I dont remember the details

It is the middle of the night. 3:37 exactly and I am awake, writing in a blog that I have ignored for months. I remembered I had a blog, but decided to spend time on other priorities. I am now (again) allowed the opportunity to reflect on those priorities and whether I have them in any sort of order. Does the way I spend my time truly reflect what is important to me?

I am awake right now partly because I am in pain and I am waiting for the Tylenol to work its magic. The pain is from a surgery I had last week to remove my gall bladder and it makes it difficult to get comfortable in bed. I have been on the couch since Saturday when I came home from the hospital. Darin is sleeping upstairs and it has been a week since we have slept in the same room. I miss him. Obviously I miss more than sleeping in the same room as him, but this is the only way I can really objectively measure how "apart" we are right now. Darin is doing everything right now. All the household chores, all the child related duties, helping me with moving and changing my dressings. I don't feel like a burden, but I feel like I am just observing life here.

It hurts for others to touch me, so I am not connected to my family the way I would like to be. My 2 year old wants to sit with me, but cant sit still enough and her 29 pounds is more than I am allowed to lift. I haven't really seen much of my son in a week because his grandparents have been helping out by taking the kids for extended periods of time, and he has not been here. He came home earlier today (yesterday?) and he was short on patience and was mean to most of us. Not the sweet, well rested boy I left last week to go in for surgery. My older girls are helping out and seem to understand that I am limited. When they ask for something they say, " Are you able to..." They are also helping to keep the peace and to keep up with the laundry. I know all of my kids want their mom back to normal, and believe me I am ready to be back to normal.

So the question on my mind this morning is "what is normal?" How did it become the norm and should it remain that way? I was already planning to change hours at work because after trying to work 5 days/week, I now know that the timing was not right for the family. So I was headed back to 4 days/week. It was never really established how that would look. Who would get my hours and when was not set in stone when I went in for surgery, mainly because there would be time to talk about it afterward. It was supposed to be day surgery.

I have to figure out how to earn the money we need to get by, determine the most efficient way to earn it, and then reconcile that with whether that works for me as a therapist. The per diem job challenges me as a therapist, but I don't know if I am the right clinician for that place. I am skeptical about some of the treatments, maybe due to lack of understanding, but maybe there is a reason that I don't understand despite my efforts.

What I know is this: The past 4-5 months have been CRAZY and I don't remember much about them. I have worked my butt off and we have a few material things that we wouldn't otherwise have. I already know that I cant keep up that pace, but I need to know when I return to work that I am doing the best thing for my children and my family. It is funny how something can seem right, and can almost appear to come from God because it was so easy, but then in retrospect, it wasn't a good idea. I need to remember the details of my life. I need to remember why I am here, Who I serve and who he placed in my care. If I can remember those details, I should be better positioned to make decisions about my employment. I need not be held by the people in my life, but be held by the hands of God. I must not allow my sense of responsibility to my employers take the place of the love and care I am intended to provide to my family. I am acutely aware of how much I cannot do for them. I need to make sure that when I start to do more, that the first things I do are for them, not for work.