Warning: This one is (really) long.

You may need to run move the clothes to the dryer and grab a cup of coffee before you start reading. (sorry, Tammi) Or you may want to skip this one altogether. I'll understand. But I hope you’ll still come back to visit on another day. :)

I’ve got a lot on my mind today. A lot of weighty things. Things that haven’t seemed to be able to find their way into words. You know I’m not typically one who has a lot of profound things to say....and I’m quite sure that even the things I write today won't really be all that profound....but somehow I feel like they need to come out. If nothing else, only to make sense of them for myself.

Last week on Focus on the Family, one of their guests was talking about sleep....you know, how we’re all sleep deprived, and how that affects not only our work and our relationships, but also our health, and so on and so on. One morning Julie (one of the new FOTF hosts, since Dr. Dobson left) asked the guest (I’m sorry I can’t remember his name) what you’re supposed to do when you DO go to bed at a decent time, but you can’t go to sleep because you’ve got so much on your mind. Or when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep because of all the thoughts and “to-do’s” and concerns running around in your head.

His solution? Journal. For about 15 minutes right before you go to bed. Even if it’s just a bullet list of all the stuff you’re thinking about. Now here’s the interesting part. He said that when you journal and then read back what you've written, it allows a different avenue for the problem (or whatever) to enter your brain. It’s sort of like different learning styles. You know how they say to help you learn something, you need to read it, see it, hear it, do it.... Well, when you write down what you’re worried about or a problem you’re trying to solve, then read it back, it gives your brain a different perspective on the situation and a different approach to figuring it out. It’s like your brain gets to take the words outside of itself and look at them from a different angle. Cool, huh?

So I thought I’d give it a try. Nothing profound. No Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy. Just me trying to figure out all my stuff.

Here’s my list:

1. Suffering. It’s been on my mind a lot lately. I go through spells. Sometimes it’s far away from me and I don’t think about it much. Sometimes it’s front and center, consuming my every thought and almost driving me to insanity. Like the loss of Kloe’s reading teacher a few weeks ago. Like the tornado in Mississippi last week that killed 10 people, including a 3-month-old baby, a 9-year old girl, her 14-year-old sister, and a 31-year-old mother who was shielding her 3 children with her body. What? In addition to that tornado, in the news recently have been earthquakes in Haiti, Chili, and China; the mine explosion in West Virginia; the oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana, and the resulting oil that is now gushing into the Gulf of Mexico; the volcano in Iceland; an attack on the World Vision relief office in Pakistan, in which seven people were killed; the flooding in Nashville that has been blamed for almost 30 deaths....and the list goes on.
   
   I was visiting over at Emily (Chapman) Richards’ (Steven Curtis Chapman’s daughter) blog today, and her sorrow over the loss of Maria brought all this back to the front of my mind. I know suffering is a part of this life; one we can’t avoid. But I don’t like that. I have issues with it. I question God about it. Why? Why is it part of this life? Yeah, yeah...fallen world and all that. I know. But it still doesn’t make sense to me. Why did God choose suffering to make us more like Christ? Why? Lately I’ve found myself praying two things more than I ever have before:
   
   God, please send workers into the harvest (Matthew 9: 37-38)
   
   and
   
   Come quickly, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22:20)


2. Serving. I can’t get away from the imperative to do something. And....I can’t get away from the idea that I keep putting it off, waiting to find THE RIGHT something to do. I feel like I should be handing out meals in a food line in Africa. Really. I’ve thought that for about 6 years now. But I can’t exactly figure out the logistics of it. My church doesn’t do mission trips for lay people. I’ve asked. You pretty much either have to be a student or on staff. I don’t think it’s a written policy or anything like that, it just sort of seems to happen that way. Weird. And, even if they did, how would I leave my family for a week or 10 days? Seriously. With the Mister’s wacky work schedule, and him being out of town so much, and us not having our parents here in town to help with the kids, I’m not sure how that would work. And so. That leaves me to try to find other places and ways to serve. I know we can give money – and we do – but the thing that draws at my heart is to do more than that. To use my hands. To work. We’ve helped out at the food bank before, and that was good. My kids enjoyed it. And I'm sure that somehow, in some way, it was helpful. But there are literally dozens of people there on any given work day, and really, it didn’t seem like it would have made that much of a difference in anyone’s life if we were there or not. *sigh* Still thinking on that one.


3. Being intentional. This series at Musings of a Housewife and this post at God Speaks Today have me thinking a lot about this lately. I.am.SO.bad.at.this. I’m great at formulating schedules. We have a chore schedule – for me AND the kids – posted in our laundry room. We have a to-do list for Kloe to follow in the mornings (she really needs that structure to help her focus). We have a devotional plan that we’re supposed to be following every morning. I've even tried writing time with the kids on my calendar. It’s the follow-through that I can’t seem to get a grasp on. My lists and schedules usually only work for about a day and a half before I’m right back to la-la land in our routine. Which leads to chaos in just about everything. And more busyness. And less intentionality. And more chaos. *sigh*


4. Homeschooling. Yep. Me. I know. Kloe’s been asking me for about 2 ½ years now if I would homeschool her. I’m not sure exactly what seems so enticing about it to her, but she's persistent. And now Jacob’s on the bandwagon, too. He wants to be homeschooled because he thinks it would be all-day-long recess every day. :) Since long before I ever had kids, I’ve always said there is no way I could ever homeschool. I am in awe of people who do homeschool, but I don't think I got that gene. All you have to do is look at #3 above for a major reason why. And on top of that, Kloe and I would be butting heads before we even got through the Pledge of Allegiance. Anyway, it’s not an option right now. For now, we have to have my income to live on. And it’s not a matter of having a lavish home or driving a new car (remember this?) or any of that stuff, it’s a matter of paying the electric bill and having food to eat. I have desperately wanted to be a SAHM since the very beginning of momhood....a STAY at home mom, yes, but a SCHOOL at home mom? It seems weird for me to even think about it, and it may never happen, but I've been thinking about it more and more lately....especially with Kloe going to middle school (!!!) in another year....and I want to be open to whatever God may have planned for us.


5. Our house. We’ve been saying we’re going to put it on the market for over a year now. It has so much work that needs to be done before it’s ready to sell, and trying to find the time to do all that work is wearing me out more than the actual work itself would. (see #3) Sure, we could outsource a lot of it, but that takes money. A hefty amount of it. Something that’s not in great supply around here. So there’s the great debate of what to pay someone else to do and what to try to find the time to do ourselves. It makes me tired. *sigh*


6. And....the "really hard thing" I asked you to pray about last week. It’s definitely more than I want to talk about in the blogosphere, but it’s really weighing on me. And will be for about the next 3-4 months. At least. *sigh again*

Well, now that all that's out on paper - umm, screen - maybe my brain can rearrange it all into something that makes some sort of sense. I’ll let you know when the epiphanies strike. Thanks for listening. You guys are good friends. :) I think the dryer's buzzing. And my coffee cup's empty, how 'bout yours?