Saturday, March 17, 2018

Nailed It!

Soooo, maybe regular blogging hasn't happened yet, but two weeks is a lot better than two years, right?

Things are just rolling along pretty normally around here.  Spring Break is creeping up on us and I CANNOT wait!  I seriously never appreciated the awesomeness of Spring Break until I was back in a traditional school setting.  Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Mother Nature that Spring Break is just about here, so Chris and Coop are helping some local people pack a moving truck in the snow today!😁

I, on the other hand have stayed toasty warm inside cleaning the house like a boss!  That is, after spending half the morning watching mindless shows.

Saturdays, Chris and I have started a little tradition of coming down before the kids get up, fixing coffee and watching a house show together...we ,unfortunately, started referring to this as our Saturday morning adult cartoons and really did not realize how bad that sounded until it was kind of a habit to say...I promise, it is totally PG!  Our current series we  have been watching is Hometown, which is about some people in Laurel, MS trying to revitalize their small town by fixing up the old houses.  It is so fun to see the transformations and dream of all the things we could do to make our house cute if we had money!  😀

After Chris and Cooper headed off to help people move, I totally intended on getting up and going to the grocery or cleaning house or exercising, or something productive, but Lilly introduced me to another show that you totally need to watch.  It is a Netflix series called Nailed It.  It only has 6 episodes so you can totally binge watch it today and not even waist a whole weekend.  The premise is that they take amateur bakers and give them challenges to recreate cakes or baked goods done by professionals.  Y'all, it is a HOT MESS!  I sat on our couch, totally by myself laughing until I cried...it is funny because it is so accurate, those total fails are totally what would happen if I tried to bake that stuff.  I stopped watching after 2 episodes because:

  1. I wanted to be a responsible home owner and mother and gift my family with a clean house and possibly even groceries for real meals this week (still on the fence about that last part). 
  2. I felt that, as a loving wife, denying Chris the enjoyment of watching this with me was just too cruel...even after almost 23 years of marriage...I am a keeper, y'all!  
In complete honesty, number 2 carried a lot more weight than number 1.  Please, set aside some time this weekend to just try out 1 episode...you can thank me later!

So now, I SHOULD be sitting down to meal plan for the week and go shopping.  Instead, I am typing a blog.  Because, priorities!  Honestly,  Chris and I did something that we have been saying we were going to do for over a year but we finally bit the bullet and did it this week...we joined a gym!  BLAH!  I know this is a good thing, I know it is necessary for health, I know this should be considered a good use of money...but y'all, I hate gyms, and exercise, and eating healthy!  I just want to be little and cute and still eat yummy food and binge watch Nailed It.  But, since that hasn't really worked out for me, we are trying to be good and eat right and go to the gym...although, today, we are feeling several days of gym membership and may skip a day or two.  But, if I am going to spend money and time in a gym...I guess I should make better food choices as well.  I told y'all last blog that I was doing a weight loss Bible Study but that I was struggling with it.  Still struggling...still on day 10 after starting a month ago.  I was thinking about it this week and wondering why it is so hard for me.  I honestly get angry when I open it up and start working on the Study and trying to decide where my boundaries will be.  Why do I react like that?

This is what I have been wrestling this week and this is where I have landed...the last almost three years have been rough for me.  I had this picture of what life would look like doing ministry in SLC...but our actual life looks a lot like those fails on Nailed It.  I pictured walking along side Chris, hand in hand doing ministry together.  I imagined a church that embraced us and wanted to minister with us.  I imagined doing women's Bible Studies with our leaders and becoming a second mom to them.  I imagined using my place in a school to help make connections and build a bridge between life and ministry.  I imagined nights around a fire singing "Kumbaya" and kids in and out of our house constantly with fresh baked treats.  The reality is, being a full time working mom is HARD!  I can remember breaking down at one point when we were looking for houses here.  The market in SLC is so ridiculous compared to Jackson, TN  and the houses we could afford were depressing.   Not only that, we were restricted to living in a certain area of town.  Then, something happened at work that left me without a job for the next year that I thought I was going to have.  I remember just bursting into tears in the classroom saying I was just so sick of not being in control of anything...and I guess, in a way, I am still having that temper tantrum.

EVERYTHING is hard here.  Getting immersed in a church while also doing a parachurch ministry is hard.  Finding a real friend in the midst of a totally different culture is hard.  Working in a Title One school is hard.  Trying to help Annet in school when she just keeps falling further behind is hard.  Trying to find leaders that will just commit to leading is hard...and forget any community building or group Bible Studies.  Rejoining my family and trying to figure out where I fit in after being away for 20 years is hard.  Trying to fix supper and spend time with my family and get homework done and still find time to do Bible Study and have a little needed quiet time (Hello, introvert) is hard.  I am soooo tired of everything being hard.  So, as I realize that I NEED to be healthier, I want to look and feel better, and I need to make better choices...I also resist because I am TIRED OF EVERYTHING BEING HARD!  I really do not want to think about whether I am making a good food choice.  I do not want to count calories or resist my craving for chocolate...I just want something to be easy.  However, I also want to look not disgusting for Brooks' wedding...so with that picture in mind, Chris and I are trying to be encouragers and not enablers and we are trying to be serious about exercise and good eating....except part of today...because 50 cent corn dogs at Sonic today, let's just be real!

So, this week, I am trying to happily embrace the hard.  I am going to try to remember that things that are hard are the things that are most worth it and that victory after a hard fight feels so much more amazing than something easily won.  And if I'm not as successful as I hope, I can find friendship in the Nailed It contestants!

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