When I'd Rather Pitch A Fit

I've made some serious progress in the world of materialistic winnowing around Costa Cottage over the last several months; well, years.  Rooms can be cleaned quickly even at their worst.  There is a place for most everything.  But when it comes to "everything in its place" I'm resolved to the truth that it don't come easy, baby.  There is, after all, another independent adult with a differing mode of operation when it comes to "stuff", and three children that seem to need to make messes or hang on to scraps of paper or inconsequential toys because of budding sentimentality.  It really is a day-to-day work in progress to keep us sifted, shifted, and stewarded well.

Because of the realization of this perpetual nature to winnowing and the bigger awareness of other things being of higher importance (things that aren't "things" like our relationships with each other), I haven't bent over backwards to tackle any major winnowing projects in some time.  There are a couple of areas that need the most attention: paperwork and laundry.  We're handling these, but there isn't real order in place to keep us from being behind the eight ball with these two areas.  I'll get to working on a system for these soon.

But the last room standing in my house needing serious attention is my garage.  Now, I know, we've been here before.  But remember there was a move two+ years ago, the addition of a kid, several more years of life, and the nearly inevitable accumulation that accompanies all of the above.  For reasons that confound me, it appears we are to never have a garage with a working garage door.  At the last house the door stopped working within a week of moving in.  Here it took a little longer; a month.  So in both places, the garage stopped being a place for cars to dwell, but rather became complete dumping grounds for a sundry discarded items: furniture no longer used, boxes that never got emptied after the move, off-season clothes, old toys no one plays with, stuff someone gives us that we should've said "no, thank you" to.  My guts churn at the bedlam in that room.  I'm not even kidding.

This week is spring clean up week in our small town.  It's brilliant, really.  The city sets out dumpsters on Main Street and city-limit dwellers can bring everything (excluding household trash) to the dumpsters for free the entire week.  It seems like the perfect time to do the garage.  And boy, I have been gung ho.  Until two hours ago.  After wrestling and wrenching myself and the garage door to get it open, surveying the situation, tears, and a flood of complete frustration, I realized cleaning out the garage...once again...isn't going to happen.  Not this week.

The last several weeks have been amazingly busy.  Fulfilling, but fall-into-bed busy.  They've also included out-of-state and out-of-country trips for Ma Luffin Mayun.  He will come home tomorrow from his latest trip.  I've had an increased work load in and out of the house, related and unrelated to him being gone.  Here's what I realized today staring at that cesspool that is our garage: I could get it done this week.  I could.  I'm not afraid of hard work.  There are a lot of times I can work circles around folks.  But to do that this week, it would come with a cost:

-It would be at the expense of my husband, whose trips haven't been vacations, but full of hard work coupled with the challenge of being away from home and family and the familiar. 

-It would be at the expense of my kids who have already been down to one parent (who absolutely doesn't act the same when she's flying solo) so much the last several weeks, and who could use the comfort and beauty and chaos that is the five of us together in a "normal" week.

-It would come at the expense of myself, which is worn out from the hectic schedule and could use some rest and recovery and self-imposed grace this week.

When I count up the cost and make the decision to say no to winnowing the garage this week, I sound so level-headed and well-prioritized.  But I'm incredibly grouchy about it.  I can tend towards self-reliance and I don't like to not be able to do something, especially if I think it is several clicks past overdue.  I've cooled down, but I wanted to flat-out pitch a fit; stomp my feet, cuss, go on a tirade about how this family let the garage turn into a dump and that it is not just my job to keep things in order around here, and demand that everybody stop everything until it's clean or until I say otherwise even if it takes days.

Man, that still all sounds really appealing, actually...

But I am wise enough at least to know that to not do it this week is right.  I do know that I will not be sorry for saying no to the good thing of cleaning out the garage and choosing the better thing of deepening relationships with my four treasures and giving grace to myself.  As I resign to it and practice that "no", it will get easier as the week progresses to lose myself in the "yes".

And one day, my garage will be clean.  Hopefully sooner than I can imagine...

     

He's Leaving On A Jet Plane

Once again he's gone.  Once again I am proud of him and feel the litany of reasons why I love him and this life with him rushing into me all at once.  What an amazing privilege to love and see the world and its people.  And what a void there will be in our arms and by our sides until we're together again.

Fly away, Ma Luffin Mayun.  On a wing and prayer.  Lord, pilot him.

a last-minute snuggle

commissioning the interim man-of-the-house

I love the way his brave face betrays him with a tinge of melancholy

 

signing I-love-yous and blowing farewell kisses from the porch

When Ma Luffin Mayun's Away - Round Two

Disclaimer: Is it just me or in my last post did I indicate - or at least lean in the direction of indicating - that it ain't no thang but a chicken wang when Ma Luffin Mayun's away?  Yeah.  Maybe a little hint of that. 

Lies, I tell ya.

I just did some more math.  On June 20th he'll leave for five days.  On July 27th he'll leave for eighteen more days.  If we go by Brilliant Beauty's school calendar, there are eighty-four days from the time she got out of school until August 13th, the day he returns from his last trip.  When it's all said and done Ma Luffin Mayun will have been gone thirty-three days of summer.  That's 39.3%.  39.3%. 

I told you I totally did some more math.  And believe me, there ain't no "new math" that can make that equation less ow-y.  I really do think I was feeling, uh, rather confidently capable when I wrote the last post.  However, 39.3% makes my knees feel like they're buckling.  Alas, it is what it is.  And in the immortal words of BMB - poet laureate of a high-rise apartment in South Korea, "You get what you get and you don't pitch a fit."  Most importantly, everything I said about the ultimate good these days apart bring about in our marriage (and consequently our family) is still absolutely true.  That's 100%.

Moving on...

Round Two: the kids

Really, we do okay, me and the kids, in these unusual times of being separated.  Some innate firstborn qualities seem to well up in Brilliant Beauty and she quite often becomes more helpful and conscientious while her daddy's away mostly without me having to ask.  Little Big Man and Pretty Baby just wonder where daddy is, but are pretty pleased to still have snacks and meals, toys, books, and mommy.  But they never let me forget that it will be so nice when daddy is home once more. 

When he's across the globe, we send him the moon in the morning since we're finished with it and welcome the sun he sends to us.  Some of Little Big Man's favorite and unique words in his vocabulary are names like, "Nicaragua",  "Dubai", "the Philippines", "Thailand", "India", and "Korea".  We talk about the world and the beautiful people within it.  I wish I could see the pictures they have drawn of these places and people in their growing little minds.  We always talk about where Ma Luffin Mayun is and what it is that he is doing while he's there.  It cannot possibly be easy to understand for any of the three kids, but I try to convey in all kinds of ways that daddy is telling people who may not know - who may have never known - that God, the creator of the earth and sky and sea and me, loves them so, so much.  And that explanation, in all of it's simplistic truth, seems to be sufficient for the kids.   "They don't know God loves them?  Then, of course, daddy can tell them."

We have awesome family and lots of chances in weeks like this for the kids to see grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Sometimes we stake our tent down at Papa's and Tunan's (my folks) for a couple of days which is always a wonderful oasis.  Nana and Pawpaw (Ma Luffin Mayun's folks) will whisk the kids off for shopping sprees or time in the sprinkler or anything else they can get into.  Our family is a huge help to me and I always know that I am supported by them and that they are at the ready when Ma Luffin Mayun's away to help in any way they can.  That's priceless.

Where it gets tricky is just in the reality that it all falls to me.  I mean, again, I could have a dozen helping hands from family and friends at a moment's notice, but no one else can be mommy.  And mommy being mommy is most needed when daddy can't be home.  It gets tricky.  I feel like I have to be "on" pretty constant.  The fullness of the responsibility can feel downright weighty. 

I have to learn in these times what regular responsibilities can slide in order to keep the main things the main things.  These weeks are a baptism by fire in "choosing your battles".  We may eat a little less organized meals and a little more junky while Ma Luffin Mayun's gone, but that way there is no drawn-out meal time prep which can be super stressful with kids hanging on to ankles or complaining about being "hungry NOW-UH!"  Mom's sanity and everyone's emotional well-being wins out over the healthier home-cooked meals.  Some days we batten down the hatches and ignore the world beyond our acre.  Other times we drop everything and run away to the thrift store or a playground - ANYwhere - to break up the monotony of the same walls and the same faces we wake up with or go to sleep with.  Some days staying on the go is the order of the day.  Other times, the thought of piling the kids into and lugging them out of the car over and over by myself is enough to make me want to fall apart.  It can be a fine line.

Like I said, for the most part we do okay, me and the kids.  I could do better, though.  Some things could still stand to shift down into auto-pilot when Ma Luffin Mayun's away.  Even still, some things that coast would really be better served by my being more intentional.  There's a huge learning curve.

I don't know who wins this round, Gloria or Donna.  It's a tough one to call.  Regardless, when daddy's away we still greet each other in the mornings with a smile and a cuddle and end the night with a story, a tuck into bed, and some soft music.  That's definitely something far better than just surviving, and worth more money than I could ever work hard enough to earn.

And by the by, that 39.3% apart makes the 60.7% together super concentrated and delicious.

She's sweet, but don't eat the baby!

Round Three: outside relationships . . .

When Ma Luffin Mayun's Away - Round One

No treading easy and breezy for us into the shift of schedule change that Summer brings.  No way, uh uh.  Nope, we slap jumped the ship of normalcy into the choppy seas of change straight out of port.  On the day Brilliant Beauty finished fourth grade, Ma Luffin Mayun left for a ten-day trip to India. 

In case you were wondering, the mathematical equation for that is
   1 me
-  1 husband
+ 3 kids for 240 hours

In case you were wondering, I'm not going to divulge everything that equation equaled.  It was harrowing (and sometimes harrying) and a lot of times hilarious.  But it's swing from monotony to mania could snap your neck.

Does this sound like a sob story?  Maybe.  Is it?  Not completely.

I confess I ended the week less shouting, "Look how awesome I am and all that I managed in these ten days!" and more choking out a "Thank God we survived that!"

Less Gloria Gaynor, more Donna Summer.

Round One: marriage

Weeks with Ma Luffin Mayun absent (which happen with a degree of frequency each summer because of his work in vocational ministry) are always, ultimately, good for the two of us.  We've grown quite past the pining away for each other too heartsick to go on in the other's absence.  We no doubt miss each other, and in so many ways more than those two kids that used to pine away.  We've gone from the shallows to the deep in this thing of our oneness.  But we've grown up enough to know that if we are absent from each other it is certainly because one of us is away doing something that both of us talked through, thought through, and prayed about doing before it ever happened.  It doesn't mean we like it, but we get it, and we're both behind it.  We start and finish from the same page.  That makes all the difference.

These times apart also remind me that we can live without each other.  He and I are not together because we have to be (though we both believe we are bound by covenant and not by contract).  It is not a relationship based in co-dependence but rather interdependence.  I don't use him to define me, nor do I define him (sidenote: he does not define me, but fourteen years into this life together who I am with him is as first nature to me as my femaleness.  I don't wake up everyday and have to pep-talk myself into being a woman or check to make sure all signs still point to "yes".  I am a woman.  And I am my beloved's and he is mine).  Part of the reason we don't fall apart when we are apart is because we don't draw all of our conclusions of absolution about ourselves or the daily world around us based on what the other one says or thinks or feels.  Instead, we are partners walking side by side working this life out together, and some days we just have to do that from thousands of miles away.  In the other's absence we have the opportunities to honor our oneness and our covenant in unique ways...focusing our thoughts and prayers more on the other's behalf, reflecting on the privilege of days spent together in this life acknowledging more vividly the reality that we are not guaranteed one more day, and making choices throughout the day filtered through the question, "If my love were here, are these the same choices I would be making?  Are these choices honoring of who we are?" 

We feel the deep need for each other, but we cannot fill all of the needs of the other.  When we are literally separated for days on end this becomes so much clearer.  We can live without each other.  We just absolutely choose not to.

I love him so much more every time he comes home.

So round one of marriage when Ma Luffin Mayun's away: Gloria Gaynor - 1, Donna Summer - zip.

Round Two: the kids...