I worked another night shift this past weekend, and a brief chat with another nurse on the floor that night reminded me how easy I had it with my assignment. I was busy, but I had time to take good care of my patients, and make plans for how I would spend my time over the course of the shift that, for the most part, weren’t waylaid by unexpected occurrences. At the end of the shift, I came in to say goodbye to one of my patients, and she asked if she could give me a hug. I said yes.
Since I work very part-time, if a patient is having a longer stay, there is a very good chance that the eight hours I spend with them will be forgettable. I do my best to make their lives better in the short time that I spend with them, but I don’t hang onto any expectations that it will make a big difference for them or their families.
Despite the fact that I obviously made impression on a patient, I left wishing I’d been able to do more. As I walked towards the stairs on my way home, I absently pulled my phone out, opened up Instagram, and started scrolling. One of my friends had tagged a post with someone else we went to school with. I clicked through to her Instagram, then to her website. If the site is any indication, she’s successful and happy.
I knew her because we lived in the same suite freshman year. She lived next door to me and for some reason, she didn’t like me. She took it upon herself to “fix” me, since I didn’t wear makeup or even really know how to use it, let alone how to shape my brows properly.
This week, I’m with my husband at a marriage intensive in Branson, MO. It’s not an enrichment for people who just want to make their marriage better. It’s for people who have hit the wall.
There are times when you’re stuck and it’s easy to pretend you’re still moving. Other times, it’s so obvious that you are stuck that pretending otherwise would be folly.
We had reached the latter situation.
Hard to believe we met in our 20’s and are now staring down 40. Well, one of us is. I still have a couple of years left. 😉
This has been the hardest year of our married lives, and one of the hardest of our whole lives – it feels unfair at times because at our age, it seems like we should have started to figure things out.
I hope this period of growth is something we can look back on as the start of something even better than what we already knew.
So many of the photos I found were of Cylon in Dad mode:
helping kids,
holding kids, carrying them where they needed to go. 
And smiling with them.
Happy 40th Birthday to the precious soul I am privileged to do life with.
(Photo Credit: P. Furniss)
One could argue that as a mostly SAHM with a part-time job that I wear scrubs for, my personal style doesn’t matter. And really, it doesn’t.
I leave my house to go grocery shopping and take my kids to activities or to the library. I go out on dates with my husband or leave the house by myself about twice a month. And when I say go out by myself, I usually mean, solo grocery shopping. I go to church on Sunday. Otherwise, I’m almost never Out In Public.
A lot of life feels like a struggle right now. Home school burnout has been bubbling up for a couple of years now. There are a lot of littles in our house. I get overstimulated. I’m struggling internally because I have everything I need and almost everything I want, and I’m still anxious and depressed.
Life feels hard, and no matter what I wear.
A few days ago, my oldest daughter was at a church event with kids her age all day. Not long after, she mentioned to me quietly that she found out that day that she was the only kid there with only one pair of shoes.
I asked her a few questions, and more information came out about what had happened over the next day or so.
I felt really sad that it was at a church function where my kid began to feel insecure about Stuff. I had to think about it for a while before I came back to her about it.
