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.

Cat Lady

Is it possible to move from being a lifelong dog person to become a cat person?  Reggie was the best dog ever and I have to admit I still miss him.  When I come home and there is no wagging tail at the door I still hate it, months and months after we lost him to doggie cancer.

There is a gap in my life now with a lack of opportunities to nurture.  I could work in the church nursery except to be honest I have gotten less and less interested in any child who does not share my bloodline.

With Jim traveling so much I am alone a lot.  A LOT.  And no amount of great music played full blast on every set of speakers in the house can make up for the fact that I am the only living being within.  But a dog (by far the best pet on the planet) is too much work and too noisy for Jim who works from home.  I used to say that cats are EVIL but now what is appealing is that cats are EASY.  Silent, self entertaining, apparently even cuddly if you can find the right one.

M says she will move out if I get a cat.  I told her to write often.  She will be home for Easter break in two weeks and has agreed to go with me to the humane society to see if there is a cat we can both warm up to.  Should be interesting.

PS on May 19th:  No cat.  Still quiet here but M comes home for the summer tonight.  Maybe I'll look in the fall . . .

Zombie/Zombies

This morning when I woke up I had been dreaming about taking my son to his first day at preschool.  The sense of loss was so intense that I immediately teared up.  During the day, in my conscious state of being, I never think of myself as a mother who longs for her children in a younger time, but there I was.  Craving the presence of that child who trusted me so completely, opened up his mouth wide to let Jesus into his heart, asked me to become a professional singer when he heard me singing harmony to the songs on the radio.  You forget how wonderful it is to have a life so deeply woven into your own with such a strong and profound love.  You forget how amazing it is to love someone enough to be willing to kill for them, or die for them, and you forget how important you were to them once upon a time.  And there it was, so raw that it hurt and I lay in bed and tried to return to the dream and cried some.  My son and daughter and I will never have that kind of relationship again.

At work (I never claimed to be good at writing transitions, that is all you get), we reviewed a client's website where the search results turned up different results when someone searched 'zombie' instead of 'zombies' (plural), and I thought -- there it is.  To be wishing for that old relationship is as unproductive as wishing that corpses would stand up and start moving.

Yep, I was in the middle of that meeting and going off on that bizarre mental tangent.

To have my children return to that earlier state would yield emotional zombies.  They have to become adults, even if that means rejecting everything I hold true.  They have to leave and find their own path and their own social circles.  Because no one wants a zombie around.  Or zombies (plural).

Got the job

Got the job!!  God is so good, and so good to me!

In our NorthRidge Church small group, we talked recently about whether or not our work is a:

1.  Way to make money
2.  Career
3.  Calling

I feel like I have been through all three of these in cycles.  Right out of b-school, I definitely wanted a career.  Marriage?  Probably.  Kids?  Mmmmm . . . maybe.  Career?  Absolutely definitely positively.

Then being married was so wonderful that we couldn't imagine anything better than growing our family and then work became an occasional way to make money.  Doing income tax returns for H&R Block, part-time clerical work here and there, mindless stuff where I learned how to gracefully accept criticism from people who would have worked for me in my earlier life.  Excellent humility training.

Then I re-entered Career.  Husband's pension minimized, social security unreliable, time to find a job that would get me back on an upward track for the next 15 years or so.  Thank you  to my last job for giving me that.  New experiences, new skills, new successes.

And now I am onto what I hope is Calling.  I am back, after 20 years, to doing what I love to do the most.  Supporting customers, developing relationships, solving problems, selling solutions.  And it is in a company that values sales and marketing, rather than seeing us as a necessary evil as my last company did.  And it is in a company where women are not an anomaly!

Given the financial debacle of our last 5 years, this path has been a great and wonderful thing.  Incredibly difficult, full of tears and sleepless nights, but a path that has shown us over and over again that this God who runs the universe also cares about me and my family.

The new stay at home Mom

This spring, being a stay at home Mom means than I am staying at home while my children travel the world.  My 22 year old son is touring South Korea with his college a capella group.  My daughter is doing manual labor as part of a missions trip to Haiti.  My husband and I are home, in Michigan, working to support their lifestyle.  Did that sound just a tiny bit jealous?

When I was a sophomore at Purdue, efforts were underway between the business program and the language programs to create an international business major.  Since I was a business major with a french minor, I was a candidate.  As such, I was offered a scholarship to attend school in France for the summer.  All expenses paid except airfare.  Before the days of airline deregulation (yes, I am that old), this was something around $2,000 -- about $1Million in today's dollars.  It was almost as much as a year at Purdue, meant giving up the summer job that was a critical financial component and was therefore completely unattainable.  My parents were both working but there were two more educations to fund after mine and money was tight enough that I had to add water to my shampoo bottle at the end of the month to make my monthly allowance last.  I mentioned it briefly to my mom but knew the answer before I asked.  Someone else got the scholarship and the first international business major at Purdue.

Now, my kids did not ask for any money for either of their trips.  The singers funded their own trip with a year's worth of paid performances and fundraising requests from alums.  The missionaries each sent out 100 fundraiser letters and expect to have raised all the money they need to pay for the trip.  Both of my kids will be sleeping in dorms/hostels and on floors, eating little and working hard (if 2 gigs a day can be called hard, moral advantage daughter here).  Ultimately, the difference between me at Purdue and my kids today is that they can imagine such a possibility exists and can put together a plan to achieve it.  AND they can expect to have other people understand this and support it as well! 

We had dinner with some friends last week whose son is living in Australia and daughter in South America.  The opportunities for global living in our global economy were unimaginable 30 years ago.  So I will put aside any petty parent-child jealousy, celebrate these amazing and wonderful opportunities and scour facebook for any photo updates.  Being the stay at home mom is not so bad.  But after we are done paying for college . . .

Just another unemployed Monday

So this morning I was reading about Solomon and how instead of asking God to give him wealth, power and fame, he asked for wisdom when he became the new king of Israel.  And I thought, what if I asked for wisdom?  Would my lack of employment concern me less?  Would I stop freaking out about how to pay for the kids' college in the fall?  Would I value the days more?  Focus more on what I can influence and less on what I can't?  Stop getting annoyed because my kids didn't call me this weekend?  Well, there is no hope on that last one but otherwise it seems like asking for wisdom is a good idea.

So I asked God for wisdom.  And the first thought that came to me is that maybe a really good use of my time now is to focus less on myself and more on others, starting with my husband.  There are only so many hours of a day a person can spend on job boards and sending networking emails.  I feel wiser already.

The first final interview

Yesterday I had a final interview with a company I would love to work for.  They have a valuable product, a positive culture and quality people.  And the guy I interviewed with seemed like a strong manager and good person.  I think the interview went well.

So why do I keep worrying that I am too old?  I know that because of my age, I have strengths that can't be shown on my resume.  I am more patient but also more persistent than I was 20 years ago.  I have greater wisdom about what motivates customers to make decisions and how to engage them in the selling (buying) process.  But I also know that taking time off to raise my kids carries a price.  I don't regret it, never will, never would go back and do it differently.  But now I have to face the fact that I am going to have to continue to fight my way back into credibility.

Either that or I am just a little paranoid about the age thing.

Goodbye Bill Moore

One thing about getting older that really sucks is losing people.  In college and early adulthood, you and your friends lose their grandparents and that hurts but not deeply because they were old, right?  Then a few years ago I and my friends started to lose their parents and that hurts much worse.  Losing both of my parents in 4 months was one of the most searingly painful experiences of my life.  And now my friends are starting to lose their parents, and I am deeply empathetic for their grief.

Today I went to a memorial service for a friend.  At age 67, he had the energy and enthusiasm of someone much younger.  But a rare and very aggressive cancer took him down in one month.  So now I have entered the years of losing friends, and this is a new level of loss.  Death is closer now, and more threatening.  I have three friends who are widows. 

I am fortunate in that I believe that death is a gateway to eternity, that because of the person of Jesus Christ, every believer has access to an eternity without pain or sorrow.  And while that is very comforting and I believe in the deepest core of me that it is true, it doesn't make it any easier for me to see my friends without their husbands.  Cindy and Bill were more than spouses, they were best friends and loved each other so deeply, just loved to be with each other more than anyone else.  Whatever they were doing, it was good as long as they were together. 

These losses, accelerating as they are year by year, take a toll and make me long for eternity.  But not too soon.  I don't want Jim to be a widower for long.

Starting over. Again.

It has been years since my last post!  How faithful I was going to be, creating a legacy for my kids to stumble upon someday!  Wretched life gets in the way.

For the past 2.67 years I have been the only marketing person at an engineering services company.  One important thing to know about engineers is that they believe in their heart of hearts that everything they design and build is so deeply and truly wonderful that there should actually be no marketing or selling required.  In fact, people should line up at the door to buy their systems and ask them to take more money, PLEASE.  A marketing person is a necessary evil who should be paid as little as possible, because after all she is really nothing but overhead.

So when an old friend called me and asked me to come be the Director of Sales and Marketing for his small but growing NON engineering company, I said yes.  Finally, decades after giving up my high powered MBA based career to raise children, I was going to be working at my pay grade again!  Then the Saturday before I was to start work, a week after leaving my old job, my friend called me to say the offer had been withdrawn.  Catastrophe at the company, nothing to do with me.  He looked like he hadn't slept in a week.  He brought a check, we had a beer with him, and after he left I sat down and cried.

The job search has begun.  And it sucks.  So here I go, knowing that I should be trusting God with my future but still waking up in a cold sweat most mornings.  We won't go hungry, Jim's job ensures that.  But two private colleges won't pay for themselves.  So I network and I fill out online applications and I pray and I quote Joshua 1:9 - Be strong and courageous, do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.  If I say it really LOUD maybe soon I will start acting like I believe my own words.