Hi, It's Me Again

Funny thing about writing...  I need to do it.

Funny thing about writing about stress... It tends to go away.

To stop writing about all of this right when I was finally putting it in words was almost impossible for me.  (So chalk another one up to crazy grief...which I'll say more about later.)  Not writing was like trying to plug a fountain with a finger.

The other day a colleague said to me, "We are harder on ourselves than anyone else ever would be."  He had just made a difficult decision, and was worrying about how his decision would affect other people.

So why do we think so much about what other people think?  I want to be one of those people who doesn't care--not in a cynical, insensitive way, but in a way that is just 100% comfortable in my own skin. And somehow throwing all this out there, and exploring all this with Tim, and letting it float around in my own brain blog is helping.

So as I wrap my brain around the idea that trauma and grief can still affect us this much all these years later, you all can tune in (or not).  Either way, at the end of the day it's me and the people under my own roof that matter most.

And do you know what's really amazing?  They all think I'm amazing.  Right here at home, where it matters most, we're working together to get it right every day just like every other family.

I can get irritated at teen sluggishness, and trails of shoes and clothes all over the house, and 10 minutes later we can all be ok with each other again.

Case in point (because I can't resist a good story)...

Yesterday Nate was in trouble.  And I told him so...  And I told him he had to "dig his way out of this hole."  About five minutes later I was loading the dishwasher (I do that once in a while) and I looked up to see him standing at the back door with a shovel in his hand.  I got it, but I was trying really, really hard not to laugh...because he was in trouble and I'm the mom and I'm not supposed to laugh if they're in trouble, right?  (By the way, I stink at not laughing when something is funny.)  I tried to ignore him, but he just stood there, and when I looked up again, all I could see was dimples...  Then he said, "I was wondering how you dig yourself out of a hole.  Technically, if you're digging, aren't you going in deeper?"

Laughter!

It was one of the best mea culpas I've ever seen.  I hope his wife appreciates that humor some day.

It's moments like that that make me amazed that these six other human beings who I love so much love me back.  At the end of the day all I have to give them is support, time (that's a hard one) and love.  And balance all that with work, home, friends, church...  (Psshht...  No sweat.)

And the best part is this new freedom to fail (which we always knew was a part of life, but just couldn't say it).  And there is relief in that, and even humor because we can say it out loud now and hear how crazy it sounds.  The other day Tim threw out the idea that if we can now fail, can we also fail and failing and therefore succeed?  Obviously, Nate is his son, because I laughed at that one also.

Either way, in the four days since I've said I'm not blogging, all this has been floating around in my brain and needed to be said.  And getting it down on paper helps me make sense it all...sort of.  I know I've said many times since this all happened that you can't make sense of senseless.

And even though I might think I'm the only one who feels this way, I'm sure I'm not.

Funny how just the opposite of what I thought I needed is what I need.

(And some good news...  Tim has day shifts for most of the rest of the summer...and 3 day weekends.  How amazing is that?  Right when we needed the gift of time, we got it.  Blessings.  I love them.)