Random Ramblings

Once upon a time, there was a girl with big dreams of how her life would be...that life included many many things such as a handsome husband, a big house, horses, a fancy car, sparkly jewelry, amazingly perfect and beautiful children, and a long string of accomplishments...that life did NOT include trips to the ER and the phrase "MS concerns"...it did NOT include disgruntling employment situations...it did NOT include broken bones or middle-of-the-night bedding changes while a child emptied their entire digestive system of its contents...it did NOT include emergency trips to the vet's office when the dog sliced open its foot and bled all over the white carpet...

I know that we're not promised an easy road...but there are definitely days I wish things were just a little less exciting form the "Fight or Flight" side of things, and more exciting from the "We're going to Hawaii!!!!!" or "Someone paid off our mortgage!!!!!!" side of things....

It's been a bumpy 2016 for the family...

Captain struggled a bit with learning personal responsibility in regards to schoolwork and got his first ever less-than-perfect report card and little bit a talk with BB and I about how his choices will impact things for the rest of his life...and little things add up and can make a BIG impact later on...

Littlest One had a horrible bronchial infection at the end of February, and missed a week of school, making me miss days of work, and while my coworker said in a happy voice that she was happy to cover for me, I'm now facing the passive-aggressive ramifications of that in her trash talk to my manager about my shoddy work...(more on that later).

Destructo-Girl has grown into a very adventurous and competitive 8 year old...and she struggles with a strong will.  In her desire to win the game of Marco Polo on Feb 27, she fell off the platform of a schoolyard play structure and broke her arm.  However, in true "Murphy's Law" fashion, she broke it 2 inches below the growth plate in her humerus...which means NO CAST, only a sling for 6 weeks...no lifting, no using that arm other than to hold something in her fingers...I think it would be less wearing on me if she'd busted both her Ulna and Radius and was casted...

As if that wasn't enough, BB has been dealing with random numbness in his hands for about 6 months.  Sometimes when he's been using his hands a lot (Carpal Tunnel perhaps?), and more recently, just whenever...Thursday, he was at work and had a massive headache just sort of appear out of nowhere, blind spots in his vision, AND the numb hands...he got himself home and I forced him to the ER...where the doctor ordered a CT and MRI/Brain Scan...and then said "there's nothing to make us admit you tonight, but you should call a neurologist and get in in the next week.  There's some concern about MS"..........and then the neurologist couldn't see us until Monday...YIKES!!!!

We did well...life as usual, met a friend for dinner, had the kids' Upward activities, I worked...and we didn't Google or WebMD a single thing for the entire weekend....

Monday found us at the neurology clinic...where the doctor ruled out some things and not others....

Good news in all of this is that Captain can get new lenses with his new prescription for his eyes...Destructo-Girl doesn't need glasses (yet) and her pain is down to a 2...Littlest One turns 6 tomorrow and is just a blessing and sunny little girl....AND, most important of all, the doctor we saw Monday says it is NOT MS.  It is NOT a tumor, or a stroke, or a blockage, or a clot in anything we've imaged thus far.


It may be something else...but for now, we're rejoicing in her fair certainty that BB does not have MS...


All I know is that this life may not be what my 8 year old self dreamed it would be....but, at the end of the chaotic days...I wouldn't trade it for anything

Worth

Tonight I'm wondering why I even bother to try showing people the parts of me they don't know....

It's been 2+ years since I started working part-time in the bookstore/coffeeshop at Church. I love what I do.  I enjoy being surrounded by good books, good coffee and amazing customers.  I do not love the politics and favoritism that runs amok among staff...

I also don't necessarily love being treated as "just" a barista/salesgirl...I don't enjoy being talked down to by anyone, but even less so by those who haven't the foggiest idea of what I'm capable.

Tonight the sting is worse than normal...our Director of Commincations is resigning at the end of the month. I expressed interest and had a personal meeting with her, in which she said plainly that she sees me as a strong candidate.  I understand fully that our conversation was just that.  It wasn't an interview, nor a job offer....but to hear her say she'd fight to have my name at the top of the list meant a lot to me. She's been in this role for 28 years.  She's an amazing marketing and design person...her compliment of my work meant a lot.

That was yesterday.

Today, as I was waiting for Captain to finish basketball practice, one of my friends and fellow Church employees announced she had something exciting to tell me.

They gave her the job today. She starts training Monday.

I didn't realize how badly I was hoping this was God telling me that leaving the bookstore was the right thing to do...that THIS was the change He had for me...

I'm truly excited for her and know she'll be good at it....truly and sincerely I am.

But man oh man does it hurt like nothing else.

To not even have had a chance at being considered really stinks.

And so, as I sit here in my silent house...kids asleep, BB in his workshop with his friend and partner, I'm left wondering just what it is I claim as being a gift or talent or skill anymore.

I'm feeling lost and adrift and hurting a lot.

Somehow, I just wonder if my 2nd Grade teacher was right and I'm just only good at being nice to look at....and that there's nothing past the exterior package that's of any worth at all to anyone.

I don't want a solution or even a "don't say that"....

Tonight I just want someone to say that they get that I'm hurting and let me wallow for a bit without telling me that I brought it on myself by not trying harder to find another job or that I should have said something sooner about being interested...

Absence

I've been absent here for far too long.  That realization turned on the light bulb of understanding.

Why I've felt so adrift and lost and as though part of me were missing...

I don't know if anyone out there ever even read my blog, and, quite frankly, I don't care...I discovered some things about myself these last 10 months.

I care far too much what people think of me.  I am a control freak.  I have selective OCD.  I am a lazy lazy person.  I am arrogant and foolish and unwise.  I am imperfect.

That recognition in and of itself is huge.

I recently read that Imperfect Progress is still progress.  It was referring to some other aspects of things, but I'm realizing that I am a perfectionist to my core - if I cannot do it completely perfectly, then I won't do it at all.  When I struggle with my fitness and don't see results IMMEDIATELY, I quit.  If I can't empty and clean and sort and purge and reorganize a space in some preset timeframe, I will just let it sit and get worse. (Seriously...you should see my basement!!!!!!)

Things at home have been tense and terse and short-tempered and frustrating and heart-breaking.

Without details...I ask prayers for anyone who might be reading this - pray for BB and I please...we need it.  Desperately.

Needless to say, I need to be here for a bit, and will be using this as an outlet to dump all the ick floating around my head.  With that comes a warning that my posts may not be uplifting or happy or even loving or graceful or forgiving.  I may very well swear and call people names and wish upon them unending agony...  But I need to be real somewhere...and here is where that will happen.  I'm no t soliciting advice or sympathy or solutions.  I just need someplace I can say all the things I really want to say to the people in my world...perhaps that's a wrong way to handle it...

As I'm daily praying "Create in me a clean heart...and renew a right spirit" it may not be wise to come here and scream out all the epithets and accusations and emotions...but as I'm learning to handle things differently and have that right spirit settle upon me, I know that if I don't get that OUT safely, it will come spewing forth onto those I care about deeply...

Adrift

Many moons ago, shortly after Captain Chaos was born, I got a phone call from my brother asking me to meet for coffee.  I jumped on it - he's my favorite, always the one who gave me the least grief for being myself, just the quiet steady presence that I needed as I was growing up.  He was the one who told me that my high school BF and I wouldn't last, that my erroneous thinking in other relationships were no reason to beat myself up...he's been the favorite uncle to my 3 children, and is still my favorite brother.  We just have a different relationship than those I have with my other brothers.

Point being - I love him.  He's just that guy that you love...

Anyway...meeting for coffee...my heart was sort of sick over the meeting - we'd just asked him to be Godfather to Captain...I was afraid of what the conversation would turn into...

As we sat, sipping our coffee, he sort of fiddled with his cup, and fidgeted in his seat, obviously nervous.

And then he told me about his years of seeking and praying and reading and studying and the conclusion to which he'd come.  He's gay.  He asked me not to tell anyone else.  I agreed on the condition that I wouldn't lie to anyone about it - if someone asked me directly, I wouldn't lie and tell them no, or that I didn't know.

For the last 8 1/2 years, I've carried this.  It honestly doesn't bother me.  It hasn't changed who he is, how he treats others...it just changes who he looks to for love.

If this is offensive or against your beliefs, you should stop reading now.  Don't leave any comments, just close your browser and walk away...

About 6 years ago, he started talking about someone - and it was evident to me that he loved this man deeply.  They've since bought a house and moved in together, and are quite happy.  My kids refer to both of them as "Uncle", and love them both unreservedly.  My parents tolerate the situation.

Well...about 3 months ago, my brother asked me what our folks would think if he told them he was getting married.  I was honest, and said it wouldn't be a good reaction...but it wasn't my decision to make for them.

He told them.  They said "oh" and it hasn't been talked about since.

Yesterday, I had the extreme honor and privilege of being there witness my brother get married.  I love and adore my brother and am so glad he's found his One.  I love my new brother-in-law.  We had a fun time, spent the whole day with them in fact...

I'm feeling a bit adrift, however...I know that I'm called to LOVE.  That's it - Love God first and foremost with everything I am.  Then, Love others the way I want to be loved.

I know for a fact that I do NOT want to ever be treated as second-class, an abomination, a disappointment, a failure...

I know for a fact that I am broken and a sinner and God loves me so much that He sent Jesus to take me place in the final ultimate sacrifice - I'm redeemed, I'm washed, I'm forgiven!!!!

I know that I am simply called to LOVE people...God loved me, I love others.  The End.

But its still tough to balance that loving with what I have always believed to be right...I know what my Bible says about sin...I sometimes wish, in cases such as this, that I could see the original manuscript of Genesis and be able to read it and understand EXACTLY what it says about God and how He made us humans...

If you're still reading, please be praying...for my folks to remember to LOVE their kids.  For BB and I, as we're now faced with our kids being involved in a bigger ceremony than the civil one they had yesterday, and how to balance loving and supporting without teaching our kids that this is right in God's sight - to have wisdom in balancing love and beliefs.  For my brother and brother-in-law...that while their relationship may not be exactly the way it was intended - that they still be happy and have the best relationship they can.

Beyond that, pray that I'll be able to be loving and intentional with my choices and actions...

Lies and deceit abound...there's just no getting around it.

What really stinks, though, is when someone you thought you knew like the back of your hand turns out to have been lying to you for your entire relationship.

Before you panic, BB and I are doing just fine...it's not him.

I have a friend from waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy back...we've literally known each other since Kindergarten...and all along, I've been totally honest and open with her, because, well, she's my friend and I trust her with everything.

I recently found out that she's been lying about things since High School.  In the grand scheme of things, what she lied about was not a giant issue (had I known when I was 17, I would have been broken)...but the fact that she lied for over 20 years about it????  Devestating...

I'm working on letting it go, and releasing the hurt and forgiving her, but man oh man...my sinful nature wants to keep hold of this with an iron grip...

Tonight my heart is hurting. I chose...foolishly...to put my heart into something...someone...believing the best of them, investing in them, encouraging them, loving them...and then, when the time came for them to choose their course...they couldn't get past me quickly enough.

In the process they tread upon my heart...I'm bruised and battered...and tired of crying.

I do not want to love anyone else without a guarantee for a long while

Here We Are Again

Perhaps it's that life is busier with 3 school-aged children and working outside the house part-time.  Perhaps I'm outgrowing things.  Perhaps it's just that I see that I had so many dreams of improvements and changes that haven't yet come to fruition...but I, like so many others, find myself here less and less.

I admit that I miss it, and, in the midst of certain moments, I find myself thinking "I have to remember to put that on the blog."  But I never seem to get to it.

It isn't that I don't enjoy writing.  Or that I don't want to share things.

I think it's just that I'm in a different season right now.

This is no longer just a chronicle of things that go on...but it seems the safest place to dump things which need mulling over.

I still write.  In my head.  In the middle of the night when sleep eludes me.

I am finding myself picking up more and more of my mother's behaviors and habits.   Most of which is pleasing to me.  Until I find myself telling the kids "It's cold out, put on a jacket" because I'm cold...

I find that I'm more and more selective with how I use what free time I'm granted in any one day.

I'm not twe.eting, or even updating my status on social media.  I'm networking.  I'm being a room-parent for DestructoGirl.  I'm volunteering for Captain's class as a reading buddy.  I'm taking Littlest One to dance classes and helping make friendship bracelets and potholders and brushing Bar.bie's hair and tying ribbons and doctoring babies and stuffed animals while their "mommies" are out shopping...

But I find I'm missing a bit of myself a little more each day...I miss the girl I was before I met BB.  When I was in a little school in the middle of nowhere and I bumped into Farmwife and we had SO MUCH in common.  When Senor was someone I pined for (no judgment girls!), and I was so self-assured.

It seems odd to me that I'm here.  39 years old. Wife, homemaker, mother of three children.  I make hundreds of decisions for my children, family, home, and self each hour, and yet, I find myself pondering the direction I'm heading, the hobbies I'm pursuing, the shape of my mind, heart, and soul...and find myself feeling in need of a serious makeover.

Farmwife once said she doesn't make resolutions.  I'm finding that to be a wise decision.  I'd rather not resolve to do something - it sounds very forced, which means it isn't going to be easy to stick with it.

I realize that there are things I need to change because it's simply not healthy for me to continue.

But there are things that I know saying "resolve" in front of will result in "rebel" in my behavior...

And so...here I am again, at the end of another calendar year, pondering just what in my life can improve, and am I truly ready to make those changes???