Any given Sunday

So today I am little blue again. I know why, but it's not appropriate to discuss it in a blog.

In other areas I feel like a little rat running on the treadmill these last few weeks. It's like I just have to complete the daily course over and over again. Get up, feed baby, get coffee, feed baby, try to find some clothes, feed baby. Do dishes, feed baby, buy diapers, feed baby, bathe baby, and sometimes I get a shower. Sometimes. Dh and I heard a song on a NWCN Christmas special called, "Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas, Sometimes". We thought the song was a bomb, but the phrase stuck around. It's how I feel about the weekends. I used to think of them like a holiday from the baby and the mundane. I try to get all my work done so the weekend is clear and open for fun and different activities. Sadly (as is most of life) the last four weekends have been all out of whack and my DH has been out of commission for most of them. He is working very hard and so it's not ok to be mad at him. All the extended family is out of commission and with the baby recently sick I've just not had a really good break from it all. So it seems like I've had to work every single Christmas for a long time.

So the crap room is piling up, as well as the laundry and the mail and everything else. I hate it when the house gets all junky and messy. It makes me feel undone and it's like a vise pushing me from both sides until it gets cleaned up. Believe it or not I've already let go of a lot of my expectations of myself. When I say messy, it's really messy. Like flour on the floor for four days messy. I'm not all Merry Maids about the house anymore folks. I only get it all cleaned up when we have company staying over. So I really don't like this feeling at all.

I think this all started this morning. DH had to go into work again and so I went to church. I was a little tardy for the contemporary service and I slid in right after the sermon started. I was in the back row, but the room isn't that big. I had to really concentrate to make out the words of the service. It's like the sound is all fed through the monitors up in the front and all I can hear is the echo. The pastor has great diction so I know it's not him. It's me. I'm just deaf now in some ranges of sound. Like the spoken voice for conversation. Right where most people preach. I was so frustrated...and tired at the end of the sermon. I spent all that time trying to make out the words that I kept losing the points of the sermon. Then the next pastor gets up and says, " I don't need the microphone." I yelled back "Yes you do." He replied something like "I have a theatre voice..." and he proceeded with the announcements. It's not that HE needs the microphone, I need him to use the microphone. I'm now hard of hearing and I just cannot hear well. Perhaps the first four rows are giving feedback because they can hear you, but I can't. Maybe everyone else in my row could him.

So I left the service. I was tired from listening and just tired of being frustrated. Perhaps I should only go to the traditional service when I can use the assisted hearing devices if I need to. Anyway, we mix louder for those services on account of the elderly members. I guess it's a small blessing that I can now understand the needs of the other 60% of the congregation. Right now it doesn't feel so great.

My good friend suffered a great loss this past week. As a result I've thought a lot about losses in my life. The first year after a great loss I call the "Year of Firsts". I remember thinking "This is the first day without so and so." and then, "This is my first birthday without so and so" and on and on every Groundhog day etc. was a milestone in the loss. My friend just joined the "Year of Firsts" club. I am very sad for him, and very sad for his family. There are no words of my own to help them, just a scripture from Proverbs "God heals the brokenhearted and saves those crushed in spirit".

I feel a little crushed in spirit, or in the least, pressed down. In my "Dark Night of the Soul" I pressed down on all sides lately. The one good thing about this season is thinking that it is God's will that I go through it. I want to complete this portion of my life and then enter a season of joy. I do, I want joy and music and to be funny again.

Oh, and I'd like my hearing back too.