Lazy Sunday

Southern Man will confess that having all three children for the weekend, while a wonderful blessing, can get a bit tiresome - particularly when two of the three bring overnight guests. Teenage son had a friend spend the entire weekend with him and teenage daughter had a girlfriend with her from mid-Saturday on, so casa Southern Man was pretty active, at least in the evenings. And there was an awful lot of running them around to pancake breakfasts and play rehersals and to their friend's houses to pick them up or run them by for essentials (that would be CDs and XBox games for the most part) or just leave them for brief teen gatherings and pick them up again. But we also got in some time at the local amusement park (see the previous post) and although it was pretty crowded everyone had a good time. And Southern Man was just tickled to death to see four teens in his tiny little study gathered around the 'net PC messing around with their MySpace accounts and such. Teen daughter even recovered a long-lost password and updated her Xanga for the first time since last summer. It'll be interesting to see if she wants to keep it up this time.

So it is always with decidedly mixed emotions that Southern Man dropped them off at church this morning. He'll miss them terribly (as he always does) but they do make quite a mess. So after services and a nice lunch out with his gf and her oldest daughter Southern Man headed back to his casa and his bed for a lovely afternoon nap. And then gf dropped by later in the afternoon and we just relaxed for a few hours talking and arguing theology and messing around on the computers. Turns out gf is something of a gamer herself and she was perfectly happy to play Spades online on one PC while Southern Man messed around on one of the others. And now Southern Man is looking forward to a quiet and relaxed evening which will be spent as roughtly one-third cleaning, one-third grading (lots and lots and lots of grading) and one-third just generally messing around. There are, for example, some nice overripe bananas in the kitchen just begging to be made into banana-nut bread. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday evening alone.

Southern Man is slowly but surely coming to terms with the unpleasant realities of divorce. It used to just kill him when he knew his ex was on a date (the first few times he just laid in his bed and bawled); now word is she's fairly steady with what appears to be a fine guy and Southern Man just hopes that she finds the happiness with him (or, if not, with someone) that she could never seem to find from Southern Man. Of course it hurts - a lot - to watch the one you still love in so many ways seek what she needs from someone else, and Southern Man dies a litte inside every time he looks at his darling seven-year-old and realizes that in all likelihood some other man will be her stepfather, but those are just some of those unpleasant realities. But Southern Man is slowly but surely overcoming his pain and is looking forward to a brighter tomorrow. Lord, I know you have a plan for me, to prosper me and give me hope and a future. And I know, Lord, that you have plans for her, and for our children, and for my gf and her ex and their children. Continue to heal us of our hurts, O Lord. Grant us the capacity to forgive, both ourselves for the hurts we have inflicted and those who have inflicted hurts on us. And let us not be bitter, Lord, but bestow on us the wisdom and understanding to rejoice when we see the power of Your mighty hand at work in all our lives. Amen.