Spotify is providing the soundtrack to my chores this afternoon. I'm eating an entire bag of potato chips. My stemless wine glass is full of a rather anticlimactic strawberry lemonade. I'm feeling fat, wearing leggings, and wondering why I cut my bangs.
Bustling about the kitchen, I realized that I'd said the same thing to myself several times in an attempt to mollify a wince-worthy regret over careless words earlier today...when it suddenly occurred to me that this was the very purpose for blogging. Blogging is designed to minimize the crazier aspects of talking to oneself. It's a good idea.
Evidently, I only blogged once last year. I assure you that I spent plenty of time talking to myself, and much of that time I was downright certifiable. My life is full to the brim with story material, but I've struggled with figuring how to include the more humorous aspects of my life without alienating my children. For years, my children have provided the fodder for most of the writing I have submitted to this forum. As the kids have grown, they have each developed an inconvenient sense of autonomy that is disinclined to be made fun of. For years, decades really, my favorite coping skill has been humor. I now have four adult offspring that I can't really joke about. Well, I can, but I need to exercise some restraint. Whatever that is.
At this point, all three of my boys are living at home. My daughter is on her own, living far away. I mostly communicate with her via Snapchat. She moved away in August and I have missed her hugs. I miss braiding her hair. I wonder if she's getting enough exercise or good nutrition. She is embracing her independence and working like a dog to pay the bills. She invested in Ferrets, which seemed rather a waste of resources to me, but then, I'm not much of an animal lover. She is.
As for the boys, I realize that there's a thing or two you may need to learn in order to bridge the considerable gap between the last update I published and the current state of affairs. Aaron is now 17, with all the attendant self-aggrandizement common to males of that age. He's honestly a really good kid, but the attitude is enough to drive me to drink. Fortunately for him, he was preceded by three siblings, so we parentals know that he'll outgrow the less attractive aspects of his teen years. This should ensure his survival to emancipation. Maybe.
Speaking of my drinking: I quit. Not for good, I don't think, but for the year. Wine had become rather too daily an event, and I thought that perhaps my enthusiasm for the five o'clock hour was teetering on the brink of religious devotion. This threat of apparent idolatry needed a solution, and a year's reprieve sounded like a good idea. I'm almost to the end of Month Number One, and aside from occasional thoughts of homicide, I believe the experiment is going swimmingly.
But, enough about me.
Don has been living at home now for two years. His addiction had reached a fever pitch requiring immediate action, and he asked for help. In truth, we didn't do a thing beyond opening our arms and our home. He took all the steps necessary to pursue a new way of living. After tidal waves of Meth, Heroin, Hopelessness, and incarceration, Don has finally settled into some kind of peace. He's worked the same steady job for two years, and he has structured a personal routine that works for him. Do you know how unbelievable this would have seemed to me, not so very long ago?
Michael came home from prison in September. He's in college, he works hard, he's involved in his church. He does household chores without being asked. He has a heart for people. It's like he finally awoke from the nightmare.
It's like I finally woke up, anyway. How many years have I watched those oldest two boys bent on self-destruction? Yet, here we are in a place of peace and hope.
We are often drawn to gratitude as we sit around the dinner table in the evenings. This story that we are so privileged to be living is an adventure that I could never have imagined for myself. This God that we live for, Our Creator, has spun for us a magical tale of struggle and redemption. There is beauty and bounty and newness and life.....and I can't believe that we are in this place. What a story we are living! What a God we serve!
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