10

What a stretch.  The last week and a half (or so) have been ridiculous.  Here's what's been going on:

-Lucy's cutting teeth.
-Lucy's been sick.
-Lucy learned how to climb stairs (seriously, all at once).
-Lucy, as a consequence of the first two items, has not been sleeping well.
-Tristan's been half-sick.
-Julie, as a consequence of item number four, has been sick.
-Julie's been really sick.
-I've been sick.
-I had a double assignment in my one class.
-I had an exam in the previously mentioned class last Friday, and have one in another class tomorrow.
-I had three labs to run through for modern.
-We had extra grading to do for Randy (and those kids will not exactly be making careers of math or physics).
-Bills are/were due.

That said, praise God.
Thank you for a baby girl who is so sweet that a rough stretch for her is able to hit us so hard (imagine if she was like this so often that we were used to it!).
Thank you for a sweet boy who wants nothing more than to love on his family, even when they're sick.
Thank you for a wonderful wife whose amazing efforts are so constantly present that it's a shock when she's not running on all cylinders.
Thank you for my general health, and for letting me dive down into sick only after Julie's started to resurface.
Thank you for the opportunity to go to school.
Thank you for professors that will shift schedules around to accommodate a classmate who needed it.
Thank you for not throwing the exams on consecutive days, but rather giving a weekend in between.
Thank you also for the homework-free weekend that results from coinciding exams.
Thank you for modern lab (seriously).  Thank you for the chance to teach a lab that's more interesting and students that are more enthusiastic.
Thank you for the extra work that grading brings, and the bit of cushioning it provides our budget, especially at a time when we are recovering from the paycheck-less month that is semester break.
Thank you for the first paycheck posting the day before rent was due.
Thank you for presenting us with all these odds and ends that tie up all the odds and ends that began to draw near.

And now that it's all drawing to a close, thank you for the down-time that tonight brought.

It's been quite a haul for this little period, but all these things are so small; it's just that the total seems larger than the sum of its parts.  But isn't this how it should be?  Yes, this was a more trying time, but there have been many times, and there will be many more, that go the opposite way.  How often have I thought something like, "I just feel so good about life right now," and upon quick inspection, realized it was just a lot of little things going right?  And what a difference an attitude can make...

What do workers gain from their toil?  I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.  He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.  That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil -- this is the gift of God.  (Ecclesiastes 3:9-13)


I think I listened to this passage (in podcast form, thanks to Shane) maybe two dozen times in the last week.  It's very easy to focus on what's going on around me (rather than within me), and that's such a trap.  The better-crafted, more subtle trap, though, is to analyze each piece and decide that, in the grand scheme, it really doesn't matter.  God specifically put each innocuous little event in my life to show me something, to take me somewhere, to ask me something, to push me in some direction (though I feel God more pulls than pushes, though maybe that's a bit fastidious).  Does dismissing seemingly trivial events, slights, wins, losses, comments, interactions -- does dismissing these down-play God's involvement in my life?  I mean, I've been advised (more than once) to take every day as a lesson, but, from the same people, I've been advised to not think too hard about the little things.  So I guess the natural question is, what makes something little?  Are there even little things?  If God knows how many hairs are on my head (which is a number that is constantly changing, as Lucy seems to enjoy pulling it out), is it really that much of a stretch to think that every situation has insight?  It hardly seems fair to say that God is everywhere and in everything, except the little things that really don't matter anyway.  It just sounds... silly, somehow.

This last little while has really made me notice the flow of time.  It's been a lot of Chronos time lately, and that gets quite grating very quickly.  I think after a long chunk of Chronos time, the first two seconds of sit-down-and-exhale are pure Kairos.  It's just difficult to continue to put that off when you can feel yourself going slowly (or quickly) mad.  But these past two weeks have brought into very sharp relief the Kairos moments that have popped up: a sick Lucy who just wants to be held and whispered to, a happy Tristan who does his best to not get too loud while playing in the morning so that Momma and Lucy can sleep a little longer, a two-minute stretch at the table where the kids start laughing at each other and all we can do is laugh with them...  The busy seasons are chaotic and draining and deflating and demanding and unnerving and altogether probably unhealthy, but there is such a beauty in the return to rhythm.

It's funny how differently different people work.  Julie, I am convinced, could get up at 4am (maybe take a few minutes to get out of bed), assemble a family's worth of supplies, meals, snacks, clothes, drinks, pals (that's what Tristan calls Hippo and Dog and company), have dinner cooking, be dressed and ready to head out the door by 4:30.  But, when nighttime hits, she fades hard.  It's like an on/off switch, and once that time hits, she needs to go to sleep ASAP or her carriage will turn back into a pumpkin or something.  I can force my way out the door in a half hour or so, but I will have just put the car in gear when I realize that I forgot A, B, and C inside and have to run back in.  And then I'll probably leave the car running and forget that I needed the keys to get back inside the house.  But at night, I can string all these things together and blaze through my physics work until all hours, if need be (though I'd rather not make it too too late).  It can make it difficult, sometimes, to get together-down-time, as one of the two of us is pretty likely wanting to be in bed, but that's really only if the day is a little more full than it really ought be (what's that about, "better one hand with tranquility than two hands with toil?").  For the most part, our together-down-time happens shortly after the kids go to sleep.  And it's wonderful.  But the staggering of our, we'll call it, optimal performance schedules, is so terribly convenient most of the time.  I wonder how people can raise kids with both parents on the same schedule...

Once in a while, I wonder about single parents.  It's mostly at times where I've only had Tristan to watch for a day or something, like if Julie has Lucy out with her, or if they stay home and Duder and I go out.  I find myself thinking that "just one child" is actually not so bad.  And I'm pretty firmly under the impression that if all single parents had half a year of taking care of two kids simultaneously prior to having only one child to care for, and if the parent doesn't have to work, and if the child is pretty conscious of his/her situation, and if the child is healthy, and if the parent has a LOT of patience, that it could be entirely manageable.  The point being, I'm very impressed with people that can pull this off solo-style.

Tuesdays are long.  Or maybe that's not true.  Tuesdays are very continuous.  My schedule at school is filled with no breaks, so it just moves straight from one thing to the next.  Tuesdays at school are abundant in Chronos time.  Before Tuesday gets too much of a head start, I think I'll call this post good and get in bed.