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.

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 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.

On Wondering

I laid wide awake the other night sifting the day through my mind, turning it over, shaking it to see what rattled, holding it up to the light to catch a different angle; suddenly, my mind snagged on a bit of Jeff Dunn's post over at iMonk.

“You mean,” said Lucy rather faintly, “that it would have turned out all right—somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?”

“To know what would have happened, child?” said Aslan. “No. Nobody is ever told that.”

“Oh dear,” said Lucy.

“But anyone can find out what will happen.” said Aslan. “If you go back to the others now, and wake them up, and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must get up at once and follow me—what will happen? There is only one way of finding out.

“To know what would have happened, child?” said Aslan, “No. Nobody is ever told that.”

“Oh dear,” said Marina.

This lesson may be self-evident to some people, but I'm just beginning to learn it. When things aren't going “right” (by my definition, of course) I tend to look back at the moments when I considered other decisions, or was pulled towards a course of action that I didn't take; I could spend (and have spent) years agonizing about “what could have been” if I had taken the other fork, made the other choice, or followed the other voice. If I had made all the right choices and said all the right things at the very beginning, my relationship with Landon would never have hit a rocky moment. If I had followed every hunch and compulsion and possible whisper of the Spirit in looking for a job, I would have found something fulfilling that would further my vocation. If I had handled my morning correctly, my afternoon would never be this stressful, choppy, and unproductive. But Aslan says that this is not mine to know. Not only that, but I know from experience that none of my “if-only”ing is necessarily true.

When I try to follow every voice inside of me I end up being pulled in half-a-dozen incompatible directions. There were times dating Landon when I said and did exactly what I thought I should and it ended up hurting us both. Sometimes the morning is messed up through no fault of my own – things just happen. Looking at this I realize that I fell for yet another lie while I was busy not believing it. I have been a vocal critic of the idea that if you just do x correctly, y will work itself out like you want, yet I wasted the first year of my marriage acting like I believed just that. I frantically rearranged, redefined, and reworked things in my head so that I could believe that the present was exactly what I wanted, because if it wasn't it meant that I really had done something wrong. Wasting time like this is an awful things to do. Thanks be to God He has pulled me out of it.

In the past weeks, God has been in the process of waking me up, shaking me up, and setting me on my feet. By His grace He has shown me so many things that affirm my choices of the past few years. Remembering that I am dust, and need much strength, He has let me see some of the good things that are coming out decisions that I doubted, especially in areas of work and school. Knowing that I need a booster He has proven to me that when I take two seemingly incompatible things that I know to be true, He can eventually resolve it for me. He is showing me what is appropriate and necessary remembering, in contrast with useless speculation and regret about the past. And He is in the process of showing me what it means to follow His voice in the present without an exhaustive review of the possible consequences. It's amazing to see validation for my choices unfolding in front of me, along with proof that if I did make the wrong decision He is capable of redeeming it. It's a little embarrassing that my faith is weak enough to need this, but it's incredible to see it happen. I feel as though I'm growing into a walk where there is no “what might have been,” there is only “what's next?” As my husband and I enter this season of defining, searching, and growing, I am more excited than I have been in a long time. Maybe I can finally learn to follow Aslan by myself, without needing other people to see Him as well. Maybe I can learn to scramble off of the cliff without knowing where the path is, just trusting that it is there.