Yesterday was Oregon’s state Science Olympiad competition — a science competition with many different types of events that the clever among you will note is very Olympic in nature — which J coached for the third year in a row for the school where she’s also a science teacher.
(Here’s where I catch my breath from the wreckless pace of this blog entry, what with the writing about events mere hours after the events transpired and all. What do I think this blog is, some sort of newspaper with fancy, fact-filled ledes? No, really this entry is less about describing our lives and more about shaming our friends with their new blogs but less-recent posts — less about information, more about competition, as it’s meant to be on the Internet.)
In any other year, this would be just another story about how J coached and I helped (occasionally even assistant-coaching) and the girls worked hard and so on. But those paying attention or otherwise in-the-know know that, in addition to coaching an award-winning team, J is also 37 weeks pregnant. And we’re moving into our new house next week. Oh, and J was also one of three people running this year’s Oregon Science Olympiad competition.
In short: [mild exclamation of your choice]! What were we thinking? What? Were we thinking?
Yes, well. I won’t say it hasn’t been one of the most stressful periods of our life together — indeed, while I usually consider myself a fairly laid-back kind of guy, I haven’t been this stressed since late college. Which is exciting, because perhaps it means that my time of stressful-college-nightmares-as-dreamworld-metaphor has come to an end, henceforth to be replaced by nightmares about hiring contractors, packing boxes, and working twelve hours at a science competition.
All of which sounds far too whiny. With the competition now over, and one fairly major item on our checklist now largely checked off (for simplicity’s sake, I will simply ignore any preparations needed after the competition … but more about that in the next entry), I’m already in “happy retrospective” mode vis-a-vis Science Olympiad: “It was all worth it, to see the team having competed and worked so hard!” And so on. Hopefully, the following weeks will see similar shifts in opinions about buying and moving into a new house, and the final days of pregnancy.
And while it can be trite, after a endeavor has been successfully completed, to thank God (I’m thinking here of the occasional televised award ceremony winner), I really can’t see how we could have made it this far without him. It’s easy enough to ignore his blessings when I feel in control of things, when I have a plan, when I know how everything is going to play out.
But in times like this, when I come home from a stressful time at work to a house that is full — but not yet full enough — of boxes and calendar full of activities that do not lend themselves to filling more boxes, not to mention the occasional, looming feeling that I am ill-prepared for my imminent parenthood and thus already a bad father … well, there’s precious little else to lean on besides God (and the blessings he puts in our lives, namely family and friends). At times like this, trusting merely in my own abilities leads me to lying awake two hours before I’m supposed to get up, quietly freaking out. And while I’ve certainly tried that approach a lot lately, it hasn’t generally been one I would dub successful.
Anyhow, that’s done. Phew. Thank God.
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CONGRATULATIONS to our brilliant, lovely, and talented daughter-in-law Julia on this 3rd win at state competition!! And congratulations to her wonderful, helpful husband (AKA our son) for helping out again! I too have been awake 2-3 hours early, praying for both of you and Grendel to make it through this stressful time. Thanks be to God for all of you! Hang in there – you’ll all survive this and live to laugh about it in some far distant future time. Love you!