reFRESHed

Do you ever feel exhausted all to the way to your spirit’s marrow?  Although, technically, I assume spirits don’t have marrow since they’re not made of bones.  Whatever it is that makes up a spirit, mine was just about dried up.  Last weekend the ladies at our home church in Virginia organized a ladies retreat and gratefully, our schedule actually worked out for me to go.  It was one of those times when you know you want to go and you know you need to go, but you’re so tired you don’t even want to think about the “going” part.  My friend threatened to drive the three hours to pick me up because I wasn’t convinced I was going to muster the energy it took to pack suitcases aGAIN.  The minute I dropped off the boys with David, weights started flying out the back van window and replacing themselves with energy.

I have a love / hate relationship with homeschooling.  I love being able to see what Adam is learning and incorporating that knowledge into life as it happens.  I love that he isn’t gone for eight plus hours a day like he was the last two school years.  I love that our school life schedule can be a little flexible because David’s work requires traveling.  But I don’t like the way I feel as though I live life in overdrive all week long.  Household chores happen mostly after a late lunch and it’s not because I decided to take the morning a little slower … it probably means we’ve been working extra hard on school work.  I don’t like the way that Adam gets the lion’s share of attention all morning long and Liam gets only the snippets that happen.  I hate it that between all the camp activities and homeschooling I feel as though I am just barely keeping my head above water all.the.time.  That slow days to regroup are pretty much nonexistent.  I miss doing extra things like sewing or crafting or even calling friends, but I know those days will come again.  Assuming I don’t actually fall apart like a meteor shower meanwhile. 🙂

Teaching and parenting may happen by the same person, but they are different hats.  I’m slowly discovering that just because I spent four hours with Adam doing school, his mom love tank isn’t any more full than it was.  He still needs time with me doing fun or normal mom things like a conversation about a book he is reading, a look at his project in the basement,  coaching as he uses the hot glue gun, help studying for a test, or a game of Checkers.  On days when school didn’t go well, he seems to need even more time from me.  There are days when things feel like a fairy tale (not lying) and there are days when everything I do happens by conscious choice and even then it feels as though it will never be enough.  And once again, I flunk the Mom-I-want-to-be-test.

The weekend was delightful.  I left early enough to shop my favorite stores for a few items that are next to impossible to find here (starbucks coffee being the first thing on the list). 😉  Met my sisters-in-law for Mexican food and a fabulous few hours of catching up on each other’s lives until we got so many eyeballs from the owners we headed next door to McDonalds.  We seem to have a history of that … staying somewhere so long we get kicked out by overstaying our welcome or because the store is closing.  The rest of the weekend was filled with friends, conversation, laughter, talks about prayer, games, coffee, amazing food, gorgeous views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, praying together, more coffee and too little sleep.  It was beautiful in that way that speaks to your soul on many levels.  Toward the end, I struggled hard with the fact that we are such nomads.  We’ve been here longer than we were at Koinonia … neither of which is very long at all.  While I love the people in both places and am experiencing growing friendships, in some ways I still feel as though I am the new kid on the block.  I crashed from finally not needing to be running on overdrive.  And, probably  more than I realized, I crashed a little from being back in Virginia.

I drove home amid tears of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion.  I desperately wanted to go home to be with my family.  Maryland finally feels mostly like home … it wasn’t that.  Just a deep weariness inside of me as I thought about going back to the colder cold, the dictatorial schedule, the intense spiritual warfare, the mom who was determined to pull her son from camp, and the constant grey skies.  I zoned in and out to the music on the radio, but three times on my three hour drive home I heard the phrase, “the God of angel armies, is always by my side.”  The first two times before it happened, I saw a flash of white outside my window and got the distinct impression that there were many angels surrounding both sides and the back of the van.  Only the front was clear leaving the road to camp clear.  The exact same thing happened one other time after I was grocery shopping and feeling so overwhelmed I wanted to fire myself from my role.  It was dark and cold and pouring down rain and it was raining inside the van on the driver’s side when suddenly I glimpsed a white reflection outside my window and distinctly felt the presence of angels.  Almost immediately those same words poured out of the speaker and cut through the layers of exhaustion and incompetence.  The God of angels armies is always by my side.  I have no idea if what I saw was a reflection, a mirage, or actually something ethereal, but I do know that I have never felt the presence of angels so close as I did during those seconds.  They weren’t pushing or pulling, just flying alongside and behind with a clear path toward camp.  Apparently God isn’t done working with people like me who are so not cut out for the job.  I arrived home feeling completely spent, yet completely at peace.  No matter how incompetent we feel, there is no safer place to be than the center of the will of God.

Even with that little blip at the tail end, the weekend refreshed me in so many ways.  The next few days were so much easier.  Laughter truly is great medicine. The sun shone for two whole days.  School was so much easier after a chance to rest my mind.  Between gaining a bit of perspective thanks to distance and a good talk with a friend on Sunday, I was realizing that I need to set up a few more boundaries or I’ll shoot my canoe so full of leaks we won’t be able to float.  The boys are both back to taking a short nap / rest period in the afternoon including Adam who has to read in his room, not the living room.  Everywhere I went on Monday, there seemed to be improvements.  While I was gone, David fixed the light in the basement so that I no longer had to grope around doing laundry in the dark.  He fixed the drain under the kitchen sink and got rid of the bowl collecting nasty drain water which gave me two more feet of prime real estate space.  He replaced both plugs for the kitchen sink so that they actually hold water.  A board member came and fixed our water situation so that we can now drink the water instead of always having a five gallon igloo of water hogging precious counter space, I can use the dishwasher again thanks to a water softener, and the hot water heater got replaced so that I shouldn’t ever have to heat water for baths again.  Isn’t the only logical conclusion to all of this the theory that I should go away for a ladies retreat much more frequently? 😉

All week I’ve been trying to consciously think of little bits of refreshment.  A weekend or even an evening away doesn’t happen very often for most of us, and here it happens even more rarely.  But I am determined to reach out and savor moments of refreshment and let them fill me.  Even if it takes work to make them happen.

Wherever you are, whatever the load you carry, I hope you find refreshment, too, in whatever way speaks to you.

Favorite moments for me from this week:

Hearing “You Raise Me Up” playing on Pandora

A latte and game of Quibbler with Adam this afternoon while Liam napped

A gorgeous pink sunset

A long, hot shower

Suddenly realizing it doesn’t get dark until after 6:00 in the evening

A glass of iced tea with lemon in a pretty cup

An afternoon phone call from a friend

Making pink cupcakes

Getting an iPad almost entirely with reward cards thanks to using Best Buys credit card for my photography work

Seeing Liam grasp the concept of God wanting us to obey Him because He so very much wants for us to come to Heaven to be with Him

Sunshine streaming through the windows

A double dinner date for Valentines thanks to super willing babysitters

Getting ready to go out for dinner and feeling like Cinderella …. and the happy realization that the magic wouldn’t end in a poof at midnight

Hundreds of kisses from my very hugg-y and kiss-y boys

Reading these words from II Thesalonians 3 Wednesday morning — the day a camper’s mom came and pulled her son from camp: “the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.  And we have confidence in the Lord touching you, that ye both do and will do all the things which we command you.  And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.  But ye, {Michelle}, be not weary in well doing. Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means.”

What small thing refreshes you on an ordinary {or not so ordinary} day?

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