almost 4

My son's birthday is next week. I am woefully unprepared. Between the never ending audits at work and my direly overcommitted state of volunteerism at church, I haven't had more than a few hours to myself in weeks, and I've been selfishly using that time for grocery shopping. Add into that my biweekly saturday morning small group, two baby showers, a birthday party, several 14 hour work days, and my daughter's new aversion to sleep, and you have a neat summary of the list of reasons why I haven't spent three seconds thinking about Nathan's big day.

None of these reasons even remotely justify my lack of preparation, energy, and planning. Kids get so few birthdays, and the fact that my son's 4th is moderately to severely inconvenient to my busy, self-absorbed adult schedule just doesn't matter. I need to shift my priorities and get excited about celebrating with him the way he wants to. This year, he wants Grammie and Grampa to come visit, and he wants to go bowling. Both are more than reasonably accomplishable, and both actually sound like a lot of fun. Add in some vanilla cake, fancy plates, and some frosting, and I think we may have a successful birthday bash. He only wants one friend to come, for crying out loud. The kid has not set his threshold very high, people.

So what is my problem? Why am I so exhausted at the thought of a kid's birthday celebration, even a super small one? Why can I not get myself organized and motivated enough to plan this, buy presents and wrapping paper, invite people, etc? Is work that demanding? Is my job that hellishly invasive to my mental and emotional space that I've sunk to looking at my son's birthday as an inconvenience?

I'm disgusted at the thought. I need some life change, stat. More and more I keep coming up against the idea that if I want to live the life I imagine for myself, I need to get out of this job. Work lately feels like it never turns off. The number of tasks I have to complete in the 9 hours I'm there so far outweighs the amount of time I have that the situation is not even comical, it is not even sad, it just... is. Like assigning an emotion to it would take too much time and I don't have the mental space to do so until sometime in March, according to my Franklin Covey planner. My brain and my heart are fretting about work nearly all the time. I find myself resenting my husband and family for not accommodating my need to work more, instead asserting their ridiculous need to go home and eat dinner before 7 pm. I am repulsed by my job most of the time. I am disgusted by the sheer ridiculousness of the depth and breadth of my to-do list. I hate how everything I value - analysis, mentoring, connection, teaching, writing, organizing, serving - has been pushed to the side because I only have time for...reports. God help me. And yet I am sucked in by the feeling that I can't leave now, not when there's so much work to do. Last week I realized I have to start leaving on time if my family and marriage have any hope of surviving me being in this job. So I signed up for a work laptop so I could bring my work home with me to do when they go to sleep. Nice problem solving, Lue, way to assert those boundaries.

I need help. I need inspiration. I need to find something else I enjoy, that I'm passionate about, that will pay me enough to enable me to move on. Or I need to figure out a way to work in this role at this organization and have it be just a job. Both ideas sound like full on, throw-the-mountain-in-the-sea kind of miracles. I need a Miracle, Lord!

(repeat to self: I will cooperate with grace. I will cooperate with grace. I will. Cooperate. With. Grace.)

And in case I did not mention it - my baby is turning 4 next week. What a real person he is. What a funny little man, my sensitive boy, my smartypants, my goofball. What a gift.