The Middle Places

My main purpose in writing this blog was, from the start, to simply record my thoughts and maybe some things that are going on in my life. Lately, I have felt intimidated as I start to write new entries and then stop writing before I am finished. The truth is that I think I want to write something brilliant or witty, but if I only wanted to capture those moments of my life I would only have one entry per year. Why the pressure? I don't know, maybe it is the fact that I know people will read some of these entries, but the truth is that very few people actually read them anyway. So I will now attempt to get back to the point of this whole endeavor.

Life is filled with ups and downs. It seems that sometimes there are overwhelming ups when everything is going just right and life seems ideal. Then there are the nearly suffocating downs that make you wonder if anything will ever bring a smile to your face again. Yet it seems that most of life is spent in the middle places.
The middle places consist of a mixture of smaller ups and downs that often coincide so that each day can be spent swinging back and forth between joy, confusion, frustration, laughter, and tears. Maybe that is why words often defy me. It is easy to write about the spectacular, but it is hard to write about the ordinary. While I know that some would encourage me to find the spectacular moments in the ordinary days - it is not always an easy thing to do. Even when those moments do come, it is hard to capture them in words when all I want to do is sit and soak them up as much as possible.
My current journey through the middle places has me excited and a little bit scared about having another child in four or five weeks, thankful for a job that I enjoy - working with a unique group of students, and yet discouraged that budget issues are not allowing me to get as many hours in the fall quarter. I am hopeful about a full time position that I have applied for, yet afraid to get my hopes up too much. I am tired of being in pain, yet hesitant to see doctors because of frustration involved with that whole process. I am "homesick" for my family since they are all on the Oregon coast for vacation without us this week, and yet I am thrilled with my immediate family that will soon be getting larger. I am enjoying settling in Spokane again, but I am feeling the itch to be overseas also.
Maybe this is not "normal" for a lot of people, but it seems that my life consists of many fluctuating and varying influences that cause me to spend a lot of time in the middle places of life. In the midst all of this though, I am very thankful for the moments of joy that do get me through the confusion. Moments when I look in the rear view mirror and see Natalie asleep in her car seat with her head drooping lazily down and to the side and her sunglasses her nose and forehead because of their wild angle. Moments when a student I have been working with for months finally reaches a goal and I get to witness their joy. Sometimes it is the way my wife smiles when I walk in the door, and sometimes it is memories of different episodes of "The Office". Last weekend, it was just fun to take Natalie out to the lake and watch her have fun waving at the fish that swarmed around our feet. The look on her face as she worked up the courage to jump off the dock (holding my hands) was amazing.
I love the moments of joy and don't always cherish the times of frustration and stress, but this is life. It is a journey of ups and downs, with some bigger than others. Lately though, it seems that much of my life has been spent in the in between places. There it is...nothing profound...nothing witty or clever, just the reality of life the past few weeks.

Sleep Deprived

Sleep is a wonderful thing! At least that is what I hear. I will let you know how I feel about it when I can experience it for myself...

Natalie has never been a good sleeper. I know, you are probably thinking "what do you expect Jeff, she is a baby?". Well, yes, I understand that there will be some issues from time to time with any child, but she has had more than most. The first 5 months of her life found me often awake with her for several hours in the middle of the night while she cried and screamed. then we transitioned to the point where she would sleep, but it came in spurts of an hour or two and the wake ups lasted for 15 or 20 minutes. Even that doesn't sound too bad if she did it for a long time, but she has never slept very long at night and her naps were even more irregular and short if they existed at all.

Now to be fair - she has improved greatly in the last couple months. In fact, she is probably averaging waking up only 1-3 times a night lately which has been a nice change. But the last three nights she has had a fever and not slept well. Last night I personally did pretty good and probably got a total of about six hours, which is good compared to the 3-4 hours of the previous nights.

So what is my point? I love sleep! It is incredibly challenging on so many levels to function consistently on much less sleep than I would ideally choose. I am exhausted. I look forward to when the next child is born in about 7 weeks because I think it should all get much better with two kids around!