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Miss Havisham, I presume

My computer has been telling me, "You have not backed up your information in 50 days..." 51 days, 52 days, 53 days...

My kitchen calendar was still on August and, I discovered this week, so was my office calendar.

This past Wednesday I finally finished reading a book, my first since 17 August. I think I get bonus points because said book was neither about child development nor breastfeeding.

I'm eating cold leftover steak out of a baggie and typing quickly, listening to the new sounds around which my life rotates... the grunts, squeaks, and sighs that mean I have only so many minutes before Daniel, my baby, wants something.

All the familiar markers of my life are completely disordered and, at this time, unhelpful. When each day is a blur of feeding, sleeping, changing, playing, trying to go to sleep, changing, feeding, and paperwork... I don't really need a calendar or even to back up the things that used to seem so important.

In a week or so, I will be going back to work, which means now I need to consider how to have some semblance of a schedule. The coffee maker that is on my counter is representative of all the friends and relatives who have come to help me. I don't drink coffee, so it only appears to give the caffeine fix to those who are living the schedule-less life with me. Now they have gone and I have to figure out when to shower (at 4 am when I know he's sleeping?). How to make sure the dog gets enough exercise. How to eat dinner in 5 courses... an apple at 5 pm, a porkchop a 5:30, mashed potatoes at 6:15, a handful of spinach at 7:30, half a bar of chocolate with a glass of milk at 8:45.

It's all new every day and I just wait to see what happens.

I did update my kitchen calendar last night. Moving ahead to October (skipping September) was more exciting than I thought it would be. It means there are only two more calendar pages until 2010. It's less than 80 days until Christmas (do you know where your sermon is?), but that also means it could be less than 100 days until my husband returns from deployment. We don't have a date and won't until two weeks out.

But the days are full of possibility, rolling over, smiling, sleeping 5 hours in a row... and as each day passes, Daniel, Ivan and I get closer to the date when we can be the family we were meant to be with Rob at home.

So did you call me and not hear back? Did you email me and receive nothing in return? Slowly, I'm coming back to the rest of the world. Slowly, I'm moving up to October. Slowly, I'm regaining strength. Slowly, I figure out how to be a mother and a pastor. And slowly, I move more fully into God's grace, though that movement has very little to do with me.

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