Hanging On

Not sure why, but as I sit here typing this while the rest of the house sleeps I feel so depleted and even a wee bit depressed. Seems I am doubting every single thing I am doing these days, struggling to keep my head above water and yet knowing all along it would feel this way.

We have our ups and downs, our triumphs and mini tragedies...nothing major and over all things are going quite well. Not really sure where this is coming from but I feel quite detached from the life I had before we left for Kazakhstan, and I can't quite seem to get the bulk of it back. I feel disconnected from friends, isolated in ways I can't explain and that are probably my own fault, and wondering when I will feel our family is truly close again. It's not for a lack of trying, and we are having some great moments...but something is amiss.

Part of it is that God feels pretty distant right now, and my prayers are feeble in the attempt to regain what seems lost.

I usually do OK with change, working through the discomfort until you get to rhe new normal, but this time nothing is working very well. I am not unhappy, just unsettled and missing what was as we jump into a very new and different looking life which is not exactly a smooth sailing ocean cruise right now, complete with lounge singers. It compares more to an overloaded skiff barely hanging on through a stormy night while the sharks are circling.

I am disappointed in my ability right now to get with it, to reach out, to find time. I see all my failures and few successes, even though practically speaking I know we have a lot of them.

Emotionally I am still recuperating, learning as I go along that this will take time. Our time in Kaz was brutal on many levels, and I have not wanted to give creedence to it to the degree I probably need to. Hitting the ground running with 2 new children who need to feel settled more than I do has not allowed me time to really work through anything in my own mind, but instead I have shoved it aside.

Progress? Yes, we have a lot actually...I hear "Mama...mama...LOOK" all day long, so even when I am taking my 30 minute break to log school work while the kids play outside I am up 10 times to watch the latest inventive trampoline move or see the new "prize" won on the computer game. Or I am asked politely for every drink and every snack taken. Or I am alternatively ignored because someone else has shut me off for the day, and that too can be very, very hard.

We have sick kiddos leaving school early again today as Josh continues to battle stomach issues and I pray it is nothing emotional going on. I had Kenny on my lap tonight in tears as he struggles with worrying about CSAPS (state testing for all Colorado kids) and cries out to me "But mommy, I may be OK in math but I don't know anything else and doing bad means the school could be shut down!", reminding me again how very much my son suffers as I try to give him more realistic expectations. Angela wants so badly to show me she is smart which I already know, and that created some friction today during a card game with the other kids..subtle and nothing others might pick up on but leaves me filled with tension as I try to find ways to work with very tough dynamics and lack of language.

Will any of them ever really be OK? Will homeschooling really work? Am I trying to help in one area and failing in another? Can I find places and ways for the kids to fit in with other kids?

I found myself near tears 3 or 4 times today, knowing I am letting my friends down by not being attentive to their needs...and will probably lose some in the process or our relationships have already been inalterably changed, knowing I am not living up to my own expectations where school is concerned for Matthew, knowing there is no possible way I can ever probably help some of my kids fully heal, for right here...tonight...all I can see is what is lacking instead of what has been gained. And most of it is me.

Kenny did say one thing that got me to the core tonight. He was curled up on my lap after wiping away tears and said "How come you know how to be this kind of Mom? I don't know other Mom's who are like you...who know what is going on inside me and know how to fix it. Do you think God knew when I was in Kyrgyzstan that you should be my Mom?". It was what I needed to hear and as I type this the tears spring unbidden, but partly because I know how wrong Kenny us, and how little I can really fix.

I guess what I am trying to say is tonight is a very lonely night for me, and I probably have many, many more to come.

I hate this. It's worth it, but I still hate it.

Keep chugging along, Little Engine That Could, and one day hopefully soon you'll look back and smile.