Regrets

In the fullness of my life, somewhere along the line my time with Rick has slipped away.  We have gotten pretty good at doing the tag team approach to our lives to keep the children supervised most of the time.  Fortunately we are both pretty independent people, so we manage pretty well.  What has been lost is our time alone together.  I have tried to think through how to have a weekend away, but the logistics of managing all of the kids and our schedules makes it look feasible in 2016.  I don't want this to be a whiny post, I want it to be a cautionary tale to my children.

I don't know if any of my children will have large families.  I have mixed feelings about that at this point.  My prayer is that I will remember to encourage my children to spend time with their spouses, and do whatever I can to make that possible.  I also want them to make that a priority in their marriages.  It is easy to think of everyone else that is involved in your life, and take your husband or wife for granted.  I know that Rick understands how busy our lives are, and how much our children need us to be available to them.  I think I have underestimated how much has been lost by not making my time with him more important.

Our communication gets cut short, when we don't have some uninterrupted time to talk.  Even when we are uninterrupted, our time is so rare we forget how to talk to each other.  I end up talking to him like he is one of the kids, and he talks to me like one of his co-workers.  It has limited our ability to communicate well, which is not the best for the kids.  They get a lot of mixed answers, which is frustrating for everyone.  It has also made our planning very reactive instead of proactive.  We don't make the time to sit down and plan out what we are doing and why.  We just sort of bob along fitting things in where we can, and making the best of whatever pops up.  I would not recommend this method to those following behind.  We would be much more manageable if we had time to think through where we are going and how we are going to get there.

I just finished listening to a very good sermon on managing figs.  I'm pretty good at taking notes on what works and what doesn't, now I just need to figure out how to share it with Rick.  I tend to be a decision maker, which works well if there are only a couple of people in the process.  I definitely need another manager for a group of this size.  A word to the wise, protect your time with your husband.  The children will always be demanding your time, but the time with them will be better spent if you and your husband have had time to get on the same page.  I hope I remember to re-read this every year, so that my kids won't have to remind me after they get married.

#417-429

Hot running water.

Shredded coconut.

Glasses of milk in the middle of the night.

Helen's Mother's Day card that she made for me.

Starry skies.

16 oz. iced vanilla lattes in the summer.

The sound of crickets chirping in the evening.

Wandering conversations with ladies over coffee.

Soren singing.

Good sermons that make you want to be more like Jesus.

Throwing rocks in puddles, it's still fun at 41.

Holding hands with my husband, I need to do it a whole lot more.