Day 8 of Feasting & Fasting

It's hard to believe I've been on this journey for a week now and 1/3 of the way through this season.  In so many ways, life feels so normal - the back-to-school run-a-round, cleaning and organizing of the house, lesson planning for our first year of homeschooling.  Yet in so many ways, it's been very different - I feel like a huge part of my heart is waking up again.  A yearning for God, a yearning to read and study and learn... in reality a learning to find ME again, if that makes any sense.  As a wife, a mom, a minister's wife, a house-mom, it is very easy to lose your identity, to bury your own loves and dreams for the sake of everyone else.  I feel like this hibernation stage is coming to an end and I love it.  I'm excited to share it, too - I don't know who is more exciting about learning and learning to learn this year, me or Emily!  Jonathan and I are studying a book together for the first time in a very long time and I've missed that with him.

In the meantime, I continue to deal with some of the unpleasant side effects of a body in healing mode.  I've popped up a cold sore, have digestional upset from time-to-time, am forgetful, get tired a bit more easily, and sometimes get annoyed more quickly that I usually would.  But other things are great - my sense of smell is sharpened (I can smell every flower and crape myrtle in bloom), my ingrown toenail is healing, and a nagging pain in my lower abdomen at an incision site that I've had since my appendix and gallbladder were removed is completely gone.

Truthfully, it's been a bit harder day today than the last couple, though I'm not sure why.  More irritable, rougher food cravings (though I did a lot of cooking for the house today), I've been cold all day, and when I got home from church, I was really craving salt, so I drank two mugs of warmed broth, and that seemed to help.  It's also 10:30 and I'm WIDE awake - sleep isn't coming any time soon.  I guess that is my payback for an 8 hour night last night!  So I'm off to work on lesson plans for next week... and maybe watch a new episode of Continuum on Netflix.  ;)