Limbo

The longest night of the year came and went. I took a nap that day, spent the evening watching Disney + with the family, and went to bed at a reasonable time for another nine hours of sleep. This is not depression, but wintering well after a fall season of working weekend overnights and not getting enough sleep. It was decadent, luxurious, and a necessary reset in preparation for working overnights the next couple of weekends. These are the last.

Spring semester is busy for me, besides school. We brought back our child from residential. Not that they were doing better, but they were spiraling, and I thought we could do better for her here. She isn’t allowed back in public school yet, but the school did provide a Chromebook for virtual instruction at home.

Life is just incredibly, incredibly full. Supervision for a needy child. Preparing for not one, but two careers. Trying to raise the rest of our motley clan, make sure there is supper on the table each night, and that everyone gets to their scheduled things. I would not trade it. I love school. I love my family. My body is going to break if I don’t get more consistent sleep.

I start a counseling practicum in the coming semester, and I am so excited for that, excited for the chance to put theory into practice actually sitting and meeting with clients. The challenge will be scheduling practicum times around appointments and classes. The kiddo back from residential has a lot of weekly appointments. I’ve misplaced an important folder of documents, again, and I am going to have to replace them.

And so this liminal space of reset. There is a beautiful shelf of Church Dogmatics waiting for me, but they will continue to wait, with some questions being lived a little while longer before being answered. I have my books for the coming semester, carefully shelved and unopened. First I sleep. I replace the missing documents. I tie up a few of the loose ends left dangling. Who knows? Maybe I even drop in to visit with a friend I haven’t seen for a while. The hustle is coming, but for now, I winter.