BEHIND THE TIMES

I know I'm horrifically behind with my blog posts.  Jasper and K's birthdays were a month ago and I still haven't written anything about either one.  The boys' shared room is completely finished and I'm in love with it, and I still haven't posted pictures.  I have tons of other pictures to post about what we've been up to lately...but I'm stuck in a never-ending cycle of either not having time to blog, or having extra time and not wanting to spend the precious minutes with my eyes glued to a computer (like now).  Another big deterrent is how heavy life is here.  There is always something big, dramatic, and emotionally draining happening here, and I like to keep it real, so it's hard to write chipper, upbeat little posts when I'm mucking around in the trenches.  So pretty much a perfect line-up of life circumstances has to happen to bring me back around to blogging each time.

Even now, I am wiped.  I am feeling very much alone, very much a failure, and very much discouraged right now - have been for about a week.  Since moving here, my list of friends has been shaved down to a handful, which is okay because time-wise I'm not sure I can manage more, but it hurts to know you were given up automatically once your life circumstances changed.  I am very alone in the scope of the emotional toll this job takes, as well.  God has blessed me with growing friendships with the other house moms out here, but we are all so busy that we have to be very intentional about making time to get together.  The failure feeling comes from the "spinning my wheels" feeling I get when dealing with our middle school girls.  We are up to our elbows in training these girls - proper routines at bedtime, good hygiene, taking good care of personal items, respect for others' feelings and property, accomplishing tasks in a timely fashion, how to act like a lady in public, table manners, etc...all things they have never been taught before coming here.  It's cyclical and draining.  I really don't want to come here to complain - once again just trying to be honest and show all sides of what we are doing here.  Sometimes I want to pull my hair out and eat it.  Holy Moly.  And I am discouraged because of something personal and very painful that happened a couple of weeks ago that I won't discuss in detail here, but suffice it to say, it still hurts, it's still pulling at me, and I just can't seem to let go.  Please pray for me, and for our big, crazy family.

Next week is our relief week, so hopefully I will have some extra, extra time to catch up on some really great posts I had planned.  And hopefully I'll feel more like myself by then, too.