Hasta la vista, 25 pounds!

Currently, the saucey smell of warmed Pineapple Pizza Hut pizza is warming in my oven. My mouth practically salivates as I write this, waiting to take a bite of this yummy piece of horror for my waist.

I have been blessed that the Lord has given me means to lose weight, but now that I have been stuck at the same weight for almost over a year, even gaining a good 10 pounds since Christmas, I find myself still yearning to be at my goal weight.

150. What does 150 pounds mean? Freedom. Release. Achievement. Bliss. Relief.

For a 260 pound woman that has found what it means to be on thinner side of 200, a miracle is the only term that can express how I feel.

I remember sitting on this same green couch two years ago, almost 100 pounds heavier. God, thank you for your mercy and grace. Now, here I am, just pounds from a dream I thought I could never achieve...but it is so close, I can almost grasp it.

My pizza is warming up, but tomorrow things change. I made a list of goals in what I want to eat, snack on, and even what physical activity I should particpate in daily. In hopes to motivate myself, I even made one of those childhood chains I used to make before Christmas. Instead of red and green pieces of construction paper, I have blue, green, yellow, and purple strips with motivating quotes on the inside. Each pound, I remove a link.

25 pounds. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

The Beginning and the End

I have started making "Ellies." They are my simplified version of a Raggedy Ann. My grandma, Heyma, is known to have made hundreds of Raggedy Anns and Andys and giving them to children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, friends, neighbors, and even children in missions.

Last week, I purchased a doll pattern that was named "Billie Anne." I tweaked it a bit and started calling them my Ellie Anns because Heyma's name is Eleanor. They are significantly smaller and take very little effort compared to the complexity of Heyma's Raggedies.

As I started to sew her small arms and small legs, I felt nothing. In fact, I wasn't so sure what I thought about this effort for a doll that would probably turn out mediocre. But once I started to turn out my sewn together fabrics of her arms, legs, and even trunk, my attitude started to change.

As I stuffed polyfill in her and saw her form take shape, I felt an unusual sense of love for this stuffed creature. Realizing she was purely fabric, string, and some stuffing, yet I had some significant connection to this thing.

A scripture kept circling in my head, but the verses that were coming were not what you would expect (Psalm 139). Instead, John 14 kept surfacing, "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

The passion and excitement God takes in creating each human life never ends. In fact, it is swollen to such an extent that He WAITS EAGERLY for us to join Him in heaven in a glorious dwelling He is creating for us.

This is our God. This is our Father. This is His tenderness.

Ellie is currently sitting on my rocking chair next a pumpkin, staring with her small green eyes and deep red hair. Her smile isn't perfect and her nose stitching may be slightly knotted, but for some reason, she is perfect. And even though she is just cloth, I kinda like her. And even though I am just dust, I know God kinda likes me too...well, more like obsessively loves me.

Gratitude

"I NEED A BAND-AID!" Gracie screamed, tears as big as gulps trickling down her face. She tripped in the rocks on the playground and had a small white scuff on her left knee.

"Grace, a band-aid will not fix it. It only stops bleeding," I replied. This is a common situation with the group of kids I work with each day. For some reasons, band-aids make ALL things better.

But we all know that is not true...sadly. If only band-aids healed broken spirits, deadness within, and emptiness that eats away at one's joy.

Driving home on I-29 today, realities floated through my head, drifted in and out and made some tears roll down my cheeks.

I am blessed. I am healthy. My husband is healthy. I have more money than I need. I have both my parents and all my siblings alive and well. I have a job and my husband does too. I have good memories of grandmothers, aunts and uncles, cousins, and friends that ONLY loved me.

Loss has been great some days, but there have been more smiles, more laughter than tears and regrets.

Lord, forgive me if I ever doubt your leading and the gifts from your hands!

Home

Sometimes going home gives me the chills. There is something about the old play house in the west woods, the cottonwood tree fort in the south that Erik and Erin built almost two decades ago, and the way that things almost never change.

Erin and I were walking our 120th Avenue for a walk as the sun started to set last night, the Creator mesmerizing our eyes with His strokes of oranges, reds, and light pinks. At the end of our driveway she asked me, “Which way do you want to go?”

I promptly said, “That way,” pointing to the North, towards Heyma’s old house. Erin smiled. I continued, “The other way is scary.” She agreed. For some reason, that surprised me.

I am continually refreshed by the idea that these memories and stirrings inside me about home are not just true for me, but for my whole family, my sisters.

I recently bought a pattern for Raggedy Ann to try to attempt Heyma’s art of doll making. Ironically, I found a pattern that looked JUST like hers and was actually printed in 1977. Determined to find my raggedies, I came across some of my old stuffed animals. I found Mr. Big Bear, Mr. Beep-Beep, Big Bird with one eye, and even my Wendy doll I bought with my saved $15 in first grade.

Mr. Big Bear, really a 1986 Santa Bear without his hat, I held for a long time. That one embrace surfaced so many emotions and so many memories that I forced myself to put him down because it was a bit too much. Memories about Heyma, about Erik that had a Mr. Big Bear too, about Umpa that died and crying myself to sleep in this bear’s arms. It was all too strong and too weird.
Home. It holds so much.

Perhaps my first feeling of home was when I arrived. Lugging all our stuff through the door and plopping them on the stained dining room floor. After a short exchange of hellos and birthday greetings, we all decided to surprise Dad in the shop. He had been working most of the day preparing his John Deere combine for the harvest and when we arrived, he looked exactly how I love to remember him - covered in dirt, grease, oil, and just smudged with sweat and work.

This was and is my dad. This is my home. This is where I come from.

And as my dad smiled at all of us parading through the open door, his grin was as beautiful as words can express.

Some days I wish I could just wallow there and try to remember all the sentiments of home. The comfort and ease and peace of such a place and all the emotions that I have still not quite worked out in my adult mind.

What Does the World Know?

There is no blessing I would withhold from those who walk in obedience to Me - who follow when I call, who respond when I speak to them. Near to My heart and precious in My sight are those who have eyes to discern My purpose and ears that listen to My direction.

Do not be intent on great accomplishments. By what standards do you judge the importance of a matter? It was a relatively small thing that Hannah prayed for a son, but what great things I accomplished through Samuel! (From the book COME AWAY MY BELOVED by Frances J. Roberts)

Today I got to sleep in. My work day usually starts in the infant room at YMCA Learning Center South at about 7 am. Here I am, well past 7, inhaling the stillness and solitude of an empty apartment on a cloudy morning.

I am now the assistant teacher in the Preschool Room. While this is refreshing, it brings about a variety of uncertainties. Secretly I keep thinking, isn't there something more for me? God, is this really where you want me to be? Thousands of dollars to various colleges, and this is where I end up? Making less than I ever did while pursuing my degrees?

My dream was always to be a counselor or maybe some special play therapist for children - I had big hopes. Of course, NEVER a teacher. Never ever, though many told me I would be excellent at it. Some days I wonder...yet what I do now may be right on the button of what I have always wanted to do, I just was very unaware of how little someone is payed for such a job...sadly.

This brings me to perhaps my biggest dream - to be a mother. Once again, this would never be until I got older. Well, older, here I am. Working with infants made me want to conceive a child desperately some days, while others it was definitely a good birth control for me. But as I slowly move to working with an older group, the more I wish I had my own.

The desire comes and goes. I realize having a child is forever. Nothing will ever be the same. I am still half gypsy that just wants to escape, explore, and find the world, but the older I become, the more I realize that many of those desires and dreams are lived through having a child.

I read the passage above from one of my favorite devotionals. I received this devotional from my sister Kaare and thought it was WAY over my head. Obviously, I was not spiritually ready for it. Then one low day I found it in a stack of my old books in a box - it was meant for THAT time.

I cracked it open this morning, praying a naive prayer of Lord, show me what you want me to think about. And sure enough, this passage.

My struggles with making something of myself and living the all American dream overwhelms me sometimes. What if I am simply content being a mother and/or being a loving adult figure to the children I serve, even if I don't make a hefty income?

Do not be intent on great accomplishments. By what standards do you judge the importance of a matter? It was a relatively small thing that Hannah prayed for a son, but what great things I accomplished through Samuel!

I take heart in that.

The Follies of RISK

I remember being goo-goo with Tyler. I would count the days, the hours, the minutes when I would see him, when we would meet in Little Falls, Alexandria, Albany, Saint Cloud, or even in Ottertail. I would try on four different outfits, examining each view, spend forty-five minutes on my hair, and be sure to have everything planned for our day together.

How things have changed.

Some of my friends say I am a poor advertiser for marriage. I don’t think so. I just think I am honest. Our first year was hard for me. Tyler may disagree, but for me, it was a challenge. It was hard to learn to keep my mouth shut when I knew I should and it was hard for me to encourage when all I wanted to do was criticize. It was easier to point out his pitfalls and ever increasing failures instead of praising him for his successes and trying and consistent love.

Even as I type this, we are amid a fight. Why am I writing and not apologizing, because he needs to cool down and I need to collect some loving words.

We played RISK. It proved to be quite entertaining at first, until frustrations boiled into arguing and crankiness and just quitting the game. Competitiveness seems to kill harmony. I quit, he wanted to finish. Who was right – I don’t quite know. All I know was that I need to get out of the heat before it turned to a wildfire.

The more I understand marriage, the more precious it seems. Even in the aggravation of this disagreement, I cannot but feel blessed to have Tyler. We may still fight, but our fights always result in love and better communication and understanding of each other.

To say marriage is beautiful is an underestimation. The goo-goo feelings are still there, but most of them have been exchanged for mature, uncompromising compassion and desire for each other. He is my One. He is my Only. He is my best friend and my companion. It will not matter what surges between us, love is still there.

I think I have collected enough warmth within that I can crawl into his office and kiss him and say I’m sorry. The best way to fight the devil’s foothold is to fight it with love…and that is exactly what I’ll do.

Manda Irene-Hegseth Tumberg

The Vikings are on, Tootsie Roll wrappers strewed about my green-Heyma couch, and I am writing on my blog for the fist time in over a year. I am now married, unpregnant, and living in Fargo, North Dakota. I no longer work with people with disabilities, but with kids in a YMCA Learning Center…so much for a better income and advanced prestige from my degrees.

Tonight, in one of my favorite events, a work meeting, an important question was asked of us – who are you? Not just who are you, but what is your purpose?

I sat there. How could such questions make my eyes slightly mist? Granted, it had been a long day; children seemed to be biting each other for eight hours, I had too low of protein to donate plasma and save for my new camera, and my eggs cracked on my groceries at the Wal-Mart checkout, but this was a valid question.

I think in college, especially in my Psychology classes, this question was asked constantly. But somewhere between courting Tyler to marriage, moving from Minneapolis to Fergus Falls to Fargo, and maybe even switching from working with the mentally ill to spending each day with one year olds, I lost that answer.

I wish I could come up with some sweet ending that will warm you, but I don’t know the answer. I think that is okay. At least I am willing to consider it and to seek again and be content with the uncertainty of searching.

I know one thing though…I am still Manda. Maybe not the same Manda that wrote those last blogs or that you first met, but I am still her. I guess I am just exploring this person named Manda Irene-Hegseth Tumberg and the place she belongs.