Good Day

It was a good day. How nice to be able to say that! Got quite a bit done, felt good and positive, had plenty of energy.

I'm having a quiet little celebration here at my desk while I wait for my turn to read stories to Lil' Princess. Whoo-hoo! It was a truly good day for the first time in a very long time!

It's one day at a time, but after so many steps back, how wonderful to have a day that counts as a big step forward.

Tuesday March 4th 2008 was a good day.

Technology Woes

Holy Week is fast approaching, and my wonderful long-distance church secretary (she lives 30 miles away in another state and works from home, we communicate primarily through email and phone calls) dropped off a 3by5 disc of the services they have done in the past so that I could figure out what to do this year. For some reason the files wouldn't transmit over email, we can't figure that one out. So we have to do this via disc.

Anyway.

So I'm finally well enough to get busy and get working on these services, which is good considering that they're not that far away! Time to get busy! I get out the disc, and proceed to try to put it in my computer. And try. And try. And try. This lovely new-fangled computer that my husband convinced me to purchase this year apparantly doesn't have a drive that accepts the 3by5 disc. It takes CDs and DVRs, it takes Mobile Disc Drive and a bunch of other things that I don't even understand. But it's too advanced for the good ol' 3by5.

Crap.

OK, plan B! I'm not sure what plan B is just yet, but I'm sure it will be impressive...

Oh is hubby going to hear about this one!

Mean Mommy

"I'm never letting Mommy in my room again!"

We are experiencing the "how COULD you shut the TV off!" moment in the house. Hubby and I have agreed that it is very important to be mindful of screen time, and only allow a certain amount of hours over the week. Today there is no school because of Regional basketball games, so our dear little one believes that she is entitled to more Idiot Box time.

Hence, when I turned off the TV: the running to her room, the shutting the door, and the proclamation that I am banned from the premises.

Thanks to a 4 year old's attention span, she will have moved on to something else in a little while, and I will be out of the dog house pretty soon, but the parent's job of picking your battles is never done. Making your bed, I'm going to let that slide. Being cruel or dismissive towards someone else, I'm not going to let that go by.

Other things, of course, are a little harder to decide what to fight and what to let go.

But for today, I'm mean mommy for being the TV police. And that's just fine. In a few years I'll be mean mommy about what toys she can have (NO Bratz dolls!) and about what she can wear (who decided little girls should dress like hookers?!?!?) and so on.

I think I'm going to call up my mother and thank her for not letting me eat tons of chocolate chip cookie dough like I begged her every time she baked cookies. And for giving me a curfew. And for cooking us vegetables every day, knowing that at least one of us would make faces and say "Eeeww!" Mean Mommies Rock!

The Upside (there is one?!?!?) to Being Sick

Is this not just the sweetest thing? My folks, my brother's two boys, and Lil' Princess all cuddled together in front of the fireplace at my brother's place. We'd just opened the Christmas presents after enjoying our big Scandinavian feast. Now it was time to kick back, watch the kids play, and enjoy being together. Ahhh, Christmas 2007 was good (except that my oldest brother was sick, poor guy. We all felt so bad for him.).

The one nice thing about being miserably sick with influenza is that for short periods of time I have enough energy to sit at the computer and play around. I hadn't looked at our pictures from Christmas since we'd taken them, and its been fun to look through them and remember a lovely holiday with my family.

So there's a bright spot in my sick day. Five shining faces of people I love with all my heart.

Oops. Gotta run. The side affects of the flu wait for no one!

Feelin' Funky...

For the first time in my LIFE I bailed on services because I was too dang sick. Nursing my girl all week, not getting a full nights rest since last Sunday night, fighting off whatever bugs my dear one has shared with me, all led to a really interesting Sunday morning.

So I'm feeling really crappy, but I manage to pull out a sermon. Mediocre at best, but hey, I'm leaning on the Spirit here! I make it down to my first service, 30 minute drive away. Start getting pale. Normally energetic greeting of congregation is replaced with a wan smile. Get dizzy during sermon, and can tell by the puzzled looks that I am not making much sense. Get dizzier during communion, and have to grab hold of the altar at one point to keep from falling over. Somehow, I make it to the end, and gratefully collapse in the big pastor chair.

I have two more services to do.

There

is

NO

WAY.

Now, I am a person very suseptible to guilt and worry. The mantra is, you show up unless you are in the hospital or dead (or so my intership supervisor and first Senior Pastor pounded into my head). But I knew there was no way. It took everything I had to do the 30 minute drive back to town. So I found the council president of the second church I was to preside at (10 minutes before service was to start, thus compounding my HUGE sense of guilt) and let her know that I was not coming through. I knew she had a sermon based on today's text prepared for a nursing home service later in the day, so I knew there would be something, anyway. I stumbled home, called up the council president of my third congregation to activate the calling tree to let them know I would be a no-show. I'm sure they just cancelled.

And so, for the rest of the day, I have vacilliated between self-pity and guilt. When I haven't had dizzy spells.

How are we supposed to handle illness as ministry professionals? We are expected to go above and beyond the call of duty, yet we are also supposed to be role models for healthy living. In talking with other pastors, we feel a sense of guilt when we "take care of ourselves" because we are not giving our all to the parish. When we pour everything into our ministry and sacrifice our wellbeing, we begin to resent the ministry and are less effective in it, and shortchange our families. What a juggling act we are in!

Long Winter's Day

This morning we had a tea party for my daughter's purple elephant, Lumpy, because, it was decided, it is her 5th birthday. So we drank imaginary raspberry tea and sang happy birthday to Lumpy.

Not a bad way to start off a sick day. Lil' Princess is home from school with a fever, so her dad and I are doing tag team care. This is the first she's been sick this winter, so I'm not complaining. This is something of a record, really, in her young life! Not sick until February!

I got to go to Text study while Revdad held down the fort, bless his heart. It was a good one today, we actually did talk about the texts for the upcoming Sunday. I had been feeling a bit lackluster about them, and our conversations got the juices flowing. Now I have too many ideas, need to whittle it down to a main theme.

Now as my little darling takes a nap (a sure sign that she is sick, she hasn't napped willingly since she was 2!) I'm going to practice for tomorrow's Lenten service and then brew a nice cup of tea.

Mmmmmmm, black or herbal? Orange & spice, or chai? Apple & cinnamon or organic mint? Choices, choices. Sigh. How lovely.

"The speed of the sound of loneliness"

The solitude and (relative) isolation of living out here in our little corner of ND has been starting to get to me again. As a social person who thrives on conversation, whose creative juices flow in the interaction with others, and whose preference is to be out and about, this move has been...challenging.

Most of my time is spent at the house, alone or with Lil' Princess. All this time I have, that I hoped I could use for creative purposes, is just weighing heavily on me, as I struggle to get basic life stuff done. I feel very alone. My hubby, who is introverted, can't wait to get back home after a day in town, and have time alone. While I'm desperate for interaction with people. I've enjoyed getting into the blogging universe, but it just doesn't take the place of real live human interaction.

So I'm trying to figure out what to do. Hubby says, "You gotta get out more." I retort, "And just what am I going to do? Visit more shut-ins?" While I do enjoy doing home visits, that's not quite the interaction I'm looking for to fill my cup. I'd like to find something that doesn't involve my parishioners or my hubby's, but out here that will be next to impossible. I'm going to have to do some searching......is there a community choir I could attend, an arts council I could get involved in, a library committee, a children's outreach program? Something FUN that involves doing things I actually ENJOY with other PEOPLE who enjoy them too?!?!?!? And DARE I DREAM, something that involves people somewhere near my age, instead of all 40 years older than me?!?!?

OK, I'm calmer now, done with the ranting. I'm just so lonely, and this pain is hurting me, and it's hurting my family. So I gotta do something.

But what.

I miss my old life.