Friday Night Delight

After slugging it out in the classroom this week (that is teaching while feeling awful), I arrived home on Friday to a surprising treat.   Our evening included pizza by the TV.  So, what makes this unusually delightful?  It was rare because it included just Kyle, our 13 year old and me for a night together.  Kelly was off at a birthday sleepover and Katie was babysitting. 

Typically, I'm greeted six days a week with bullet fire questions.  "Can I have ____ over to hang out?.... Will you take ___, ____, and me to the basketball/volleyball game?   I want to study with ___ at Starbucks."  (Yeah, right!)  As we enjoyed our dinner, I kept waiting for the social engagement to surface.  It never came.  She suggested a romantic movie and we settled into a simple and most pleasant night together.  I was quietly soaking in her company and contented presence.  

Only 5 years ago, pizza nights were the norm with all three girls gathered on the couch.  I used to think, "We need to spice up our weekends."  Now, we've entered a phase where you need a spreadsheet to keep the whereabouts and activities of the girls straight and quality time with just one daughter is a complete treasure!   Having been a parent for 15 fleeting years and realizing we will be "empty nesters" in just 7 short years, I'm going to savor every unexpected occasion like this one. 

Chief Nag to Head Cheerleader

When the girls were babies, toddlers and in elementary school, I would kiss their sleeping heads each night and pray for them.  It was a very short prayer: "Lord, please help them to love you more than anything in this world."  Now, my teenage/preteen daughters stay up much later than me, so this ritual has shifted to the morning hours while they are still sleeping and I'm leaving for work.  Parenting struggles have changed in some ways, but my prayer hasn't changed a bit!  So much remains the same, yet my confidence in parenting has diminished with the need for a new style of influence.  Safety is a common thread throughout the years and sharing continues to be a front burner issue, but authoritarian and controlling leadership is no longer effective. 

If I could sum up my role in the home, it would be "Chief Nag".   When I walk in the door from school, the first comments often include, "Have you done piano, homework, folded laundry?  Who left the bowls, cups, chip bags on the coffee table?  That is too much make-up!  That skirt is too short or tight, etc., etc., etc....."  In just three years, our first daughter will be ready for college.  I don't want to nag her to death during the fleeting time we have her in the home.

My desire as a parent would be for them to know that I'm am their biggest fan and cheerleader!  With driving and dating on the horizon, I can only imagine the challenges ahead.  I pray that the Lord will grow in me a winsome spirit of grace and mercy that helps navigate these years with loving and patient influence.  Believe it or not, I can distinctly remember being their age and being attracted to and influenced by people who believed in me and encouraged me to live in a way that honors the Lord, those who inspired me to love the Lord more than anything else in this world! 

A Tapestry of Grief

Well, thoughts of retiring the blog were premature.  Grief has followed me into 2013, so I will continue to write.  When you lose a loved one, you hear a lot about the "Stages of Grief".  My gut response at my Dad's memorial service was that people can use a stage (anger perhaps?) to keep from healing and finding acceptance.  Remembering that I'm Carl's daughter, reminds me that moving forward is always the goal.  Wallowing is frowned upon in our family!   My experience has been more of a "tapestry of grief", not necessarily stages where you progress from one to the other.  I find myself in denial, depressed, angry and bargaining all in the same day.  Clearly, I haven't come to accept the reality just yet.  I have to remind myself daily that he is really gone.  It doesn't seem real that we will never see him or talk to him again this side of heaven, especially considering the sudden and tragic way we lost him.  I find myself constantly thinking of questions I would like to ask him and things I wish I could tell him.  "If only thoughts" are the norm right now.  At first, denial and shock was my only experience.  At my Dad's memorial service, I comforted others with a stoic, almost heartless, attitude.  I told one of his lifelong friends (who was in tears) to "snap out of it" before the service.  At the hospital, after we lost him, I watched others dissolve into tears and thought, "What is wrong with these people?"  Really, it was an unbelievable experience of being removed from the whole thing while in my happy place of denial.  Now, I still find myself looking at pictures and thinking he's not really gone, but that is combined with an element of anger that our girls will not have the blessing of a grandfather's strong influence in their adult years.  At the same time, I'm dabbling with melancholy that resembles depression at times.  During the holidays, I hit rock bottom while obsessing over photos of him throughout my life and also the pictures he took on that last trail ride.  Come to find out, from campers who witnessed the accident, the horse threw him off as he was taking a photo.  I spend a lot of time looking at that picture.  His last view on earth was breathtaking!  He died enjoying the beauty he loved to capture on his camera.  New Year's Day was particularly sad for me.  Our family made a big pot of chili, but I just wanted to stay in my pj's all day.  I could almost hear Dad telling me to get my act together.  He was all about celebration and hospitality.  So, we invited friends over and and had a very enjoyable time celebrating the New Year, sparing myself the uncomfortable thought of disappointing Dad.  After four decades being motivated by a desire to make him proud, his influence continues in his absence.  Recently, I found his last email to me.  It contained four words which will stick with me for the rest of my life.  He simply said, "You are on fire."  Those words sum up HIS life and his role throughout my life.  It is surreal to me that my Earthly father and my Heavenly father are both in heaven.  I've always desired to honor my Heavenly Father, though I can not see Him.  Now I find myself driven by love and faith to honor both of them in the way I grieve and live.