Sunday, June 6, 2010

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."

Blog. It's been on my to do list. I have a half-finished, never-published draft of our second vacation last year, during which we went to Washington D.C. and Ocean City, MD. It's one of those perpetual back-burner things that I put off until an entire year has slipped by without me noticing it. Now, instead of looking back and seeing all the little nuances of the year that warranted a blog, the year seems like a big jumbled heap of days, all mushed together.

I feel as though much of life is a cookie cutter duplicate to last year. We work at the same companies. We live in the same place. We follow the same schedules. We eat the same food. We watch the same TV shows.
But there are significant differences from last year.

In October, I began overseeing the Children's Ministry at church. It wasn't the amount of work that it could have been, but it certainly wasn't as easy as I had perceived. It took a full six months until I felt comfortable in my new church role. It was very clear to me that God had given me the responsibility not for the good of the church or the good of the children, but for my own personal good. He always provides exactly what we need.

December was a difficult month for both Joel and myself. I purchased a three-foot fake Christmas tree from Wal-mart, which felt like a devastating compromise. It wasn't a happy option, but we decided it was a reasonable middle ground between two depressing choices: having a real tree or having no tree at all. I still enjoyed the annual Christmas tree hunt with my family and took pictures of the three trophy trees that were headed towards houses. Our little fake tree fit our home perfectly.

Our Christmas plans got changed at the last minute due to snow storms across Missouri. We had planned to spend Christmas morning in Belton. Back in 2002, we drove through a snow storm to Belton for Christmas. On that trip, it took us two hours to drive Lake St. Louis, what would normally have been a 30-minute drive. My dad had begged us not to drive that year, and we drove anyways, and know now that it was a dangerous decision. We decided to learn from our mistakes and be responsible adults and change our plans. So we stayed in St. Louis on Christmas morning, and drove to Belton the following day.

In January, we regained control of our finances. We were already far removed from using credit cards, but were in a continuous cycle of falling behind on bills, causing late fees, which caused more bills to go unpaid. We finally jumped the hurdle of paying everything on time, and promptly set up a realistic budget. The first few months of following this budget were completely eye opening. Rather than buying whatever we wanted, and hoping there was enough money left for the bills, we were paying all of our bills first. (This approach seems so simple when we actually got around to trying it.) For the first few months, when I paid bills, I racked my brain to think of what I forgot to pay. I had to be missing some bills if there was money left over. When it occurred to me that this money (however little or much it was) could be used to pay extra on bills, it was quite liberating. We added up our debts and found that if we stick to our budget, we will be completely out of debt by January 2012. It may sound a long ways off, but it's the first time we've had an end date, which is completely exciting. When we arrive there, we will turn the page into the next chapter of our lives, debt-free and pursuing adoption.

In April, Joel's job changed. He moved from managing at the Westport Waterway, to heading up the new Waterway Detail Center. He and his boss traveled to Denver for a week to learn about detailing from their Denver counterparts. It was an extremely busy month, loaded with information, and packed with hours. Joel worked up to 70 hours a week during April, getting the Detail Center up and going. He's still working hard on marketing, but not so many hours. The last few weeks have been filled with calls to hundreds of customers, with thousands left to call. He is calling every Waterway Car Club Member, a time consuming task which is not Joel's favorite. Joel would go crazy if he had a desk job, thankfully Waterway keeps things interesting for him.

April was busy for me also: birthdays galore, housesitting, women's retreat, trips to Belton, organizing the Children's Ministry teacher schedule to allow for several weekends out of town. Through some varied circumstances, I learned a lot during April. I had the unpleasant experience of being very emotionally hurt by someone's opinions expressed to me. I believe that they intended to be motivating or encouraging, but that was not the result. God showed me that it didn't matter how uncaring and naive people are, I do not have to defend myself. God is my defender, and He doesn't need people to approve His plans. I also learned that I have become much stronger than I would have guessed. Such a situation would have devastated me in the past, but I was able to cast those cares on the Lord, and refocus on navigating through the valleys of life. I shouldn't have been surprised, because valleys are vulnerable to attacks. The stronger I am, the higher I can hold my shield of faith to fend off attacks. On the opposite side of the spectrum, some words spoken to me at the women's retreat continue to resonate encouragement in my life and remind me that the Lord knows what I'm going through.

In current events, I am changing positions at work, leaving the front desk, and moving out onto the floor. Tomorrow, I start training for "pretester" (optometric technician, the person who does the puff test on your eyes before you see the eye doctor). Once conquered, I will continue on to train for optician. I'd like to think that I'm slightly ahead of the game, due to learning by immersion, but I'm surely going to be surprised by the amount of information I have yet to master. I have an equal mix of excitement and nervousness.

The best new thing is that Joel and I have joined our nation, in that our new pastime is baseball. We have been to three St. Louis Cardinals games. At the second game, we both set a new record for how many games we'd been to in one season. We are going to our fourth game next week. We had even talked about spontaneously going to the game tonight, but Joel had a quick work commitment that prevented us from it. We are even subscribing to mlb.com, so that we can watch Major League Baseball games from our computer (Joel has it streaming to our TV in the living room). We know the players names, we look up any rules we're unfamiliar with, we cheer from the stadium and our living room. In short, we have become fans.

We are loving our Sundays together. It had been a long time since we had a consistent day off together. Now we ride to church in one car. We go out to lunch. We go swimming. And we watch baseball. Life is good.