I have been a life long insomniac. I can usually go to sleep, it's staying that way that is a reach. I roll over and click my mind turns on and won't shut up. I think the the same way I drive, fast and all over the place. So I have given up laying motionless and just go ahead and get up.
Waking up with Brad at 3:30 some mornings is not hard, I'm up any way. I do like the mornings he sleeps in til 5:00 and we both sleep a little longer. I love morning. I love the time before the sun comes up, the quiet and stillness of my house. I fix my cup of coffee and turn on my laptop. I have to check and see if anyone has emailed me the night before, what has happened on Facebook in the past twenty-four hours, the news, the weather etc. I look forward to my email from Jesus. He sends one every morning. I know it's not actually Jesus sending it but sometimes my little email devotionals are so accurate and in tune with my life I think there's no way He didn't send it.
I am a lazy Christian of convenience. I do not kneel to pray, I have never read the Bible in it's entirety, and I'll skip church to go four wheeling at the drop of a hat. I want to be the person that kneels and that has read all of The Book, but I am not there yet. I know I'm not that grown up yet, so instead I signed up for daily devotional emails a few years ago. It's so easy! Wake up and in your in box is a lesson, who knew? You can even read it in the car on your phone. Perfect for me.
I have only had my coffee pot for nine months. It has fired up every morning since I unwrapped it. I enjoy my coffee alone in the stillness and I swear Jesus is a coffee drinker. My time with alone in the mornings is when those little notions and thoughts that wake me up and won't let me go back to sleep flutter through my mind. I think that "intuition" is probably God trying to tell me what He wants from me, I am still just not able to hear all of it, my pride, fear, vanity, and stubbornness are in the way. Seeking Him is hard for a Type A gal like me. Mornings are the only time I am quiet enough to have a chance of hearing His plan for me. So to heck with sleeping! I am going to try to get better at listening. It scares the pants off of me, to try to give control over of my daily decisions but I need to. I need to give myself over in a loss of control, maybe then my life won't seem so out of my control.
I am pretty sure God put me with Brad and sent us on this cross country adventure to teach me to let go. I want to keep everything just the way I like it, and I now have absolutely zero say so in where I live, how long I stay there and who I'll meet. I pouted like a child and had a heart full of resentment the first few years in Arizona. It was the hardest thing to leave my sister, my family and my friends. I hated Brad and held it against him for so long. When I gave up pining for what I thought was best for me God showed me what He had in mind instead. Low and behold, He kind of knows what He's doing. I have lucked up on the most amazing friends.
I think I'll have and extra cup o' joe this morning and try to listen a little harder. God You know I am a slow learner when it comes to this, stubborn and prideful. Please fill my heart with Your direction and cup with enough coffee to to get me started.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Two Feet by Two Feet
What unit is happiness measured in? My weight is measured in pounds, my gas and milk are measured in gallons, my food is measured in ounces, and my happiness is measured in feet. Two feet by two feet is the space of my happiness.
My happiness creeps down the hall every morning at six a.m. on the dot. He walks in to the living room and scoots right up beside me. My happiness knows that I will have coffee for two waiting on him. My heart is full when I am smashed into my chair crowded out by my son.
Raising a man is such an odd process. My son will be a man one day and I am simply along for the ride. I hope all that is good and sweet about him now stays with him into adulthood. I hope the habits he and I create stick with him. Will he always get up and drink coffee and talk with the woman in his life about what he dreamt the night before? Will he continue to start his days with a bowl of oatmeal and a devotional lesson?
I love morning, before it is light. The day is new and untarnished. Morning is an opportunity, the beginning of what you make your day to be. I love sharing this time with the other morning person in our house. I know Turner is awake before six, just like me. He knows to stay in his bed til six then he slips out and we cuddle. We talk and I stroke is bed mussed hair and smell his little boy morning breath. Morning is my time with my son. It's my two feet by his two feet in the chair and it's what a measure of happiness is.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
My Person
I miss Sweetness. The "Outage" started this weekend. What is an outage? Hmmm, I'm not sure I know what an outage is, but here's my understanding of it: An outage is a set number of days that certain parts of the power plant will be shut down for work to be completed in. Sounds simple enough. Plan the work, shut some stuff down, work and return to normal. Not so much. We won't be seeing Brad much from now until April twentieth. He'll work more hours than any one man should in a day, sleep a couple hours then go right back to it. He'll be at Plant Scherer more than one hundred hours a week. When I hear people complain about their eight hour work day I sit on my hands to keep from accidentally punching them in the throat. Thank God for OSHA guidelines, if not for them Brad would work several twenty four hour shifts in a row.
I call Brad my Sweetness. Sounds better than my person, but my person is what he is. I never think of him as my best friend, he's more like my right hand. He's my constant, and what a strange match we are. I was reading a friends blog this morning and it made me smile. My friend Wendie has cancer and is fighting through chemo. She wrote that she was falling in love with her husband all over again. It made me remember the weeks I spent in the hospital and how that made me fall in love with Sweetness all over again. If I ever doubted my husband's love for me all questions were answered in May of 2009.
I miss my person when he works all the time. We did get to go to a fantastic party last night and stay at a beautiful winery. It was great and I needed time with my husband. As soon as we got home Sweetness was out the door to work. He'll work til midnight tonight, sleep "late" til six and then go right back. He'll work eighteen hour days for the next two months, and I'll miss him. He is a work-a-holic, but it's not that simple. He's not working like this because he likes it, it's necessary. Apparently the city of Macon will not volunteer to go with out electricity for a month or two so PCL's crews can work a normal fifty hour week and have time for their families.
The next couple months are going to be hard. Our little family will be member short most of the time. Turner will be starting baseball and Brad won't be around to practice with. Dinners will be served to a table of three and singing God our Father will sound empty without Brad's voice in unison with ours. The little time Sweetness is home he will be burnt out, tired and his mind will still be at work.
I am looking forward to April twenty first, when I get my person back and life is back to a version of normal. I want to plan a camping trip and steal Sweetness from work and the kids from school. I want fires at night, fishing, and just being together as a family. So the count down has begun, seventy four days til I get my Sweetness back.
I call Brad my Sweetness. Sounds better than my person, but my person is what he is. I never think of him as my best friend, he's more like my right hand. He's my constant, and what a strange match we are. I was reading a friends blog this morning and it made me smile. My friend Wendie has cancer and is fighting through chemo. She wrote that she was falling in love with her husband all over again. It made me remember the weeks I spent in the hospital and how that made me fall in love with Sweetness all over again. If I ever doubted my husband's love for me all questions were answered in May of 2009.
I miss my person when he works all the time. We did get to go to a fantastic party last night and stay at a beautiful winery. It was great and I needed time with my husband. As soon as we got home Sweetness was out the door to work. He'll work til midnight tonight, sleep "late" til six and then go right back. He'll work eighteen hour days for the next two months, and I'll miss him. He is a work-a-holic, but it's not that simple. He's not working like this because he likes it, it's necessary. Apparently the city of Macon will not volunteer to go with out electricity for a month or two so PCL's crews can work a normal fifty hour week and have time for their families.
The next couple months are going to be hard. Our little family will be member short most of the time. Turner will be starting baseball and Brad won't be around to practice with. Dinners will be served to a table of three and singing God our Father will sound empty without Brad's voice in unison with ours. The little time Sweetness is home he will be burnt out, tired and his mind will still be at work.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Filthy and Wonderfully
My Sweetness finally had a good day yesterday, I think. Maybe he's just getting better at hiding the bad days. I think this job site is cursed and so does he. I hate that it takes so much to go right for him to have a good day. Fifteen different contractors, hundreds of employees, and millions of pounds of equipment and steel all have to flow together for Sweetness to have a good day. My good days are much easier to make. Today Tater made my day.
We've been working on learning different Bible verses. At church she learned "Let the little children come to me" Luke 18:16. Turner, not to be out done, taught me "Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" Hebrews 12:1-2. So I wanted to build on these verses and learn a new one every week. I could lie and say I'm doing it only for the kids, but it's for me too. I've never been able to pull scripture out of my head or heart on command, but I want to. So every morning I stand in my bathrobe, slippers and glasses and I repeat our verse and do a little choreographed jig that goes along with it. What is the saying? Verse learned in song is a verse learned long? So we half sing half dance our verse out. If I can sing and dance all of the hokey pokey years after learning it, then we'll be able to sing and dance out a Psalm any time, right?
This week is one of my favorites "I will praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made" Psalms 139:14. We've gone over it several times, but I was beginning to wonder if it would stick. Just when I think all the repetition is fruitless God used Tate to smack me in the head and show me it is working. Tate and I had to run in to Kroger to pick up a couple things. We walked in and I bent down to pick her up and put her in the back of the buggy. She said she wanted to be by me in the seat. I said "Good I wanted you to be by me, you know why?" I was about to tell her that I wanted her by me because she is such a good girl, but she answered the question before I could. She yelled out "You want me by you because I am filthy and wonderfully made!" A better answer has never been given. There is my smile for the rest of the day.
My sweet three year old amazes me daily. She frustrates me daily too, but I am trying to concentrate on the amazing and let the other stuff slide into the background. She is fearfully and wonderfully made, so is Turner. They teach me more in a week than I ever learned in four years of college. They are fun and they give meaning to my life. Stay at home mom life can be painfully repetitious. Every day is the same, yet vastly different. Today is filthy and wonderful, I can't wait to see what tomorrow is.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Ripples in the water
My heart is hurting tonight for a family I barely know. They live in a house across the street. I've been to a couple parties with them, we've chatted, I've met their daughters. I've seen their girls playing soccer in the front yard, I've laughed watching the dad catch his rambunctious dogs and bring them home.
Empathy is what makes us human. We feel other's pain and identify. I watched the little girls across the street playing in the front yard, because they had not been told about their mother. I wanted to freeze time for them.
I am beyond fortunate to have nearly all of my close family still alive. I lost my grandfather to cancer when I was ten. He wasn't just a grandfather, I'm pretty sure he taught Jesus to walk on water. He laid on his back in the grass at night and showed me the stars, we fed the fish in our pond together every day, he snuck candy for me, he played, he laughed and he loved all of his grandchildren beyond the bounds of the human heart. He was sick for a couple of years. The details and sequence of surgeries and treatment is foggy to me. What is not foggy is the morning my Dad woke me up to tell me my Pawpaw was gone. My world shattered. The sound went out of the room and I thought the sun would never shine again.
That memory is the source of my empathy for those little girls. It's also the reason I sat in my kitchen today with Tate in my lap and cried on the back of her shirt while she strung beads into a necklace. I can feel the grief of the family I barely know rippling over the waters.
I sit here tonight listening to Sweetness softly snoring on the couch. I know my children are fast asleep because I have checked on them several times already. I will hold all of my little family tonight. I will praise God for the people he put in my life and I will ask for peace for the family who lost their wife and mother today.
Today the wife and mother from the house across the street was killed in a car accident.
Empathy is what makes us human. We feel other's pain and identify. I watched the little girls across the street playing in the front yard, because they had not been told about their mother. I wanted to freeze time for them.
I am beyond fortunate to have nearly all of my close family still alive. I lost my grandfather to cancer when I was ten. He wasn't just a grandfather, I'm pretty sure he taught Jesus to walk on water. He laid on his back in the grass at night and showed me the stars, we fed the fish in our pond together every day, he snuck candy for me, he played, he laughed and he loved all of his grandchildren beyond the bounds of the human heart. He was sick for a couple of years. The details and sequence of surgeries and treatment is foggy to me. What is not foggy is the morning my Dad woke me up to tell me my Pawpaw was gone. My world shattered. The sound went out of the room and I thought the sun would never shine again.
That memory is the source of my empathy for those little girls. It's also the reason I sat in my kitchen today with Tate in my lap and cried on the back of her shirt while she strung beads into a necklace. I can feel the grief of the family I barely know rippling over the waters.
I sit here tonight listening to Sweetness softly snoring on the couch. I know my children are fast asleep because I have checked on them several times already. I will hold all of my little family tonight. I will praise God for the people he put in my life and I will ask for peace for the family who lost their wife and mother today.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Sheriff in Town
The bad guy, that's what I am lately. It stinks! I remember playing cops and robbers, OK it was Cagney and Lacey, when I was little and not once was I the bad guy. I am the TV police at my house and I am sick of it. Sweetness is an avid TV watcher. The man works long hours and deserves to come home and veg out. I don't disagree with him. I do disagree with what he watches in the hour between the end of supper and the children's bed time.
Recent outings with those in the working world proved the language difference between us moms and the "grown ups with jobs". I was embarrassed to be grouped in to the crowd of F-Bomb tossers. I think the fact that Brad hears that proliferation of verbal sludge all day keeps him from realizing when it is on the TV at home. He'll turn on a show and I can count five words in two minutes that I do not want my kids repeating. I say "Brad" in that tone that he hates and he shoots me dirty looks and tells me that there is nothing wrong with what's on TV. Then once I've pointed it out he realizes the language and changes the channel. All of this goes down and the the kids want to know why they can't finish the show they were watching. Brad then tells them "Because mommy said we can't". That is dirty. We are supposed to be on the same team. So what if it makes you give up a favorite movie? Who cares? Why are the mothers responsible for this?
I'm sure my husband's life changed when we had kids, but I do not think it up-ended his world in quite the same way it did mine. He missed a day of work, drove me home from the hospital and life went on. He had new babies to cuddle, but everything else remained the same. I never asked Brad to get up with either of our children at night, and he didn't, that was my job. I nursed both children, they never got a bottle, every feeding was me and my babies. I have not gone to the bathroom in the past six years with out an audience. Maybe that is why it's easier for me to adjust to giving up TV preferences. I've been practicing giving things up since the day I became pregnant. I gave up just about everything I ate for the first several months of carrying my children. I gave up sleep, my figure, and my sanity. After those what is a little old movie?
My sheriff duties don't stop with the TV, they also include food and it's consumption. I sat down to dinner every night with my family. Several nights a week we sat down with all our extended family, prayed and shared a meal and each others company. It was special and holds so many memories for me. Since I can not give my children Monday night meals with the grandparents, aunts, uncle and cousins, I am going to give them nightly, TV free dinners with our little family. Sitting down together and praying, sharing food and each others days is important. Stability is important, routine is important. I feel like I can only provide the routine, since our moving situation is anything but stable. But in this I am the bad guy again. They want to eat in the living room, and so does Brad. But we can't because "Mama won't let us".
Sometimes I want to stomp my feet and yell. I want to cuss and rip. Who doesn't? Would it be fair of me to tell my teary eyed son that we have to move because "Papa won't let us keep living here"? No it would be wrong to place blame on him for a situation he can't control. Should I answer the question "Why isn't Papa here tonight, is he working late?" by saying "Nope, he just didn't want to be home bad enough". I hate being vilified for upholding family law. I give in some times as a special treat. If we order pizza on a Sunday night we eat in the living room. If it's not a school night the kids can stay up past 8:30 and watch a movie. Sometimes we have cake for breakfast. But since I am the only sheriff in this wild uncharted territory I have to keep a close watch over my little would be law breakers.
My strict rule keeping is not just to appease my type A personality. It also helps when there is no other help in sight. There is no grandpa to pick the kids up when I have had enough. There is no break to be had when Brad informs me he will be working seven days a week until some time in April. I need my children to listen. I have a short temper and little patience, if they run all over me I am such a bad mom. If they know the routine, stick to the rules and go with the flow I feel like I can make it until April when Brad can help out again.
I will stick to my guns as it were. I will up hold the child appropriate TV programing rule, we will eat at the boring dining room table together and not stare at the idiot box. Maybe I should look for a pretty star to pin to my shirt? Maybe add some spurs to my boots? I'll just have to make sure any sheriff accessories I get go along with my crown. I may be the law round these parts, but I'll always be the queen of the laundry too.
Recent outings with those in the working world proved the language difference between us moms and the "grown ups with jobs". I was embarrassed to be grouped in to the crowd of F-Bomb tossers. I think the fact that Brad hears that proliferation of verbal sludge all day keeps him from realizing when it is on the TV at home. He'll turn on a show and I can count five words in two minutes that I do not want my kids repeating. I say "Brad" in that tone that he hates and he shoots me dirty looks and tells me that there is nothing wrong with what's on TV. Then once I've pointed it out he realizes the language and changes the channel. All of this goes down and the the kids want to know why they can't finish the show they were watching. Brad then tells them "Because mommy said we can't". That is dirty. We are supposed to be on the same team. So what if it makes you give up a favorite movie? Who cares? Why are the mothers responsible for this?
I'm sure my husband's life changed when we had kids, but I do not think it up-ended his world in quite the same way it did mine. He missed a day of work, drove me home from the hospital and life went on. He had new babies to cuddle, but everything else remained the same. I never asked Brad to get up with either of our children at night, and he didn't, that was my job. I nursed both children, they never got a bottle, every feeding was me and my babies. I have not gone to the bathroom in the past six years with out an audience. Maybe that is why it's easier for me to adjust to giving up TV preferences. I've been practicing giving things up since the day I became pregnant. I gave up just about everything I ate for the first several months of carrying my children. I gave up sleep, my figure, and my sanity. After those what is a little old movie?
My sheriff duties don't stop with the TV, they also include food and it's consumption. I sat down to dinner every night with my family. Several nights a week we sat down with all our extended family, prayed and shared a meal and each others company. It was special and holds so many memories for me. Since I can not give my children Monday night meals with the grandparents, aunts, uncle and cousins, I am going to give them nightly, TV free dinners with our little family. Sitting down together and praying, sharing food and each others days is important. Stability is important, routine is important. I feel like I can only provide the routine, since our moving situation is anything but stable. But in this I am the bad guy again. They want to eat in the living room, and so does Brad. But we can't because "Mama won't let us".
Sometimes I want to stomp my feet and yell. I want to cuss and rip. Who doesn't? Would it be fair of me to tell my teary eyed son that we have to move because "Papa won't let us keep living here"? No it would be wrong to place blame on him for a situation he can't control. Should I answer the question "Why isn't Papa here tonight, is he working late?" by saying "Nope, he just didn't want to be home bad enough". I hate being vilified for upholding family law. I give in some times as a special treat. If we order pizza on a Sunday night we eat in the living room. If it's not a school night the kids can stay up past 8:30 and watch a movie. Sometimes we have cake for breakfast. But since I am the only sheriff in this wild uncharted territory I have to keep a close watch over my little would be law breakers.
My strict rule keeping is not just to appease my type A personality. It also helps when there is no other help in sight. There is no grandpa to pick the kids up when I have had enough. There is no break to be had when Brad informs me he will be working seven days a week until some time in April. I need my children to listen. I have a short temper and little patience, if they run all over me I am such a bad mom. If they know the routine, stick to the rules and go with the flow I feel like I can make it until April when Brad can help out again.
I will stick to my guns as it were. I will up hold the child appropriate TV programing rule, we will eat at the boring dining room table together and not stare at the idiot box. Maybe I should look for a pretty star to pin to my shirt? Maybe add some spurs to my boots? I'll just have to make sure any sheriff accessories I get go along with my crown. I may be the law round these parts, but I'll always be the queen of the laundry too.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)