I'm freaking out, I'm totally freaking out!
I leave for Italy this morning and really don't want to leave my family, but am so excited to see Italy and meet the people, see my sister and watch God unfold what I trust is his awesome plan for this trip.
I Googled our hotel and it is so quaint and perfectly Italian, I can't wait to be surrounded by Italian voices and scenery. I also saw where we are going for our excursion day - Lake Como! Don't worry, I'll tell George you said hi if I see him. And, of course, I'll be posting pics.
Well, wish me safe travel and my husband sanity as I leave him for nine days as Mr. Mom.
Addio!
Friday, November 19, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
My Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
Last week was not a good one. It began with tears, my own instead of Hope's this time. I woke up Monday morning unable to shake my sadness. I went for a run and as I prayed I started bawling. Apparently there were some unresolved issues I needed to work through with some friends. The hurt was overwhelming me, which then turned to anger.
I don't really like anger. It's ugly and impulsive and does all sorts of stupid things and then blames it on us. So I boiled and stewed and sent out a short email asking my friends if we could get together and talk. I knew my typical novelette of an email would only lead me to trouble. They responded promptly with a time to get together and I felt a little better. The cursing in my head subsided a bit and I considered making a list of grievances, but thankfully didn't.
Apparently this is what happens when you leave things unresolved for something like 10 years. One day some event triggers it and a flood of emotion, dammed up to overflowing comes flooding out. I don't really like these floods of emotion either (note my previous post on my control freakishness).
So, to recap, it's Monday, and I'm an emotional mess.
Then I took my daughter to the doctor where she failed a hearing test, in both ears, even though I thought her hearing had improved.
Discouragement on top of sadness.
Then I took my daughter back to school and discovered that I had taken her to the doctor during a special lunch time when she was to get pizza and cookies and sit on the stage to get a character award.
Complete failure as a mom on top of discouragement on top of sadness.
At this point I was thinking going back to bed and starting over in another hemisphere would be nice.
The week progressed.
The meeting with my friends on Thursday went well. I told them how I felt, minus the angry tirade, and then cried for over an hour as we hashed through the past. Apologies were made, explanations were given, friendship was reaffirmed, and then I left.
On Friday, my mom arrived. We headed to the mall to do some early Christmas shopping and while in our first store, perusing pajamas, I got a call from my son's school. He had lice.
Lice.
Deep breath...
So now my emotionally exhausting week turned into a physically exhausting weekend as we washed (and shaved some) heads, cleaned sheets, bagged stuffed animals and combed out nits. (I apologize if you are now scratching your head uncontrollably. I promise you can't get it through the internet.) By Saturday night I was pretty sure that every surface had been sprayed, laundered and deloused and I was done. Emotionally and physically DONE.
Mom left on Sunday morning and I had the opportunity to go to Starbuck's for a little chai therapy and journaling. It was wonderful. A few more tears were shed as I poured out my heart to God, but he gave me insight into where all the tears had come from and why. But he did me one better. He showed me that he saw all of my pain over all of the years, all of the sacrifice, and that he felt it, too. It mattered to him. And not only that, but there would be rewards in heaven for everything done for him. One day, he would make everything better. And so, after a very, very long week, I was comforted. I felt peace.
As I thought about what I needed for the coming week, I felt prompted to fast on Monday and then to gradually reintroduce foods throughout the week. Have I mentioned that I was eating my weight in Oreos to cope with all the stress of the previous week? I wondered if a little self-control on the food end of things might help me look to a higher power than Nabisco when tragedy strikes again.
And it has been awesome. Not only is my son's head no longer crawling with insects, but I feel so connected with God and able to do one thing at a time, prioritize my time without worrying about my list of 100 other responsibilities, and I've lost a few pounds (this in not the ultimate goal of fasting, but I'm pretty sure it was all Oreo weight that needed to be removed immediately). I feel like this fast has been a reboot for my body and my brain.
So, my terrible, no good, very bad week came to an end. God redeemed it and has given me a pretty wonderful one to follow it, and hey, I go to Milan in seven days!
I don't really like anger. It's ugly and impulsive and does all sorts of stupid things and then blames it on us. So I boiled and stewed and sent out a short email asking my friends if we could get together and talk. I knew my typical novelette of an email would only lead me to trouble. They responded promptly with a time to get together and I felt a little better. The cursing in my head subsided a bit and I considered making a list of grievances, but thankfully didn't.
Apparently this is what happens when you leave things unresolved for something like 10 years. One day some event triggers it and a flood of emotion, dammed up to overflowing comes flooding out. I don't really like these floods of emotion either (note my previous post on my control freakishness).
So, to recap, it's Monday, and I'm an emotional mess.
Then I took my daughter to the doctor where she failed a hearing test, in both ears, even though I thought her hearing had improved.
Discouragement on top of sadness.
Then I took my daughter back to school and discovered that I had taken her to the doctor during a special lunch time when she was to get pizza and cookies and sit on the stage to get a character award.
Complete failure as a mom on top of discouragement on top of sadness.
At this point I was thinking going back to bed and starting over in another hemisphere would be nice.
The week progressed.
The meeting with my friends on Thursday went well. I told them how I felt, minus the angry tirade, and then cried for over an hour as we hashed through the past. Apologies were made, explanations were given, friendship was reaffirmed, and then I left.
On Friday, my mom arrived. We headed to the mall to do some early Christmas shopping and while in our first store, perusing pajamas, I got a call from my son's school. He had lice.
Lice.
Deep breath...
So now my emotionally exhausting week turned into a physically exhausting weekend as we washed (and shaved some) heads, cleaned sheets, bagged stuffed animals and combed out nits. (I apologize if you are now scratching your head uncontrollably. I promise you can't get it through the internet.) By Saturday night I was pretty sure that every surface had been sprayed, laundered and deloused and I was done. Emotionally and physically DONE.
Mom left on Sunday morning and I had the opportunity to go to Starbuck's for a little chai therapy and journaling. It was wonderful. A few more tears were shed as I poured out my heart to God, but he gave me insight into where all the tears had come from and why. But he did me one better. He showed me that he saw all of my pain over all of the years, all of the sacrifice, and that he felt it, too. It mattered to him. And not only that, but there would be rewards in heaven for everything done for him. One day, he would make everything better. And so, after a very, very long week, I was comforted. I felt peace.
As I thought about what I needed for the coming week, I felt prompted to fast on Monday and then to gradually reintroduce foods throughout the week. Have I mentioned that I was eating my weight in Oreos to cope with all the stress of the previous week? I wondered if a little self-control on the food end of things might help me look to a higher power than Nabisco when tragedy strikes again.
And it has been awesome. Not only is my son's head no longer crawling with insects, but I feel so connected with God and able to do one thing at a time, prioritize my time without worrying about my list of 100 other responsibilities, and I've lost a few pounds (this in not the ultimate goal of fasting, but I'm pretty sure it was all Oreo weight that needed to be removed immediately). I feel like this fast has been a reboot for my body and my brain.
So, my terrible, no good, very bad week came to an end. God redeemed it and has given me a pretty wonderful one to follow it, and hey, I go to Milan in seven days!
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Losing Control
Apparently, I'm a bit of a control freak.
My husband chuckles when I say this. Not a, "No, you're not a control freak!" kind of laugh, but a, "Really, you're just figuring this out?" laugh, which I do not appreciate.
It's always irritating when other people know things about me before I do.
But I came to this realization the other day when I mentioned to a friend that I have had a few borderline panic attacks lately. It was odd to me because my life has gotten less stressful since my kids are all in school and I no longer work at a job where I felt like a constant failure.
My friend, after listening to what brought on these attacks, suggested that I make a list of everything I feel responsible for and then share it with my husband, and maybe see what he could take on and be responsible for.
I began my list. I started with all my responsibilities on Monday - everything from getting groceries, to getting kids to their events, to working out, making dinner, checking everyone's homework, teaching my younger two to read, and practicing spelling words, then moved to Tuesday and so on. The list, by the time I was done, had more than 100 items on it, all things that I feel responsible to get done.
I showed Joel the list and he gasped, really. My husband has a lot of responsibility right now with working a full-time job and going to grad school just about full-time, so I try to pick up everything I can for him. But the truth is he does help a lot. He does dishes regularly, throws in a load of laundry here and there, vacuums and such, but when he does these things I usually feel guilty. Like it's a sign of my failure that he needs to pick up my slack when he's already stressed out.
But getting to part 2 of my assignment was difficult. What could I actually give Joel as his responsibility? As in, not my responsibility anymore. The problem was, as much as I didn't want so much responsibility on my shoulders, it was hard for me to let go of any of my list.
If I don't make sure that Joshua's reading is done, will he fall behind? If I don't clean the bathroom myself, will it really get as clean as I like it? Could someone else really work out for me? Man, that would be nice if I could hire a personal trainer to work out and then see the results on my own body! Seriously, why has no one else thought of that?
Anyway, all of this thinking about my myriad of responsibilities made me think about something that Shauna Niequist said in her book, Bittersweet. As a wife and mother, author and speaker, she has made a list of things she doesn't do.
This list includes:
scrap booking
baking (though she buys lovely treats from the bakery)
gardening
home improvement (she says unloading the dishwasher counts as home improvement in her family)
making the bed
I look at her list and think, but I love baking, just not the effects of eating what I bake. Gardening is sort of fun, especially the fresh basil and tomatoes that make the most wonderful bruschetta. And making my bed is the easiest "cleaning" I do of the day.
I know I need to give up some things on my never ending list of responsibilities, but every time I try to make my list it looks something like this:
What I don't do:
Sing well
Keep my house clean enough
Always respond patiently to my children
Eat well enough to get my cholesterol down and lose 10lbs
Save money
Respond to emails promptly
etc...
You get the point. My list of what I don't do is really a list of what I feel bad about not doing well, which is probably not the goal of this exercise.
So, for right now, just having a husband who has compassion for my extensive to-do list is nice. I'm still working on figuring out what I can let go of and sacrifice for my own sanity, without causing my house to spiral out of control.
My husband chuckles when I say this. Not a, "No, you're not a control freak!" kind of laugh, but a, "Really, you're just figuring this out?" laugh, which I do not appreciate.
It's always irritating when other people know things about me before I do.
But I came to this realization the other day when I mentioned to a friend that I have had a few borderline panic attacks lately. It was odd to me because my life has gotten less stressful since my kids are all in school and I no longer work at a job where I felt like a constant failure.
My friend, after listening to what brought on these attacks, suggested that I make a list of everything I feel responsible for and then share it with my husband, and maybe see what he could take on and be responsible for.
I began my list. I started with all my responsibilities on Monday - everything from getting groceries, to getting kids to their events, to working out, making dinner, checking everyone's homework, teaching my younger two to read, and practicing spelling words, then moved to Tuesday and so on. The list, by the time I was done, had more than 100 items on it, all things that I feel responsible to get done.
I showed Joel the list and he gasped, really. My husband has a lot of responsibility right now with working a full-time job and going to grad school just about full-time, so I try to pick up everything I can for him. But the truth is he does help a lot. He does dishes regularly, throws in a load of laundry here and there, vacuums and such, but when he does these things I usually feel guilty. Like it's a sign of my failure that he needs to pick up my slack when he's already stressed out.
But getting to part 2 of my assignment was difficult. What could I actually give Joel as his responsibility? As in, not my responsibility anymore. The problem was, as much as I didn't want so much responsibility on my shoulders, it was hard for me to let go of any of my list.
If I don't make sure that Joshua's reading is done, will he fall behind? If I don't clean the bathroom myself, will it really get as clean as I like it? Could someone else really work out for me? Man, that would be nice if I could hire a personal trainer to work out and then see the results on my own body! Seriously, why has no one else thought of that?
Anyway, all of this thinking about my myriad of responsibilities made me think about something that Shauna Niequist said in her book, Bittersweet. As a wife and mother, author and speaker, she has made a list of things she doesn't do.
This list includes:
scrap booking
baking (though she buys lovely treats from the bakery)
gardening
home improvement (she says unloading the dishwasher counts as home improvement in her family)
making the bed
I look at her list and think, but I love baking, just not the effects of eating what I bake. Gardening is sort of fun, especially the fresh basil and tomatoes that make the most wonderful bruschetta. And making my bed is the easiest "cleaning" I do of the day.
I know I need to give up some things on my never ending list of responsibilities, but every time I try to make my list it looks something like this:
What I don't do:
Sing well
Keep my house clean enough
Always respond patiently to my children
Eat well enough to get my cholesterol down and lose 10lbs
Save money
Respond to emails promptly
etc...
You get the point. My list of what I don't do is really a list of what I feel bad about not doing well, which is probably not the goal of this exercise.
So, for right now, just having a husband who has compassion for my extensive to-do list is nice. I'm still working on figuring out what I can let go of and sacrifice for my own sanity, without causing my house to spiral out of control.
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