Thursday, March 01, 2012

Thankful Thursday - Austin Ends Well

Austin was rough.  Mighty Rough.  I questioned my worth as a mom and wife for leaving my family without mie.  I questioned my worth in my career for a lot of reasons.

I tend to do these things when I'm alone.  Therefore, I don't let myself be alone often.  Thank you blog community for helping mie not to feel alone even when I'm technically alone sitting at my desk.

As it turns out, spending time away from your kiddos and normal family life on occasion can. be. wonderful.  Yes, I missed them, but despite my heavy concern God managed to take care of them better than I could while I was away.  He managed to help all the kids be good for daddy while I was gone, help daddy have lots of extra patience, and help keep all crazy accidents/incidents/troubles away from the family while I was gone so that things went really, really smoothly.  (And apparently Auntie K lets Logan go into his class "like a big boy" - I still have no idea what that means compared to how I do it but it totally lifted little man's spirits).

Hearing how well my kiddos were doing without mie around and how hubby was handling it all helped lift all the weight off my shoulders.  I was actually able to enjoy Mie Time sans family.  Tuesday morning I went down and spent nearly an hour at the water's edge, just mie and God.  (I have a picture but just imagine sunrise over a hill next to a lake where fish are occasionally jumping but otherwise there was complete serenity.  And an occasional sound of a boat which brought great memories).

I posted on facebook that I.  Was.  Refreshed.

(Good thing too because that day was a killer in terms of work.  That was when the career self-lashing began.)

In general, the work discussions were healthy and enjoyable.  We had LOTS of social time.  Adult social time. A 3 hour restaurant dinner with no children.  Lots of laughter.  (Lots of alcohol, by others, not mie, which made things interesting).  Lots of yummy food.  Lots of sleep.  Catching up on 2 weeks worth of Desperate Housewives.  And a run - yes, I even got to go on a run in the hills of the Lakeway (???) community where we were staying.  (During which I heard sirens - later I was told that the sirens were responding to an accidental emergency call to not only the police, but also the firefighters, and the ambulances, by my coworkers who were simply trying to adjust the "thermostat" because it was too warm inside.  Classic.)

But no taxes.

I didn't realize how refreshing the whole trip was until I arrived at home.  My hubby decided to let us go out as a family to our local all-you-can-eat pizza joint, a family tradition of sorts, so that we could reconnect and have fun celebrating mommy's return.  With 4 kids 1, 2, 3, and 5 this is often quite an exhausting task.  Managing the food and drink demands, restroom demands, "MOM can I go play the games NOW?" demands, and keeping everyone in their seat this trip is usually quite daunting.  Instead of being stressed I was completely relaxed and completely ready to meet the needs of all my kiddos and hubby willingly with a genuine smile on my face.  I was home with them. I'd missed them.  Now we were together again.

I also have had the opportunity to have lots of conversations with a few people about my career and although some of them were hard to have in the end it has been very helpful and God has redeemed that too.  I still don't know what's up His sleeve in this area, but I feel refreshed in the moment I'm in and that's all I needed for now.

So, as it turns out, maybe going away from the family for a bit is a good thing on occasion.  It had been probably 3 1/2 years since I'd spent time away from them for any longer than my workday, and maybe we all needed just a little bit of that.  It doesn't have to happen often, but maybe it's ok if I allow it occasionally.

And I did eventually get my taxes done.  I'll tell you about that on Monday (no promises).

By the way, I have my first contributor post up today at Foster2Forever.  Go check it out~!

9 comments:

Julie said...

Love the post over at Foster2Forever. I posted a link on my FB page. I don't think I had ever realized that we had been involved in foster care the same amount of time. It's amazing how you can become so passionate about something so quickly. You definitely know your stuff :)

Jamie {See Jamie blog} said...

It is hard being away -- but glad you found a bit of refreshment. I'm here for the first time, popping over from Foster2Forever. I'm an adoptive mom of a former foster child, and we've started the process for another adoption from foster care.

Mie said...

Welcome Jamie! Glad you stopped by :)

Kylee said...

I loved your post over at foster2forever, Mie. I think about those same things on a daily basis...what if my parents had said "no", what if God had chosen a different family for my 4 siblings? It's humbling for me that He chose my family. I constantly think how underserving we are of these kids!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Glad you were able to get away last week!

Dianne said...

Wow, loving your blog! Just found you through Foster2Forever and read like 20 posts. Finally had to comment... First, thank you for sharing your story with us. Your guest post grabbed my attention as if it was written just for me. We are in the middle of feeling that tug, but going through, apparently, all the typical questions you talked about. Our biggest question is concern for our current children, they are 7, 5, 4, and 1, and we keep thinking that fostering/adopting is something we will do when they are older or in college. But lately, I have been feeling like we should not wait. What suggestions do you have for us?

Penelope {Foster2Forever} said...

Thanks again for writing! Loved it!

Penelope {Foster2Forever} said...

Thanks for writing!
"What you do, isn't who you are." That saying became my mantra when I was in a career slump years ago.

Mie said...

Dianne - I know I commented on your blog but wanted to briefly post here too for the sake of everyone else.

Basically, my advice to people who believe they are being called to do foster care but aren't "sure" is to start the process. As you go through it I believe you'll either be told "STOP!" or get enough confirmation at each step to encourage you to continue. Then again - this is how we work in our family - we pray about something and if we're still not sure we start heading in that direction until we are stopped. It takes a lot of faith and obedience!

Dianne said...

Thank you Mie! Everyday I feel it more and more. I think we might just have to do that and see what happens. We may be coming back here for more wisdom & encouragement ;) Thanks so much!!