Inadequacy

This is the worst gingerbread house ever. Completed a good month after the holidays. Things kept coming up like the stomach flu and ear infections, and, well, gingerbread people need a place to live all year round, don't they? The roof was broken in many peices so we turned it into a patio. And it sort of went downhill from there. It looked nothing like the picture on the box when we were done with it. This gingerbread house is just one tiny reminder of many things that make me feel inadequate. There is a song from Grey's Anatomy that says, "Miss Almost, Miss Maybe, Miss Halfway." Sometimes, in moments of exhausted surrender, I feel like Anya Marina is singing about me.

The hardest thing for me about having a job that I have to go to on a regular basis is this overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. It is always creeping in, like a dense fog, and I am always trying to push it back so I can breathe. As jobs go, mine is flexible. Three days a week, I have patients coming in to be monitored as they exercise. Those are the days I try my best not to miss work. It is stressful for my nurse, who happens to be one of my best friends, to be left in the lurch on those days. She handles it well and never complains, but I try hard not to put her in that situation if I can help it. The remaining two office days are easily negotiable. These are the days I try to schedule things such as haircuts, dentists, doctors, class mom duties, and groceries. Of course, life does not always come in a neat little package wrapped up with a bow like that. There are many factors that do not always adhere to my schedule. The snow buries my van in the driveway or the ice makes the curves and hills of my crazy blacktop too treacherous to attempt the drive with my precious cargo. Kids throw up or spike a fever. Kevin gets an injection in his back. Sometimes there are places I feel like I need to be more than I need to be at work.

Sometimes I feel like I have a thousand strings tied all over my body and the only direction I can go is toward the string that is pulling me the hardest. When I do miss a work day for unexpected reasons, I feel inadequate at my job. I feel guilty for placing the extra burden on my nurse. I don't want my patients to consider me to be unreliable. When I forget to send the dollar so Madison can buy a drink at her class party at school that day, I feel inadequate as a mother. Or when the kids mention whose mom was at the class party. Sometimes I take kids to Grandma's house when they are sick instead of staying home with them myself...if it is a patient day at work. How wrong is that?

I am gone most days. As with most families, the evening shuffle includes dinner, dishes, laundry, homework, bath time, and bedtime(which includes quality time rocking a baby). Add to this the fact that the wood stove needs wood in it and the cows need checked as we had our first calf this week. Kevin has been having some bad days with his back so I am the one in the gum boots and snow, both up to my knees. He has been cooking some to balance things out, but all of this adds to more feelings of inadequacy as housework piles up and people are pulling their clothes out of laundry baskets instead of their dresser drawers. When I considered what I wanted to be when I grew up, I am confident that I never said I wanted to be half of a mom and half of a wife or half of an employee and a partial homemaker. I just wanted to be a wife and a mother and to work in a job that I enjoy and that helped people in some way.

I am a wife and I am a mother. I do like my job and I almost always feel like I am making a difference with my patients. But in trying to encompass every facet of my life to make me the person I want to be, I feel like most of the time I am inadequate on every side. Like I am doing everything half way so I cannot do a good job at anything. I see women who never miss work. I see women who never miss a function at school. I see women with immaculate homes. I do not see any of those women when I look in the mirror. I see a woman who loves her family. I see a woman who likes her job and feels abundantly blessed. Mostly I see a woman who has a long way to go in figuring the rest out.

Happy Birthday, Tabitha!

I consider a lifelong friend among life's greatest blessings. I am a person who thrives on the familiar. I have lived within a twenty mile radius my whole life. College years included. I married my junior high boyfriend. I have been working in the same job for seven years. I get excited about planning things out. When one of those plans works out like I imagined it would...it makes me happy in an almost unnatural and juvenile kind of way, like when a kid gets to have cake and ice cream for breakfast or something. I like to try new experiences, but when I am my most content and satisfied with my life, I am surrounded by the familiar. Every time. That is why I treasure my lifelong friends.

Take my friend, Tabitha, for instance. There is not a time in my life when I did not know her. Our first meetings were in diapers. There is very little we do not know about one another. I love that. For many reasons. I didn't have to explain the milestone event that was my taking a group of girls to the Princesses on Ice at the Sprint Center in Kansas City a couple of years back. She knew I had never even driven alone in Columbia until my doctor visits with Madison's pregnancy required it. She got it. And she was appropriately proud and encouraging. I don't have to tell her what wonderful and caring people my grandparents were. She knew them. And once in a while, she tells me. She knows the significance of LYLAS and blue shoes and Hoosiers and A League of Their Own. She was enlightened, as I was, that hindsight is 20/20 and some people don't know the difference between their butts and a hole in the ground. And of course she knows rule #3 in the Handbook of Life, "Life is not fair." She does not give me a strange look for saying things like, "I hear talking!" or "Riiiiiiiight" and she knows all of the songs that I know. And doesn't make fun of the ones I don't. We were born when we were born, people! There is a very significant and extended time in my life where you would be hard pressed to find any photos of one of us without the other. Because we were always together. Together we have worked, played, laughed, cried, prayed, yelled, sang...and it is not over yet. She is a lifelong friend.

I appreciate how she gets me, but I love how I get her, too. For instance, I am proud of the strong woman of faith she has become. I am not surprised, but I am proud. After all, I was there when she invited me to revival, and when she led our team in prayer before every game. Her beauty never surprises me, either. Or when I see her dazzling smile reflected in her sweet boys. After all, I watched her compete in Miss Missouri. I have always known it was there. When I look at her hard work and dedication to her family and her community, I am like a proud mama. But I am not surprised about that, either. After all, I was there at camp after camp and tournament after tournament and open gym after open gym where we learned all about hard work and dedication and commitment to each other and to our goals.

Somewhere along the way we stopped talking about sports, teachers, clothes, and boyfriends and started talking about husbands, potty training, doctor visits, low cal snacks and black coffee. I look forward to whatever we will be discussing next. As I think about Tabitha on her birthday, I know she has become the kind of wife and mother and friend that can really set an example for us all. She impresses me on a regular basis. Sometimes I seriously get the urge to get out a pen and paper and take notes. After all of the time I have known her, she inspires me that much. I am thankful for my forever friend. I am glad our children know each other. I hope they all grow up with lifelong friends that are as loving and loyal as mine! Happy Birthday, Tabitha! You will have to let me know what 32 feels like!

The Long Winter

I may have already mentioned that my mom use to read the Little House books to us every summer. She probably read to us during the other seasons, and she probably read to us in the house. But in my memory we are on a glider on the back porch of the town house. I hear her reading voice, which has always been fabulous, and I feel the dry breeze tickling my neck with stray hairs that have escaped from my pony tail.

The Long Winter was a perfect summer book to read. Howling blizzards and homes covered by snow sounds almost refreshing during those blazing and sticky days. I have been thinking about Megan's first year as we approach her birthday. I think I will remember her first winter as the long winter. The winter the stomach flu touched our entire family over the holidays...and hit the boys again shortly after. The winter Megan and I had to have two rounds of antibiotics to kick crazy ear infections. The winter Kevin broke his finger. The winter most of our free time was spent together at home. The winter there was snow aplenty for snow days and hot chocolate and homemade soups. And the winter I got to stay home from work on occasion and pretend that I was a stay-at-home mom. There is nothing more cozy and content than being snuggled up with your favorite people with nowhere to go while the snow comes down outside. And, seriously, this winter I have seen numerous breathtakingly beautiful snow scenes without leaving my yard. But I miss the sun. I am ready to trade the smell of firewood for the smell of freshly cut grass. I am ready to put the coats away and put on some flip flops. I am ready to trade lip gloss for sun block. Well, I am keeping the lip gloss, but you get the idea. I want to feel the sunshine on my shoulders and watch the big kids ride their bikes and teach Megan more about the outside world.

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We are not in danger of starving to death. We have meat in the freezer and canned goods lining the pantry. We do not have to spend all day melting snow for water and braiding hay for hay sticks to burn in the fire just to survive. We do not have to insist on someone selling us essentials against their will to make it through. We have doctors and medicine and stores in abundance. And we have play time. We have everything we need.

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Laura Ingalls Wilder ended The Long Winter by writing, "And as they sang, the fear and the suffering of the long winter seemed to rise like a dark cloud and float away on the music. Spring had come. The sun was shining warm, the winds were soft, and the grass was growing." All that I am saying is that when spring gets here this year, I just may have to sing a song of my own!

Their Boxes are Their Boxes

I am sure there are mothers who devote significant time and energy to projects like the Valentine's Day box. Accross America these moms probably have a shelf in the supply closet devoted to projects such as this. Those shelves are probably full of things like glitter and glue and string and felt and paint and pipe cleaners. At my house, project materials come from the kitchen or the scrapbook supplies. I won't be featured by Martha Stewart anytime soon, but the kids surround me in a flurry of excitement anyway. So, I wrapped some boxes with foil, let the kids choose their stickers, and turned them loose to decorate. I mean, that was my intention. Jaron chose a John Deere theme. He placed a tractor on top first thing, and then he started sticking all of these little tool stickers right up next to it. I said, "Jaron, I really think you need to space out your stickers a little bit." He placed a hammer sticker on the steering wheel and said, "But I am working on my tractor here." Of course he was. Like his grandpa has worked on tractors my whole life. He is Grandpa's buddy. How adorable is that?

Why should he space out his stickers on the box? Are things like balance and coordinating colors supposed to be important to him just because they are important to me? Sometimes it is hard for me to step back and keep my advice to myself. I find myself encouraging the kids to do things like I would do them instead of asking them for their own ideas. So I chose to leave the big kids alone to finish their boxes and gave Megan her bath and bedtime bottle. I think sometimes their ideas are better than mine anyway. Their boxes are their boxes. They are exactly as they wanted them. And do you know what? They are absolutely adorable.