Blech

I made up that word. It's the sound I make when something is gross or lame or more than I feel like handling at the moment.
It's the noise in my throat when I hear Beth Moore tell me she waited 16 years between hearing God's call and finally stepping into it.

It's the sound I feel when I think of my friend's 17 year old who just arrived to his temporary, but long term, room. In prison.
It's the feeling I have listening to my stomach grumble knowing two of my boys threw up this week (one on the counter. One on the carpet. Cool. )
It's the feeling I have all the way to my bones when God so subtly reminds me of the writing I have before me that I am procrastinating like a freaking champion.
It's the noise that represents the disappointment when I realize I am living out Paul's ever cryptic "I do what I do not want to do…" which always makes me think of Abbott and Costello.

It's the sound in my gut when I know I am supposed to be doing something else. I don't know fully what. But I miss my kids. I am either supposed to stay home and give up on this full time life of teaching or pray for better organization and six more arms to be a full-time working mom of five children.

Blech.

I went to a job interview because I love teaching English as a second language, and there was an opening for a part-time professor. Two things happened.

I spent one hour in the chair: ten minutes interviewing and being offered the job and 50 minutes counseling my interviewer. She is nearly old enough to be my mother and a wife and a mother of one child. She is a very impressive woman who spent that time asking me how I maintain balance of work and family. Amazingly, I had some answers. Rather God knew what she needed to hear. She was amazed when I said I couldn't work four nights a week because my husband and kids are my priority. She couldn't understand my choice. She spoke of her hurting daughter who always complained of missing her because she worked so much. It was a glimpse into a life I have been mindful to avoid, but also a life eerily mirroring parts of my own all of a sudden. Under my breath I mumbled. Can you guess it? Yes.

Blech. And then,

I caught a glimpse of an alternate life.
Maybe I could stay home. We could lose our car payment (which we loathe anyway) and I could homeschool my littlest rugrats again and make a little extra dough as a professor and (and this is just the cherry) watch my new neighbor's brand new. Teeny tiny. Gray Brown baby. What? That's his name. I am not kidding, nor would I want to be. He's the best baby currently in the world.

I would cut my salary in half. I would lower my expenses only a smidgeon. But my family would be overly blessed (if I do say so myself). And then today wouldn't have ripped my heart a bit tinier and made the word Blech wrench in my throat.

Instead it would have felt perfectly at home spending time with Samuel. I teared up in the backyard when he helped me fill a bird feeder. Something is not quite right.
Blech.