Our Way

Today was the first day of a shiny new future, it seemed like, because today was the first work day after leaving my previous job...and I didn't go to work. Because my new job is affording me something I've desperately ached for since the moment James was born: more time at home, being just a mom to just my kid.

It looks so silly typed out, and like it shouldn't be a big deal. But it is. To me. I was not always as grateful as I should've been for the job I just left, because on paper it was great: earn an income while still getting to be with my own child. (I was a nanny.) But for three years I worked outside my home for nearly 10 hours a day, five days a week; and that and other reasons wore me out. Now, I've found a different family to work for, and while my pay has decreased, so have my hours - and my whole outlook on life has brightened. I feel a hundred pounds lighter. I feel so grateful for this tremendous blessing. Today I did just my own family's laundry, I sewed, I painted, and I took my son to the zoo, just me and him. It was heavenly. We walked and explored with his little hand in mine, and it was just us, and I praised heaven for allowing me that moment. I realize it's silly, that it shouldn't be any different because I'm with him every day anyway, but for the first time in a long time I felt like this burden was lifted, and I was allowed to be the mom I want to be, and spend time with my son without all these other negative feelings weighing me down. I let myself relax; we did whatever he wanted to do, and we could do things our way, however we pleased.

It probably won't be long before we settle in to the new routine and life becomes life again, and I feel the stress of a lower income weigh me down. But I'm grateful for right now anyway. I'm grateful for a new moment.

Trees for the forest

I'm forcing myself to write today, because I mean what I said in yesterday's post: I really don't want to be only negative.  But I also use the word "force" because it's hard.  Not just trying not to be negative when I'm feeling down, but just writing in general.  I want so much to cut through all my personal bullcrap and write words that are pure and honest, without trying to sound a certain way or be funnier or more clever than I really am.  I really, truly am on a journey to know myself and speak myself...and I know that sounds very corny and cliche, but I guess sometimes maybe truth is cliche?

So my point is, today's post might end up being like a meandering stroll through a forest with no clear destination.  But I tend to be a "trees for the forest" person anyway, so maybe it's good.  Let's spend some time looking at the trees.

I hope I don't worry my parents too much with this one (though it should come as no surprise to them, their girl who never really followed convention) but I struggle sometimes identifying as a textbook "Mormon".  Not near as much as I used to - I've come to terms with some things - but still just a little bit.  I feel calm and secure in my faith, like I don't have any thoughts that are too radical, and I'm not a boundary-pusher just for the scandal of it.  Ordain Women has no siren's call for me, for example.  But sometimes I worry that I appear just a bit sacrilegious to some people.  I love the church, I love the gospel.  I love everything it teaches.  But, my friend Brooke put it beautifully one time while she was teaching a Relief Society lesson - and I wish I could remember exactly what she said - but she said something along the lines of how sometimes our words or our wording, inside the church or inside Christian circles, gets in the way.  And sometimes it's easier to understand a concept or a principle when you hear it called something else, or described in a different way.  I feel that way so, so often.  Like I get so used to hearing the same phrases over and over again that I become deaf to their meaning, and it's refreshing to hear it described with different words so it can reach me again.  Not that the concept or principle or whatever  becomes bad or not true anymore, but sometimes I feel that our terminology within the church can feel a little exclusive to people on the outside.  There's nothing wrong with trying to find new ways to say the same thing.

So I really like Buddhism.  I had a little conversation with my dad a few days ago about how much we like Buddhism, and that many of the ideas and teachings we've found in it are really applicable to living a spiritual life, even one centered on Christ and the restored gospel.  I've recently discovered a woman called Pema Chodron, who I'm tempted to say is one of my favorite authors even though I've yet to fully read one of her books - and that's only cause I don't have a bunch of money to spend on books at the moment.  She's a Buddhist nun, and she has a way of speaking that opens me up to understanding.  

Here's an excerpt I love about meditation (I love meditation), from her book Start Where You Are:

"Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself.  It is healing to know all the ways that you're sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways.  You can know all that with some sense of humor and kindness.  By knowing yourself, you're coming to know humanness altogether.  We are all up against these things.  We are all in this together.  So when you realize that you're talking to yourself, label it "thinking" and notice your tone of voice.  Let it be compassionate and gentle and humorous.  Then you'll be changing old stuck patterns that are shared by the whole human race.  Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves."

I'm sure someone at church has said basically this same thing at one point or another, but for some reason hearing about how knowing and being kind to yourself is important and is what allows us to be kind and compassionate to others from this meditative, Buddhist perspective helps me internalize it so much better.  

I also started reading this book called Restless: Because You Were Made For More, by Jennie Allen, who I guess is a non-LDS, Christian author.  And in most cases I seem to find myself relating even less to "christian" speak outside of the Mormon church than I do to non-christian spirituality, but so far I'm relating to this book.  This is a passage I particularly liked:

"Some of us have decorated our prison walls so beautifully that we have altogether forgotten we are sitting in a cell, wasting our lives.  We don't know there are chains that, though they no longer bind us, still seem to tangle us up.  We sit and listen to talks or read books about God, and we wonder why nothing changes when we so desperately want it to."

I love this, because it reinforces the principle of acting, of doing the work that's required instead of just thinking nice thoughts.

Anyway, those are just some of the trees in my forest. It took me like an hour to write that, which is probably really sad; but like I said, this is hard for me. It would be really nice if this were the kind of thing that gets easier the more you do it, but I guess we'll see.

Slump

I'm slumpin hard over here.

I don't know what my deal is.  I don't know if I need a hug or to be smacked around for a while, but I just can't get my head in the game.  The game of life, or whatever.  To borrow an overused-yet-apt phrase, it feels like a roller coaster, like as soon as I seem to get it together, and I'm motivated and inspired and having adequate energy and thinking clearly, a fog rolls in.  The tide goes out and I'm heavy on the wet sand.  My mind blanks, my energy saps, my willpower takes a nap, and all I want to do are things that sustain me for an instant and leave me feeling extra crappy in the long term.

I find my eating habits are a good barometer for how I'm doing in general.

The weather in my life has been an interesting mix of stormy and calm, lately.  It's confusing.  One minute everything seems like it's never been better: I've never felt better, my marriage has never been happier, my house has never felt so much like home, I've never loved my child more.  The next moment I'm climbing the walls.  Nothing gets done.  Clutter builds.  Patience vanishes.  Tears well up and repress or fall.  Tony said I was sleepwalking last night, or at least that I got up several times during the night and tossed and turned when I was in bed, though I remember none of it.  I felt like I slept good, I dreamt, but I woke up exhausted.  How is that helpful?  Waking up tired is a travesty that should throw the entire universe out of balance.

So, as far as this blog is concerned, I'm afraid I'm developing a pattern I've always worried I would do once I started writing, which is writing about only negative junk all the time.  I don't want to do that! It's just that, I guess when I'm feeling good, I don't have this same urge to write as when I'm feeling all bungled up.  Is bungled even a word?  I don't know.  The desire to write is there when things are peachy, but I always second-guess myself or decide that whatever I want to say is trivial and has probably already been said before.  Not that the negative stuff isn't or hasn't either, but the bungled me doesn't know what else to do.  The foggy, confused, desperate me is begging for some sort of release, some connection, and it's either whine to a computer screen or else consume all the chocolate and then beach myself on the floor while my precious little boy tries to entertain himself.  I hate that I just typed that, and I don't really want to push publish anymore. Because the thing is, I was such a good mom when James was a baby.  Really, I feel confident in saying I was pretty great.  But now that he needs me to move around and be more present, I'm falling behind.  I'm dropping the ball.  And oh, I so don't want to admit that to you, whoever is reading this, but it's the truth.  All the dreams and expectations I had for myself are crumbling in the reality of how I really mother in the day to day.

Please be gentle with my reality.  I want to apologize for it, but I won't - I'm trying to work on accepting me and things exactly as we are, and moving on from there.  I'm going to try and disperse the fog, and when I do I'll try to come back and write some of the good things I've been thinking about.  Try, try, try.  It seems like such a pitiful offering.  The good things are there, I promise; they just take more energy, and my stores are empty.