Family

A few very sweet moments from the last two days:
-singing Christmas carols at my parents' apartment
-having Vic and the children -- ALL of them, including Tim and Liz in their PJs -- walk into the bedroom on Christmas morning singing Happy Birthday
-an incredible interesting pile of 75 'cake balls' for my 53rd birthday cake -- very easy to serve! "Chocolate, vanilla, or citrus?" Plop - on the plate!
-family members liking the presents I made for them -- Ben's t-shirt quilt, my sisters' decorated gourds, my neice's barretts and cloth bags
-seeing Vic and the boys work together installing technology
-walking upstairs and finding out that Betsy had cleaned both bathrooms
-giving out my okra santa ornaments to friends
-enjoying my cleared-out work-room by having plenty of space to sew, do crafts with Emily Vastola, and set up an extra eating table for Christmas dinner

Making

I have developed quite an urge to make things over the past few years. I've done a little painting, sewing, woodburning, and other 'crafting', and it is so satisfying to produce something that I like and give it to someone I love, even if it's just a simple apron or Christmas ornament. Is this one of the ways we are 'in God's image'? Look at all the beautiful gifts he gives us each day.. I find there's a particular pleasure in looking at something I made and that I'm pleased with despite its flaws. Remember when God looked at it all and said it was good? Is that something like trying on the apron and looking in the mirror, or spreading the quilt out on the table just to enjoy looking at it?

Every so often...

I seem to get the urge to blog only every 1-3 months. Problem is, the urge does not necessarily coincide with the time or energy to follow through. All my energy has been going into my new job and my garden. That's Spring for me. Let's see what happens in Summer.

Sunday Afternoon

I should never read someone else's blog before I write an entry in mine. That very act has prevented me from writing over and over. My own writing never feel interesting enough. Then I have all these nostalgic pangs as I read blogs of the folks who post and photograph their young children with such delight (while I now photograph my tomatoes or my gourds...). That was such a wonderful time of life. It seems so long in the past, that the kids were always saying the funniest things and we were doing our weird interesting homeschool stuff... before the existence of blogs.

Of course, some people with small children would probably like to be able to do what I often do now after church. I sit on the couch and read and think, listening to the clocks tick. I call friends or family that I haven't seen for a while, and catch up. I often get in a walk with a friend. Then I go fix whatever I want to eat -- like spinach-artichoke dip, or graham-cracker crust eaten in a bowl like cereal -- and I eat it in the living room (Not much done when the kids were itty bitty. They wanted to do it too, but they were too messy.) It makes a wonderful, if not very exciting, day of rest before going back to work on Monday morning. Or sometimes I go get sweaty working in the yard, if that's what I feel like. Digging and planting refreshes my psychi like few other activities. But today, I am recovering from being sick so I will mostly sit on the couch and think.

I liked today's sermon, especially a few tidbits I will record and comment on here:

• Theology from beneath (determining whether I think God is favorable or hostile according to affairs around me) versus theology from above (connecting with what is real through the word of God, the greatest single tool to let us know who He is and who we are). I do too much of the former, and way too little of the latter.
• Alternate translation "God, the joy of my rejoicing" from Psalm 43:4
• The way that music both expresses and enlarges our joy in the Lord, and the fact that the Bible mentions it so often as an appropriate way to praise God. This is certainly something I experience all the time. It is one of the big reasons I am in choir and like to sing with the children. Some weeks, an uplifting anthem or hymn gets stuck in my mind and turns me to worship over and over.
• God is committed to his glory and my joy. He will accomplish all of his intentions. This takes so much pressure off of me, to know that God is at work.

Enough couch time. I need to go look at my little gourd seedlings.

Home?

For some reason I named this blog Home with Gail. I guess it was nostalgia, since home is not where I am most of the time any more. This transition from homemaker to outside-worker is not an easy one. for me. There are so many things that I just plain long for and miss that used to be part of my life when I was 'at home'. Being able to get up and spend a whole day on a project of my own choosing is one of them. I could sew or garden or work on the house or build something with/for the kids or start several big recipes at once, knowing I had time to make significant progress before I had to clean up the mess or go to bed. I could start in on a project in the morning and know I could come back to it again and again in between household chores and homeschool lessons. I could flex my schedule around whichever way seemed to work the best each day. And then there was the school year schedule -- the holidays and summer vacation. My best energy -- for me, the morning hours -- could be devoted to the work of my choosing. Now it feels as if home gets the leftovers and work sucks the creativity right out of me. By the time I am ready to start doing 'something' in the evening, it is too late for me to accomplish much of anything and still go to bed at a decent hour to be ready for -- you guessed it -- work -- in the morning. I don't like my life being defined this way.

This sounds so grumpy. Probably I SHOULD be noticing how this job is a pretty good fit for my skills and personality, how it has room in it for a fair bit of creativity, and how it also is more flexible than many other types of work. I SHOULD be grateful for a good boss, a compatible co-worker, an office close to home, a chance to help children and mothers and get paid for it. I should be grateful that I had the chance to spend 20+ years as my own boss, and that I was able to enjoy a great deal more time with my children than many women have opportunity for. I probably should think this way, but really I just don't. Really I just feel this longing to be free of my work responsibility and be able to say yes again to my self.