Putting a name to it

Several weeks ago, I started seeing a counselor.  Last fall, I asked my priest for some sort of recommendation or referral to help deal with some of my sketchy mental health.  Through a little bit of a snafu with messages not getting to the right place, combined with me feeling really really good through the third trimester of my pregnancy with James, nothing ended up coming of the lead in the fall.  This winter, though, beset by postpartum hormones, short nights, and a stressful breastfeeding situation, I realized that the time had come to reach out once again.  My inability to cope with what life was throwing at me was starting to affect my whole family.  I wasn't debilitated, but my interactions with my husband and sons were certainly less than ideal.  I was doing my best, but I knew that it wasn't the best that I was capable of.  The decisive moment was when I imagined my sons growing up, and reflecting on their childhood with me.  

"She was a good mom," I imagined them saying, "but..."

"...but she could never quite get a handle on her own issues.  ... but she couldn't quite open herself up and love us fully. ...but she reacted unpredictably. ...but ...but ...but."

My children are going to have enough to forgive me for.  I don't want to deal with things that I could, but won't because it's scary and painful.  So I called up the practice recommended by Monsignor, begged a poor-cash-patient rate, and began seeing M.  

It took less than one appointment for it to become clear that my "anonymous" commenter way back here was right - I have been learning, slowly, to live with anxiety.  Obviously, this diagnosis is no surprise to me, and probably not to some of you, but it feels good to hear it from a professional in their professional capacity (as opposed to a professional in their aunty-ly capacity).  I left the appointment feeling lighter, free-er.  This means that the gentler voices in my spirit are right.  I'm not just weak (although I am that), or lazy (although I struggle with that), or sinful (although God knows I'm that, too).  There truly is something a little tweaked somewhere with how I process things.  And beyond relief, and permission to be gentle with myself, this knowledge gives me hope.  Not hope that my struggles to live life fully and freely will ever come to an end, but hope that I can find the correct ways to struggle, that I can put some focus into my efforts.  It's the difference between lobbing cannon balls into the fog because you know there's a threatening ship out there somewhere, and being given a sonar to find your target.  

So, pray for me, if you feel so inclined.  I'm excited about this new venture, but apprehensive.  I've shot myself down many times before, and the weeks since that initial appointment have been unusually rough.  The poking around at old sore spots required to do some assessment and make plans for addressing them seems to have stirred things up a bit.  I'm trying to breathe, hang on, and remember that it'll be worth it in the end - for myself, my relationships, and my beautiful sons.

Word for the Year: Joy

My word for this year is Joy.  Last year's word was "struggle," and struggle I did.  One of my biggest takeaways from the experience of the past year is that struggle isn't just a one-year thing; it may have been my word for one year, but it will be and should be a continual part of my life.  I've learned something about the value of struggle, about letting go of my expectation that life should be free of unpleasantness, and, finally, about the joy that comes in and through struggle applied correctly.  Since I know that struggle will be a feature of life going forward, this year I want to focus on that joy.

Joy can be difficult for me.  I'm feeling the reality of this more keenly now then I did a few days ago when this blog post began to germinate.  I've hit a rough post-partum patch.  Life is settling down into its new normal.  Landon is back at work today.  I'm figuring out what I can expect to get done while tending to the needs of my two boys.  The lack of sleep, however, probably in combination with difficulty getting a good diet and the dearth of exercise, is catching up with me.  I am less stable mentally than I have been in at least a year.  Whatever combination of anxiety and obsessive symptoms that float around in my brain are making their presence known.  I woke up this morning with life clinging to me like an ill-fitting outfit, seams in all the wrong places, twisted and too tight, impossible to ignore, making me want to scream and throw things.  Since I can't do that, I settled for yelling at Christopher, snapping at Landon over little things, and storming away from the breakfast table for a good cry in the bedroom because the tip of my strip of bacon (that Landon made for me, in addition to the rest of breakfast) was floppy.  Even I know that this is beyond petty, but when my brain is screaming for an unattainable perfection, something petty can be the last straw.  This is not healthy.  And it's certainly not joyful.  

My goal in choosing "Joy" as my word for the year is to be able to look through the chaos that I kick up for myself to the joy that life holds underneath.  I can't always help it when an out-of-order life feels like a kick in the stomach.  I can remind myself, though, of the joy of my life that makes it worthwhile to fight the lies that my brain and emotions conspire to tell me.  The purpose of all the struggling that I do is not just to struggle because it's the right thing to do, or because I don't want to be beaten down by my own weaknesses.  I am fighting to find the joy that is right under my nose, in my husband who does so much for our family, my toddler who is an explosion of learning and discovery, and my sweet still-but-barely-a-newborn who falls asleep in a squishable heap on my shoulder while I'm burping him.  Beyond these is a community of the sort that one finds perhaps once in a lifetime; wonderful family on both sides; fulfilling activities that keep my brain exercised; and all of this in a world saturated with heartbreaking beauty.  This is true, whether or not I feel the truth of it on a regular basis.  And I'm hoping that, by living into the truth, I will find more consistently the joy that seems sometimes so easy, and sometimes (like now) so elusive.   

My children are not my enemies

I don't remember when the thought first came to me.  Sometime late this past fall, probably, when Christopher was needing something.  I do remember the sudden epiphany: 

My children are not my enemies.  

It was only after I had the thought that I realized that I had a habit of thinking of and treating Christopher as, in some respects, my enemy.  My mental framework of our relationship set him up as my main competitor for some of my most precious resources - my time and energy.  If he got it, I didn't, and vice versa.  The best case scenario in this framework was a carefully choreographed tug of war, with my toddler and my conscience on one end of the rope, and my sanity, selfishness, and legitimate need all jumbled up on the other.  If I allocated resources just right, the rope stayed taut and we all stayed upright, but under continual strain.  In the less desirable but more realistic scenario, an unexpected tug on one end led to a giving way on the other, leaving everyone on the ground and nobody quite happy.  Christopher gets his snack, but maybe I yelled at him a little, and my sanity has a nosebleed.  Or my sanity gets its knitting break, but accompanied by much guilt, and Christopher doesn't get read to that day.  

But if my children are not my enemies, my competitors, then what are they?  My best answer for this at the moment is that they're other human beings, with whom I am in relationship, within the larger organic unity that is our family.  Basically, I think of us all as part of one organism.  There are still more demands on my resources than I can answer.  Those demands still sometimes seem to be in direct conflict.  But it helps to remember that this is not a win/lose situation; rather, what is good for one part of the body, i.e., our family, is good for the whole.  Practically, this means that instead of seeking a sort of static even tension, where everyone is getting just enough resources to stay upright and keep things balanced, there is flexibility, with an eye toward equilibrium.  Just as one part of an organism might temporarily demand more than its "fair share" of resources in order to heal or grow, so one member of the family might need more time and attention for a short while.  Sometimes that's one of my children, and I give up something that I legitimately need for their sake.  Sometimes, it's me, and my children go without something important, like story time, in exchange for a functional mother.  

I find this framework especially helpful during these days of early motherhood.  The fact remains that my children are very dependent parts of our family, and much more fragile than myself, or Landon.  They can't handle much deprivation of resources; James, in fact, can handle almost none.  It's comforting to know, however, that there's a reason that things feel off balance and a little feverish, and that this will not last forever.  

The child and the cross

I'm teaching Christopher to make the sign of the cross these days, and it has me reflecting on my role as a parent in not only teaching our children our religion, but also bringing them into participation in it.  There's something startling in taking a toddler's little hand and tracing the shape of the cross over his little body.  This is, after all, not only a trinitarian prayer but also an acknowledgement of our own participation in the cross of Christ.  That means that it is both the best thing that I can think of and also something that scares for my own sake, much less for my child.  I wonder sometimes if this is really a decision that I can, or should, make for him.    

In one sense, it is imperative that I do choose for him, because the choice has already been made.  There are many things that we do not get to choose when we are born, such as parentage, and family.  Just as Christopher has earthly parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, he has a Heavenly Father, and just as it is our responsibility to bring him early into relationship with his earthly parents and other family members, it is our responsibility to enable his relationship with God.  And this relationship with God, we believe as Christians, comes through Jesus.  It is therefore essential that we not only encourage an amorphous relationship with God, but teach him the specific ways in which this relationship is maintained and deepened through Christ - by his teaching, and by belonging to his Body, the Church.  So through baptism he is born into the body of Christ, through prayer he learns the words to begin a conversation with Christ, and through the sign of the cross he learns the shape of the way to God.  

In another sense, however, it's clear that I cannot choose anything for Christopher.  No matter what I teach him, he has his own free will to exercise, and he can choose to accept or reject the relationship with God into which he has been born, just as he will someday choose his own response to other relationships into which he was born.  

All is Grace

"This is it.  These are some of the best days of our lives."

I stood on the stairs yesterday afternoon, looking up at Landon who was about to walk into our apartment with a bowl of grilled meat in his hand.  I held the foil and the tongs, waiting for Christopher to inch his way up the stairs, and conscious of so many pleasures in that moment: cooking food outside; teamwork with my husband; the tow-headed toddler behind me; a joyful consciousness of our second child growing within me.  It's late summer, time for ripening, deepening, and the rush toward harvest.  Like a few other times in my life, I can sense Life settling into me; I feel the growing and ripening of my own self.  There are things growing in my spirit that I neither planted nor planned for, but are sheer gifts of grace.

One recent gift of grace is courage to more fully embrace my vocation of service.  My heart has been cracked open by repeated reminders of the selflessness necessary to love and serve my family well, and an increasing knowledge of my terrible inadequacy to that selflessness.  In this moment, I have been give the grace that allows me not to shrink from that knowledge, but - through the tiniest of baby steps - to allow it to do its work of softening, repentance, and humility.  I am amazed to see these things unfold.

Another recent gift of grace is courage to relinquish the fear of belief.  On Sunday, Landon, Christopher, and I will be welcomed into the Roman Catholic Church.  Landon and I will receive the sacraments of Confirmation and First Holy Communion, and Christopher will receive the sacrament of baptism.  Again, my cooperation with this work of grace is imperfect, and so so slow, like a toddler's fingers pried off of the illicit candy in his hand; this tiny sprout of courage, too, is wondrous to behold.

I know that there are those who, through their love and concern for me, look on these things in a different light.  Some of you worry that I will lose myself in mothering and homemaking, not in the positive loss of unselfish service, but in the frightening loss of sublimation and nonexistence.  Some of you look at the vast gulf between the church of my childhood and the church of my adult belief and are concerned that I have lost my way.  I do not blame you for your worry and concern, and I thank you for the love that motivates it.  Please, pray for me.  But if it is any comfort, know that when I look at my life right now, all that I can see is the work of God.  I know of no other way that could have brought me to this moment.  The circumstances could have come about by a certain stumbling and accident, but the seedlings of courage, the baby steps of virtue, the slivers of openness - grace.  All is grace.  

Lent, Day 8: Christopher

It's Lent, and my posts in these past few days are distinctly Lenten posts.  Today, however, I can't find it within myself to write another post about crosses, or struggles, or the nitty gritty implications of the Christian walk.  Today, this day, this lovely day, is my Christopher Luke's first birthday.

I love this baby, this would-be-a-toddler-if-he-decided-to-walk Little Guy.  I love his pure joy at waking up in the morning, and his utter delight at peering over the edge of his pack-n-play to discover - again - his still sleeping parents.  I love his giggles games, his outright chortles over peek-a-boo, and his screaming laughter over "chase."  Everything is new for him.  It blows his mind that he can move wooden beads along a maze of wires.  He thinks it's hilarious when the toy that disappeared behind my back reappears on the other side.  He wants to drop the same toy, or book, or rag on the floor over and over again because he just cannot believe that it falls down every. single. time.



I am utterly charmed just watching him putter around the living room, investigating every loose piece of paper sticking out from a shelf, experimenting with what happens when you push on the books on the shelf, discovering all over again a fascinating toy, being suddenly distracted by a more fascinating piece of shiny junk, chewing thoughtfully on a wooden block.  My heart nearly explodes with delighted satisfaction at the joy of seeing him crawl efficiently off to inspect the hallway and the other rooms of the apartment for any toys or random objects left within reach.  He is most endlessly fascinating when he is ignoring me.

I love doing life with him, as frustrating as it is.  He sits on the edge of the sink while I wash dishes - his back against the microwave, his feet dangling into the rinse sink - experimenting with the physics of the clean dishes that I stack on his side of the sink, and dabbing his feet in the running water when I rinse those dishes.  Laundry day is a personal favorite of his; there are so many ways for him to help, from dropping dirty socks into drawers of clean clothing, to adding folded t-shirts back into the basket of unfolded laundry.  When I go grocery shopping with him, he leaves a trail of smiles in the wake of his adorableness.

This child, this squeezable, kissable, beautiful, crazy-making child is bursting with Life.  This is the promise; this is why we go through Lent.  Life abundant is the only things that makes the cross worthwhile.  Suffering in and of itself is pointless.  Death left to its own devices is ignoble.  Sacrifice without hope is foolish.  Only in the Resurrection looming large beyond them do they gain significance, nobility, and wisdom.  We embrace Lent not because we love Lent, but because we have to get through Lent to come to Easter.

On vocation

I've been reading a lot of Catholic writing recently, from Catholic bloggers to the Pope.  And one idea that I've come across quite consistently is that of vocation as answering the question, "who will I serve?"  This has been an enormously helpful consideration for me.  After all, for me the primary answer to that question is made obvious by my situation in life: I am a spouse, and I am a parent.  This is my vocation, to serve my family.  When I look at any given day, and make my lists of what needs to go in it, the summation of my priorities is:

Serve Landon.  Serve Christopher.

And this has made several other things abundantly clear.  I knew right away that this was about more than housework and baby playtime; this was about my life having priorities so that there was a hook to hang everything on, and so that I would know when I was out of hooks.  So, because serving Christopher is a priority, and because Christopher and an open laptop do not happily co-exist, I've suddenly found the motivation to close my computer and find other things to do when Christopher is awake.  Christopher knows when I'm distracted, not just from direct attention to him, but from being engaged with him and his needs; he knows that when I'm on the computer, he has to work three times as hard to get my attention for something as basic as a diaper change.  This should not be, of course, and I knew that my computer and I had issues, but I've never been able to quite get a handle on it.  I think that this is because I was still thinking of it terms of how I would benefit from being off the computer - how much less guilty I would feel, how much more I would get done.  It wasn't until I thought in terms of serving Christopher that I was able to see how much of a no-brainer it is to just close the laptop while Christopher is awake, and I'm the only one at home.  I'm able to be much more in tune with Christopher's needs, and as a bonus I get some of the other things thrown in - less guilt about my computer use, and more productivity on the home front.  I still get on my computer at least twice almost every day, but I've found a hook to hang it on - it doesn't belong in the same time as my son.

These hooks, however, are not all full with housework and baby play time.  It's a dirty little secret in my stay-at-home-mom-of-one life that, honestly, I have time.  It might be somewhat unpredictable time, but it's still there.  And the thing about thinking of life in terms of vocation, the thing that differentiates it for me from some other notions of service to a husband or children is that I am not asking them to define my self by my service to them, but I am serving them by giving them my Self.  In order for this to be meaningful, there has to be a Self to give.  And in order for me to have a Self to give them, I need to be doing things that renew, refresh, and build-up that Self.  I know that in years to come, when there are two or three or more little ones running around, and they're making more work for me, and demanding more in terms of interaction, I might not have much time for this - it'll be manna in the wilderness time for me then.  But that time is not now, and right now I have time to do one very concrete thing to build-up this Self that I give in service to my family - I have time to go back to school.  Not a lot of time, granted, but a little.  And suddenly, I've found the willpower to spend a little bit of time, every day, working on going back to school.  So far, I've finished filling out one application and started in on another one.  These are things that I've been meaning to do, talking about doing, for a very long time.  My guilt, railings, and feelings of un-fulfillment weren't enough to overcome the inertia.  Seeing it in terms of serving Landon and Christopher was.  There are still lots of questions to be answered, like "how do you think you're going to pay for this?", but faithfulness doesn't require that I know the answers ahead of time.  If it doesn't work out to go back to school because of issues other than time, at least I'll have explored that avenue to its end, and I'll know that it's time to turn to other option.

In the end, here, I'm a little frightened at the sheer gift of this all.  As I look back at the past several days, and see the ways that I've found willpower where inertia seemed invincible, calm and persistence where anxiety seemed unstoppable, and an attitude of service where resentment seemed inevitable I am overwhelmed with the sheer grace of it.  These things are not natural to me, and since they are a gift, I both marvel at their presence, and hold my breath for their absence.  If the lives of those who have walked this path before me are any indication, the road will be much harder up ahead.  Knowing my weakness, God has lavished me with so much help here at the beginning; He doesn't owe this to me, and He can withhold it in the future.  But can I refuse to fully accept the gifts that He gives, because I want to protect myself against the pain of their surcease?  I could, and that's a whole 'nother blog post, but for now, I find that I am also give the gift of gratitude.

On compensation

Between two and four weeks of age Christopher started crying on occasion when we set him down, and ever since then he grows more and more demanding of distraction, stimulation, and interaction.  But as he grows more demanding, he also grows more delightfully interactive.  He started with smiling.  Then cooing expressively.  After that, he began giggling when Landon and I made faces at him.  And then when we tickled him.  Eventually, he started reaching for us and trying to pull us closer.  Currently, he is bored with all of his toys and very insistent in his desire for playtime with Mum-mum, but he has also started giving giant, slobbery, gummy baby kisses.

And now, he is crawling - mobility has arrived, the ultimate in parental time and attention demands.  He can crawl towards the phone cord in the wall.  He can crawl towards the open door into the bathroom.  He can crawl toward the book forgotten on the floor.  Nothing is safe.  But in addition to all of the above, he can crawl towards me, place his tiny baby hands carefully on my toes, and look up at me with a face covered in drool and eyes full of living delight.     

On pain

I carried Christopher into the study room last night for his bedtime story with his dad.  He's a wiry baby, all upright body and active limbs, with barely an ounce of superfluous flesh.  As I held him, facing away from me, I felt his little tummy move with his breaths - out, in, out, in.  Effortless life.  And for a moment, caught in that boundless vitality, I saw a reality that I'm aware of, but don't often feel.

I saw myself and my Little Guy mapped over other mothers, other infants; people who are occupying my thoughts, but as they once were, not as they are now.  I saw my grandfather, my Saba, once the small infant of another woman.  I never met his mother, and I know so very little about her.  Could she possibly have ever imagined the moment on Saturday when we buried him?  Could she have pictured her tiny child become an old man, white bearded, leaving behind, after nearly 62 years of marriage, a widow, 8 children, their spouses, 42 grandchildren, and 6 great-grandchildren?  I don't know if she could have.  My own tiny child is one of the six, and this future is too strange for me to imagine.

For another fraction of that moment I became my aunt, holding her own firstborn son 30-some years ago.  She and I share the position of being the first girls born into our respective families, and her firstborn is the oldest grandchild of her parents, as is mine for my own parents.  This image brought a flash of panic, a flare of anger, and a threat of tears.  30-some years is easier to imagine than 80, and that firstborn, my oldest cousin, is lying in a hospital bed in Mexico recovering from stab wounds in his chest.  His little tummy breathed against my aunt's hand the way that Christopher's does against mine.

Kyrie eleison.  Christe eleison.    

This child, this little man who lives and moves and breathes in my arms, has cracked open some of the deepest veins of joy in my heart, and yet his every breath draws me in, closer than I ever wanted to be, to all the heartache of this moment in my family's life.

On Something

At first, there was nothing.  There was just a space.  Nothing.  And then there was a fateful January day.  And something started to grow up in that space.  Something grew up in between us that was not either of us, but came from both of us.  A late May day the next year, we promised to always be with each other, no matter what, and the space filled up.  And two years later, from that nothing and something between us, suddenly there was something tangible.  A something that swelled my body, and squirmed around inside of me, and was born on that cold February day to become Christopher.

From nothing, something.  And that something is growing, and giggling, and squirming, and rolling over, and one day, all of a sudden, he will be like us.  He will be an adult.  Just. like. that.  Something from Nothing.