The Athens library doesn’t open until 10. One of the boys asked if we could stop there sometime to look for a book. Library time was one of the casualties of Covid. I saw the nicer library lady in the grocery store not too long ago. We passed each other in the frozen foods aisle but I don’t know if she saw me. You look away and keep walking.

But I’ve got to make sure our card is up-to-date which I’m almost certain it’s not. Something has gotten off in our morning routine where the boys aren’t getting school until well after 8. Before, if we left at 7:37 we were pushing it but still good. Lately I turn on the car and it’s 7:50’s. One used to care more but I think he’s just accepted it now.

In the middle of the kitchen this morning it hit me, I had to ask, “Is everyone doing okay right now? Is anyone suffering silently and needing to talk or not saying anything?” I’m going to school for mental health and kids are apparently struggling for all kinds of reasons. And teens, and young adults, and the list goes on all the way up life’s stages.

“Mom, if we were, we’re not going to tell you right now”, she said. In the middle of making a sandwich or me filling in another downstairs on what the after school and dinner plan is. I’m trying to be courteous. People in general like to know what is happening. Dad’s going to Nashville for chapel in the afternoon to talk about camp.

This morning I was sitting up on our bed, the morning light now growing. It’s my favorite light to be seen in and I had been seen in it. But not long after the other feelings were back. I was looking at the floor, at the piles of my clothes in front of the still fairly organized bookshelf. The tipped over paper bag of mail that I’d moved for company.

“Why is it”, I asked, “that these piles just stay here, and I can hardly make myself engage them.” It didn’t used to be this way, I went on. There are too many podcasts and gurus out there who talk about email strategies, routines, and deep work. About your outward environment being a sign of what the inside looks like. If things are a mess then you are.

Why is this my standard for having things together? I hardly even listen to that stuff now. He does. “I feel like I used to be able to do it, and now it’s like I don’t even see it.” I did want an answer, but if I haven’t figured it out by now, I didn’t think there really was one. All the years of closet cleaning and thinking once I get it this way then I’ll be happy.

“You’ve got a lot more things going on now”, he said. I think I stared a little longer, then turned around, aware that something had just happened. “That was a very empathetic thing to say”, I said to him, “Thank you for saying that.” It did mean a lot. “You’re welcome”, he said. Driving back from taking the boys I thought, “I’ve got my own style.”

For some it’s Bohemian, and for others it’s Chic, or Classic, and I really am not that informed to be saying. Mine is “Whatever I’ve got”, and it works. Why is being put together outwardly the sign of having it together inwardly? How about if you, for the most part, have inner peace? Or if you’re generally at rest in home and relationships?

Deep down I think we know this, that it’s the inside that counts. And that’s not to discredit the value of wisdom or the insight that the two, the inward and outward, are somehow related. But even true wisdom isn’t everything, and there are even greater insights than those. So I was satisfied enough to keep on going, and I didn’t doubt it.

The kids’ track meet was cancelled this evening. It rained for a significant portion of the afternoon and even hailed. By the time school was over the rain had passed and they probably could’ve had their meet. But I was thankful it had been cancelled. The weather feels like a mercy at times to give you a break from the traveling around from here to there, though this year’s sports schedule is much lighter without all the baseball games.

Yesterday evening was our last day of classes for LCU. Our teacher gave us the choice of having shorter days for last night and next week, or just having one longer night where we combined two class times into one. We chose to combine the days. The teacher was giving away stuff from his office and I said I’d take the couch. It’s a dark brown loveseat that matches pretty well with the sofa we have in the living room. I still have to get it.

There is a paper and take-home exam that are still due next Monday. So I worked on some of that today. In order to be fully accepted into UIS I still need to get one more transcript sent over from a summer class I took at Lincoln College the month before we got married when I was gathering nursing prerequisites for when we’d eventually get to St. Louis and the seminary. There were several transcripts like this that they needed.

I didn’t need any of these for LCU, and I thought maybe that would’ve been enough of a reason for them to waive the requirement, but no. So at some point I have got to make myself get a self-addressed stamped manila envelope and send in a form along with it to this address where they have archives for colleges in Illinois that have closed. Lincoln College closed around the time I started at LCU. It was interpersonal communication.

Miles decided to go to college at a little Baptist college in Hannibal, MO. It’s only about an hour and a half from Springfield. The high school is having a public signing event where students who are playing sports in college get their pictures taken and sign a paper. He’s going to be doing track and soccer. I did have a hope that this would maybe convince Ethan to transfer and join Miles. They could be roommates and everything.

But it sounds like he told Miles he wasn’t interested. Dad was gone all day at a job fair in town. The head cook stepped down over the winter and he still hasn’t found anyone for the summer. These kinds of positions are extremely hard to fill these days. It’s not like the olden days where there are just women out there whose families are grown and their passion is cooking and this is their thing they love to do. The hours aren’t ideal.

You’ve got weekends and evenings and it isn’t full time with benefits or anything like that. I wish I could do more to relieve the burden but it isn’t me. I can help here and there, but to do the whole thing would be too much work and stress. I used to dream about us having a family here and it being like our little family business where one of my jobs was stripping the beds and cleaning up the Christian Growth Center rooms.

That I am much more happy to do, and able to honestly. You don’t have the performance and pressure issues that come with the cooking. There were lots of people who took flyers and maybe a few prospects. I need to pray about these things more because obviously the person who can do the most about it is God. I slept today for what felt like a couple of hours but it couldn’t have been that long. It was during the rain.

After Ghost died we planted a tree in his memory. When I had seen his days were numbered, I went to Target and bought a roll of burlap in the gift section. I watched him under the piano and bound his burial bag with yellow ribbon. It was gold like he was.

Dad dug a hole in the corner by the fences. That afternoon a couple of the kids and I went to Lowe’s to buy plants. I had no idea what to buy, but what was left of the selection included a pallet of gardenia trees. We came home with one plus one hydrangea plant for either side. I was originally going for symmetry but in the end it worked out. The hydrangea plants were the cherubim. And the open path to the gardenia tree meant the tree of life was no longer barred. There’s even a grapevine, leftover from a Lowe’s trip from several years ago, that miraculously grows.

I never planted the echinacea. I watched it in its pot, tipped over in the wind and dried up by the sun. And I lined up the rocks, and matching more to make a border. Those greens did not outlast the fires, but for a summer, there was Eden in my own backyard.

The cats were happy to have us back. The smell when we walked in was not even as bad as I was expecting. As long as you keep the windows open often enough to air out the rooms then it is manageable. It isn’t at the odorless level I’d like but it’s something I have accepted having to deal with for the time being. What was much worse was the hotel room this morning when we walked in after breakfast.

You really do appreciate the creature comforts of life when you’re on the road traveling. A comfortable bed, a clean bathroom, food that isn’t going to make your intestines uncomfortable, and, as my brother added, time with family just to name a few. This was such a fun little trip. We stayed in St. Joseph again last night but at the cheaper hotel that had a pool, but by the time we got there I was too tired to swim.

Or do anything except to get into bed. Dad took them still. I woke up when they came back and changed out of their swim trunks and turned on The Shawshank Redemption. I don’t think I ever could’ve crawled through the tunnel. The sewer one I could’ve done, but the first one that was just the dirt, I would’ve had to dig it out larger. He was also lucky that the sewer hole wasn’t covered by a grate at the end.

We did not stay up and wait for the new Taylor Swift album. But I have slowly made my way through about half of it on the various rides. We picked up the boys from the dorm on Saturday morning and had about a half hour drive to the meet. For the close ones the team is supposed to find their own rides, so we drove Ethan there as well. It was an exciting race, this time the 1500. My goal had just been to watch it.

I felt like I was going to throw up when it was over. I started walking away in the opposite direction of the finish. Josh sent me a picture and said he was fine. I’d sent him down to the other side to see if he was okay. I was sitting by the concession stand fence shaking and crying. It was a just a release of whatever. My brother sat next to me and said, “It’s alright, Beck.” They all came over soon after and we talked.

I started five songs on the way home from Nebraska. I mean like ones that I’ve written. So far the titles are Figured, Lucky Ones, I Said She Said, and Maybe This Time. The other one I didn’t have a title for yet. I hate to say this but I haven’t been a huge fan of the past few albums. At some point you can’t relate anymore. There are a few okay songs but the rest just seem to be more and more, well, morally depraved.

She does still inspire me though with the way that she writes. It is interesting to see what happens when exploring the depths of female freedom of expression. None of the songs I wrote today were things I haven’t said before, but listening to Taylor made me want to write my own album. It’s just finding that balance of saying what’s true without saying too much, and not just expressing feelings but inspiring new ones.

Elianna didn’t come along. She had a bigger meet in Rochester that she wanted to stay for. Since it was bigger we could watch her events live-streamed, just the times. Apparently this is bigger deal meet that I have missed now for the third year in a row. I was hearing about the things that went on last year and told my son good job.

And also Elianna who I texted via Grandma. She’s staying with Josh’s mom tonight and tomorrow. The boys are staying in the dorm tonight so I hope they all is going well. Josh and my brother walked to a gas station to get cigars and drinks. I was perfectly content to stay here in the room.

Earlier we watched the boys 5k race. It was mostly Concordia boys except three. One of the seniors was going fir his last chance at trying to break the school record. His PR from last year was only a few milliseconds off. He didn’t get it this time but still was running amazingly fast. The remainder of the college meet is happening tomorrow.

My brother and I spent the day hanging out. I had told him that I was needing today to be more of a rest day so I wasn’t going to be doing a whole lot. I made sure there was food to eat and worked on the laundry. Besides that though we had a self-declared lazy day–his words, not mine. We talked on the couch and called several siblings. Later we talked to Mom and Dad when we heard there was severe weather down near Irving.

Dad sent us pictures of the clouds when the storm was over. He couldn’t remember the name of them, but he said they were kinds you didn’t see too often. In the background Mom said something about cotton ball clouds. We had windy and rainy weather here in the evening. Before that he and I and the boys had gone to the store to get some food to take along for the car ride. We’re traveling for a weekend track meet in Nebraska.

We had to go look for Casper this morning. Josh walked all the way down to main camp. I walked out to the road and called to him where he is sometimes across the street in the neighbor’s driveway. He didn’t show up until the afternoon, so we missed his appointment today. We were supposed to bring him in between 8-8:30AM. I didn’t think of it soon enough, but we should’ve brought him in last night when he was on the roof.

*this is only a guess, I don’t know

The kids had a track meet in Pawnee this evening. They’ve had a long day. It started out leaving for school around 7:30. Josh took the kids and first dropped off the little boys. Then he took the older kids to the high school where they were meeting with the others. He drove a bus of about 23 kids into downtown Springfield where a March for Life event was being held. They had Matins at 10 at the downtown Lutheran church.

I wanted to go but stayed home. The day prior had been long. I’d driven up north with my brother and mom to take him back to his apartment after staying with my parents for the past week following an appendectomy. We ended up coming back home with him still with us. He spent the night with my parents last night and then he and my mom met us today at the meet. He’s staying with us for the next several days.

So I’m looking forward to that. With my younger siblings especially, the affection I have for them isn’t quite the same as it is with my own kids but it is similar. It was nice to sit and visit with my mom and brother at the meet. The kids did well even if they don’t always think that they do. Josh drove the track bus back to the school and somehow they were home before me, my brother, and the boys. We ate supper soon after.

Something about my food story wasn’t adding up. In the moment it had happened so fast that I didn’t have time to think about it. But through the rest of the day, on and off, I could not shake a nagging question. They say you’re supposed to use wisdom when bringing up potentially touchy subjects. Is your husband stressed? Is he in the middle of doing or thinking about something else? These aren’t good times to brings things up.

But sometimes all the rules can get to be a little much. What’s a life partner if you can’t even ask them a simple question? If everything must be filtered with these carefully measured amounts of striking just the right balance? I imagined him getting a text from his wife in the middle of talking with all of the pastors. The old ball and chain that you can’t get away from. Drinking their beers and talking around the trading post campfire.

And I thought, you know what? He can answer me whenever, but right now in the moment I was ready to verbalize so I texted from the van after class had been dismissed. “I’m just wondering…”, I started out. I wasn’t consciously thinking this then, but John Gottman talks about using soft start-ups. You’re less likely to activate a person’s defenses. “When you heard so-and-so say something about taking the food…”

Why didn’t you say something know that I had already asked for it?

He didn’t know I had asked. It’d been another one of those instances of miscommunication. If he’d known he would’ve said something. And I was satisfied with that. If that’s all it was well then I didn’t have to worry. It didn’t have to be about why I wasn’t important enough to speak up for in a potentially awkward moment, or why he’d left me to do the work of confronting.

“Well I did.” I had to say it. I wasn’t trying to be a pain, contentious, or obnoxious, or heaven forbid like the woman who’d make you rather sit on a roof. Sometimes I think Solomon brought some of that upon himself. And I think it’s unfair that the women didn’t get to write their proverbs. And if he was the one who was so in love, whatever happened to the one he was in love with?

I would’ve said something, he said. And that was that. We moved on to other things, or rather, I drove home, my curiosity satisfied and heart reassured. I went to bed when I got home with him still down at the campfire. I wasn’t sad, I was simply noticing. There was a time when the chance to be at home alone in a bed together was the number one thing either one of us would’ve asked for.

I follow a woman on Instagram @heybeginnerwife. This morning I saw a post where she was saying that she used to get irritated with her husband because he didn’t notice things she did to take care of herself, in this case a manicure. She finally realized she was being silly for putting that pressure on her husband to notice.

I didn’t like the implications. Why does it seem with this kind of advice that the happiness of the woman doesn’t come from actually receiving something she wants? Rather she finds it by realizing she was silly, by denying her desires, in this case, for her husband to notice and compliment her nice nails. Josh was on his way out to make sure coffee was ready in the CGC. I asked him if I could show him this video. He said sure.

And then I said that I was showing him this video because the woman in it said something I didn’t fully like and after the video I was going to explain why I didn’t like it. So if he could find something to affirm in what I said or see my point then that’d be good. And it was actually funnier because I said that. And I was happy.

Everyone is away from home today. Josh has a pastor’s conference in town. The older kids are at school. The younger boys are at Grandma’s after she picked them up at noon and is keeping them overnight. I have class tonight and Josh will be busy through the night hosting the pastors who come back to camp for supper. As always these are only the tentative plans.

We had an incident this morning where a kitchen helper came to prep a few things. I had asked Josh earlier about the leftover food in the dining hall from last night’s supper meal. He said if I wanted it I better go get it, because someone had discovered it and was making plans to take it home and split it in their own determined way. It wasn’t something that had been asked about.

This made me mad. In what was some kind of internal surge of assertiveness, protectiveness, and probably brazen selfishness, I texted the person and said the leftover food was already spoken for. I didn’t want it disappearing by accident. The person replied and said they were glad that I said something. I drove down later and put the trays in the van.

My stomach has been hurting the past couple of days. I feel hot inside, like my insides are inflamed, my joints as well in my hips especially. And it isn’t just physical. It’s like all of a sudden my wounded pride woke up from a nap and started shouting, “Enough. Enough!” And I write things in my journal like, “I’m really going to have to watch it this month.” I ask for awareness.

I believe in the mind-body connection but I also don’t mean to make it more than it is. Certain cycles are more peaceful and others have more disruptions to work through. It’s this combination of alerts to real things that are needing to change, and then having to process what has already happened and needs to be released and let go of. You realize this is called forgiveness.

Tonight’s banquet went really well. The catered food was delicious and the crowd fit nicely in the dining hall wing. Our speaker was Mary Kate Zander who is the executive director for Illinois Right to Life. She drove all the way from Chicago, and then turned around and went back. I was tired just thinking about it but she also has a five-month old baby which makes total sense. You don’t want to be apart for too long.

I’m not normally much of a political activist type of person, and since I had never heard of this woman, I didn’t really have much excitement or expectation for her talk. But I ended up finding myself captivated by her in some way. Her confidence in standing up in front of people and talking, the way she said, “Can you all hear me okay?”, and when the man from the side of the room said no, she decided just to hold the mic, and proceeded to talk for long time, switching the mic back and forth with her hands.

I hadn’t any idea the stuff that was going on with “abortion tourism”, where women travel across states to access abortions in our state where it is legal. The numbers were staggering regarding how much government support is received by providers. I welled up when I heard the words “Project Love”, which provides grants to women experiencing crisis pregnancies, for things such as overdue rent or fixing their cars.