Category: thoughts

excerpts from my journal

Inspired by this, I’m going to share periodically some of the personal journaling I do.

Tuesday morning. 5:30 a.m.

Liam is sleeping in my lap in a dense bundle of warmth and cuteness. I am watching Meredith sleep on the monitor, all curled up. And I can hear David softly snoring.

I just drank a cup of coffee and wrapped up the last lesson in the Bible study on James. What an amazing book.

I am so grateful for my life. For these children I’ve been entrusted. For the husband who is my partner and my love. For our home. It is all a happiness.

But for all of these good gifts from God, I know there is more. There is a greater gift, a greater blessing, a greater understanding and fellowship with God. It will come through sacrificial giving, and serving, and yes, suffering. I want to know God and experience him in that way. I want to truly live out my faith.

Now Liam is squirming, and grabbing my hair, and wanting to nurse. He has morning crust on his eyes that I wipe away. Soon Meredith will wake up and cry, “Mommy I wanna hold you.”

And God, I want to hold you.

***

It’s Saturday. 6 a.m. The kids are both awake.

Liam didn’t sleep well so we were up a lot in the night. Meredith peed all over our bed for the first time in awhile. She is now sitting in my lap “writing” in her own “journal” while Liam kicks and squirms around on the floor, probably wanting to be picked up.

I am sucking down coffee and snacking on chocolate-covered espresso beans that Mom gave me last night.

Today is starting early, and I am already tired. It’s one of those weekends where I have a lot on my personal to-do list, so I could easily be disappointed in the amount I actually get accomplished. Time to practice the art of prioritizing and slowing down.

“All done,” Meredith says. Next on her to-do list is watching Frozen again. She points to Liam and says, “He’s a baby.” Yes, he is. But not for long.

***

A Thursday. 5:45 a.m.

I’m sitting in the craft room. It’s not a very pretty room but it’s oh so comfortable. Outside the sprinklers just turned on and the noise they made as they sputtered to life sounded like a dog sniffing and for a moment I looked around for Eddie or Cleo. No one there.

Everyone is asleep but me for the moment. The quilt I started two years ago is on my lap, only missing the binding. It makes me happy. Soon I will start working on one for Meredith, for her big girl bed. It’s time.

In a couple of days this oh so comfortable craft room will be cleared out, painted white, and kid furniture moved in. I’ve been putting it off – I hate painting, I hate moving things around, I hate living in limbo with stuff spread all over until I have time to organize and set up. But I know it’s time to move away from the family bed, and having a room and beds of their own is the first step.

Of course I’m sad. Bedtime can be hard, but I do so love to feel their little bodies pushed up against me. Meredith, not always much for cuddling during the day, loves it at night. When she stirs, her first instinct is to reach out her arm for something to hug close.

Liam just woke up and now he is in my lap, nursing. My big, happy baby. Maybe I can leave him in bed with me a little while longer.

September 4, 2014
life interrupted
Over the weekend we decided to tackle the project of switching the nursery, which the kids had been sharing but is very small with only room for a crib, with the craft room, which is the largest bedroom other than the master. I don’t need all that space for crafts, but the kids could use a bigger playroom and this way Meredith can have a “big girl bed” that hopefully she’ll be sleeping in soon (fingers crossed).

I have known that something like this was going to have to happen at some point. Whenever I got frustrated with the family bed situation I would think about all that needed to happen to get the kids into their own beds and I’d feel so overwhelmed that I’d just go into denial. But I have two long weekends in a row and things are slow at work, so there really was no better time.

I’d been dreading the project because for one, I hate moving things – I love to feel settled and at home, with everything in its place. I’m not someone who rearranges furniture for fun. I knew this wasn’t going to be a day-long project either; it’s going to take a couple of weeks to really be finished, most likely. I dislike the thought of my stuff being spread around the house for that long.

And two, I hate painting – I knew I’d want to go ahead and repaint the kids’ new room because I never liked the wall color with the new carpet we had put in and this was the best time to just go ahead and knock that out. Even the ceiling needed to be painted, ugh.

On Saturday we spent all day painting. With the help of two generous friends and my mom to watch the kids, it still took way longer than I expected. By the end, we had finished, but there was time for very little else that day.

On Sunday morning I managed to wake up early and do my Bible study before the kids awoke. That day I read the story of Moses and the burning bush. Do you know it? Moses has been a shepherd in the desert for 40 years when one day he notices a bush on fire that is not being burned up. So he decides to investigate the strange phenomenon. Then this verse happens:

When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ –Exodus 3:4 (emphasis mine)

I was completely struck by the fact that God didn’t reveal himself until Moses turned aside from his ordinary routine. The burning bush was an interruption, and Moses paid attention.

Obviously this little changing of rooms ordeal is minor in comparison to many other possible life interruptions, but after reading this I still decided to see what I could learn from it – what God was maybe trying to reveal to me about himself through it. I was surprised at how much I came up with:
- My friends Lauren and Gerardo, along with my mom, gave selflessly of their time and effort all day to help us, and that showed me an awesome example of servanthood and Christian love.
- We moved out all the stuff from this room and painted it white. It’s a clean slate, just like God gives us despite our sin.
- For the moment, all of my craft stuff, and a lot of junk I was holding onto, is scattered throughout the house and exposed. I will be forced to confront it and my intention is to get rid of whatever isn’t necessary. This exercise would be good for my soul as well.
- All of this stuff being out of place and unsettled provides me with a good reminder that this house – this world – is not my final home, and my life is not my stuff. I am traveling through.
- I couldn’t do this project on my own, so it makes me appreciate the people in my life and emphasizes that relationships are ultimately most important.
After that exercise I felt a lot better about the whole process. I really want to remember this for next time my normal life gets interrupted.

How about you? How do you react when ordinary life gets interrupted? In what kinds of situations do you think God tends to reveal himself to you?
September 1, 2014
on contentment
Contentment is one of those things that you never really master, is it? It seems to come and go. Right now I’m searching for it.

There has been a lot written on the internet about fighting comparison. Sure I deal with that from time to time: wanting my life to look a little more like hers, wishing my blog was as successful as that one or that I had the resources to pull off that project.

I’m searching my heart, though, and I think that I’m being truthful when I say that I don’t really play the comparison game too much. I know that we all have different struggles and we are all coming from totally different places and we all have different strengths. I actually love who I am and I love my life.

Sometimes I do fight off discontentment within myself, though. This is so silly, but usually it’s because there are things I want to spend money on that we can’t afford. For example, here are some specific things that if we had the extra funds, I would purchase:
- a real camera
- new workout clothes and shoes
- yoga mat + carrier
- weekly swim lessons for Meredith
- a good blender/food processor
- supplies to do a small reno on our kitchen & half bathroom and several other smaller DIY projects for the house
But the truth is that this is the most expensive time of life for us right now. We have two kids in daycare full time. We have a mortgage, student loans, and two car payments. We have good jobs with good benefits (which I am SO grateful for!!) but we aren’t raking it in. We are constantly trying to save money here and there, but in the end there isn’t a whole lot of saving going on. It is frustrating.

Over the weekend David and I went to tour Costco to see if it would make sense for us to join. We decided that if we had more freezer space it totally would. We have an extra fridge + freezer in our garage but the outlets don’t work there and never have, along with all the outlets in the bathrooms, so we were thinking that it would be worth it to hire an electrician. As we were pulling up at home later we saw some big tree branches down in our yard and realized that we also really need to get our trees trimmed.

“That’s another thing that costs money,” I said. “Everything costs money!”

“What do you mean?” David prodded.

“The electrician, the trees, a camera, and everything else I want.”

“Maybe we just need to work on not wanting so much,” David suggested gently.

I knew he was right. How do you do that, though? I’m not asking rhetorically. I really don’t know.

For me it seems to come and go in cycles. I try to focus on what I have and stay busy and eventually I get to a place where I feel fine the way things are. Prayer helps. So does going outside.

How do you fight for contentment?
August 19, 2014
this week

Alright folks, link roundup posts are getting pushed to Saturdays because we could use some more real life shenanigans around here, couldn’t we? I say yes.

SO. Just two weeks ago Liam and I were home sick for a week, then we had a week of recovery and getting back to normal, then this week I felt like we were hitting our stride again. Half marathon training began on the same day as the gym opened at work, and I made it through a weeny 1.5 miles on the treadmill.

It was pretty boring and I’ll have to get used to it, but still better than dying from heat exhaustion. Anyway, the same day Meredith started swim lessons. The last time I took her to the pool she was scared out of her little mind so this was a birthday gift. It’s a class where she goes every day for two weeks, and I was expecting tears or whining or crying or something of the sort because parents aren’t allowed in the pool area, but she did SO GREAT.

And that night I even threw together a salad for dinner! I was pretty pleased with myself for a Monday.

So then Tuesday came around and threw my week off entirely when Meredith got a fever at daycare. I thought that winter was the season of sickness, but apparently we like to be different in our household. I spent that evening on the couch watching Frozen with her and my dinner plans went out the window in favor of David picking up Chick-fil-a because it just wasn’t happening.

Wednesday I stayed home and we got a doctor’s appointment for 10:40 so I kept Liam home all morning too. Anyone else’s kids love to just watch you play with their toys or is mine just a weirdo? Anyway, there was a lot of stickers, coloring, and Play-Doh going on.

And another viewing of Frozen, of course.

So on the way to the doctor we dropped Liam at daycare because why go through that with two kids when it’s not necessary? Meredith was really well behaved even though we had to wait 40 minutes. There was no obvious source of infection so…virus it is!

Afterwards we stopped at Starbucks for a treat because we deserved it. I had one bite of her cake pop but I wanted the whole thing.

Then why not go to the craft store? I picked up some sewing stuff and I was verrrry tempted to buy multiple quilting books despite the fact that I can’t even really call myself a quilter when I have not completed a single one yet.

We got home and then things started to go downhill. I don’t know how she did it considering she was running fever and obviously exhausted, but she managed to not nap until 4pm. So for about two hours I could do nothing but hold her and try to stop her from crying. For example, she wanted to go into the room where her play kitchen is, but she didn’t want to play with it. She wanted ME to play with it. I told her I didn’t want to play with it. Freak out. Then she just wanted to stand in the room so she could LOOK at it. I did that for about ten seconds before I was bored.

Eventually she passed out, right after David got home feeling sick himself and was unable to help me because of how bad he was feeling.

I probably should have used the time to make dinner, but instead I started actually quilting, and it made me happy.

Before long I had to go pick up Liam, and then Meredith woke up screaming and demanding to be held again, so for dinner we had fruit and nuts and we were in bed at 7:30.

Thursday I was determined to go back to work but David was still sick and incapable of watching M. My mom to the rescue! They had an awesome day and Meredith didn’t have a fever all day so after work I totally mommed up and picked her up, brought her home to change into swim clothes, picked up Liam, went to swim lessons with both of them, then came home and made dinner (also it was totally yum – egg salad with bacon lettuce wraps).

This morning everyone is pretty much back to normal. (“Say cheese Liam! Why isn’t he saying cheese?”)

Thankfully Butterball Thumbsucker Forbes (who is busting out of this 9-month romper) stayed healthy throughout the week and is content if you just put a boob in his mouth every once in awhile.

And that was our week! Over the weekend I’m planning to get a longer run in and do some more quilting, or maybe finish the top part of Liam’s stocking. I’d also love to get some art journaling in and pick out my next Bible study. (I’m sure multiple viewings of Frozen will happen as well. I’m getting my money’s worth out of that one.)

Now tell me, how was your week and what do you have planned for the weekend?

August 8, 2014
project life 2014 : weeks 27 – 28

July 23, 2014