Empty Nest Full Heart

Discombobulated

 

We've been home from the hospital since Friday night, and I have to admit to having spent the past two days feeling somewhat discombobulated.  I walk into rooms and don't remember why, I spend way too long trying to figure out what I'm doing, and I lose things.  Like my work keys.  They're on a red stretchy thing (kind of like a telephone cord) that fits on your wrist, and there are 6-8 keys on a ring identified by colored tabs.  If you've seen them, would you let me know?  My goose could be cooked without them.

Anyway, what was I saying?

I think it's perfectly normal after spending  6 1/2 days at the hospital, where the world is somehow shrunk down to a single room, to feel a little misplaced.  Maybe I've had the bends these past couple of days and being home has been like undergoing hyperbaric oxygen therapy.  We've had several slow days and I'm almost feeling like myself again, which is a good thing considering facing the world is the first thing on the agenda today.

I was thinking about this last night and realizing there are many times in life when we feel a bit discombobulated - not the least of which is when the nest empties out.  Our world is upside down, our focus changed, our attention no longer required.  One of the best gifts we can give ourselves when we're hurting is time.  Time to spend with God, pouring out our hearts to Him and being wrapped in His loving arms.  Time to pamper ourselves (Lulu and I had our first mani-pedi of the season yesterday, and it was sublime).  Time to explore the interests that were laid aside during the child-rearing years.

And time to be patient with ourselves.  It took 32 years from the time our first child was born until the last one left home.  We can't expect to "get over it" just like that.  Grief is a little different in every person and some people feel it more deeply and/or for longer than others.  Girlfriend called her dad on the phone the other day when he was feeling ready to go home before his doctors would let him go.  She sang him a song from her childhood:  "Have patience, have patience, don't be in such a hurry...when you get impatient, you only start to worry.  Remember, remember, that God is patient too, and think of all the times that others have to wait on you."  He had to smile, and remember that sometimes we just have to submit to the process, lean into our troubles, and be patient for the outcome.  It's as true for us empty nest moms as it was for him.

Have a great week,

Gigi

Confession Time

Well, I have a couple of confessions to make today.  First of all, when I encouraged comment making, I did not expect to find a new one so soon!  Many thanks to Jennifer for sharing her heart.  It's sort of like having to learn to walk all over again when the kids leave and the roles change and everything is different.  Jaycee will be encouraged by your comment as you identified with her struggle.  Thank you!  Jennifer is starting a new chapter in her life in a new place with the support of family close by.  And in Denver, no less!  Flyboy graduated from Denver Seminary and we have many fond memories of the city.  I love Denver for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that in Denver, I always knew my directions (I am unbelievable directionally challenged - confession #2) because the mountains were always to the west.  

On a more personal note, my third confession of the day is that I have been in a real sulky snit for a good couple of weeks.  Truthfully, watching Flyboy struggle with a new set of symptoms for about a month has just about put me over the edge.  When you've been through cancer with the person you love most in the whole world (and not once, but twice!), you sort of feel like you deserve a break.  Flyboy has not had a break in a very long time and frankly I'm really getting tired of it.  He has actually had a better attitude than me and even that fact has rubbed me a little the wrong way.  Come on, Flyboy, feel just a little sorry for yourself!  Like the old proverbial chicken and the egg, we've struggled to determine if his new symptoms are a result of his diabetes medication suddenly not working anymore or if his diabetes is out of control because of his new symptoms.  He visited yet another new specialist today who was not helpful in any way, shape or form.  In fact, after Flyboy sat in the room for over an hour, the doctor was interrupted  repeatedly, making for a very choppy visit.  When he did ask questions, he would accept only a yes/no answer.  In the end, he ordered another expensive test, which may or may not be covered by insurance.  I was working my way up to an all out tantrum when Flyboy reminded me that all of this - the referral to this doctor, the weird appointment, the non-answers, and the less than satisfactory game plan - was no surprise to God.  God knew all this would happen and allowed it to be.  He, in His sovereignty, has not willed that Flyboy be free of health problems, and did not plan for us to have the answers we so wanted today.  And then, Flyboy told me over a bowl of soup at Panera that he is not so sure he's willing to be a human guinea pig any longer.  And together, we sorted our way through what had happened.  He is starting to think that he is not willing to submit to the next round of tests, but instead wants to focus on getting his blood sugar back under control (which will mean a return to insulin 4 times a day), and then see how the rest of him feels.  I am oddly at peace with this plan.

I think I've come full circle.  I am willing to support whatever he wants to do (or not do).  I am willing to put him back into the hands of God, no matter what that means.  I am willing to stop obsessing and set aside my fears in order to trust in God's plan, even when I can't see what it looks like.  I am reminded that it's not our circumstances that dictate our responses.  It's how we choose to view our circumstances.  I'm feeling better already.

A Comment on Comments

I just thought I should take a little pause from our regularly scheduled programming to mention a word about commenting.  Leaving comments at Empty Nest Full Heart is encouraged, and your comments help me to know if I'm speaking to you, as it were, or if I'm just blowing hot air.

If you've never commented on a blog, it might seem intimidating, or revealing, like getting caught at church in your slip.  It doesn't have to be!  In order to discourage spammers from clogging up blogs, servers require a name and an email address.  First of all, you don't have to type in your own name!  Whenever I comment on a blog, I sign my name as Gigi (oh, you thought that IS my real name?  No, it is what my grandchildren call me), because like a lot of us, I like to maintain a little cyber-anonymity when I can.  

Second, your email address is NOT published along with your comment.  Your pseudonym and your comment can be completely anonymous if you so desire.

And finally, in the space labeled "Web Site URL", this is where a person (like me) can enter their own site address (like www.emptynestfullheart.com).  This WILL show up along with the comment, and will be linked directly to the respective site.  What?  You don't have a blog of your own?  No worries!  Just leave it blank.

So, please...whether you agree or disagree with what you read here, leave a comment!  You may have an idea, or a recipe, or a point to make of your own.  Whatever you have to say, say it!  Your thoughts are welcome here.

Yes, I Know It Was Last Week...

Yes, I know that Valentine's Day is long gone and that I missed it here altogether.  That's because I was in the middle of my reunion weekend with Melvin.  We did take a few minutes in a frozen custard shop to call our valentines on the phone, but the rest of the entire weekend was absorbed by talking, talking, and more talking, so Valentine's Day was not, shall we way, at the forefront of our minds.  Part of our conversation, though, in recounting the highlights of the past thirty years, was sharing the stories of our marriage proposals.  

After hearing the story of our SIL's proposal to Elasti-girl (it IS phenomenal - I'll tell it sometime soon), Flyboy said, "Thanks alot.  Now you've made the rest of us look really, really bad..."  But I always loved the fact that Flyboy popped the question under the big Texas moon-lit-star-filled sky.  I thought it was very romantic.  And it was very Flyboy.  Not showy, not flowery, just from the heart.

Melvin's husband-to-be surprised her with this dialogue one night long ago:

Doc:  You know, if we got married you wouldn't have to change your monogrammed towels.

Melvin:  Huh...I'd not thought of that (their last names began with the same letter)...but I suppose you're right.

Doc:  That was a proposal, you know...

Melvin:  REALLY?  But I'm so short and you're so tall!

Doc:  So?

Melvin:  You're okay with that?

Doc:  Well, of course...

Needless to say, Melvin was somewhat surprised by the direction this conversation took.  But she did finally say yes.

And here they are, thirty years later, one still tall and one still short, both still in love...

I have only met Doc once, lo those many years ago, and my singular memory is watching him tie sutures to the arm of the sofa while we visited.  Melvin laughed when I told her that, saying he tied sutures in his sleep back then.  Her memory of Flyboy took us back to a Thanksgiving when Girlfriend was a baby, where we met for a quick visit at my grandparents' house.  It was late, and she was about to leave to head back home when Flyboy, ever the over-protective one, gave her a ball cap and told her to put her hair up under it as she drove.  She was rather surprised by his concern, but I wasn't. 

So, all this is just to say that while we didn't celebrate Valentine's Day in the traditional sense, the weekend did include lots of stories about our guys, who have been at the center of our lives for a very long time.  That was one weekend I won't soon forget.  

Friends in Need...

When we got up on the last morning of our reunion, Melvin was in the bathroom washing her face and I was looking out the window of our hotel room to check out the weather.  Melvin's husband had told her the night before that snow was in the forecast, and sure enough, it had started to snow.  We turned on the Weather Channel, to find that she would indeed be traveling in snowfall, while I would be enjoying clear roads.  Her route was solely on the interstate, though, so she felt confident it would be an easy drive home.

Mine was, indeed, an easy drive, slowed in Chicago by minimal traffic.  I've seen travel time multiply exponentially in the Windy City, but this time was quite tolerable.  Melvin, on the other hand, hit a patch of ice on the interstate not ten minutes into her trip that sent her fishtailing off the road and into a fence.  Mercifully, she was not injured, and though it took a beating, her vehicle seemed to be drivable.  Miraculously, it would seem, she made it all the way home without further incident, since she found out at the body shop the next day she had a cracked wheel that should not have been driven on.  Her journey, having begun quite dramatically, continued very slowly as the snow continued to fall and added many hours to her drive home.  I was so sad to hear of her accident and so wished I'd been there to hug her and pray prayers of thanksgiving that she was alright.  

I would imagine she is hurting today.

My friend at work, Elsie, was on her way to work yesterday when she was t-boned at an intersection.  While her car was totaled, she was protected from injury - miraculously, it would seem, since the impact was on the driver side of the vehicle.  Her airbag deployed, as did the one on the empty passenger side (with such force it broke the windshield).  Elsie came into work late morning, to meet a project deadline, which took her most of the day to complete.

I would imagine she is hurting today.

Would you join me in thankfulness that they both avoided serious injury?  Would you pray with me for their recuperations - both physically and emotionally?  And would you pray for Elsie, as she was counting on her already older-with-high-mileage-car to last a whole lot longer?  She is not in a position to be replacing it right now.  

What a reminder that we never know what the next minute will bring.  It is a comfort to know that nothing takes God by surprise and that He (while He allows bad things to happen to good people - we do live in a broken world) will sustain us in whatever comes our way when we trust in Him.

Oh My Goodness!

"Did you pick up where you left off?"

There is no picking up where you left off when you spend a weekend with a friend you've not seen in thirty years.  There is a massive amount of filling in the gaps...connecting the dots...comparing notes...and much more.

This was, without a doubt, one of the most amazing weekends I have ever experienced.  It wasn't without a bit of pre-visit-angst, on both Melvin's and my parts, as we wondered if it would be awkward, or if we would run out of things to talk about, or if our paths had taken us to places too different to find the common ground of friendship we had so enjoyed in high school.  

It began with my arrival at the chosen restaurant thirty minutes early.  I had allowed 15 more minutes than Mapquest had predicted it would take, and I somehow made up for 15 more minutes along the way.  I planned to park, relax, blog a little and wait for Melvin to get there.  As I drove up, I saw her next to her car.  We waved and I found a spot.  We hugged and Melvin told me she'd already been inside and had our name on the list.  What I still had failed to realize even then was the fact that I was not 30 minutes early; I was in fact thirty minutes late.  There was a time change I had not even considered!  Oh my goodness!

Melvin was gracious (and grateful I'd not stood her up) and we were off!  We began talking, and did not stop (except to sleep, groom, go to church, and call our valentines) for the next 46 hours.  There was not even a lag.  One memory led to another, one story led to ten more, and we talked, and talked, and talked, barely taking a breath.  Melvin got her degree in special education and taught school while her husband was in medical school.  They have raised three beautiful children who have all followed the Lord and are excelling in their endeavors.  

Life brings different challenges to different people, and while she had been learning about some of ours through this site, I listened (with varying responses from gaping mouth to LOL) to stories of numerous misadventures.  In the number one position?  Melvin's baby #3 was born in their brand new van as they arrived in the hospital parking lot.  With the engine still running, her husband jumped out, ran around the front of the van, yanked open her door, and caught the baby.  Oh my goodness.

I find myself at a loss to communicate how profound this experience was.  Time had not erased our heart connection.  While so much has changed, Melvin is the same person whose friendship I treasured so long ago.  Her laugh, her animated reactions, her common sense, her strong faith and time-tested values...these things have not changed.

Thank you, Melvin for an incredible weekend.  I am exhausted to the core, but in the very best way possible.  It was like a little taste of heaven.

Reunion!

I purposely did not attend my 35th high school reunion last summer.  It's not because I don't care about what has happened to everybody, I do...it's just when I added up all the costs involved ($400 airfare, $200 hotel, $200 rental car, $75 reunion dinner - the ONLY planned activity, $100 incidentals), it just didn't add up.  And as I've looked at the pictures posted online since then, I'm even more glad I didn't spend the money.  None of the people there were good friends of mine, and I'm not sure I would have reconnected with any of them.

But the real reason I didn't want to go?  Melvin, my best friend in high school was not there.  My family left Orange County soon after I got married and moved to their mountain home.  Melvin's family left California altogether not much later, and then my parents made the migration back to Oklahoma after that.  Our paths have just never crossed since then, with the exception of a couple of very brief visits, the most recent one having been 30 years ago around Thanksgiving time.

We have communicated enough to know the names of each other's kids and what our husbands have been up to through the years.  We know each other's address.  But a face to face visit?  Not for a very, very long time.

Until today.

Today, I am leaving for our highly anticipated meeting halfway between our homes, about a four hour drive for each of us. We're staying in a hotel for two nights and will have lots and lots of time to catch up and reacquaint and connect the dots and fill in the blanks and remember...

Stay tuned!

Letting Go

A friend of mine is a few years behind me in the process of the emptying nest, and hearing of her struggles has reminded me of mine back then. While she is dying a thousand deaths, I am finally enjoying my empty nest.  It's not that I don't love my kids, because I do - and there's nothing I wouldn't do for them.  But because of where we are in our lives, I am past the grieving stage and even past the acceptance stage in the grieving process.  Flyboy and I are loving these days together - the hard parts of childrearing behind us, we can now really enjoy the fruits of our labors.  This is not to say our kids don't have struggles of their own.  This is not to say we've washed our hands of them.  But they are adults now, and it's not our job to fix them.  Our job is to love them and support them and pray for them.  They are making their own decisions, independent of us, and that's the way it's supposed to be.

But I can remember the grief.

I can remember the first time Girlfriend left home.  We thought it would be the last, and we had no idea of what the coming years would bring.  We just thought she would be gone forever, and that our years with her had gone way too fast.  We grieved, crying most of the way home after moving her out to her first apartment. 

I can remember when we took Elasti-girl to college.  We unloaded her stuff, hauling it up the elevator to the 12th floor of the highrise dorm.  She was giddy with being "on her own" and we were terrified.  Leaving her there left us feeling like we had thrown her to the wolves.  From the barrel of condoms outside the elevator to the boys rooms on either side of hers, we couldn't believe we'd ever consented to such an arrangement, and we cried all the way home.

BammBamm's first leaving home was also wrought in tears, but for different reasons.  And while his story won't be told until he's ready, suffice it to say it was wrought with pain and feelings of failure and longings that things had turned out differently.

I get the pain of separation.

I get the feeling of loss.

I get the purposelessness.

And then, I remember waking up one day and realizing this was all a normal part of the process.  This is what being a parent is all about.  The children do grow up.  They do leave home and live on their own.  And we do have to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives.  When you stop and think about it, being given a blank slate and some time to paint a picture of a new tomorrow...that is an exciting prospect.

From work to ministry to play...from reinventing the marriage relationship and enjoying the time to rediscover one another...the possibilities of the empty nest are just waiting to be explored.

If you are like my friend who is struggling as the chicks are taking flight, my prayers are with you.  I understand your desire to hold on.  And I'm smiling on the inside, because I know that when you finally let them soar, you'll be soaring, too.

Snow Day

I don't care what the ground hog says.  Winter can't be over until you get a stop-your-life-and-sit-on-the-couch-drinking-tea-and-watching-it-snow-like-crazy day. Yesterday was that very day.

I was one happy girl.  

Awake half the night with anticipation that the possibility of a snow day might indeed become a reality, I was watching the clock from 4:30 on, knowing that if school was closed, a call would come around 5:00.  No call came, and I laid in bed until 5:30, turning the alarm off before it rang, and got up, making the slow and sad walk to the shower to prepare for the day.  I set my phone on the bathroom counter, went to the kitchen for a drink of water, and headed back when...my phone was ringing...yes...yes...eureka!  It was true! A snow day!

And what a glorious day it was.  A quiet morning, practicing the piano, hot tea on the sofa watching the snow fall, catching up on a few things around the house, some more lounging.  A nice middle-of-the-day conversation with Elasti-girl provided a chance that we don't often get during the work week to chat, due to the time difference between here and the UK.  That was followed by a phone call from Girlfriend, who suspected I might be home and called to check.  Then, a yahoo chat with Pebbles (who is finally enjoying a welcome respite from morning sickness) and I was happily caught up on all the news.  Right smack dab in the middle of a work day.

Life is good.

BFFs

Thanks to the networking genius of Facebook and the fact that blogs offer just way too much information, I have reconnected with my best friend from high school, who on this site, is known as "Melvin".  It's not that Melvin and I ever really LOST contact.  We've had each other's addresses and have exchanged Christmas cards quasi-faithfully through the years.  But lately, we've actually been emailing and that has made us hungry for some human contact, and now we have a plan!

Melvin and I are meeting halfway, which should be about a four hour drive for each of us, and we are spending a weekend in February catching up.  I don't feel old enough to be saying this, but we have not seen each other for over THIRTY years.  Neither of our sets of parents live in California anymore, where we graduated, and thus "going home" has never afforded us the opportunity to easily see one another.  We have grown up, we have raised children, and we have lived a lot of life.  Melvin recently said to me, "I'm looking forward to knowing the grown-up you."  I thought that was a very insightful comment - and it will be fascinating to see how different/the same we find each other after all these years.

When we were raising kids our attention was focused on the "now", and we never quite got around to making any reunion plans.  Now that we're empty nesters, it's the perfect time to reinvest in the friendship that got us both through high school.  In fact, I think that renewing an old friendship is the perfect empty nest project.  Stay tuned!