Real Life and Escape

We've been here for three months now and real life is catching up to us.  I was just talking to a (real life) friend yesterday who also has recently moved cross country, though more recently.  She said she is in the surreal state of being which I remember from a few months back.  In a way, that state was a bit nicer.  Alas, we must come back to reality or we end up in the funny farm.

School has started for all, boxes are all finally unpacked, the house no longer has its vast, clean unlived in look, yes, wherever you go, there you are.  We fall of the cloud eventually after any big and welcome transition.  But real life is not so bad.  Real life means coffee dates in person with friends you can reach out and touch.  It means that though there is pain, there is real healing.  It is the only way we can really appreciate anything in this life.

Source: itsthesmallthingsblog.blogspot.com via Nicole on Pinterest

And I am also finding that it is so much easier to deal with when for a few moments each day, we take a break from it.  When we nourish the creative.  When we pray and allow God to handle our problems while we just bask in His presence.   Real life will be unmanageable unless we allow ourselves bits of time to escape.

Source: art.com via Nicole on Pinterest

Wow, how was that for rambling, unedited?  Linking up at creative every day, 5 minutes just for me, and

We were at the campground almost all weekend and we babysat a friend's child both of those days so, I'm wiped out but it's not about to get easier. I started homeschooling again today, and it was a little rough. I'm also taking two classes myself, Annika's taking art classes, True's in Tae Kwon Do, they're both in piano and football and ballet start in a couple of weeks. Whew. So, yeah, I'll be busy.

Brett's friend came by and asked if we could maybe start watching his child for him on a regular basis. Um, no. Absolutely not. Fortunately, I'm not one of those people who thinks I can take on everything and then some. I don't think. Maybe I'll have to get a second opinion on that. It was Brett who said no. I, thankfully was not home at the time of the request.

So, I learned a couple things this weekend. Or reflected, rather on a couple of things. I've realized that just because I don't like something, it doesn't mean that thing is wrong. Today in my speech class, we were talking about culture and family culture. We were talking about how we should view differences not only without judgement but also without evaluation. That last part got me thinking. I recognize when I'm being judgemental, but it's very hard for me to not at least evaluate. And when I evaluate, I usually come to the conclusion that my ideas are correct and other's are wrong. So I guess that would bring me full circle back to judgement, wouldn't it?

Yesterday, I was "viewing" a certain aspect of my husband's family. It was an aspect that did not appeal to my senses. It ticked me off. It wasn't anything wrong, per se. I just couldn't comprehend it, and therefore didn't like it. First, I judged it. Then I silently asked for forgiveness for my attitude, and that should have been the end of it. But I kept "evaluating" it in my head. And even though I knew the behavior being displayed from his family wasn't wrong, I still wanted to pick it apart, comparing it to my family's behavior. That in turn, led me to a conclusion that okay, it wasn't wrong, but it was weird. So in the end I still got to be right in my mind.

Today during class it became clear to me that what I had been doing was evaluating for the purpose of justifying my feelings of superiority. Why do the way I do things have to be better, why can't they just be different?

Anyway, I thought that was an interesting learning example that I thought I'd share. I would write about my other realization but Verity woke up and it' s a little hard to write with her eating crackers on my lap.