Lessen

Overall Austyn is doing better (now a week from the event). He started walking Tuesday night. He walks with a limp and he still crawls from time to time. He still complains of the pain and so we give him some ibuprofen when he does, which ends up being about 2 times a day. His foot is very tender, or at lease he treats it so. And whenever he bumps it or it gets jolted somehow he ends up in tears. This sprain will take a while to heal, I guess. So continue to pray that all the ligaments and muscles go back into place and are healed.

Penelope who was having some problems with school. Mostly circulating around not liking school, not wanting to practice letters, numbers, words, math, and wanting to just have fun with her friends. In which my mother said, "I can understand that". Of which I responded "Well I don't! She needs to love school. Its a great thing to be able to learn. She should enjoy it." God help me for pairing this daughter with this mother. Anyways she started a kind of tutoring for after school, which they call 'intervention' where she gets one on one attention to go over writing and phonics. The morning of she was fighting with us about getting ready as usual and telling us how much she "hates" school. At dinner that evening she proclaimed, "I love school! I love intervention." Russell and I sat there shocked for a moment before we both cheered. It isn't a complete 180 degree turn around but she is doing better which is a relief. It was getting to the point that I didn't know what else to do. How do you teach a little girl who refuses to be taught? It's not like I was trying to teach her to be nice to her friend or share her toys. I'm trying to get her to do repetitive tasks to learn her sight words or addition and subtraction. She is defiantly my free spirited child.

I recently finished reading a book a friend let me borrow titled 'Rebekah: Women of Genesis' by Orson Scott Card.  It is a fictional novel based on the biblical character Rebekah, the wife of Isaac.  It was so good.  Quite a page turner.  I had only read one fiction novel based on a biblical character and that was about Prophet Jeremiah titled 'He who Wept' by Thom Lemmons.  It was way too much in his head all the time that it was hard for me to read. But I really like this one and related to the main character, Rebekah, very easily.

It did get me thinking about a certain topic.  There is that moment in Rebekah's life (as a the character in the novel) that she is young and adventurous and ready to do great things for the Kingdom.  It brought me back to my own moment.  You know that moment....That moment where you are in your teens, or young adult.  You have your whole life ahead of you.  And think how you want to make a difference somehow.  But it is only by the pass of time that this idea flutters away.  Real life happens and the goings of everyday only make for normal and not world changing.

I remember this desire early on.  I didn't quite know what I wanted to do but I wanted to do something big. After I completed nursing school, I got married, and I felt my life can begin.  I could go out and be.  I loved my job.  Loved that I worked at one of the best hospitals in the United States.  And then I got pregnant.  My job didn't make exceptions for my growing baby.  Didn't seem to like the set backs that I was no longer wanting to do heavy lifting.  When returning back to work after having my daughter, people got upset at me for pumping privately at work during my breaks.  It went all the way up to management and they sided that I may be requesting too much to get that opportunity to feed my baby.  I knew what they were pressuring me was against California law.  I knew I could fight it.  Have this be my big moment of what I stood for.  But I didn't want to be known for forcing breastfeeding.  Either that or ended up just being a coward after all.  I switched jobs to closer to home, a local community hospital that had a more family friendly atmosphere.  More women and moms who know what it was like to have other commitments besides work.  And I gave up the idea of being a world changer.  I loved that job, but I didn't love the stress that it started giving me and it wasn't worth it.  Shortly after that was when my desire to stay home came.  No maybe not.  I remember going back to work in the first place after having my daughter and not wanting to leave her.  I never cried, but I worried constantly.  Would call my mother-in-law during every break to see if she was still okay.  Only with my son did my anxieties lessen.

But Rebekah stirred in me the desire to do some life changing thing.  Only I'm not holding onto the dead sea scrolls.  I can't birth another Jesus to save all mankind.  I just continue in my ordinary.  I am okay with my ordinary.  In fact I love the life Russell and I have chosen to live so far.  I am happy for the choices we have made.  But part of me, in the deepest part, still wants to do something big.  Maybe someday.