Sacred Sunday #6 – Headache, Party, and Men’s ACTS Retreat

Sacred SundayIt is kind of annoying to be a blogger and get told a lot of secrets this week. I have had 3 significant things happen these past few days that I’m not really able to discuss yet.

One of these things has induced the fuzzy eyeballs of grief and making it difficult to want to write this evening. It doesn’t really seem real yet and I don’t know a lot of details.

I don’t quite know what to do with myself, so I guess I’ll just write. I don’t feel quite coherent enough to write topically as I experimented with in my last post, so I’m just going to see how chronologically works for me tonight.

I also realized that by scheduling a post to occur in the morning, that I can’t post to facebook immediately after I publish, which I find annoying. So I’m going to call this a Sacred Sunday post and just publish it now and share it to facebook the way I used to.

Thursday

After dropping off the kids, I met the plumbers at the old old house as the toilets was leaking and so they replaced it. So to clarify, the “old house” is the house I just moved out of last fall and the “old old house” is the house that I moved out of before that.

Kraston bought the old old house in the fall of 2007 just before we got married. We moved out of it in the summer of 2013 and have been renting it ever since. We are only on our second tenant and it has really been a pretty smooth process.

After the plumbers finished up, I went to Reasor’s and ordered cookies for younger son’s birthday party on Saturday. I also bought a couple of party trays. One was meat, cheese and crackers and the other was apples, cheese and grapes.

I dropped those off at the house and then went to Lafortune to meet my friend Whitney from the gym. I have learned that running is not my new favorite thing. We did a mixture of running and walking for an average speed of 16 minutes per mile, which I don’t think is very fast. I also don’t think it is much faster than I was when I was race walking after older son was born.

I think I’ll stick to my dance fitness classes. But I did go ahead and sign up for the Cinco de Mayo 5K next weeks since favorite trainer thinks it would be a fun bonding activity for us.

I then zoomed out to Broken Arrow to have lunch with my sister. I’m so glad that we are having lunch together every now and again as I feel kind of disconnected from all of my siblings.

I then went to work and started getting a headache around 4pm, which meant that I didn’t feel up to going to the sendoff for the Men’s ACTS retreat. I came home and napped until a couple of friends came over for an hour after the kids were in bed. I had taken some mucinex and that seemed to help briefly.

Headache / Friday

I am still not for certain if it was a migraine, something sinus related from being outdoors running, dehydration, hormone related from starting my period this week. Ugh, just a combination of all of it probably. I didn’t leave the house on Friday. I somehow got the kids ready for school and my parents came and whisked them away. I skipped going to the gym. I rescheduled seeing my spiritual director.

I ran out of mucinex and didn’t have any caffeine in the house, so I managed to get a Target delivery scheduled to bring me mucinex and Barq’s root beer (the only root beer with caffeine). I also somehow managed to get the headache to ease up long enough to pray my scheduled hour for the Men’s ACTS retreat.

During my prayer, I spent some time reading my bible. I somewhat ambitiously started a One Year Bible Chronological Reading Plan back in January, but I’m only on day 15. Only 350 more days to go.

While I was reading the story about Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, I cried. I don’t remember crying during that story before. I cannot imagine trussing up any of my kids with that kind of faith.

But then a funny thing happened. I smelled him. Kraston. Like he had walked through the room a moment ago. I finally had one of those moments that my therapist was trying to explain to me. Where I knew he was with me. I cried some more. It doesn’t surprise me that it would be while I was praying for the Men’s ACTS retreat. He loved his ACTS service so much. Once my hour was up, my head started hurting again, so I went back to bed for a while.

Friday Evening

With the caffeine, mucinex, and tylenol, I managed to feel slightly human for a while in the evening. I did some research on my timeshare options in Florida. I am now planning to take older daughter to St. Pete’s Beach outside of Tampa for 3 nights for her birthday in December.

I also did some research on parental control apps for computers and phones. I decided I like an app called Qustodio. Older son has been wanting to play on my old phone and an old laptop and I’ve been putting him off until I could pick out some software to keep tabs on things. He isn’t very satisfied with being limited to the kindle.

Older son stayed up too late and ended up sleep walking about an hour after bed. I sent him back to his room, but he just boomeranged back and laid down in the middle of my bed. So I gave him a pillow and shoved him over to the far side. He is too big now to carry him back to his own bed.

Saturday

I got to sleep in just a bit before we had to go get things going. Since I hadn’t left the house on Friday, I still had a few things left undone to get ready for the party that afternoon.

So we left the house about 9:45 to go to to Party City for favor bags and other party treasures, went to the dance class at the gym, had lunch at Macalister’s Deli with my mom and Kraston’s parents, bought presents at Target, picked up the cookies from Reasor’s and made it home before the party started.

Son had not wanted to invite his school friends, so it was a fairly smallish party of family and a few family friends.

About halfway through the party, my headache started creeping back in, so I was glad when my nanny arrived and the last guests departed so I could go take a hot bath with epsom salts. I also drank a couple oz of Barq’s and so by the end of my bath I was feeling a little better.

Again, with the headache lingering, I wasn’t able to go to the Men’s Candlelight service in Wellston, so I just went to bed early. I love going to the Candlelight services, so I am always super bummed when I don’t get to go. I think this is only the second one I’ve missed since we went on our retreats in the fall of 2015.

Sunday

We still had a dozen cookies left over, so we took them to the return reception for the Men’s retreat. Older daughter has her daddy’s servant’s heart and so she helped with the cleanup of the reception. She loves helping so much. Even the boys helped a little bit with rolling up the mats in the gym, but she wouldn’t leave until the bitter end.

We went home so baby girl could get a nap in before the gym and my parents picked up the two big kids to take them to the Bedlam baseball game. Baby slept right up until 3, so I was a bit late to my 3pm class. There was a time I would have just stayed home. But I know better late than never.

I still got in 40 minutes of dancing. I definitely needed the endorphins since I had a missed call and two texts from two different ACTS sisters asking me to call them asap. I remember thinking, oh no, who is hurt? But I should have known it was worse than that.

I took a few minutes to collect myself after hearing the news and didn’t know what else to do but continue on the usual routine for now. I did go back by my house so I could change out of my workout clothes since I would be going to a service at a chapel at 7.

We went to my grandparents house and played. They were in a pretty good mood, but I was pretty fuzzy the whole time. Luckily baby girl was in a good and feisty playful mood, so she entertained them well.

The two big kids were still at the game, so I took the two little ones with me to the chapel. We sat in the back since I wasn’t sure how restless the two little ones would be at that late of time. Baby girl managed to break my rosary and then younger son had a #2 accident, so we left early. I didn’t get to see any of my ACTS sisters while I was there, but it was good to see how many people showed up.

Final Note

Please pray for my 3 special intentions for the 3 things I can’t write about on here. The only thing that stays the same, is that things change. Time for a bedtime snack and to go to bed. Pray I stay out of the leftover gummy bears.

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