Homecoming

This week I started my new job.  At my old company.  Doing something new.  And it really did feel like coming home.  They know me, and they know what I can do.  They knew that hiring me back was what they needed, now that a change in management will support the approach I always wanted for them.

I know them.  I have no illusions about them ever becoming a giant company, I have no expectations that I will become rich through stock options, or be hired away because they are such a big bonus on my resume.  They are good people.  Not perfect, but good, solid people who care deeply about doing the right thing and creating things of lasting value.  Such a different perspective than a company who is trying to be bought.

I want to be like that.  I want to care more about building things that last than doing things for show.  I want to spend more time on relationships and less on facebook.  I want to find a way to give more time to the Lord, both personally and in service.  Tomorrow I start training to be a weekend producer at NorthRidge.  I pray that God will show me clearly if this is the service He has for me.  I started getting up earlier this week in order to spend more time in prayer and the Word.  Baby steps.  But every step forward is avoiding a step backward.

Launched

One down, one to go. We are in Ft. Myers to celebrate S's graduation! On Monday he starts his new job with an ad agency in New York.  I couldn't be more proud and of course I am feeling so sentimental.

This image says it all to me. Those kids are creating something amazing in the sand. They are taking the raw materials given them and they are focused, working, building a city of castles. And when they are done their parents will take a picture of them with their creation and it will go in a scrapbook or a tumblr and that will be the memory they retain.

Here's what nobody photographed:

• Dad and Mom planned for this trip, bought the sand toys, packed them in the car and carried them down to the beach. They also brought all the food, water and sunscreen required for the creation of that city. 
• As I watch, Dad has begun digging a moat around the city to keep the tides away as long as possible. 
• You can't see her in this picture, but Mom is watching as the 3 year old goes back and forth from the surf to carry water. She does not relax in her chair reading or writing as I do. Her vision constantly follows whichever child is closest to any type of risk. 

This is parenting. You plan and prepare and support. You divert your children from risk as much as you can while still enabling them to build and create. You watch most closely the child who is at risk while trying desperately not to communicate your own fears. You stay in the background whenever you can, to make sure that what they build is truly theirs. And then, when the city is built, you take pictures and celebrate the Builder. The one true Builder who gave you that child for a time, as well as the son or daughter who built those castles. Well done, my dearest S. Thank you, Father.

Sometimes life does not turn out how you expect

I should change the title of this blog to The Erratic Blogger.  Except that someone who doesn't know how to spell might think I meant something else with one less R and an O and then I would get all kinds of awful comments.  I am pretty good with getting none.

Soon I will be 52.  Let me tell you what was supposed to be happening right now.  Jim was supposed to be 3 years away from retiring from Ford with an awesome pension and a fully stocked 401k.  I was supposed to be employed part time in some sort of church-related or philanthropic organization that involved lots of public speaking, creativity and management of volunteers.  During my off hours I would redecorate my house with craftily painted thrift store purchases.  During the summers, the flexible nature of my work would allow me to spend weeks at a time in South Carolina with my parents, cooking shrimp dinners after long days reading on the beach or volunteering with them in one of their many causes.  Jim and I would have the money and freedom to visit our kids in their respective cities and our holiday reunions in Michigan would be centered on the spiritual foundation on which we raised our kids.

So that didn't happen.

On the other hand, God has been so gracious and Jim and I both have good jobs, good enough to send both of our kids to private colleges without crushing them under student loans.  My house looks like crap, but honestly it just isn't a priority.  Once in a while I will think about what my house could look like if we kept some of the money that belongs to the Lord, and while it looks nice in my imagination it comes with too high a price tag. To give up the blessings that come with tithing has no appeal to me at all.   Besides, I can barely keep up with paying bills and preparing food and there is no way I am going to hunt down cute little wooden chairs and spray paint them.  My kids are terrific, even though we don't see them nearly as much as we'd like to.  M. has kept her spiritual foundation intact but S.'s is shattered on the rocks of a bad experience with our old church.  But life is a long thing, and I trust in God to draw S. back.

Things have not turned out the way I expected.  But I continue to be astonished with the way that God uses the misery in my life and works it to good.  I am both thriftier and more generous than I might otherwise be.  When I hear about people who have lost their parents, my heart aches with a genuine sympathy and I try to support them.  I will never again think "that can't happen to me", because I know how fragile life and faith can be.  I am deeply and truly in love and in like with my husband.  Life is hard.  Life is good.  God is good.  Even when I don't get anything I was expecting.

Arrivals and Departures

Two weeks from today, we will take M. back to school.  What a different experience this will be from last year, for many reasons.

First, I am not dropping off my fragile baby girl, strong on the outside but already desperately missing the love of her life hometown boy.  The hometown boy is long gone, having thoughtfully made this summer so much easier by taking up with a partying girl.  Good riddance and all that.  And the fragile girl is still more breakable than she lets on to most of the world, but she has a stronger sense of self and of her gifts.  Her future is still unfolding but this year she is better prepared to handle it.

Second, I have one child coming home!  3 days after we take M. to school, S. comes home for a term.  Having lost a term to a medical withdrawal, he will do a term at the much cheaper Wayne State University than the oh-so-expensive Dartmouth College.  He will return to Dartmouth for spring term and graduate a year later than planned, but that is such the fashionable thing to do these days.

What will it be like to have him at home for 7 months?  He is dreading it, I know.  I hope against hope that he will use the time positively, even though I am sure that a lot of that time will be spent complaining to remote friends via chat and watching the Sopranos.  Most of all I pray that he will come back to faith.  The path he has chosen has served him poorly but he has to find God's grace on his own.

There is nothing like falling down to appreciate being picked up.  I pray that he will find grace and accept it and allow himself to be made new.  If he does, I see great things ahead.  If not, I see more struggle and pain.  I wish I could do it for him.  No, I guess I don't.  He has to own this.  It is his struggle to overcome.  I only have to continue to love him through it, coming as close as I can to living out God's grace in his life.

Half here, half there

My husband continues to be offered opportunities to work in other cities.  There is one coming up in the fall that looks like it might be a perfect fit.  Great job, great company, a city where my current employer would probably be happy for me to be located.  And for the first time in a long time, I don't want to move!
I finally have a job I like, a church I love, and I have seen how important it is for M. to come home on breaks and reconnect with her friends.  Do I want to dig up my roots, my kids' roots, and start over?
All my life I have chosen family over money, relationships over material things.  Do I encourage my husband to move to a new city where we have wanted to live for years?  A city that is suited perfectly to my current career and is closer to extended family? Or do I try to help us stay where we are comfortable, where our kids have friends, where we have put down roots?
What I do know is this -- I serve a God who is big enough that I can trust Him with every decision, knowing that He will use it to develop me and perfect me.  Through my wisdom and my foolishness, God has seen me through and I trust Him for whatever comes next.
And my God has told me I need to submit to my husband.  J. is no tyrant, he will not impose his will on me, he will never make a choice that will make me miserable.  But he has sacrificed his career for his family for decades and it is time for him to benefit from the recognition he has gotten in his career.
Virginia awaits!

Half of a Mother's Day

Last year, with my son away at school and my experiencing my first Mother's Day without a Mom, it felt like half of a Mother's Day.  Maybe less.  No longer able to celebrate my own mother, my mother-in-law no longer recognizing me, my son away at college . . . I wanted the day to hurry on by.  Fortunately the whirlwind of my daughter's senior prom and impending graduation carried me along in continual busyness so that I was able to push all those miseries down under the surface.

This year I was struggling with missing my beloved Mawmy (even at 50 I still think of her name as spelled that way) and so when M. had a performance that weekend it was a great reason to make a visit and stay for Mother's Day.  And we went to church with her, and the pastor talked about how God uses even dysfunctional families and genuinely awful moms to raise terrific people, some of whom even end up walking in faith.  And suddenly all of my lonely hollow mom-missing feelings were gone and I was just grateful for the memories.  A little dysfunction, sure, but mostly painting and dancing and building forts and climbing hills and building sand castles.

And then it felt like a complete Mother's Day.

Confessions of the Formerly Hot

So I used to be what they call hot.  I mean, I never had the traffic stopping kind of face or figure of a Victoria's Secret model, but I was pretty and I liked being pretty.  That was then.

Throughout my 50th year I started to experience a sort of transformation, where the wrong things started to grow (a GUT?  When did I ever have a GUT?!) and many things started to droop.  I mean, what happened to my jawline?  The shocking part is how quickly it all happened.  One day I am thinking I am holding up pretty well and a month later I am wondering how that old woman got in my mirror.

Now at last I am in the position of never being able to flirt my way out of a situation.  Honestly, I probably shouldn't have even been trying for years, but when 90% of your customer base is male and over 60 it is still worth a shot. At this point in my life I am thanking God that He saw fit to have me born into a family that had two smart parents who valued a college education.  As a diner waitress right now I would be racking up the penny tips, especially with my bad attitude.

Here I am, struggling daily with Weight Watchers and Deep Wrinkle Smoothing Cream and working out to Just Dance 2 in the basement.  Not feeling sorry for myself (much), but still wishing I had the kind of excess income it would take to pay for that Lifestyle Lift to pin back my jawline.  And maybe a little lipo.

But the thing that matters is that my husband still thinks I am hot.  The man is still crazy about me and I love him like crazy too.  Funny to be thinking this way, but this is now my prayer for my children - that my son's future wife and my daughter's future husband will think they are hot for the rest of their lives.  It is a wonderful gift.