finding our middle

so....i saw a counselor yesterday. it's funny...when i thought i might have breast cancer over a year ago, i called the mammogram place immediately and the soonest they could get me in was two weeks. i dragged my feet for a week on calling a counselor, finally did it last friday right before close of business, and she just happened to have an opening this monday first thing in the morning. funny how that worked...

i liked her. she was clear, pretty direct, a good listener. yeah, i know...she's a counselor...for the love of god, she better be these things!!! yeah, well, she was...

and it's funny to me how this seems to have affected my whole house that i did this. the kids don't know where i went yesterday...just that i had an appointment. they didn't ask anymore about it, which i tend to think is because they're boys, but maybe not.... yet, the house seemed a little more tentative, sensitive... but not in a bad way. my spouse was definitely feeling differently. but again, not in a bad way. i mean, it could be that i was the one feeling differently and nothing more. and while i am sure i was feeling differently, i think there was more to it as well.

see, a friend told me that when you get help for something you've been carrying around for awhile, that it changes the balance in your close relationships...changes the dynamic. and while sometimes i may feel like a dynamic in my marriage needs to change...the not knowing how it could change can get scary and sometimes cause me to hang on to what i already know (and NOT make the change...if you're following my rationale here). it's a funky little dance...and how i move is based on how brave i'm feeling, how confident, and how much faith i have in my tank...

a small aside...the night before i went to the counselor, i reread my last post on n...so yesterday there was one of those funny-God-moments when i was talking about parenting a teen and she said, (basically), "it's different when they're two and we're pulling them out of the street for their safety than when they're thirteen and we're showing them acceptable ways to handle their anger...but that's for their safety, too, because there are a lot of unhealthy ways of stifling anger in our culture..." uh, yeah, i was impressed in some way i'm not even sure i understand right now....

so my family is still moving forward. it's just that we're just taking our steps a little smaller, a little slower...like when you walk to your bed at night, in the dark, and you can't remember if the kids put the legos away when you asked or not... and that's probably a good thing. (the slow and careful part...not the legos...legos in the dark BAD....)

peace