So how is everyone’s lock down going? Still feeling okay out there, in your own home?

I noticed that some of my Alabama friends went back to church this Sunday. I was like, “Say whaaa?” I can’t even imagine that yet here in Maryland. Because we move so much, my Facebook newsfeed represents people from all over the country, but mostly the South, the D.C. area, and California/Washington state. I am always surprised at how different life is in different states.

The variety of locations make for a fun read on Facebook. Georgia opened back up shops before Alabama, I think, but poor Alabama is the one having the surge in coronavirus cases.

One of my sons has firm opinions about all this, and it is funny because he does not get these opinions from Alan and me. Alan and I stay very busy and rarely even comment on the lock down situation. Alan literally does not have time, and I honestly sometimes forget that we are even in lock down. Day dreaming is my most special skill. It is a coping skill too. If you don’t let things bother you too much, you do live with more peace of mind and less heart problems.

I started to get excited about planning a Disney trip a month ago because I was just certain they would open by the end of summer. Being optimistic is my coping mechanism. Sure enough, they are opening this summer. Alan just started a new job though, so he is reluctant to leave for long enough to do Disney in addition to visiting grandparents and going to the beach. Alan dislikes Disney and takes germs very seriously in a normal year. I think Disney this year might actually give him an aneurism. No matter how many times the boys washed their hands, I don’t think Alan would ever believe they were truly clean.

I still want to go to Disney again soon though. I cannot explain why, but I seriously love it and feel so happy when I am there. Maybe we will wait until cooler weather though. It’s pretty hot to wear a mask outside.

By the way, Alan was NOT working at home for week 11. He actually went to his work building.

This greatly improved my stress level. We loved the idea of having Alan at home, but we didn’t see him when he was working at home anyway. While he was at home, he was literally ALWAYS in my bedroom, with two computer screens on, talking on his phone, and typing. If I went to my room, I had to be quiet. Most days he does not even leave that room for lunch. The boys or I bring him a lunch and a coffee. It’s like room service….but way less fun.

The Army, or I should say Alan’s corner of the Army, is heavily involved in the whole COVID19 thing. Plus, Alan is in the thick of his “command time,” a three year section of an Army officer’s career that they take very seriously. With him in my room, working around the clock, his stress felt like my stress. It was horribly draining. I mean, I hate that he has to deal with it either way, but at least with him back at the office, it does not also become my stress. At this very moment, I am peacefully sitting on my bed, at four-o’clock in the afternoon, which I haven’t been able to do in months, typing this up. Peace and quiet reigns.

Memorial Day

I know Memorial Day is not supposed to be about taking a day off and going to the lake, but man it was nice to do just that this year. We are so grateful for those who gave all for our country. As a military wife, I cannot watch anything remotely Memorial Day related without crying. It was just extra sweet to get that day off this year. We needed it so badly.

Only 2.5 Weeks of School to Go!

I am so excited about this. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! It’s been years since I felt this happy to see summer arrive. As a rule, I am not a big fan of sweaty, sticky summer, but this year is vastly different. Come on over, summer. Hop in my minivan. We are going to Alabama and Florida. We can lock down at my parents’ house just as well as we can lock down here.

I haven’t been this excited to see summer….since… well, since the last time I had to be the teacher. Ha! So much responsibility!

National Uproar

You can’t really talk about this particular week without mentioning the death of George Floyd. Whether you think he died as a result of racism or not, the fact is that he should not have died. Racism in America is also a fact. We all know that to be true. I remember when I enrolled as a freshman at the University of Alabama in 1999 how much racism I saw and felt because my roommate was black. The racism was towards her, not me, but I learned from it. Several different girls asked me, “So are you going to move, try to switch roommates?” No, of course I wasn’t. My roommate, Monica, was ideal. She was a wonderful, mature graduate student, and we had fun together. I could not have asked for a better roommate. We stayed friends for years. She sang the Lord’s prayer at my wedding in 2002.

In my college days, there was controversy over allowing anyone not white into the Greek sororities at UA. I read up on it the other day, out of curiosity, to see if that has changed. I looked at photos and read articles, but honestly, I did not see much change. A few sororities on Alabama’s campus have let in a few people of color, but I did not see many. I’m not trying to villainize the Greek system, but I am using it as an example. You cannot still have these social clubs that keep people out based on skin color and yet say racism in America is gone.

Please don’t send me emails defending the Greek system. I know people are actively trying to change it, and I have faith that they will eventually succeed. One of my best buds was in an Alabama sorority, and she would not agree with the keeping out of other races. She is a kind person, but even she will admit that it happens. Some sororities and fraternities are much worse about this than others.

But I’m chasing rabbit trails. I just wanted to say that I do hurt for the African American community, and I am doing my best to teach my children to treat everyone with equal love and respect. We are all created in the image of God. Underneath our different crayon colors of skin, we are all just people. We are people who were stressed already from the lock downs and are now stressed even more from the racism and the riots. My prayer for our country is that we keep improving in the way we treat one another and that we are able to get back to working together more closely soon.

I thought Will Smith’s quote was quite correct, “Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed.”

Jesus said everything best.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:36-40

I hope you all have a happy week. I’m working on a project, my next e-book, called “5 Days of Finding Joy in a Pandemic.” This one will be free to all of my blog subscribers. I’m hoping to have that finished and available in just a couple of weeks. I’m thinking “5 Days” because I think I can get 5 days done so much quicker than 10, and you can read it quicker too, but I’ve drawn up a draft cover, back when I was planning it to be 10 days. Here’s a sneak peek at the draft cover:

I will let you guys know when I have it all finished up! Thanks for reading!

The post Lockdown Week 11: National Uproar, Alan at the Office, and My Next Ebook appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

This past week I stopped every few days to jot down a paragraph or two of how quarantine was going for us. I had no idea it was going to be such a challenging week, thanks to the addition of virtual schooling. Our school only involves a little of the classroom videos. It is mostly, “Go to this website, click on the list, click on the links, do the problems. Take the quiz at the end. Create a brochure about it.” But with all four of them going at the same time, that is twenty-four classes I am overseeing at once, and it is a heart attack waiting to happen. I have been extremely dutiful in taking my beta blockers.

This week took me from restfully joyful to crying for help. I can be a lot dramatic.

Friday, April 10

We are enjoying our 3 day spring break. I let the boys go straight to video games this morning. They were required to eat, brush teeth, and do chores first. I mean, even we have standards. Then I dove into my baking. A friend’s precious one-year-old just got out of the hospital, so I wanted to send them a little food. That was a major prayer praise. So many of us have been praying for Parker for weeks, and I know her parents are emotionally stripped. Other than that, no big plans today except to work on healing my feet, getting some exercise, playing with the kids, and writing.

Monday, April 13th ……..Okay, I admit it. I love sheltering in place. This is fun to me.

I am still oddly enjoying the shelter in place situation. We are saving money and spending tons of time together. I have way more access to Alan than I normally do with him working at home, and all the stuff is cancelled. I find it very hard to muster up disappointment about everything being cancelled. That probably does not say good things about me. As a shy person in a new place, leaving the house is still intimidating, but those are part of my own issues. I use withdrawal to cope with stress. The coronavirus pandemic is feeding my coping strategy…which makes me far more mentally healthy at the moment than the poor, poor extroverts. However, eventually this will end, and I will be a little closer to where I was when I started out about a year ago at putting down new roots here.

We have some friends now though. We are going to be okay. I feel so optimistic. Of course, that may be because it is my boys’ three day spring break today, so I have virtual school management off my plate for a few days. That is Wednesday’s problem. We will worry about that on Wednesday and not until then!

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Romans 3:23-24ESV

Thursday, April 16th

Another day, another colossal meltdown. I have not handled this well. The children have been very good this year at our home school. They have not given me the problems that they did when they were younger. Instead, they genuinely care and want to do a good job.

My problem was learning how to use all the technology and help four people with that at once. There is a learning curve. It has been nothing short of an Olympic obstacle course. I get one boy signed into something and explain the directions, and before I am done, there is another boy, “Mom, I am finished. I have done everything. Can I play Minecraft now?”

Okay, only J.D. does that, but still. Usually I get halfway through explaining something, and then the screen disappears. Huh?? Where’d it go? I was going to show you…Grrrr

“Hey, Mom! What is it talking about ‘graphic organizer’? Do I have to do it? Where is it?”

I give up on finding the screen that disappeared and start all over to open a new document. Put in the username. Add in the password. Select this, select that. Now here we are again. Be very careful not to make a swipe motion on this computer because I don’t know how to use this new one, and I cannot figure out where it swipes it to…

We shelled out the big bucks to buy a new computer to get us through virtual school. It is a PC when I have been using MacBooks for nine years, so I am not as good at using it. In fact, I am so bad I cannot even find my email. There’s the whole Outlook thing.

“Mom! What does it mean? I don’t understand.” Another boy, another problem.

Most teachers post all the assignments on ItsLearning for us, but there are a few who use an off-site text book, and you have to know all those links and codes for that.

“Oh, yeah, let me check my email. She sent an email with the link. Where did I put my phone?”

“Daniel, why are you watching videos on YouTube about the nervous system? Did you even do your art? No? You know what, go ahead. That is a really good science video.”

Well, you get the idea.

I have hope though. Why? I have hope because we are learning how to use these programs, and you know what? You never have to do a thing for the first time more than once. This week is our first week. Next week is not. We will have a clue because of learning through experience, and we will be praying quarantine ends soon now along with all the extroverts. I was loving it when we didn’t have to do computer school. Now I am in the boat with the people ready to be done.

Friday, April 17, 2020

Sweet relief. Today was better. It was oh so much better. I put on mascara this morning, and I told Alan, who was probably on a phone call in my room, and I should not have been bothering him really, “I AM putting on this mascara because I am determined not to cry today.”

And I didn’t! Hurray! We even had one class that we could not get into, thanks to random technology weirdness. This particular teacher sent me the user help desk number to the platform company and said that my boy has to do this particular assignment. Haaaahahahaha! Yeah, I am going to spend my Friday talking to a tech company fully knowing it will probably work just fine tomorrow or even later today. Yeah, no. Missing one lesson of math is not worth the long phone call. Thanks. The website worked yesterday and the day before. It will work tomorrow.

Choosing to move on from petty problems when there are other problems to be dealt with of equal importance is a valuable skill. It’s like getting hung up on math question #5 when you have a test of 30 problems to solve. Not today, Pearson EasyBridge. I will deal with you another day.

Believe it or not, other than that one math lesson, all four boys managed to finish all their work. It would not have been quite so insurmountable if I had not made an error on my calendar. I have a tendency to think I have my calendar memorized.

“Oh, we get three days for spring break.”

No.

They actually had only Friday and Monday, so there was me on Wednesday, cramming four days of work into three. Haha! Oopsie…

And so quarantine week five ends. There were tears, and there were fits, and the children were a little stressed too. hehehe But it’s done. Week 5 of quarantine/week 1 of computer school is done, and there will never be a weekend I will be more grateful for than this one right here, even if it does rain all weekend.

Happy sheltering in place! I am off to make french toast.

The post Quarantine Week 5, Computer School Week 1: It’s like patience training. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Tomorrow is Daniel’s very first day of kindergarten. To me he still looks like this:

How can I send this sweet Bama boy to kindergarten??

But, believe it or not, the Dan Man is 5, and he is extremely excited about going to school with his brothers. They will all be at the same school together. I had planned it differently, but at the last minute Daniel was awarded a scholarship, so that worked out beautifully.

It’s hard to even focus on how much is happening.

Our heads are still spinning. In June, we trekked across the U.S. of A. In July, we hurriedly unpacked. (So now I need to go back and re-organize everything.) Then we headed off to one vacation after another. We did Disney. We saw friends. We went to Destin. We visited family.

I feel as though all along, our life keeps improving more and more. Happy things keep happening to us, and I’ve been so much in recovery from the dismal beginning of 2016 that it’s taken me awhile for this new thing to set in to my head.

I’m not stressed anymore!

Wait. I don’t have to make lesson plans? Nope.

I don’t have to do any teacher training? Nope.

I don’t have to even feed everyone lunch? Nope.

I can be at my parents’ house in two hours? Yep!

The big boys are already in school, and they LIKE it??  Yes!!!

They actually like their new school a LOT!!!

I keep thinking about those Christian song lyrics, “He set my feet upon a rock.”

Of course, that is also in the Bible, but it’s so much easier to pop in my head when it’s set to music. In my head that’s me. I was sinking in my misery, and I have been lifted and set upon a rock. Amen. Amen. Amen.

I think we’re on the verge of loving it here. I made my schedule for tomorrow, and it doesn’t sound hard! I didn’t even have to color-code it!! 

Praise the Lord, y’all! I have found relief!!! Now we just need to make a friend or two, and we’ll be all set.

We aren’t off to a great start on the makin’ friends bit.

First off, we’ve lived here over a month and we’ve been out of town for most of that.

Secondly, we have a son whose Southern accent impersonation is down right hilarious. I only hope the locals will think so, instead of feeling like they’re being made fun of. I haven’t heard him do it in public though, so we should be good. (Ask Joshua to talk Southern next time you see it. You will laugh!!)

Then there was the doctor’s office incident.

Alan took all four boys to the doc on a Saturday by himself. (I was out of town again.) We just needed to get school and sports forms filled out. Moving is such a pain when it comes to health care!!! (That’s another reason our company should let us live places a little longer.)

Well, they were all there for HOURS, but everyone was well behaved, thankfully. But right at the end, the doctors refused to sign the sports forms for ALL the boys! Can you believe that!!??  And it was because of my heart problem! Ugh.  Way to go, Me!

Alan tried to convince them that the boys do not have it, and even I am fine. I could play sports even. (Not well, but I could do it.) He failed to convince Doc #1, so he asked to get a second opinion from one of the other docs there that day.

Doc #2 also denied us. We all have to go to a cardiologist before they will be cleared to play sports. Doctors totally freak out about the v-tach thing, but I’m telling you mine is benign. It’s monomorphic, non-sustained. I’m good.

So today we’re sitting in Sunday School, and Alan whispers, “That doctor that wouldn’t sign the boys’ sports physicals is right over there.” Yep. Doc #1 is in our Sunday School class.

No way.

Yes way.

We chatted with him after class. He didn’t budge any on the issue, but hopefully we are all on good terms. I’m sure he’s a very good doctor. It was just a little embarrassing.

Oh, yeah, that’s us. We’re just making friends all over the place.

Won’t you be our friend??

I am seriously, for real, truly going to take a “1st day of Kindergarten” picture for Dan tomorrow. And a “3rd day” pic for J and C! I don’t know why I’ve had so much trouble remembering.

Have your kids/grandkids started back to school yet? Share with me in the comments!

The post Life After Home School and the Move appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Ah youth. Where did you go, youth??

My Battle with Chronic Pain Part III: The Pain Returns

It reminds me of that song: “The cat came back the very next day; it just couldn’t stay away.”

Life was going well, and I was on cloud NINE, being finished with my very first year of home schooling! Wahoo! Summer! I made big plans.

But why wouldn’t I? I was young and healthy. I should be able to handle a cross-country flight and a few short road trips. Right? And don’t give me the, “You just need to be more active,” talk because I was being active. The problem was all the sitting and riding!

It started with the plane, it worsened with each car trip, and I took several.

When I first arrived in Florida, Alan called me from home, “I made you a doctor’s appointment.”

“Why?” I asked. I hate doctor’s appointments, and I had been doing so well.

“For your back!”

“My back is better. I’m good, Alan, I don’t need a doctor.”

“Ehhh, I think you do. Let’s keep the appointment, and you’ll probably be glad you have it by the time you get home.”

Heh? Did my husband just do a little soothsaying? Was he saying that he knew I’d be back to hurting by the time I got home?

I shrugged it off. I enjoyed my vacation. He joined us. We took even more car trips in the South.

fun in the sun

And Alan was right. I was happy to go to the doctor by the time I got home. What is it with airplane and car rides??? I don’t think this is normal.

The doc was a super friendly chap. He offered me a shot for my shoulders to loosen them up. I declined. I’ll never forget seeing my mom get a shot for a similar shoulder problem. It hurt much worse before it felt better. No thanks. My shoulders are more stiff than they are painful, so I’m not that desperate yet.

The Physical Therapy Phase

He sent me to physical therapy for my hip.

I tend to lean towards my left when I sit to keep the pressure off my bad hip. That hip hurts bad when it flares up.

“Why are you sitting like that?” the physical therapist, Ryan, asked me.

I’m so dumb. I went straight into defensive mode instead of patient-being-helped-by-a-doctor mode.

“What? Like how?” I asked trying to straighten my posture.

“All cocked to one side.”
“I don’t know.” Yes, yes I do know. Why didn’t I just admit my hip hurt? That’s what I was there for, geesh.

Doctors are always asking me questions that are probably super obvious, but I haven’t thought about it. So two days later, bam! I always figure out the answer to their questions. And that is why I am so thankful for physical therapy.

Yes, they made me do stretches, exercises, taught me how to squat properly, etc., etc. But the biggest thing was that I finally began to learn what I had begun to truly want to know:  What is wrong with me????

Ryan would work on an area, and I noticed that he knew the exact name for every single thing he worked on.

“That hurts bad. What is that?” I’d ask him.

“That’s a muscle.”

“What muscle is it?”
“That’s your tensor fasciae latae muscle. It’s a compensatory muscle.”

I learned that the tensor fasciae latae, and several other muscles become inflamed when the more essential core muscles are weak, but I also learned that those muscles tighten down when they are protecting something that’s injured underneath.

“Yow! What is that?” I have more angry muscles, tendons, and bursa than I had ever realized.

“That’s your iliotibial band. You’d be better off if I don’t work on that. You need to roll it at home with a rolling pin.”

He was right. He did work on it right before Christmas break, and every where he touched it there were little bitty bruises for a couple of weeks.

Physical therapy was fantastic. My favorite part, besides just being so happy to get out of my house, was the ice therapy at the end. They laid ice over my achy shoulder muscles and that evil iliotibial band, which is a tendon that runs down the right side of the thigh.

I was able to learn so much from my physical therapist because he was actually able to see me enough times to know the real deal about what was going on. The doctors, on the other hand, only have that one visit to go off, in which I answer all their questions wrong but realize what I should have said days later.

And then I finally had a lumbar MRI and a shoulder MRI. The verdict was in: not a single thing wrong with my spine. Ryan was right.

And the shoulder: tendonitis and torn muscles.

I asked to see a rheumatologist. I did this because I had done some research and came across a disease that sounded so much like me. Yep. I’m guilty. Self-diagnosis.

Enter the Rheumatology Phase

Now you want to talk about life-changing self-evaluation questions. My rheumatologist asks questions that I simply go blank on.

“How long does it hurt in the morning?”

Ummmm I never thought about it that way. Some days it does not ever go away. Some days I don’t hurt at all..

So I said, “I don’t know. Once I get going, I’m okay.”

I hated not knowing, and why have I never noticed? Then he asked me which is worse, morning or night?

I have no idea!

So I’m making a chart. It’s enlightening. Every day really is different.

So let me tell you what I think I might have (but of course I’m not a rheumatologist):

Psoriatic Arthritis: This disease is hallmarked by joint inflammation, which I have yet to be able to prove, except for tendonitis. Tendonitis is also part of PsA, though. So is nail psoriasis. You can read more about it here. (rheumatology.org link)

Was I right? We still aren’t sure, but we’re working on figuring it out. I could be dead wrong.

In fact, I had a rheumatology appointment this week. I do like my rheumatologist. He wasn’t convinced of the PsA. My blood work did not help me any, as it was free of any inflammatory markers. The day they did the blood work I felt pretty good. But he has ordered a hip MRI.

What is the deal with all the torn muscles, tendonitis, and bursitis (in both hips) if it isn’t psoriatic arthritis? That IT band syndrome that I have in my legs is called “runner’s knee”. Only I’m not running anymore, haven’t run since JD was born.

Over Christmas, I figured I’d get rid of all of this. I would just rest.

“Rest will fix it all,” I assured my parents, as I spent the entire vacation, practically, laying in bed. I literally could not sit down. The pain was even radiating into my pelvis bone, when I was lying in bed.

I love this photo by Janet. I literally woke up, rolled off my ice packs, posed for this picture, and went back to my ice packs.

My internet research assured me that rest is the way to fix tendonitis or bursitis.

Of course, that didn’t work. I finally went to urgent care and got a steroid shot.

The nurse practitioner assured me, “This will help, temporarily, but if you’ve had bursitis for three years, a steroid shot is not going to take care of it.”

It did help enough to get me through that plane ride, but returning to a wet California did not help. By Wednesday, I developed a terrible limp. It was so hard to walk.

And guess what, by Friday I could walk completely fine again. In fact, on Thursday and Friday, the sun came out and I felt down right wonderful. I was so excited.

Maybe this flare up is coming to an end, and I am excited about that, but I’m desperate to get to the bottom of it. Now the whole family is telling me I can’t go on the cross country road trip in the spring because I never know whether I will wake up completely incapacitated or not.

I have a doc appointment on Monday. We’re going to address my anxiety level, my heart,  and the renewal of my physical therapy referral.

This is getting personal. Rest didn’t work. Maybe exercise and nutrition will. It’s time to put this Humpty Dumpty back together again, and I mean business.

I do want you to know that while I was stressing out about this earlier this week, I am doing much better both physically and emotionally now. Even if I never find out “what’s wrong.” it will be okay.

“He, whose heart is kind beyond all measure,
Gives unto each day what He deems best,
Lovingly its part of pain and pleasure,
Mingling toil with peace and rest.”   (from the Hymn Day By Day, my favorite hymn)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

In case you missed it:

Part I: My Battle with Chronic Pain

PartII: My Battle with Chronic Pain

The post My Chronic Pain Battle Part III: The Cat Came Back the Very Next Day appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Such an anti-climactic couple of days around here.

Do any of you have chronic back pain? I sure do. Upper back, lower back. It goes down the side of my right leg. It pops up in my wrist. I’m always hurting, some days worse than others. When I want to pretend like I feel fine, I pop an Advil 800 and head out into the world. When I want to sleep, I take Tylenol PM.

I lay on hot packs. I rub on Panaway essential oil. I have a stash of back massagers, tens units, back braces, lumbar pillows, anything you’d buy to help with your back, I’ve got a few of them.

No one wants to read about other people’s medical problems, so I try not to write about it too much.

Today was the day I got my MRI report back. I was all excited and nervous about this.

Surely I didn’t research every sort of problem that could cause back pain. Surely I wasn’t afraid that I had cancer. Surely I didn’t imagine suitable replacement wives for my husband. Haha! No, no…. of course I am not that insane.

I just have a wild imagination. I’ve never been a worrier, but I admit I went a little overboard on this one. The thing is that I so badly wanted to know what caused my pain. I figured if I knew the cause, maybe I could fix it.

So when the doctor’s office, which I can never ever get an appointment with, actually called ME to schedule an appointment right away to discuss my MRI results in depth, I thought, “Oh! This is it. There was something on the MRI. We’re getting somewhere,” but those thoughts sort of led to, “I hope I’m not dying, or what if I need surgery?”

Therefore, it felt incredibly anti-climactic but also exciting to find out that the MRI suggests that I am fine. They didn’t let me read the actual report, but she said the only thing on there was tendonitis in my shoulder. 

Pretty funny, as I thought the shoulder MRI was a waste of effort. My shoulder itself is fine. It’s the back muscles around it that bother me.

I’m so happy and relieved to know that basically I am okay. Only, I’m not “okay.” I’m all tired, sleepy, lethargic, and achy.

So the next thing they wanted to discuss was depression……

Am I depressed? I don’t think I’m depressed. I have such a blessed life, I have no reason for sadness.

Okay, well, here’s the thing. I’m not depressed in the sense of being sad or lonely or such. However, the quality of life factor became greatly reduced the day I began to home school my boys.

It’s sad that something I wanted to do so badly turned out to be such a mixed bag of blessings and curses.

I love being with my family. I enjoy knowing what they are learning and seeing them succeed.

The thing is that I am not a school teacher. I don’t enjoy teaching, testing, or researching fun things to do. Plus, it hurts. My back hurts too badly to haul them out to field trips very often. It takes me days to recover from that.

Home schooling has been the single most humbling event of my life. I have leaned on my faith in the heavenly Father hard to simply get through my days. I wake up with a sense of dread over having to manage the course of the day for five separate people, while also feeding them all and wishing for a tidy house or time to do anything that I actually enjoy.

When the boys were in school, I relished that time between 8 and 2:30 to lavish love on my pre-schoolers and live at a slower pace. Then we’d pick them up at 3, we’d all head to the park, and we’d do homework and play in the evening. It worked for us.

I am so glad that I tried the home schooling thing. This was one of those jobs I looked at with high ideals and rose-colored glasses. I romanticized it in my mind, but in the end it is not for me.

Many women love it, and they should continue to home school. I should not.

The stress of managing a job I’m not cut out for is making my entire body hurt. Did you know that’s possible? It is. The aching body is making me less capable to take care of my family and my responsibilities.

I believe that the Lord puts inside of each of us a “soul thing”, a thing that we can do, enjoy doing, and bless others with. I have several soul things. I love being a mom, just a mom. Writing is my therapy, and singing is a little extra fun on the side. Those are my soul things. Oh! And when my back cooperates, I can cook like no tomorrow.

Next year, my children will be taught by someone who enjoys it, and I am going to get back to living a life that fits.

We all have a different mold we are created to fill. I’m done trying to fit into anyone else’s mold. I’m ready to get back to being a happier mom, and that will bless my boys and others as well.

“You won’t ever be able to keep up with unrealistic. Unrealistic demands lead to undercurrents of failure. So don’t allow the unrealistic demands of others to march freely into your life.”    Lisa Terkeurst, The Best Yes, page 161

“And this is my prayer:  that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”    (Phil. 1:9-10, emphasis added)

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