::: in the bleak midwinter :::

Usually, this time of the year, trying to get any schoolwork done at all is such a drag. I'm so affected by the weather, the brown dreariness of it, that I feel nothing like learning, accomplishing, teaching, and I feel only like burrowing, hibernating, lounging and lazing.

I'm not saying that I don't feel that way now, during this bleak midwinter, but I am saying that I'm learning to force myself into a discipline of sorts. Where I would normally awake and say, "Well, I slept in too long today. The whole day's shot. So much for that," I'm instead saying, "Okay. So I awoke late. We'll forgo the normal schedule and get some breakfast, and I'll read to the girls while they're eating."

Usually, forcing myself to start something creates a type of perpetual motion, and I find myself gaining some steam from each thing I make myself do. If I'm completely unmotivated, folding and putting away a load of laundry gets me somewhat motivated, and it continues on from there.

I'm not sure why things seem so overwhelming right now. Life is going very well, I'd say, for the most part. Sure, there are things that could be better, relationships that could use repairing, and money is always a strain, but, for the most part, life is good. But even one small thing, one extra stop for an errand, one more meeting or phone call or page of a schoolbook, and the thought makes me want to crumble. And yet, if I eliminate all of those things, if I find myself without commitments and activities, I sink into a boredom that serves pretty well as depression, and then I simply don't know what to do with myself.

A friend has recently offered to loan me a therapy light, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that works. I plan to use it during lesson times when I'm reading to the girls aloud. That should make for plenty of exposure to the light, given that the bulk of our day involves reading aloud.

I also really feel that I should get out and take walks, but just the thought of it almost sends me to tears. Isn't that pitiful?

So, for now, I'll keep forcing myself to do what needs doing and looking for light whereever I can find it. I'm so thankful for those around me who are patient and loving and kind and pitch in whereever they're able. Without you, I'd be completely lost.

::: for jill :::

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

::: doing it all: how to enjoy a perfect christmas :::

Last night, my mother-in-law called. In the course of our conversation, she told me about some traveling she'd like to do that just isn't going to pan out this Christmas. She was disappointed, but she'd come to terms with it. My father-in-law had given his oft-repeated advice:

"You can't do it all."

"That's a lie," I told her. "You most certainly can do it all."

Of course, I was joking.

Kind of.

I don't like being told that I can't, and I usually choose not to believe it when people say it. As a matter of fact, it kinda spurs me on. I mean, what if Mother Teresa had believed those words? What if Stephen Hawking and Beethoven and Stevie Wonder had believed those words? Of COURSE you can do it all!

You can do it all and be it all and have it all!

Especially at Christmas time! Not only CAN you do it all, but you're EXPECTED to do it all! So take advantage of it! Put all that expectation to work for you and do EVERYTHING! Find the most complicated gingerbread pattern and invite all of the kindergartners in your neighborhood to make them from scratch! Promise to decorate the Christmas tree in the center of town all by yourself using only ornaments made by people from your community! Open a homeless shelter and soup kitchen instead of buying gifts for your loved ones! Or, better yet, spend July through December finding the perfect gift for everyone on your list, including all of your children's teachers, the neighbors, the mailman, the librarian, the Sunday School teachers and the dog! The gifts must be perfect--only very expensive or cleverly handmade will do--so yank out that credit card and spend, spend, SPEND (because even handmade costs lots of money if you want to do it right)! Attend multiple Christmas celebrations with all of the branches of your family, your co-workers, your neighbors and your church! Better yet, invite your entire family and a few lonely people to dinner in your home, research all of the most complicated recipes by your favorite food bloggers, create a killer tablescape complete with handmade place cards featuring your favorite photograph of each guest, and look like a knockout in the little black dress you avoided all of the Christmas fudge and ran five miles on the treadmill every day to get into! Cozy up your home with adorable Christmas vignettes in every corner featuring authentic old-world goose feather trees, crisply ironed linen stockings with hand-embroidered names, and vintage mercury ornaments piled in hand-blown vases! Better yet, create a theme for each room! The bedroom can be all muted blues and whites, the kids' room can have a "Candyland" theme, and your bathroom can be dripping with silvers and golds! And don't forget pictures! You must take lots and lots of pictures to capture all of this Christmas magic! Arrange for formal pictures with color-coordinated outfits in which everyone is happy as well as candid pictures of family members wide-eyed over their perfect gifts. This is the time of the year when expectations are high! People are counting on you! Christmas comes but once a year, so you only have a few chances in your lifetime to do it right!

WE CAN DO IT ALL!

Except...

I didn't make hard tack candy this year.

Years ago, during a Christmas when money was especially, um, missing and Bard, my eldest, was a child, she wanted to give her grandmother a very special gift. She knew that Grandma loved stained glass, and she had the idea of making her a jar of hard tack candy. I'd made a few batches along with hand-pulled molasses taffy, hand-wrapped caramels and the usual array of cut-out cookies. It sounded like the perfect gift, so we found a jar and went to work filling it. Oh, how it sparkled with color! She was excited to give that gift and it has turned into a Christmas tradition in the Thicket Dweller house.

Every December for many, many years, I have spent days--verily, weeks--mixing water, sugar and corn syrup, boiling it for what seems like hours, carefully testing the molten mixture with a candy thermometer, a glass of cold water, the sheet test--whatever I had available to me at the time--to get that perfect temperature before adding the little dram of oil and a few drops of food coloring. Over the years, I've learned some valuable lessons about this pass-fail project:

Lesson #1: Don't drip any of the molten liquid on your skin or it will leave a hole in your flesh that burns down to the bone;
Lesson # 2: Don't put cinnamon, clove, wintergreen, spearmint or peppermint oil in the molten lava until it has completely stopped bubbling, or the oil will immediately turn to a gas, coat all of your exposed skin, and hurt for days like the worst sunburn you've ever had as well as giving you an extra edge by turning your face a not-so-festive bright red;
Lesson #3: If you have four burners on your stove, use 'em. There's no rule that you have to make one batch at a time. Just space them out a few minutes apart and pay attention to the rate that each pot and burner cook (they're all different!) so you're not adding oils and coloring to all four pots at one time;
Lesson #4: Grape oil is from the devil. No matter what my multitude of tests said, once I added grape oil, the resulting candy would NOT be hard and will stick to all dental work. I gave up on grape oil;
Lesson #5: This stuff is SHARP! It can and will cut you to ribbons. Blood does not mix well with hard tack candy.

I've always loved the way the process filled the house with so many delicious aromas, the line of tiny oil bottles marching along the countertop waiting to be added to the molten lava, the satisfying "CRACK" of the cooled candy being shattered by the heavy end of a butter knife, the shake-shake-shake of the candy in a baggie of powdered sugar, the big jar filled to the brim with stained-glass candy. It's a beautiful thing. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it's a very, very beautiful thing.

And I've never really felt that it was Christmas unless I've made hard tack candy.

I mean, we can do Christmas caroling, or go sledding, or pile gifts under the tree, or tick off each day with the opening of yet another door on the Advent calendar. We can bring in the greens and haul in a live tree, hang the stockings with care and wear ugly Christmas sweaters, but it doesn't feel like Christmas unless I've shopped for all those flavors, burned my hand a time or two, covered the counter with foiled-lined cookie sheets, scented the whole house with root beer, watermelon, bubblegum, clove, anise and wintergreen (but NOT grape), and filled that gallon jar with cracked sparkling goodness.

Tell me, how crazy is that?

No, you don't have to tell me. I already know.

As much as I want to do it all, have it all and be it all, I also need to know my own limits.

Because Christmas will come even if I don't do any of those things. It will come if I live in a slum neighborhood in Philly or if I have Pancreatic Cancer or if my child dies or if I feel depressed or if my house burns down or if I lose my income or if my family comes down with ringworm or if my husband has pneumonia.

Christmas will come if I make gingerbread houses, or if I don't, if I find that perfect tree skirt I bought on sale last year after watching it all Christmas season, or if I remember that it got peed on by the dog, hung on the porch railing and forgotten until Spring.

Christmas will come if all of my children are home for the holidays, or if one is in a remote village in Western Africa avoiding poisonous snakes and making food out of trees.

Christmas will come if I find that one perfect present for each of my family members, and it will come if I have to buy everyone gift cards to Stuff-Mart, and it will come if I don't give anyone anything at all but a kiss and a heart-felt "I love you."

Christmas will come if I don't make hard tack candy. And it will come if I do.

Heck, yeah, it's fun to do some of that stuff. It's also a big pain to do some of that stuff. So I take my B-12, my Vitamins A and D and my Glucosamine and I do what I can, what I want to. And that might look different every year.

It has been looking a lot like Christmas every year for over 2000 years.

And the One who makes it look that way is not a God of guilt, but a God of hope and healing, love and forgiveness.

Maybe we can't do it all. Maybe we can. But maybe we can work on taking joy in what we can do, leaving the guilt out in the cold.

May you be blessed this Christmas season with pure peace and true joy.

(Photo of kids from Christmas 2005)

::: walking away :::

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver
HT to Tonia

::: a million canaries :::

How do you explain to a child,
that seeing is not always believing?
That the stars still exist in the daytime,
even when the sun is out,
but that there are no monsters
under her bed
or
in her closet
or
outside her window
watching her lay scared into sleeplessness?

How do you explain it to a child,
that God loves us,
protects us,
provides for us,
through the reality of nightmares,
the cruelty of friendship,
the unfairness of death?

How do you explain to yourself
that believing is more than seeing?
That yellow birds hang suspended
in the cloud-dotted blue?
That the greatest of these
is that one thing
that doesn't seem to be working?

How do you explain to yourself
that God loves us,
protects us,
provides for us
through the reality of disease,
the cruelty of depression,
the unfairness of economic poverty?

And yet he does,
and he does,
and he does.

When the yellow bird sails
and my fingers bend
and the stars shine,
I know.

Men can take from me
my life,
my Prozac,
my 401K,

But if the yellow bird hanging suspended
in the cloud-dotted blue
spirals to the ground,
he knows it,
and only he holds my soul
and he values me--
he values you--
more than a million canaries.

So I will speak in the daylight
what he tells me when I bolt upright,
in a pool of cold sweat;
What he whispers in my ear,
I will sing in my own voice 
as I stand on the shingles of my roof.

He does!
And he does!
And he does!

::: guilty either way :::

There are times when I need to just shut my mouth.

During these times, I think it's best to stare out the window silently and feel sorry for myself. The greatest satisfaction comes when I think of something so terribly sad that my eyes cloud up and mist over and all of the sadness spills out, and when I squeeze my eyelids together, it runs down my nose and tickles the outside of my nostril until I have to push it away with my sleeve or the tip of my finger.

There are times when I need to just speak my mind.

During these times, I know it's best to pause until the right words pop into my brain which cooperates with my mouth to bring forth the intended meaning. As the sentiments spill out, I know when they're hitting the mark, just like a basketball player who knows that the ball is headed for nothing but net the moment it leaves his fingertips. It just feels right.

What I should have learned by now, as an adult, as a human being, as an intelligent woman, is which times are which.

When I stare and the sadness spills and the nostril tickles, I feel childish and self-pitying.

When I speak and the words hit and they're nothing but net, I feel hubrish (it's not a word...yet) and bossy.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is no right time for either. Maybe this is a causal oversimplification. There are likely many reasons why I feel childish, hubrish, self-pitying, bossy.

Either way, I feel like I should apologize.

So I'm sorry. I'm sorry for saying nothing, and I'm sorry for saying everything.

I hope that covers it.

::: view from my desk :::

This is what's keeping me going today. Every time I look to the left of where I'm sitting right now, the window, filled with the image of that gorgeous silver maple tree, gives me just the amount of yellow life I need to make it through the next few minutes, and then the next, and then the next.

These days, when the days grow shorter and the skies grow gray, my energy level and patience both shrink drastically. Now more than ever I need help and encouragement from those I love, and lots of patience so that I might have some to pass on.

I don't like feeling weepy, cranky, snarky, but here it is. My vitamins and healthy eating don't seem to help. Road trips like the one we took to Niagara are just the lift I need, but how many of those can I pack in?

So I take the encouraging moments where I can get them, even if the only one I have is the view from my desk, the beautiful leaves that stored the summer sun and are holding on to it for just a little while longer. Thank you, tree. I'm glad that you are willing to share with me.

::: sometimes the system goes on the blink and the whole thing turns out wrong :::

Man, I'm pretty doggone frustrated right now.

I mean, I'd like to spend a few paragraphs telling you about our great trip to see Houdin at the discipleship center, but I can't. I just can't.

Instead, I'm thinking about my rotten luck.

We were given a van to test drive, a kind gesture from a friend. A nice van. A 2002 Town and Country. And while it has a lot of miles and a few little issues, it's a better vehicle than anything we currently have.

After a couple of weeks of test driving it, we told our friend that, yes, we would buy the van. He gave us the title and the extra keys. On Friday, I paid $150 for the title transfer and plates and had new tires put on to the tune of $450.

In less than 24 hours, the thing was dead on the side of the road. Apparent transmission failure. It was 7 A.M., we were three hours from home, halfway there to see Houdin's presentation, with three sleeping kids in the car. One minute, we're cruising along, admiring the scenery, making good time. The next minute, bam. Car no worky.

I could say that I'm so glad we were at a place where we could pull over. I could say that I'm glad I packed extra gloves and coats and that I had enough money in the checking account to get a tow truck.

But I don't want to say those things. I want to say:

Dang.

I didn't renew my AAA.
I spent $250 on a tow truck.
I spent $80 on a rental car.
We missed Houdin's presentation.
The car dealership that the tow company recommended for repair was closed.
We have to drive back with the rental (because the only rental place available didn't do one-ways) in five hours, just seven hours after returning home from the trip.
Nothing seemed to go well.
Everything seemed to be stinky.
I'm in a bad mood, and I don't know what to do about it.
I think God's out to get me.

Where I had just made some financial progress and was in the position to pay some of my debts, I am now in the hole by $500. More if we have to fix this vehicle. Like $2,000 more. And we haven't even paid for the vehicle yet.

Man.

So I'll try to settle down, and then I'll write about the rest of the weekend which, unfortunately, seemed to be true to the theme of "stinky."

But we got to see Houdin and Grace. And the hugs from them were sweet.

Goodnight. I'll try not to go much further into debt while I sleep. If I can help it.

::: if i get there before you do, i'll cut a hole and pull you through :::

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown—
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

~Robert Louis Stevenson

This is one of the girls' favorite poems, and when we read daily from The Child's Garden of Verses, this one is almost always read. The older children sang a version of it for choir.

Isn't swinging one of those simple, lovely things that makes childhood grand? One of my favorite memories is of my dad pushing me on my little metal swingset in the back yard, me soaring, he loudly singing, "Swing lo, sweet cherry-ought. Comin' for to carry me home." I can remember how I would rush to the swingset at the school next to my aunt's house, even into my teens, when my friend and I would pump our feet to the rhythm of our own voices singing The Steve Miller Band's Fly Like an Eagle.

It's great fun as a child. But somewhere along the line, we decide, or someone tells us, that we're too old for it, and then, when we want to return to it, our bottoms are too big for the seats, or our feet drag on the ground. But if we can get past those parts, it's still a simple, lovely thing to do.

And swinging in sync with a friend? Ah. Magical, isn't it?

I loved watching Sweetheart, The Baby, and their friend Lydia fly through the air, giggling, trying to slow down and speed up to match each other's flight. And even the competition that took place was interesting to watch. The synchronized swinging almost became an obsession with some, and a non-issue with others, and for those some who took it seriously, the fact that no one would sync with her was a great insult to her psyche.

Life is like that. There are things I take way to seriously, and someone might be able to say to me that it's no big deal, that I should just shrug it off, that it doesn't really matter anyway. But that doesn't erase my human emotions, my desire for relationship, my confusion when someone I love, or someone I try to love, rejects me, deals with me callously, or misunderstands my intentions. Why does it matter? Why does it bother me so? Why, when people who love me, people who really know me, people I respect and admire, tell me to forget about it, shrug it off, can't I do so?

I must not be the only one. I was listening to a repeat show on This American Life, an NPR radio program that I download as a podcast each week. This week's theme was The Kindness of Strangers. In it, Brett Leveridge tells the story of his experience of standing on a subway platform. A stranger, which, of course, means someone Brett doesn't even know, probably someone that no one waiting on the subway knows, meanders along the platform, and chooses people as if choosing players for a kickball game: "You're in. You're out. You can stay. You have to leave." But it wasn't like the people who were told they had to go left. They just ignored this strange person. Not Brett, though. For some reason, as the guy approached Brett, all he could think about was how he hoped the guy would approve of him. A guy he didn't even know. A total stranger.

So if, as humans, it matters to us that a total stranger approves of us, how much more important must it be that someone we know, someone who at least in modicum knows us, rejects us?

This is why, I believe, the person of Christ is so compelling. He was, and is, what we long to be. Perfect. Without sin. Blameless. And we long so much for that perfection and blamelessness, for that relationship and acceptance, that it's almost unbearable when someone rejects us for reasons we can't fully understand, even if it's a person we don't particularly like. Even if it's a person we can't really stand at all.

But here was Jesus, and, yeah, like I said. Perfect. Without sin. Blameless. And still, He had enemies. He was despised and rejected. Those He loved denied Him, betrayed Him, doubted Him. What must that have felt like for Him, who didn't just feel He hadn't done anything wrong. He really hadn't done anything wrong!

And so I know that, with all of my flaws and failures, I can't expect to be unconditionally loved by anyone but God, but this feeling of swinging so high, of laughing and and feeling that weightlessness, and laughing, and then falling and scooping so low, and reaching out my hand to sync with someone who chooses to keep theirs death-gripped tightly on the chains, pumping their feet so that they can rise higher and higher and higher than I, is always a bit of a shock to me. Hey, I think, wasn't this supposed to be fun?

And on the worst of days, I just want to jump off of the swing altogether.

My son told me recently that it takes seven positive comments to counteract one negative one. Seven. For every. single. negative. So if you get totally chewed out by someone, told in every way how you've failed, what a loser and terrible person you are, just imagine how much encouraging and building up your loved ones have to do to cancel out what that one uncaring, selfish, unthinking person did.

Wow.

No wonder it's so hard to love. It takes persistence, doesn't it? We have to keep undoing all that's been done, not just by us, but by others, too.

I guess that's why I want to be the one who swings next to you, who, when you reach out your hand for someone to sync with, grabs that hand and sticks right next to you, keeping time with your rhythm, no matter how high or low you go.

Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down
Coming for to carry me home
But still my soul feels heavenly bound
Coming for to carry me home

The brightest day that I can say
Coming for to carry me home
When Jesus washed my sins away,
Coming for to carry me home.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Huff. Puff. Huff. Puff. Huff. Puff.

That's the sound of me trying to catch my breath. It's the sound of me coming up for air. It's the sound I make when climbing the stairs, too, because I have woefully set aside my running in favor of other important things, like working my butt off so I can pay my bills and feed my family. Unfortunately, my butt doesn't disappear as quickly with this kind of work as it does with running. That, I fear, will have to wait. While my running partner chugs along (have you registered for the 5K yet, Kim?), I'm left in the dust. In lieu of running, I dream about it. Literally. I've composed an essay in my head about my running dreams, but I haven't stopped my life long enough to write it.

The past month has been eventful. Every moment has been occupied. I've been rising with the sun, but it's been beating me to bed each night. If you've ever seen a candle burned at both ends, you'll know what I look like.

Each morning brings the urgency of getting to the garden. With our wet, cold early spring, not much happened after the initial tilling. Now the herb garden is planted and mulched, the veggie garden is filled with onions, swiss chard seeds (yet to come up), peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, more onions, marigolds, basil and cilantro. The asparagus on which I had given up poked its many heads from the cool earth, only to be snipped off by a gang of marauding goats. Still, it persists and I hope for a bountiful harvest next year.

This seems to fit in with the theme of the month--hope deferred. Seeds that don't want to germinate. Newly placed seedlings that fall to the fate of a hungry goat kid. Threatening letters from government agencies holding my precious world in its fists lest I cough up several months' pay for taxes I owe. A new birthday camera just in time for my computer to crash. The cultivator quits when gardening season begins. Life=challenge. Most days, I'm tired and grumpy and my family takes the brunt. A few moments, like waking up from this afternoon's nap to the sound of birds and little girls singing, looking out my window over the finally green hillsides, turning silvery in the breezes of this spring day, almost make me want to grab my camera and my journal, but I barely have the desire. This home and hillside, this desire of my heart, this fruit of my labor, is only tenuously mine. Any act of God, unavoidable tragedy or certified letter might pull it out from under my bare gardening feet, leaving me on my rump, disillusioned and desolate.

These things have been occupying my mind, and more days than not, I find myself deep in depression. Work takes me from home, home greets me with more work, and never am I completely caught up. Even today, a day off from work outside the home, gives me an opportunity to pursue those things that have been niggling at me every day while I'm away, but my energy is zapped, and curled up in bed is where I'd like to be.

That's hardly anything inspiring to write about, though I do think about jotting down thoughts now and again. Life isn't all that poetic right now.

I need air. I need to resurface and take a deep breath. Something fresh and clean to purify my body and renew my energy.

A bit of hope would help, too.

For Firefly

Most of us will never know how dark this world can seem.
When life becomes more nightmare than a dream.
So to all of you who have survived a visit to the edge,
I trust that you will understand this pledge.

I promise I will always leave the darkness for the light.
I swear by all that's holy, I will not give up the fight.
I'll drink down death like water before I ever come again
To that dark place where I might make
The choice for life to end.

I've found that as I've traveled through the inscape of my life
That mountain tops make valleys in between.
And when that nameless sadness like a cloud comes over me,
I look back on all the brightness I have seen.

And realize that though my world might seem so torn apart
Most often it is joy that breaks the heart.
And that I am the richest woman though I must beg for bread
For the very One who might condemn has called me friend instead.

I promise I will always leave the darkness for the light.
I swear by all that's holy, I will not give up the fight.
I'll drink down death like water before I ever come again
To that dark place where I might make
The choice for life to end.

I will always leave the darkness for the light.
I will not give up the fight.

Michael Card

Role with It...

Lately there have been a lot of thoughts running through my head about my role in life.

I seem to get like this specifically when I'm busy with things that pull me away from the home, like work (right now, I'm working for a local greenhouse part-time), or classes (either my kids' or my own), or volunteer work, or activities, or social gatherings. My being gone really takes a toll on the state of the house. Right now, it's a disaster area. And that causes me a lot of stress.

But being gone takes a lot of toll on me, too. What I really want is to be a home-maker. I want to be with my kids, read to them, bake things, cook meals, clean the house, do laundry.... I know, I know. It sounds so June Cleaverish. But it's true. Nothing relaxes me more than a clean, organized home, a neat yard and a bucolic barnyard full of well-cared for animals.

Unfortunately, I'm the only one in my family who really has strong desires regarding these things.

So I feel like I spend a good portion of my time fighting the inevitable messes and prodding, bribing and threatening the masses to take a look around and take a bit of inintiative and take CARE of things!

Lately, I've been feeling the pull to get me back in the house. I almost feel like I'm caught in a trap, expending time and energy at the greenhouse, forensics club, choir, and even the housecare things that take me away from home, like grocery and thrift store shopping, and I'm wondering if it's all really where God wants to have me.

I'd like to wrap up this post by saying I had a wonderfully insightful epiphany about this while showering this morning.

But I can't. Because I haven't.

Last week when we were preparing for the forensics tournament, I just felt like my life was completely out-of-control, how I spend a lot of time serving in other areas for other people, and then my own home, health and family suffer because of the time we spend away. As we were preparing to leave, The Baby, who's four, wrapped her arms around me and said, "You're leaving again? Already?" and clung to me, bursting into heartbroken sobs, begging me not to go. Yesterday, after two days of being gone for the tournament, she clung to me and continually offered me "surprises" that she had for me. She was emotional, weepy and clingy. She really needed me. And I was gone. For what? What's so important? Especially in light of the fact that my other "little girl" was four just yesterday. And now, she's seventeen.

It's a complicated thing, this life. And being a mother? Oh. My. Goodness. Pressures like I never would have imagined.

Even at the tournament, I knew that I had certain responsibilities, but I also had children who were presenting pieces and wanted me to see them. No matter which choice I made, I felt guilty. If I went to see them, I felt like I was shirking my responsibilities. If I didn't go see them and made myself available for other things, I felt guilty for not being a good mother.

I think part of it is always second-guessing myself about what I'm "supposed" to be doing. Or maybe just what I think other people think I'm *supposed* to be doing.

Like now. I'm supposed to be running, and shopping for a dryer, and buying milk for my family and another family, and dropping things off at the thrift store, and checking on the goats, and heading to the greenhouse.

But I'm here. Trying to figure our my role in life.

Have you ever struggled with this?

Note to Self: Stay off the Scale

Yesterday was killer. I don't know what it was that knocked me down like it did, but I'm still not completely up again.

Some days are like this.

There are days when I feel like I can take on the world. Give me any chance, I'll take it. Give me any rule, I'll break it.

But there are other days, like yesterday...

I didn't want to get out of bed. I was supposed to run with Kim, but it was raining. Not just raining, but really, really raining in a gray, depressing kind of way. I was going to cancel our run, but Kim, being the ever-encouraging walking/running partner that she is, found a way around the dilemma and got us into the local club for the day. We did the treadmill for an hour, and it was absolutely no fun. I hate the televisions and the noise and the heat and the whole being-on-a-treadmill feeling. I'm much more of a nature girl, really. But we did it, and I think the little blinking lights said that I burned like 325 calories or something. Kind of depressing. Not really even a meal's worth.

And then I weighed myself. I weigh 185 right now. 185! That's terrible. I never, ever, ever want to weigh myself again. I guess it doesn't help that I used to be 110. I guess it doesn't help that I topped out at 180 when I was nine-months pregnant with my first child. I guess it doesn't help when I see that other people can lose a whole person in ten months, because I'm totally not interested in eating fake fats and counting everything I put in my mouth. I don't want to live that way, really. I just want to find a healthy, happy balance. I want to enjoy my life and not hate my body.

Yesterday, when I came home from the gym, I spent time wtih my kids for a while, reading and talking and laughing, and then I got really, really tired. By three o'clock, I crashed. I couldn't stay awake any longer. It didn't really matter if the house was burning down, or if my childen were shooting each other. I...just...needed...to...sleep. It was all I could do.

So, I closed my eyes and slept. For three hours, I slept.

When I awoke, my head was splitting open and there were angry thoughts in it.

I spent the entire rest of the evening in bed. My husband brought me wine and peanuts. My daughter brought me toast and eggs. I tried using my sinus mask, but it didn't help. I drank another glass of wine. Finally, I asked for ibuprofen, and I went to sleep.

This morning, I still didn't want to get out of bed. Is this illness or depression or what? But I did get out of bed, and I did actually go with Kim and we did actually run. Not three miles, or seven miles, or ten miles, or a marathon, but we ran. We ran a total of twelve minutes with intervals of walking in between.

Why doesn't that make me feel better? Why is it that I feel worse about myself right this minute, in my size-twelve thrift store pants, than I felt six months ago in my size-sixteen jeans? Why am I suffering this anxiety, that I'll never lose weight? That I'll be 185 forever? That I'll have to eat nothing and like it in order to look the way I want to look?

I don't know. Maybe this will pass. But today, I just want to go to bed and cry.

I might just do that.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'll return to my normal program following this plunge into depression.