Serenading Pep Talks

Sometimes we all just need a little pep talk. 

You know that feeling: there's something you have to do, and you just don't want to. The self-doubt swirls and teams up with feelings of inadequacy and fear, and soon that one little thing you had to do becomes a great, big, stinky doubt monster that you wish you could trap in the closet and forget about.

I happen to be very over-dramatic, so I can really turn blowing something out of proportion into an art form.

This is what it can sound like in my head:

i can't do it. i'm not good enough for this. i don't even know what i'm talking about or what i'm doing. uggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh. but i really am no good at this. it's going to be awful. 

Eventually I get whatever it was done...and get a big ol' knot in my stomach to go with the finished product. Sound familiar to anyone else??

As childish as it is, it happens all the time.

I'm working on the whole notion of "let go and let God," but I'm going to be working on that one for life.

Enter in pep talks in musical form.

Tonight as I prepare to give the chapel message tomorrow --

not for the first time this year, either...more like the third...but yup, still envisioning a boring disaster!

-- I'm turning to some musical inspiration to chase the great, big, stinky doubt monster away. I hope it helps to chase some of yours away too.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

If I'm going to start trying to do this regularly again then I'd better fill in a few important details before blogging much further. 

May 2013 brought some major changes. I left my first teaching job to get married to the love of my life! It was hard to leave such wonderful coworkers and all of "my" kids, but it would be an hour commute. No thanks. We celebrated our love with our wedding surrounded by our wonderful family and friends, and a new chapter in life began. 

I started job searching in the public school system. Truth be told, I don't have a strong desire to teach in a public school. Sure, subbing there could be okay, but to be there full time? I would miss having the ability to talk about God without having to watch my back at school. I doubt I'll ever stop being amazed at how much children "get" when it comes to faith. There's a reason Jesus tells the disciples that we should have faith like children, and I have the gift of seeing that every day and helping it grow. I ended up getting a call for a kindergarten job at a small Lutheran school, and things really fell into place quickly.

June was a blur of moving, visiting the new school and accepting the job, and going to Alaska with Tim's side of our family, helping with house projects, and getting acquainted with the new school. July was teacher meetings, classroom prep, planning out the year, house projects, and so was much of August before school started. 

There are pros and cons to being in a tiny school literally in the middle of cornfields, but it has been a wonderful place to be. Now I have 4 students in my class, and when I teach K-2 PE (yes, I teach PE and find that ironic since I loathed it in high school!!!) I have 13 kiddos. I'm enjoying being able to use things I've learned from the past 2 years, and I love having a small group of co-workers who are my family away from family. 

Some days it's hard with Tim's work schedule because we'll barely have enough time to say "hi" and eat before he leaves, but this is our family's version of normal. The 40 minute drive is beautiful, and we've only had a handful of truly yucky weather conditions to drive in, so I am thankful for both of those things. The only major issue I had was getting hit by/hitting a deer a week before school started on the way home from a late meeting, but even that was not nearly as bad as it could have been. The drive is a nice time to get mentally ready for the day ahead and wind down from the school day. 

Life with the man I love and doing what I love...it's a blessed life indeed. 

No More Monkeys Jumping Off the Bed

Once upon a time I was scared terrified of dogs. We're talking hysterical if one even looked my direction. 

My brother thought it was great fun to let my grandparents' Newfoundland out when I was playing in the yard. (That booger head.) My family says she was one of the sweetest dogs in the world, but when that big ol' Cassie dog came my way I saw my short life flash before my teary eyes as I ran and screamed for help. 

My brother is no longer a booger head, and I am no longer terrified of every dog I see -- just some of them. I even have two furry space heaters to share the bed with. (I'm sure 5 year old Michelle would look at 25 year old Michelle like I'm nuts.)

One of Squirt's nicknames is Little Brother. Technically he is about 4 years older than Danny, but we go by size. Sometimes we call him The Problem Child because he's good at escaping if there is a gap in any part of our fence...and then doesn't quite seem to know how to find his way home. 

Lately his new nickname has been Little Hop Along. 

Squirt has been sleeping on the bed since we moved to the house. He was crated at the apartment after a few too many mornings of finding "presents" when he had free reign. At night he will usually snuggle in and stay put until the morning (unless there are storms, but that's another story).

A week and a half ago was one of those rare nights where he got up for who-knows-what-reason, and we got woken up by the heart-wrenching sound of scream-crying a dog only does when something is super painful. He still hasn't 'fessed up about whether he fell or jumped off the bed, but his paw was swollen immediately. I just wanted to cry. We iced it every few hours, though, and carried him around a lot.

The vet verified that he broke one or two matchstick sized bones in his paw, and we felt like terrible dog-parents that he got hurt when we knew we should have just crated him. He got a splint and meds, and a little later he got the Cone of Shame for trying to take his bandages off. We got to take that off when he got home, though, and he's left them alone since then. Apparently he isn't always a forgetful old man who forgets what he's learned. (Yes, Squirt, we are on to your "selective" hearing when we say "No"...)

He's gotten his own little suite next to the bed filled with a pillow, blankets, and the stuffed frog he adopted a while ago. He still whines a little when we first go to bed, but I think I pout more than he does. He can nest to his hearts' content and stretch out as much as he wants there. 

At his check-up the vet was pleased to hear how he has barely slowed down. He isn't allowed to jump on or off the couch by himself, and I don't let him do the stairs, but everything else is pretty much the same. He will only have a splint for another week or two. Oh, she also gave him a much more dapper red bandage, too. I think he appreciates it much more than the purple.

Danny has been watching out for his little brother, though. He has sniffed him from head to toe each time Squirt has come back from the vet, and he's careful not to run him over lately. I'm sure things will go back to normal when Squirt's splint is gone, though. 

These are things that 5 year old Michelle never would have dreamed of dealing with, and they are certainly things that I didn't expect when I first got him. I wouldn't trade our pups for anything, though. It's an adventure, and I'm sure it's helping Tim and I hone some skills for the future.

Here's hoping that nothing else breaks in this house any time soon. I think we've had our fill for a while. 

"Outgoing Guts"

"And by the way, everything in life is writable if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath

Confession: I fell into the self-doubt trap. 

I have been on a long hiatus from writing in general. I've written in my personal journal, but that's it. Sure, at first part of it was a change in the amount of free time I had as I juggled wedding planning, teaching, and working on the house. If I'm honest, though, it was bigger than that. 

I got sick of how blogging changed some of the relationships in my life. I wrote a little about what was going on in my life, but life was bigger than words in a post or two. I'm not the kind that spills every detail or feeling to everyone I meet. 

It made me so sad and frustrated when I would talk about something with someone and get a response that they'd already read about it on my blog. That was like the end of the conversation. The salt in the wound was perhaps that some of the ones I heard that from were people I heard less often from anyways. I would think, "Um, okay, but I brought it up with YOU to get your input...and because there is more to it than what I wanted to put out for everyone's eyes. But you don't want to hear about it, so that's cool."

There is a difference between knowing a person's blog and a person.

I ended up running out of steam. I just let myself stay frustrated for silly reasons, really, and then just didn't care for a while. I started missing it, though, and began pulling up the blog to post again.

The blank posts were intimidating. Anything I started seemed insignificant in light of all life's recent changes, but I didn't feel like posting about things many people already knew about...so what to write about?? It was easier to say nothing and close the browser than try something out. 

But I haven't stopped missing it. I still don't have as much free time as I used to, but we can always find time for things we are passionate about. I'm done letting self-doubt stop me from writing. It's time to find my "outgoing guts" and get back to it.

To those of you who blog, have you ever noticed your blog having any effects on your relationships?