Day 22-24

I confess I am struggling to look on the bright side of things right now. The time for Chandler to come home is getting closer and I am strangely more fraught with frustration and sadness than I have been since he left. However, I know that joy is not always found in happiness. Sometimes struggles are required to understand and feel true joy. I know God is using this time to help me grow into the woman I am supposed to be, but I currently find myself questioning my work and abilities as a wife and potential mother. If I am perfectly honest with myself, I know that the perfectionist in me who wants to prove my worth at work has taken on too many responsibilities and I am feeling more and more incapable of adequately performing my duties. On top of this, I find I am so consumed with myself that I am not nurturing the relationships that make my job so special (the students I currently teach and have previously taught as well as the co-workers who have become my family and friends). I know I can love and encourage my students. I know I would be a much better teacher if I were craftier and more diligent in creating a more rich environment for my students. I know I would be better at these things with the proper support, but the truth is it just does not exist in our current educational environment. There are many amazing men and women who do a phenomenal job of providing these things for their students with love, patience, grace and humility all while keeping up with student work, paperwork, and familial duties at home as well. These men and women continue to amaze me, but I constantly find myself falling short. I ask myself annually if this is truly where I am supposed to be, or if I am stubbornly sticking to it because I want to prove myself worthy of standing with these amazing people. There are days when I feel things are going great, but this month it has become too difficult and I feel like I am letting people down left and right. I look forward to learning how God is using this time to strengthen me. Until then, I am grateful for the wisdom I have gained in previous times of frustration and distress, and I pray I do not end up burning bridges here in the final stretch of this deployment!

17-21

Apparently I am really bad about getting on my computer every night. I probably should have been less specific with my time frame. Alas! I find myself overwhelmed with love, joy and thankfulness tonight. I can't believe how truly blessed I have been to have known and been affected by hundreds of wonderful people. Recently I have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have been my family and support during this deployment. I would not have been able to stand so strong through some of the most difficult periods of this separation if it weren't for the men and women who have constantly shown their love and support for both me and Chandler. I wish I had the appropriate vocabulary to share my appreciation, but the only words I know are Thank You. So to EVERYONE who has been there for me, listened to me whine, complain, cry, talked me through some serious meltdowns, and made me laugh - from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU!

Day 15-16

I did not have to search far these past couple of days to find Joy in my life. Not only was I reminded that there are people in my life who are a joy to love, but that there are many of them. I am so very thankful to have been blessed with a loving mother who sacrificed many things to provide for my sister an me, great friends who have loved me through many "testy" moments, a husband who is my best friend and who puts up with me at my craziest moments, and a plethora of good role models who have taught me many wisdoms about what it is to experience and accept God's unconditional love. All of these people have loved me and helped shape the woman I am striving to become - one who is full of love, grace (in life, not movement - I've kind of given up on that one), patience, empathy and compassion. It's so much easier to understand and accept God's unconditional love for me when I remember how much I have actually experienced it from others. What could be more amazing and comforting than that?

Day 15-16

As weird as this is to say, I am am so thankful to have cried in the doctor's office on Tuesday and also for standing my ground afterward. I woke up Tuesday morning feeling the exhaustion that has become part of my daily experience. It has been some time since I have felt like myself, and though many of the recent conscious changes I have made have been positive and necessary, my body has decided to make some other not so necessary and definitely unapproved changes. Basically I have been feeling like an 80 year old dementia patient. So, I called my doctor (something I rarely do) and made an appointment. As I described the symptoms I was having, she added them to the ever growing list. Now I HATE feeling like a hypochondriac, so it took a LONG time for me to go to the doctor for a lot of these issues. Consequently I had a list of issues that would make a hypochondriac look normal to report. Knowing what she was probably thinking, I kind of lost my cool. All the frustration of not functioning properly at home and work because of the barrage of problems I have been experiencing kind of came out all at once. Thankfully she took me very seriously, but naturally her immediate response was that I was depressed and needed an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication. Don't get me wrong...I know depression and have lived with it for many years; but I am not depressed. I will be the first to admit it when I am (and will still be stubborn about medication) - but this has been a very different experience and I wanted to know what to do to make it go away, not just keep some of the symptoms at bay.  So after insisting that we keep looking for other possible causes for my symptoms she began doing some typical doctor-y things. She listened to my chest, took my blood pressure and then palpated my throat before doing some blood-work. As she palpated my throat, she lingered and began muttering some "hmms" and "huhs".  She then informed me that my thyroid was enlarged and she felt a goiter. At this point I thought to myself "What the heck is a goiter, and who in their right mind would come up with such a horrible name?" It's very difficult for me to bring myself to say that word out lound, but there it is. A goiter. So, I Googled "goiter" and found out lots of fascinating things about them, ,including the fact that they are often caused by hypothyroidism. As I looked further into the symptoms of hypothyroidism I was relieved to find that other people have had all of these crazy symptoms I have been having and then some. I love it when I am not the only weirdo out there. :) I also wondered if this could be the culprit in my case. I guess I will have to wait for ultrasound results from today and the information she gathered from my blood-work on Tuesday. Not to sound like I am hoping for a problem, but the fact is I'm having many of them and I would LOVE an answer to why I have been feeling this way. If it turns out everything is fine with my thyroid, that's great news! I guess I will start the search over until we either find the problem, or I give in to the anti-depressant/anxiety meds. Either way I hope I can begin to feel like myself again!

Day 13-14

Yay for Halloween trick-or-treaters! I had so much fun giving out candy to the neighbors' children (Minny Mouse, prisoner, two ninjas, and a beautiful butterfly). I loved getting a visit from my favorite monkey who was practicing before she went out to the strangers.





 

I can't wait until next Halloween when I get to share Halloween trick-or-treating with Chandler and prove him wrong. He insists that I didn't get the "good" kind of candy and the only way to win at Halloween is to hand out Snickers. Now he's afraid we won't have any trick-or-treaters because I handed out Wonka candy instead of chocolate. I guess we'll find out next year! :)