Sorry I am so inconsistent in posting these days... I think about you guys all the time, but am going through a rough patch. I try to be upbeat for y'all, even funny when I can but life is beating me up a lot lately and it has been hard to find positive spin.
As most of you know by now, we moved to Maine from Tennessee this summer to take care of my aging parents after my mother got breast cancer this spring. It has been difficult lately...Ok... That's an understatement.
There is a reason nobody who lived closer was willing to help or continue helping them. You see my mother has certain personality "quirks" that makes her difficult to deal with on a long term basis. She is generally a really sweet, generous woman but she does have an extremely lazy streak mixed with a somewhat over active since of entitlement... Mix those together and it can be extremely hard to be the one in the position of helping her. She literally won't do anything for herself if she thinks someone else can or will do it... and I do mean anything. (I am trying to avoid being somewhat graphic here...) One additional downside of this is that if you do something for her once she now sees it as your job... forever. As for her sense of entitlement she believes she is entitled to a life free from any physical discomfort and will refuse to do anything that may cause her discomfort if she can get away with it... To this end she also feel entitled to any assistance she may need in her quest to avoid all forms of physical discomfort. I could give you guys tons of examples of this, but promised myself I wouldn't allow this post or this blog for that fact to become a rant about my struggles with caring for my aging parents. I will tell you I did have yet another long hard conversation with her the other day. These talks do seem to help but it doesn't seem to last long and each time it is extremely emotionally draining for me.
On another front, poor Sparky quickly followed her first love with her first heartbreak. They met only a couple months ago and only officially "dated" for three weeks so the "adult" in me says it should be no big deal, but I see the pain she felt and it is very real. It brings back all those memories of heartbreak from that age. My personal theory is that with the lack of life experiences to teach them to guard their hearts teens seem to feel these things extremely deeply... I don't know what really caused the breakup... I'm not sure they do either. (And I don't really want to air all her personal stuff here.) I just know that the tears Sparky shed for days were very real and it was heart-wrenching to watch. It would be easy to blame it all on the boy, but realistically he is a great kid. In fact as much as I wanted to be mad at him for causing my baby such pain, I have to admit there is part of me who will miss having him around. The "breakup" happened last Sunday, and last night we were completely tear free for the first time so maybe she is starting to move on a little. She isn't in any hurry to try dating again anytime soon which is good news for both of us!
To add to all the fun in our lives we are currently looking for a new church. When the girlies and I were flying back and forth this spring we went to a local church that I went to as a child and have family that goes to church there. The girlies and I liked it a lot but understood that when we decided to move here that my husband might not feel the same way. We were relieved when he liked it too, he had a few reservations, but overall he was ok with us continuing to worship there. Flash forward a few months and we decided to take the "membership classes"... This is when we found out that we have some major doctrinal differences of opinion with part of the church (including the pastor)... We could maybe live with some of the differences ,but it turns out there is a split in the church on doctrine. They don't make a clear choice on where they stand on some issues that are important to us. For Paul the decision to look elsewhere was less about the differences in doctrine, but about the choice they make for ambiguity. He is a "mean what you say and say what you mean" kind of guy and he just didn't see how we could continue to seek membership there. We tried to quietly leave the membership course but of course the pastor and some others wanted to "meet" with us to find out why. They understood our reasons, but it became abundantly clear to us during that meeting that this might not be the right church for us. We have visited a couple churches, and there are two more we want to try, but lets face it, Maine feels about as far away from the "Bible-Belt" as you can get. We are not exactly spoiled for choice here, so pray for us that we can find where we belong. I really need that support of a stable, consistent place to worship with like believers to feel grounded. (And boy oh boy do I need to feel grounded somewhere right now..)
You put all of those things together and add the fact that I really don't have any friends I can talk to here yet and two weeks of nearly non-stop gray, rainy weather you get a Rebecca looking for the "chicken exit." I am sorry I haven't been a very good bloggy friend lately... I am going to do better...
I felt like I needed something to look forward to... Then I remembered, Christmas is just around the corner and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Christmas... I would have to work hard not to be happy at Christmas time... I fully intend to bore y'all with lots of posts about my obsession with all things Christmas...
Thanks for listening,
