When it rains, it pours

Students in my classes use a term to refer to a number of different emotions or situations.  As best as I can understand, as long as it is a negative emotion or situation which involves bitterness in any way, shape or form, they can use the word "SALT" or "SALTY" to describe it.

"I'm chucking salt!"

"That teacher is so salty because so many of of us didn't finish our homework."

"Why are you being so salty towards me?  I didn't do anything to you!"

It's a pretty creative term, really - seeing as salt is quite a bitter compound.  What an innovative way to communicate negative experiences.

So, in light of this newfound vocabulary word, let me just say:  "I've been feeling pretty salty lately." Hm.  No.  How about,  "My life's full of salt".  Um, no.  I'll try this: "Why so much salt in my life, all at once??"
Hm.  Maybe I'm too old for this teen-RVA jargon.  I guess I'll just stick to the old phrase,  

"When it rains, it pours." 

It started with receiving some pretty intense, negative feedback on my failures from someone I love.  While I needed to hear it, I definitely felt pretty bummed that I had let a friend down, and that I had been oblivious that I was doing it all the while!  Soon afterwards, I heard another friend had died, and then later, that a little boy, one of Deste's friends in Rwanda, had fallen off a motorcycle taxi and had broken some bones.  Then I got what I took as some negative feedback from an area where I've been trying my absolute hardest.  Another little boy's family in Rwanda was sick, and went to the "traditional medicine doctor" for medicine, which made them all much, much sicker, and we were worried some might not even live.

Linda the water-rat

Meanwhile, I was struggling at home to find a way to keep up with grading 90 essays and checking over 400 journal entries a week (plus whatever other assignments I needed to grade), and wondering how on earth teachers have managed such a crazy workload since schools began. 

I felt like a rat in a swimming pool, paddling like mad to keep my nose out of water, yet with no hope of climbing out of the unreachable side-ledge and climbing onto dry ground.

My kids were beginning to complain that they never saw me anymore, and that I was living at school, and the worst of it was, they were pretty much right.  Tim, naturally, was being an amazing sport through all of this, but even he has his limits.   Finally, about 9 weeks into the school term, Tim and I hit what I'll call "stress-fracture" week. 

If you are married or involved in a long term relationship, you know what a "stress-fracture" week is all about.  C'mon, admit it.  You know what I'm talking about!  

After pushing back on life hurdles too hard, for too long, with too little down time to relax and rest and re-create, a time comes when relationships hit a wall.  

 And ours sure did.  

One day, all was fine.

The next, we were each wondering what on earth we had ever seen in each other.

After two months of living here, the stress of the transition, of getting used to the mom and wife going to work each morning and staying late trying to figure out her electronic grade book and online Moodle site, looking at bills together that we didn't have the funds to pay, missing our college kids SO badly, hearing that my mom and dad were sick, getting a slightly worse test result back on my kidney situation, and not having a clue what to do about it, getting some other bad news from home, trying to learn 100 students' and 50 staff members' names, having a 6 year old who kept throwing a fit at bathtime and bedtime (aren't we too old for this problem?), and having what feels like an overwhelming amount of new things to learn and do on our "lists", we ended up neglecting each other and paid the relational price for that. 


Maybe it is extra important for Tim and me to continually make time for each other, to seek to understand and appreciate each other, because we are polar opposite personalities in pretty much every way imaginable.  Being SO different is a sure fire recipe for misunderstandings to occur! 

Polar Opposites, Tim & Me

Some dear friends prayed for us, and after a few days of us trying not to act upset around anyone else in the house, but pretty much ignoring each other the rest of the time.....

.....we finally prayed together, and went for a long walk.  And somehow, on that walk,

From this..... :(

.....to this!  Awesome, huh?

....God healed our hearts.  

I'm so impressed at how just praying, just opening ourselves to Him and telling Him our hurts together could heal so much pain and right so many misunderstandings, and brighten up everything.  Just everything.   Not feeling "together" with my man can remove the color from my whole world, leaving everything dark, dreary, and rainy-grey.  Everything else can be functioning perfectly - but if our relationship isn't thriving,
everything else seems BLEH. And the inverse is also true. If all else is in the toilet, but Tim and I are doing well, life still feels great.

.....to THIS!

From this....

 

And, isn't it the same, only more so, with our Maker?  When I get so busy that I go days without more than a nod in His direction, a "thank you" for my meals, or a glance at a token Bible verse or short devo page......my entire life perspective dims.  Life begins to feel more and more pointless, hopeless, random, brutally unfair and exceedingly "salty".

So, any new lessons learned?  ...Nope!

No new lessons, that's for sure.  

But, I have RE-learned some old lessons!  

The main lesson being that I should always go back to the basics, and go back to "Life Lesson #1", which I've learned and relearned too many times to count.  (Feeling like an Old Testament Israelite, anyone?)  So here it is, the wisdom I remembered from our stress fracture week.  

Life Lesson #1.  The Key to Living:  

I must always be about tending the garden

 of my most treasured relationships.  

 

My relationships with...
God,

myself,

my husband,

my precious children,
our original families

& my closest friends

must, must, must take precedence

over the myriad of "to-do's" that cry

out for my time and attention each day.

If I want to run myself ragged, end up empty, plum worn out, and feeling used and abused, I can run the "to-do" race until I collapse in a heap.   I must choose to not try to come in first in life, to allow myself to not be the best and to instead be satisfied with "good enough", so that I can resist the temptation to work too long and too much.  Like the old saying goes, "No one ever regretted not spending more time at the office when (s)he was on his deathbed."   I certainly do not want to regret not investing more into my relationship with Jesus, my relationship with myself, and my relationships with those I hold dear in my heart.

Many people spell 'love', T-I-M-E.  

And that's exactly what I've not been giving.

Relationships, just like paying jobs, take work and investment.  Lord, help me to remember this lesson this time.  Or, please wake me up sooner, and help me to repent quicker, the next time I forget and return to workaholism again.

Which relationships have you perhaps been neglecting, and what do you want to do to try to begin tending them again?