My Whole Being Waits

source: Instagram @elizabethlaingthompson

Hey everyone! I hope whatever this week has brought you, that above all your eyes have stayed on Jesus. It's been a weird week. The week began and continued to be bittersweet and filled with tears over our friends, the Bowers, moving to SC. I was able to keep it together with them all evening Wednesday at church (their last evening with us), until we drove away and it became very real to me that we would no longer see them as we please. What can you do with the kind of hurt that wells up as a physical ache in your chest?

This was also the first week back to school for me and with some new things in place for teachers and a new grade level for me to convert to our use of technology throughout the year, it crushed me. I've worked nonstop from the moment I walked into the building until the moment I've left. (Yesterday I made myself eat lunch without working and today took lunch to talk with all of you.) I napped after school the first two days and sat like a lump yesterday evening. My Kent classes start next week and I just wonder how I'll find the self-motivation and energy to make it through the next 39 weeks. 

And then there's just life in my head. What I know God has for me to do now, what I think is in process, and what I wonder it is all leading to in the future. And as my thoughts jumble over each other at any given time, my emotions begin to frustrate as well and I can feel them trying to take me down. My attitude changes in my head and in moments I become petty and even snippy with those around me. Even when it's good stuff, too many thoughts in too many places is overwhelming.

But today ladies, today I awoke to a reminder in Psalms 130:5 "I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope." In reading the Word daily, in staying in prayer, in worshiping, in weekly fasting, in surrounding ourselves with a Christian support system, we wait - or remain - in Jesus and we find our hope. A friend recently gave me advice in a hard moment to take it one day at a time, don't look so far ahead. And now I add to it that not only does one day at a time take away the overwhelming aspect, but in taking it one day at a time, we can better wait on the Lord. 

And suddenly my week looks differently. The bittersweet tears over the Bowers's departure becomes somewhat momentary in the fact that future visits are already planned and technology will keep my family and I in touch with them as always. And I'm reminded of the blessing just to have them in my life and to keep in touch so easily.

I realized this morning that I've hit very few snags in my work at school this week - technology has cooperated and free trials of programs and apps have allowed me to transfer from old technology to new as easy as can be (there's just a lot to transfer). I have SO much done in preparation for the next month. So much done during work hours that I didn't have to take much work home and the naps, laying around, and time with my family didn't mean other work was going undone. I came to work today feeling ready to go in the days to come. And my Kent classes? Two semesters of actual classes left - there's a light at the end of the tunnel and the fact that I managed it last year. One day at a time.

And my thoughts...the redirection in other matters has redirected my thoughts as well. I am content with now. Do what God has for now - spend time where and with whom God says, speak and write as God leads, do the best in the roles which God has currently ordained. Record away the upcoming he has given for later reference and don't worry about months and years in advance. If I can't wait in and live in and learn from NOW, God's future plans for me are delayed anyway and I'm left in a longer wait than even He intended. 

Being present where God has you now - especially if it's a season of waiting or transition season - is the only way to be. Wait in him and you will find your hope. And that hope will alter your perspective in all that goes on around you. 

Out of the Box Summer

A couple weeks ago, I finished my first year of my PhD with straight A's. I went straight from finishing my college semester to focusing on finishing my school year as a teacher, which meant grading 86 research papers and teaching one more book in the remaining three weeks of May. Happy to say I finished the last of those papers today and besides another day and half of classes, I am free!

Well, free of my full time job for a few months, but not free from the ebb and flow of life. Next week will lead me straight into planning the rest of my daughter's graduation party: ordering food, making decorations, and putting together picture collages. She's a full time college student next fall and our relationship will begin to change. I don't know how to navigate it all quite yet, but I'm desperate to find a decent balance of parent she still needs and the friend I will eventually fully become.

The party at the end of June will give way to a few days of taking care of our friends' two boys while they are away on a trip. Bringing my two younger kiddos as back up, of course. Triple teaming them ensures we all come out alive and happy! Haha! I am looking forward to getting to know the boys better. The past year has definitely taken a toll on my connections to my close friends' families and I feel I've missed some milestones.

A week later, my husband and I are off to Israel for ten days. This is a trip of a lifetime for more than one reason. First of all, it's a pilgrimage for us - to walk where Jesus walked. I am expecting big things - to come back refreshed, fulfilled, and ready with a new word for my path. Second, my husband and I have never been on a trip together, not even a honeymoon. Although we'll be traveling with a mix of friends and new acquaintances, our kids won't be there and the evenings will be ours to do as we please. I get nervous when my kids take simple trips away, so this will be a challenge even as it is a dream come true. Third, besides Canada, we've never been out of the country. Besides a one hour flight to Chicago, we've never spent any significant amount of time on a plane. This is the Middle East! The flight is nonstop eleven hours one way! This trip tests everything I've said I would never do, because leaving the comfort and familiarity of home challenges me on every level - physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Yet, even in my most nervous moments, I feel the desperate tug to go. 

Two weeks after returning from Israel, my children and I are meeting friends just outside of Myrtle Beach, SC where we all rented a beach house for the first week of August. My husband just started a new job and they so graciously gave him unpaid time for the Israel trip (which he shouldn't have received), so he won't be going on the beach trip with us. I travelled once before without him, chaperoning our church's youth group to Ocean City, MD. But this feels crazy. The trip was meant to be one more family trip, as our oldest daughter's schedule will change more drastically as a full time college student next year. So in that vein, it makes sense to be upset my husband won't be there. But, this is how in a box I have kept my life: I can't fathom that I am driving my kids all the way down there myself...my husband always does the driving. I'm going to have family vacation photos without him in them? I can't fathom that I am spending an actual vacation without my husband...he's my comfort in my out of the box situations.

The week we get back from the beach, I go back to in-service days for teaching, my students come the following week, and my next PhD semester follows the week after that. And the crazy begins again...not that it's stopping over summer to begin with.

I typically don't like this much busyness...I likes gaps of break time between events. But this year is different. These events are all amazing and special in some way. They are all extremely personal to me for different reasons, but also for the same reason - I have to step out of my box and trust God. It's almost like someone planned it out for me - a summer of out of the box living. All of these events usher in endings that also serve as beginnings. One thing is sure - I won't make it to the end of the summer the same person I began it as.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

I can be intense, I don't like to cook, I only clean when it starts crossing THEE line, I don't mind doing laundry, I hate the NFL (football itself is fine otherwise...if you're into killing brain cells), I have a love/hate relationship with exercise, I have a weakness for candy, pop, and sweet tea, I have always been a working mom and have never regretted it, I've never participated in PTO or a mom's group by choice, I enjoy my teaching career and have loved quite a few students as my own over the years, I am proud of my talents although they don't always feel useful in the grand scheme of things, I will read and write like there's no tomorrow, I love words and I want to use them to inspire and encourage people, I hold my close friends close as my family, I adore my fur babies, I've enjoyed my own kids more as teenagers than little kids (for the most part), I don't deserve my husband but I'm awfully happy I have him, I love Jesus, I know Jesus loves me.

That's me. I've spent far too much time regretting who I am and who I'm not. Feeling bad and feeling guilty for what I like and don't like, for what I can do and can't do, what I do and don't do, in comparison to common social roles or just other people in general. Even if it's just in my head, it's gone too far. It's a lie.

Because the only thing on that paragraph list that matters is the last one: Jesus loves me. And the last one validates all the others. The Bible tells me "...I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well" Psalm 139:14. Everything about me has been a part of me from the start. I can't remember ever liking cooking, even as a kid with my mom. My mom says I've sat "reading" books since I was old enough to hold a book open. I never once imagined myself as a stay-at-home mom, college and career have always been on my radar. Regardless of what anyone has to say about this list of me, I should stand assured because it's who I am...who I was made to be. And every part of me - made fearfully and wonderfully - will serve the purpose God has for me to glorify Him.

What a great word God has sunk into my head tonight (as I'm writing Sunday at 2am), but it doesn't end there because I'm not in this on my own. My husband is laid back, he doesn't mind cooking, he cleans and actually does it right (I take short cuts), he loves the NFL and played football, he drinks coffee, he has useful computer skills, he does not read or write and doesn't have a way with words, we are agreed on our friends and family, he loves Jesus, Jesus loves him.

Do you see what I see? Two people who are opposites, put together as compliments of each other. Our personalities and abilities fit together like the pieces of a puzzle, one filling in the other's gaps. Where one is weak, the other is strong, and vice versa. Team Gleghorn - cause everything we do needs to be done as a team. My realization that I should accept who I am came hand-in-hand with the revelation that I don't truly view my work as a team effort with my family. Dare I say sometimes I forget I'm teamed up with God?! Yet, everything I do my family (and God) are a part of, whether they or I like it or not. For example, right now, my enrollment in grad school affects my whole family's schedules. Especially Brandon, who has to do the running around of kids and errands that I don't have the time for. The kids picked up certain household responsibilities and more independent time. All of which limits their time for other things. And the tables have been turned in other seasons of our lives. This team compliments me and I them, so that we can each be who we are.

2017 brings with it so many good things - I can just feel it. Possibly the biggest for me though is learning - really knowing - that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. That God knows me and wants me to know Him, if I would only seek.

To paraphrase author Ann Voskamp: I am hard after Him.

Grade Perspective

After seeing the impossible syllabus first day of class last August, I had decided I would do my very best, but that I would be happy if my best was a B for my Methods in Study of Literature class (aka Thursday class). I would never have said that in previous English classes/degrees. I did get one A- in my masters program and was mad about it for years because it gave me a 3.9 GPA. However, this time around, I have a different perspective. This class was HARD before I even started! It challenged me and made me doubt myself and fight to get through it. I was working hard as I could but asking God "please just let me get a B." (FYI: B's are not good in PhD programs and you can't really get more than one, maybe two, and expect to be awarded the degree.)

Grades were in end of last week. I received an A in the Brit Lit class, which I expected. And an A- in Methods?! For me, a grade has never been more amazing, more hard fought, or truly earned. And even the minus part of it couldn't be more beautiful. This time, the minus is the difference between an A and B, not a low A and higher A.

Part of me wants to think the prof rounded it up or took pity, knowing I tried but fell just short. Not only is my prof not like that (hence the difficulty of the class), but I also know God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. My A- and all the change it represents within me (cause God knows how this class challenged me in personal ways as well) is to God's glory.