Category: Yearly Goals

Yesterday I was walking out of a local quilt shop when a stab of loneliness hit me.  I had just watched three women standing together around the cutting table laughing, talking about their lives, talking about someone they all knew who has inspired them over the years, sharing a common interest together.  I watched them and felt so lonely!  I drove away thinking about how many friendships, especially groups, I’ve let go of in the past few years during my struggle to stay afloat as I learn how to mother eight very different children.  I thought of the book groups I dropped out of, the classes I didn’t take, the luncheons I’ve missed, the chats on the phone that I rarely, if ever, have anymore.  All of a sudden it felt like I’ve paid a terrible price for this family of mine, and it felt hard.  I longed for the community of my first home, for the proximity of a dozen good friends living within two blocks of my house, all of us starting and adding to and raising our children together, driving each other’s children to and from soccer practice, sending samples of new recipes across the street for a fellow cook to taste.  So much in common, so much to talk about, so many easy opportunities to serve each other every single day.  Why did I ever want to leave that?  Then I was honest with myself and admitted that in the muddy years of trying to figure things out, while I’ve wanted so much to be understood and accepted, I’ve also held the world at arm’s length.  Not living up to my own standards, I couldn’t bear opening myself  up to the view of others.  It was really quite strange how these feelings suddenly rose up before me like a monster.

I need to do better.  I’ve tried to resume more friendships this year, but admittedly it was more difficult than I anticipated. My husband’s injury changed the summer, and the school year has run away with me and left many good intentions shriveled and cast aside.   I learned this weekend that I need more of friendship than I’m getting, that I’d like so much to find a close circle of friends that I can belong to once more.

But I’m focusing on feeling happy this year, and the kind of feelings flooding my heart were the opposite of joy.  I remembered what I read early in the year in The Happiness Project and decided to fall back on the good old advice to “act the way you want to feel.”  I went to work and an hour later realized that life was just fine.  Looking back over the week, I recognized so many joyful moments and blessings.  I have a fantastic marriage.  I tried a new recipe for dinner and we loved it.  I got to go outside with my children and watch them play in the leaves while I pulled weeds.  I got to watch the sunset.  Went on a date with my husband.  Took the children to choose pumpkins, then came home for root beer floats.  We made caramel apples.  We made cookies.  I planted a few tulip bulbs.  Started a book.  Helped each child along the path of learning new skills that will help them to solve problems effectively.  Today I laughed really hard at some of the sweet things that little children say and do.  What could I possibly feel bad about?  Yes, I have a wonderful life.  There are certainly things I can adjust, but life is very, very good.

Especially if I focus on the positive and let go of the things that hurt.

My husband tried to take the boys on an overnighter this weekend when one of our cars broke down an hour from home.  Oh well.  My daughter has had pain in her feet for two and a half years, and this week we were fortunate to pinpoint her Achilles as the problem, then get her in to see some great physical therapists.  It was an eventful week in some ways, but nothing we couldn’t handle.  THAT is also a blessing.

I want very much to be good, to be better.  I hope the Lord will help me along this path.  I am grateful for His assistance every day.  And so we start another week with hope in our hearts, trust that we can figure things out, astonishment that October is ending so soon, and happiness in our step.

Have a great week, Jennifer

If my tendency is to begin these posts with descriptive images about the quiet hum of family life,  then tonight is different.  A wonderful week, an even better weekend, yet the children got louder, busier, more wild as the night progressed until we reached a full-volume cacophony long before bedtime.  Gratefully it was equal parts humor and tears, conversation and craziness, wrestling and watching.  But cacophony is what it is:  a discordant mixture of sounds, jarring to hear, and we had plenty of that going on.  At last they were all in bed and the quiet didn’t descend in a gentle blanket slowly creeping over us; it disappeared as things do when the power goes out:  suddenly, completely.

And so here we are, down to only twelve weeks left in the year.  I recognized in myself this week a stress underlying everything I did, and after some fairly detached self-observation, discovered that it was largely related to nothing more than the change in the calendar.  I was worried because the end of the year is approaching must faster than I’d like.  The sentence “too much is still undone” has been replaying in my mind to the pace of a freight train gaining speed.  I actually reached the point this week when I acknowledged to myself that yes, I do indeed love fall and all the slowing down, sheltering in, cozy living it conjures in our minds and hearts.   But the first thought that followed those lovely images was this:  I don’t deserve it.  Ridiculous, and yet it was my first thought.   I guess in my heart all those lovely fall rituals come when the work is done, and this year I feel like I can’t slow my pace just because the earth grows colder for there is “too much yet undone”.

I suppose some of these feelings come naturally with the week that also brings a descent in temperatures and a clear change in the air.  Regardless of how much I want to hang onto later sunsets and warmer temperatures (please just until soccer/lacrosse seasons end?) the day will come when my leaf, too, will drop and I’ll find myself  snuggled up with a mug of hot chocolate and loving it.  My heart is just behind the timeline a bit.  I’ve no concerns about it catching up.

It was a week of hard work and traditions.  Traditions that ground us as a family, that make my children feel like all is well with the world because mom made the cinnamon rolls she always makes on Sunday morning for General Conference, and so forth.  It makes me happy to do it, knowing they count on it.  Small steps forward here and there, lots of focus on various skills which certain children need help with.  We ate well, played hard, folded laundry, did homework and so forth.  Friday night found me in the freezing wind with jackets too light for the weather, watching our two daughters play soccer at the same time on two fields immediately adjacent to one another.  I had to write that, of course, because it’s the only time it will happen and when there’s also a playground, well, what more can you ask for?  {I almost asked for that cup of hot chocolate on the way home as my toes thawed.}

I visited a friend this week who lives an hour away.  Because she works full-time, I had to go on a day she wasn’t working.  It turned out that her day off fell on the day when it’s hardest for me to lose housekeeping time but I felt like I should go anyway.  I’m not sorry I went; indeed I’m certain it was the right thing to do, but I was right about the house.  I never caught up.   Time with a faraway friend is worth a dirty house any week, though, don’t you think?  Enjoyable conversations with a fellow soccer mom while sitting on the sidelines together were also a bright spot.

The overwhelming feeling of my heart right now is simple and deep.  I want to be better.  Please help me be better.  I will work harder.  I will love more.   This desire to improve, this yearning for more is steady and strong, keeping time with my physical heart.  I am teary-eyed, a little overwhelmed, and yet amazed at the simple but powerful knowledge that I know where to look for the help that I need.  I know why I can hope for such help.  So the please becomes a prayer and a commitment and I close the day with a certain knowledge that I am not alone.  I am a daughter of God.  I am raising his children.  Things will work out.  Life is good.

Happy October!

Jennifer

The fan hums consistently as it pulls the cool air in through open windows.  Outside there are the faraway sounds of cars passing, sounding farther away than they really are.  The moon rises slowly in the sky, framed for the moment between branches on a pine tree.  The house is mostly quiet but for the muffled sounds of little girls playing but trying to hide it.  I wonder why I describe these moments of quiet so often in these posts.  Perhaps it’s because pausing to notice and share them is such a luxury in my day to day life.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve always enjoyed quiet but never really knew it until quiet had been almost entirely erased from my life.  Perhaps it grounds me, helping me to savor the life I have even at the end of days that I didn’t love.  Maybe I just love searching for the right words.

Regardless, here I am again, and in the brief moments it took to type those sentences, the scene has already changed.  Suddenly two girls are in my room, one professing her ultimate goal of sleeping on my floor and the other jealous of the idea, using a plastic hanger as an imaginary bow to shoot arrows of air at her sister.   I mind the interruption, and yet I don’t.  It’s my life!  Suddenly I’m grateful that I write at all, knowing that this stage will pass before I am ready and one day I’ll be swimming in quiet and wishing for the stampede once more.

I’m not sure how to judge the week.  It was a good week.  Nothing too crazy happened, and I like weeks like that.  I feel good about the things I did this week, but my heart wasn’t in a lot of it.  Every day I had things I “felt” like doing, things that are good but which ran counter to what needed to be done.  I’m happy to say that I stuck with my duties and so things hummed along rather nicely.   My favorite quote from James Lehman was my banner this week:  “We don’t feel our way to better behavior, we behave our way to better feelings.”

My little one has been potty training this week.  THAT is reason enough to stay home and forgo any urges to leave the house!   My daughters scored some awesome goals in their soccer games.  We read books, drew pictures, played with friends, picked vegetables from our garden, tried new recipes, shared favorite treats with friends, joked and laughed and worked.

I had hoped to have the entire house whipped into shape by today.  I made great progress but there are areas which have gone untouched and areas that obviously didn’t work like I wanted because they’re already back to a state of chaos.  But I’m working at it and that’s enough.  We had some small setbacks which tempted me to be discouraged but I was able to keep things in perspective and not let it phase me.  I was tempted to think that I’m not learning anything but again I didn’t go there.  Behavior, not feelings.  So I got back to work.  So many skills to teach, so many hugs to give, so much work to do, and I’m thrilled to be here doing it.  Really, in many ways, that is joy.  Being able to do your own work.  What a lucky girl I am!

Jennifer