on him. She held up the smaller one and we couldn’t believe how little he was before.

Our school is on spring break this week. We can still be at our sites getting hours but there are no classes. If you can even believe this, I still need to turn in my social justice project proposal. It was my plan to get it finished over break and to work ahead on the power point and cultural identity scrapbook assignment that is due at the end of the month. I decided I’m doing my advocacy project and presentation on homelessness.

Today was technically my most free day. The boys did school in the morning and I read their Bible lesson to them. The other day Ethan said something jokingly to one of those boys saying, “I’m going to need to talk to your math teacher.” He replied, “I am my math teacher”, and it kind of made me sad, wondering what it would’ve been like if we had kept with the Algebra lessons together.

I made the boys eggs and heated up rice. Ethan had to run four miles and then Dad gave him a haircut in preparation for their official engagement pictures. Laura and her mom have already been shopping and filled two carts full of flowers and decorations at JoAnn fabrics. She was buying things to decorate the cross and the outdoor chapel. The colors are going to be shades of pink and coral. They’re storing it all in their basement.

They met each other for lunch and then looked around at wedding bands. Laura’s ring is just a tad too big so they stopped by the place where it was originally purchased and found out they she can get it resized for free. They didn’t buy anything yet. I told him that we can give him money to put toward her wedding ring so he’s going to think about it. He paid for the engagement ring himself.

I left before lunch to shop for Elianna’s birthday. She wanted a bigger dog collar and a dog tag that was etched with Zorro’s name. So I found that and a few other things. While walking through the checkout aisle they had a display of coffee mugs. I looked until I found a pretty spring one that I liked. I looked for jeans and tops as it’s time again to have something a little different to wear. I found a few things that can work for now.

Our pastor had a hemorrhagic stroke while we were gone over the weekend. It was like ten o’clock and his wife called Josh asking if he could come to the hospital. We were still up in Wisconsin so he texted her a bunch of numbers of other pastors in the area. I guess she’d found a replacement for the next day’s Sunday service. He was in the ICU with a feeding tube but thankfully was okay.

So Josh is picking up his Wednesday Lenten services, most of the Sunday services, and Holy Week through Easter. I think they will probably end up ditching the Saturday vigil. Laura was over this afternoon when they came back from shopping. I didn’t know she was coming over so there was some spontaneous cleaning that needed to happen. I took a nap and made supper then left them after the prayer to go into work from 7-11.

I feel like I’m currently back in a “life sucks and is hard” mindset. Yesterday we had the memorial service for my grandma. We left around 7 for the three hour trip north. It was nice to have the kids home and able to come. Zorro came with for his first bigger trip since the time he was picked up. I don’t have much to compare it to be to me he seems like a good dog and that he was really enjoying the ride and different activities.

I sometimes find it painful still to be around my family. As much as I love when we get together, I feel like we’re reaching this different state where the individual families are becoming more solid and set in their ways. I don’t mean stubborn. I mean set in the ways and paths that God has for them and those paths are crossing now less and less. My parents are the set of grandparents now but we will be there before too long.

Or could be anyways. And there are still those insecurities that arise from old wounds from the past that are still filling in. In group it is talked about this way: you could’ve been loved and cared for, AND there were likely still ways that your primary caregivers could not show up and meet needs, sometimes deep ones. It seems to happen this way with spouses as well, where you are loved still and yet some terrible hole remains.

They swear that this is the way that it is. I think I would almost believe it. Admittedly I doubt when I read posts from this younger millennial woman in her early to mid 30’s. She divorced her husband last spring after years of being unhappy. She’s now dating a firefighter and keeps posting things about how happy she is with her new guy, that it really was just a matter of finding someone more compatible who truly adores you.

This isn’t even about my family or my marriage or whatever else to which we pin our longings and desires. I tried to say this a few weeks ago but it was too much to go into. But we were talking in group about the egoic mind. The lower self takes its wants and attaches them to lower people, places, and things. Those desires can lead to more pain when we keep seeking after the same things that do not satisfy because they can’t.

“Marion is now more wonderful than when she lived on this side of life, which when here showed Christ’s love to me and many more.”
~J. M.~

From Darlene:

What can I say about Marion?

She gave grace and love to those who unexpectedly but by God’s sovereignty, crossed paths with her. She left a legacy of providing for those in need oftentimes by way of housing them or adopting them as her own. I will always be amazed that God saw fit to bring her and Ken into my life through Antonio.

We shared the majority of our holidays and birthdays together over the 14 years that I have been married to Tony. 

Marion left a legacy of nurturing and caring for women. She had an ability to see when someone just needed a friend or to be mentored and led to Christ and she filled that role.

She wasn’t only Grandma or Mom but she was a dear friend to me. We often would get together on a whim when I would stop by with some pizza hut and just spend time talking and sharing life together and we treasured those moments.

When she left NY we found ourselves traveling to see her and I would joke that we were her groupies.

Let me tell you why we loved her so much and why we would travel the world for her and why we took her in to spend her final two years with us.

It is because of her heart, her love for Jesus, her generosity in every way, and the way she loved us as if we were her own. She loved my kids like they were prized possessions who were worthy of her love. She loved Tony and I without hesitation and we loved her so much.

In her final weeks and days she had episodes where dementia had taken her mind on adventures and I never once heard a bad word from her or anger- I heard her giving Bible studies, organizing missionary conferences, making sure her grandkids weddings were done well, her dinner parties were organized, etc, which truly reflected her life of service.

Though we mourn not like the world and we rejoice for her to be in her heavenly home we can’t help but feel a huge loss. We are so grateful God gave us Marion even though we wish we had longer!

Elianna had an indoor meet in Charleston. The boys and I spent much of the morning doing house chores. Dad left around 6:30 to drive to Nebraska to pick up Ethan for spring break. He was finished with his final class at 2:30. They’re supposed to be home around 11 tonight. Every time he makes this day’s round trip I am just in awe.

The meet was so fun. Miles came along since he’s still home for spring break. We picked him up on the way out to Grandma’s where I dropped off the boys and the dog. Then we drove to the high school to pick up Elianna which wasn’t too far away. I asked if she could give Judah the phone since he was going to have to drive himself to practice.

She said she’d already done that. So we drove the two hours to the indoor girls’ meet. It brought back memories from driving Ethan to the boys meet and being there when he ran. We found a spot in the bleachers and watched through the heats. I Facetimed Dad and Ethan and Miles recorded. She ran a personal best. I was happy we’d gone.

“For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source…”
~Hebrews 2:11~

I’m really enjoying having Alexis at the Contact site this semester. It’s one of those things where “she was a godsend” feels like an appropriate statement. It just makes it more fun when we can both arrive around the same time, catch up in the side room, go over each other’s plan for the evening, talk about class or whatever else. Then in between sessions we catch up again and talk about how things went.

Sometimes I think I’m resilient enough for counseling work. I don’t feel like the work come home with me or that I spend large amounts of time thinking about what happened in session. But sometimes different sessions get to me where afterward I get strangely emotional. One time I bawled the whole way home. All I could think was that for one inkling of a microsecond I felt the love that God feels for a person.

I haven’t had exactly the same experiences at Thrive. I’ve felt more disappointment there, either from not getting clients or feeling disappointed with myself for not opening up more in group. I finally prayed and asked God recently to help me open up in love, to come out of my shell. He says it’s just a matter of jumping in. That’s easy to say when you’re the one used to talking with everyone already listening.

I don’t know where the shyness comes from. There was a guy in group who said he didn’t have any trauma. We had just watched a video of Peter Levine and Gabor Mate.’ I used to watch their YouTube videos in bed. He said it’s a block for him, the whole talking about trauma. I told him those blocks are often the places that hold the keys to our deepest healing, and that we cannot heal what we don’t acknowledge.

There were a few other things I tried to say as my voice became weaker and the lump in my throat grew. So I counted that as hours because I actually talked to a person. And now I’m crying thinking about him because over the past several months of being together in that room we’d looked at each other enough little times. I’d heard enough about him and knew this was the time so in that moment I loved him.

Man is like a breath;
his days are like a passing shadow.
~Psalm 144:4~

The past couple of days the weather has been horrible. It’s been rainy, windy, snowy, with even a mixture of icy. We still had class though because it wasn’t enough to shut anything down. So that’s where I was on Ash Wednesday, in Brookens Library, room 369. We do our check-ins and then bring up any issues we are having at our sites. I didn’t have anything to report. I feel at peace with each one.

Dad had to preach in Delvan. It’s a smaller church up north that is in a vacancy so they’ve been calling him more. He had to be there for church at 6:30. The older kids were back from track practice in time to see him before he left and to play with Zorro before putting him in his cage while they went to the Lenten meal and Ash Wednesday service at Good Shepherd. She texted when they’d gotten there.

I wrote (and then deleted) that for Lent I’m repenting of my slothful tendencies. I keep thinking of that verse, “the last enemy to be defeated is death” with regard to this, except the word death is replaced with sloth. It’s like for whatever reason this is the one that saved for last. I still get tired and I still need naps, but it’s everything else. It’s everything else that is calling out to me saying I can do more.