Breathing Deeply in Simple Gratitude (Not Guilt)

So I’m running today and loving the scenery. How incredible is it that I get to run with a view of two mountain ranges and a glorious expanse of water? I stopped for a moment to take it all in and reflected again on how incredibly blessed I am to live in this place. And then I was besieged with that old familiar feeling: Guilt. I have this terrible habit of feeling guilty for my blessings. So often all I can think is, “Why am *I* so blessed?” Why do I get mountains instead of cornfields or industrial parks or whatever (though I of all people know cornfields do have their own sort of beauty). With my second pregnancy I couldn’t feel joy for the longest time because all I could think was, “Why do I get blessed with another baby? Why when so many of my friends and loved ones struggle so much to get pregnant and suffer through miscarriages, or who simply long for the love of a husband and a family, do I have this second blessing coming into my life?” It literally robbed me of joy. I was cloaked in depression for weeks at the beginning because I felt such guilt for the blessings I was given. Guilt not gratitude–Isn’t that outrageous?!

I was thinking of that today and suddenly I heard God whisper, “You can trust me with other people’s blessings, you know.” And then I was flooded. I got it. Oh yeah… If God is taking such care to bless me with these exquisite things crafted with care to make my heart smile, of course He’s doing that for others! He knows my heartaches, he knows my cares, and he knows what woos my heart. He knows when I need the simplicity of resting into beauty. He knows the desires of my heart, little and big. He allows pain and suffering into my life, yes, but He also cushions me with an abundance of his love and a portion of blessings that leave me astounded and and grateful, and… guilty???

In a perfect world it would all equal out. We would all, well… Still be in the Garden of Eden experiencing pure intimacy with God and with one another. Our bellies would ALL be full, our hearts would be unashamedly vulnerable. Sickness and death and grief wouldn’t be in the picture. All truly WOULD BE (instead of shall be) well.

This is, at root, a trust issue. Do I trust in God’s goodness in my life and in the lives of others in the midst of plenty and in the midst of want? In the midst of the obviously beautiful and joyful and good and in the midst of what looks stark and barren and ugly? I knowthat I am graced with such abundant blessings, but I can trust that God is supplying blessings to others. He’s God. He’s not stingy. I don’t have the corner on his extravagant benevolence and generosity, and to feel guilty for my blessings only suggests that I think He’s holding out on others. That He could, at a moment’s notice, hold out on me. But that’s not Abba. That’s not God. This tells me that really I think He can’t be trusted. It also suggests, a really embarrassing level of narcissism, I suppose.

He IS blessing others. Even those that I see who are in such excruciating pain, who might not be in the same sort of season of blessing that I am in. He is there. He is their comfort and shelter and he delights in and woos their hearts just as much as mine. He is God. He is everywhere. His love endures forever. And I can rest in that instead of fretting and stewing over guilt. He was there for me in the times when the walls closed in and the bottom fell out of my life. When it seemed the crap of life would never stop piling up, His goodness was still in the midst of it. The blessings looked different then, but they were no less real or sustaining. That’s God. That’s His goodness. That’s who He is.

It’s not about ‘fairness’ or ‘equality’ in the long run, though He is equally present with each one of us. It’s just about trusting the unceasingly good heart of the Most High. He continually shows such goodness to me. Now I realize He’s got everyone else’s blessings covered. I don’t need to worry about their portion with the giver of all good things at the helm. So I think, I’ll just feel free to rest and relax into the good things in my life. Gratitude just makes more sense than guilt. Don’t you think?

Thankful to be a failure

I feel like God is calling me to be thankful for something I never would have expected to be thankful for:  My failures.

Last night I’d had it with Carolyn.  She’d had a fabolous day really.  I’d had comments from several people about how well-behaved my kids were, but then came bedtime.  Her sister, who had stayed up and played late WITH her big sister the night before conked out immediately.  Carolyn stayed awake.  And played.  I caught her in her playroom, happy as a lark.  And I. Was. Mad.  It wasn’t that it had been building all day.  Before bed I’d spent some time building her up for how well she’d done the rest of the day.  It’s just that bedtimes are notoriously hard for us.  We’ve had several bad ones lately and I just was in no mood to tolerate it.

And I didn’t handle it well.  I reacted in anger.  I did all the things the parenting gurus and experts and expert Mamas that I see doing it right on the days I am getting it so freaking wrong tell you not to do.  

I felt so low…  To be honest, right now, I can give you a list a mile long of things that I feel like I screw up as a parent and as a person, and the list of things that I feel like I do right is non-existent.  Do I recognize the distortion here?  Yes.

But yesterday as I was trembling with frustration and feeling the desperation of having chosen wrong in the game of parenting, again, what I heard was this:

I’m supposed to feel like a failure. 

I’m in a season of striving for discipline.  I’m trying to commit and recommit (usually on an hourly basis) to eating in ways that are good for my body.  I’m running.  It’s been my hope all summer to get my house under control (that SO hasn’t happened).  I’m trying to be deliberate about setting time aside to be with God.  I have been trying so hard to do the RIGHT things in all the RIGHT ways in all the RIGHT places.  And I go to bed each night seeing two dozen ways in which I failed, and so very few ways in which I succeeded. 

And I caught a glimpse for a second of me trying to build a Tower of Babel.  Trying to do it all right so that I am acceptable to other people and especially to God.  I’m trying to build my way to heaven, trying to earn favor.

It doesn’t work that way. 

So I feel like God is telling me to be thankful for my failures.  Because they remind me that I *can’t* get it right on my own, and that I don’t need to.  I am His by virtue of what HE DID, not by virtue of what *I* can do.  Admittedly, I struggle with what it looks like to ’surrender’ to the work of the Holy Spirit in all of these venues that do legitimitely require an outward effort on my part.  I don’t think I know how not to strive.   How does one surrender and still act?  I don’t know.

At least I do know that I can be grateful for not getting it right all the time.  I can trust that God is enough when I am not.  I can believe that even though it sucks to feel like a failure, that God is teaching me good things in the midst of it.  And maybe eventually I’ll even learn to get myself out of the way enough to stop striving and simply surrender.

Hello Blog

Me:  Hello Blog

Blog:  Hey!  Where’ve you been?

Me:  I dunno, I just haven’t had much to write I guess…

Blog:  You’ve been cheating on me with Facebook haven’t you??

Me:  Well, we have been spending more time together than we should, but that’s not why I haven’t blogged.

Blog:  Then why haven’t you?  You’re telling me that nothing is going on?  The kids haven’t done anything crazy?  The Navy hasn’t done anything interesting?  You haven’t had any angsty thoughts or new developments in your life?

Me:  The kids have done plenty of crazy things…  But I’m trying to collect those in a journal now and usually when they’re doing a lot of crazy things I’m too tired to come here and write about them…  The Navy, well.. .  It’s the Navy!  It’s always a little unpredictable.  Of course I’ve been angsty.  But Shore Duty has been, thusfar at least, relatively uneventful.  And, yes,  I’m still the thinkative girl who gets into a twit about lots of things and thinks herself in circles.  I’m still plenty angsty.  There really have been plenty of developments…  Just none that I’ve really wanted to put a publish button to.  And I’ve been staying busy doing other things.

Blog:  You’re leaving me, aren’t you?  Haven’t we had good times together?  Haven’t I always been there for you when you needed a shoulder to cry on or a place to vent steam?

Me:  You have always been there for me blog.  I’m not leaving you.  I’m sure I’ll have more to say somewhere down the line.  Right now my words are just quiet.

Blog:  Your words are quiet?  What in the heck does that mean, anyway?

Me:  Ok.  If you’re going to be mean about it, I’m done. 

Blog:  Fine!

Me:  Fine!

Encouraged by Complexity

I’ve been trying to write about how I felt after I read a New Yorker article about Madeleine L’Engle. 

I’ve been trying to tell you how encouraged I am by her complexity and imperfection.  How something in me responds when I think a person could be rejoiced over and treasured and loved by strangers as well as by those who are close to her when she was evidentally far from perfect.

I’ve been second guessing all of that because it’s really scary that someone who has so much insight about the ideal of marriage and family and life and faith could have struggled so much with all of the above, and could have been so desperate to live in denial of some really harsh realities in the lives of her family members.

I guess what it boils down to is that as I read more about Madeleine L’Engle, herself, I find that I’m challenged in the same way I am after reading her novels and books:  I’m challenged to accept the complexity of humanity as a whole and of the individuals in my life.  I’m challenged to embrace and accept the complexity…  to not to turn away from it…  to not judge it or be repulsed by it, but to look for how God’s transforming love is at work there.

So that’s what Madeleine L’Engle teaches me.  I think I’ll keep reading.

This is me acknowledging, but not apologizing for, the fact that it’s been a very long time since I’ve updated here. 

I’m just not feeling the blog thing lately.  I’m just not.

I do, however, find it somewhat hilarious that someone landed here by searching for ‘kinky euphemisms…’

With that, I shall recede back into  bloggy oblivion once more.

The Notebook

Sometimes I still cry.

While we were cleaning out the ‘we don’t know where to put it so we’ll just put it in this extra room’ room that needs to become the ’sparish’ room, I came upon a couple of notebooks.

The first one had some journaling, some grocery lists, some C doodling.  I tore out a few pages to keep.  The rest went to the recycle pile.

The second one took my breath away.

The first page began with a list of meds in my Mom’s handwriting.  Underneath that, a new and separate thought, were the words, “rapidly fatal.”  On another page there were the words “adenocarcinoma,” and “lymph nodes.”  There were words like, “Insurance Company,” and “MRI.”

In handwriting that goes back and forth between my mother’s and my father’s–often on the same page–I found the book that accompanied them to appointments.  That asked their questions.  That voiced their fears.  The book they carried with them after Mom was diagnosed with Lung Cancer.

There are test names and drug names and bold-faced facts that standing alone would elicit no emotion. 

And then there are the words that show me chinks in the armor that I rarely saw.  That maybe I was too scared to even look hard on. 

It was the fear.

“How do I manage the pain which is so bad now? (already….  at diagnosis)”

“Will I be paralyzed from this?”

“What can I expect?”

There are stark scribblings like “9-24 months.”  (We had 8 almost to the day when all was said and done). 

I wonder how alone my Mom felt in those fears.  I know I was just trying to be ‘the bearer of hope,’ and say only things my Mom could grab onto and hold with all her might.  But sometimes when you do that you deny a person their need to speak the truth about their feelings.  About their fears.  Which are real from the start.  I hope Mom didn’t feel too alone in her darkness as I stood desperately hoping to shine some light.  I hope that she knew she wasn’t alone in her fears.  I hope I did a better job than I remember of listening.

But what killed me in this notebook–what brought the tears pricking and overflowing and bewildering my husband who was sorting a few feet away–was what I read two pages later.

In Dad’s handwriting:  “Carolyn Helen, 8 lb. 1 oz.  20 1/2 in,” and the name of the hospital in which she was born and the number of days we’d be staying.  It was an empty page all by itself surrounded by all of this fear and pain and starkness.  It WAS the hope that I DID provide for them to hang onto.  It was the joy in the starkness.  Remembering that superimposed joy and starkness was overwhelming.  Remembering that year of newness and joy and pain and loss and the hugeness of it all, took my breath away.

The notebook also has the notes I scribbled after I called the Red Cross to let Husband know that Hospice thought she had two or three days at best.   Those notes were a lifeline of hope that I held onto.  They represented precious time I took away from being at my Mom’s side to tell my husband what was going on and to shoot a flare that might bring him home.  It did.  Mom held on, waited, lingered until Husband was by my side.  He came in late a day later.  She heard me say, “I love you Mom, Goodnight” and him say, “See you tomorrow Carol,” and a few hours later she was gone.   Such few words in that little notebook bookmarking moments and hours that I’ll never forget.

Further on, the notebook has notes of homes for rent that I scouted out that spring after staying with Dad during deployment when C and I went back to Washington for Husband’s coming home. 

It has scribblings I left for a babysitter during those six months as I tried to regain my footing. 

It has a years worth of experience and emotion and pain and joy all within a few pages of one another. 

And I cried.  And I held the notebook like it was something alive and real.  Like it was a link to those days and a way to hold my Mom’s hand again.

I thought about that year and the hugeness of all we lived through.  I didn’t minimize it or rush it away.  I sat there with it for a moment and remembered what it was like to have a baby.  Nurse my Mom.  Lose my  Mom.  Say goodbye to Husband as he left on deployment.  And live through the subsequent months of grief and aloneness while trying to piece back together the life I’d return to in another state.

It made me remember when I learned to take things a day at a time and to look only at “what is” and “what’s next.”

It made me miss my Mom and relive those days.

Sometimes I still cry.

Extravagance

One of the words that keeps coming at me over and again in this current season for me is “Extravagance.”  I feel absolutely surrounded by glorious extravagance.  Like I’m swimming in it.  We’re starting to settle into our new home.  I keep thinking there is no reason in the world that we should be in a house like this.  This house is special.  We couldn’t afford a home like this in a place like this in a million years.  This simply must be grace.

 

But it goes further than that.  Soon after we moved in here I started trying to get back into my walking/jogging routine.  I discovered that just up the road from  us is ‘the country’–the kind of country that reminds me of home.  Farms, and trees, and flowering plants, hills and fields.  It smells so good in those spots:  like dirt and flowers and baby leaves. 

Then I set out one day to see how close I could get to the water.  We could see it from our house….  But how close was it really?  And if there was access to it was it all in restricted ‘military base’ places? 

Imagine my surprise when I found 1/4 mile from our home, a ‘backroad’ beaten with potholes, that takes you to the beach.  So we’ve spent some time exploring there…  We took a ridiculously long beach walk two weekends ago, and while doing so we crossed paths with three otters.  We’ve lived here almost five years.  I’ve wanted to see a sea otter for five years…  Husband said he saw one the first week he was up here.  I’d stopped believing they really were here.  And then we saw three.  They played in the water, and then came up on the beach right in front of us, sunned themselves, played, noticed us and headed back out to sea where they continued to give us a show of playing and peeking back at us for at least 25 minutes.  Since then I’ve seen another otter in a completely different spot, and seen our family of three again while walking along ‘our beach’  another day.  Sea otters are my thing.  I’ve loved them since I first saw them in a trip to Alaska with my parents.  In my mind there is no other explanation for being inundated with sea otters lately except that God is, for whatever reason, saying I love you…  wooing me witih gifts he knows I find better than jewels…  showing me his extravagantly good heart.

I could go on and on about a park that I discovered in the town C goes to preschool in with sweeping views of the islands; about the 13 deer that I saw there  yesterday just milling about as I walked by with a stroller; about the way the sun has played on the mountains; about the storms blowing over the water, swirling around and then giving way to blue sky and sunshine.  I can go on and on, but it can all be summed up in one word:

Extravagance. 

Maybe two: 

Extravagant grace. 

Or another two:

Extravagant love.

 

There is no reason I should be so blessed.  I could sing deyenus (It would have been enoughs) for all time for the blessings we’ve been given besides any of these…  This kind of extravagance makes me nervous, makes me wonder if a downturn is coming…  If this is a season of beauty because I will need to store it up for a season of pain.  I have never done well with extravagance.  I feel awkward and unworthy and nervous around it.  But I am trying to remember that right now is what is most important.  That bad things WILL happen at some point, because it’s a simple fact that ’in this world we will have trouble.’   I try to be mindful that worrying about them steals the joy of this extravagance.  I want to stay present.  I want to soak it in.  I want to breathe it all in, and store it up and cherish it.

Extravagance.

Why Support the MOTHERS act?

• Because postpartum depression is THE most common complication of childbirth. 
• PPD affects approximately half a million women per year in the US.
• 10-15% of women who give birth will experience a postpartum mood disorder
• Postpartum mood disorders negatively affect mothers AND children
• Postpartum depression is frequently unreported and under diagnosed. 
• Postpartum mood disorders are TREATABLE

Need more reasons?

• Because no woman should suffer the sadness, guilt, and anxiety that postpartum mood disorders bring
• Because children need mommies who are able to care for them
• Because being a parent should be a joyful experience
• Because chances are someone you know will experience postpartum depression

You can even read the bill yourself! 

Please support the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERs act.  How can you do that? 

Again, it’s easy! 

Go to the DBSA and sign the petition.

E-mail Susan Stone at susanstonelcsw@aol.com and put your name on the state-by-state list of people who endorse this bill–be sure to include your name and state.

Call and write your senator or Congressperson

Write about the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act in your blog.

Call or e-mail every one of your organization’s members today and tell them to get up and get to work for goodness sake.

Join Postpartum Support International as it works to create more and better services and education for the women who suffer.

More Goodies:

Sharing the Journey–A fellow PPD survivor, PSI coordinator, and PPD Advocate who is heading up this week’s movement to blog for the MOTHERS Act

An interview with Mary Jo Cody

Susan Stone’s Perinatal Pro

Senator Menendez’s enorsement

One more edit to add:  I just got done calling a good 3/4 of the H.E.L.P. Senate Committee (including getting yelled at by a very annoyed but official sounding somebody when I fat-fingered a number…  *sigh*).  I’m a girl who wets her pants when she gets pulled over by a policeman, and gets sweaty palms just driving by them. I’m afraid of important people.  If I can call a few Senators, I know you can!

Because Information Empowers, The MOTHERS Act, and my story

I’ve started several posts about the Mother’s Act today.  I’ve spent some time reading things that those who oppose it have written, including one of the articles which comes dangerously close to libel against the fantastic Katherine Stone.  That’s a line I didn’t expect to see crossed, and it saddens me that it was.

What rattled me almost as much today were assertions that were made essentially suggesting that postpartum depression is not a real medical problem, and that the difficulties women may face during the postpartum period could only come from Western Medicine’s mishandling of pregnancy, labor, and birth.  In light of that, I thought I’d share a bit more of my story. 

With both of my  daughters we faced the real possibility that my husband would be gone during their births  So….  I sought out a doula each time.  I wanted someone WITH me.  Along the way I learned a bit about doulas…  I learned about how they decreased the rate of C-sections significantly, about how they often help Mom’s find ways to endure the pain of childbirth without using epidurals or other medications.  And you can’t learn about doula’s without learning a bit about the ‘natural childbirth movement.’ 

When my second daughter was born, I did most of my laboring at home.  Our doula was fantastic.  She kept me calm and focused.  I spent most of the labor on an exercise ball or curled up on my own couch.  I took showers to deal with the pain, and to stay relaxed.  We actually ended up planning our trip to the hospital around the opening of the military base’s gate that was closest to us.  I arrived still minimally dilated, VERY quickly transitioned from 2 cm to 10 cm, pushed for a reasonable amount of time and held my baby girl in my arms just two hours after getting to the hospital (with a total laboring time of 10 hours–I have to get my full credit!).  I didn’t get an epidural, or any other form of pain relief.  My labor went as close to going ‘as planned’ a labor possibly can. 

But as I said in an earlier post, it felt different from the start.  I felt panicky with my baby in my arms.  When I got home, I found the only time I felt really ok was when I was snuggling my tiny miracle and she was content.  Months went by and I attributed my feeling ‘off’ to the anniversary of the death of my mother, to my  husband’s deployment, and to countless other things only to find when life ’settled down’ that I still didn’t feel right.

It took weeks of me looking online for people with stories like mine before I got the courage to call for an appointment.  I didn’t have the symptoms I expected to have for a diagnosis of Postpartum Depression.  I felt sad, but I didnt’ cry all the time.  I was irritable and angry too often.  My default setting for life was more negative than positive.  But mostly all I could say was that I felt off.  I wrote more about how I felt in this post.

I was lucky to see a compassionate doctor who was aware of depression and postpartum depression.  When I went to the doctor, I expected to have to convince HIM I had a problem.  Instead he listened to my symptoms and my conclusions and spent the next half-hour or so helping me to understand WHY I was feeling that way, and explaining the avenues of treatment available.  I left knowing that I had a REAL problem and that HOPE was available.  I wasn’t always going to feel like this, and the fact that I did feel like I did WASN’T MY FAULT.

I write all of this for two reasons:  1)  Because I had a pretty minimally medically invasive labor and delivery.  I was in no way, shape, or form a “victim of Western medicine.” (the fact that Western Medicine, while it can be flawed, can also be a life-saving Godsend is really for another post.  In the meantime, go read what Liz at Mother is Not For Wimps says about CesareanAwareness Month).  Yet even with this non-medicated, “natural,” doula-assisted birth, I STILL experienced Postpartum Depression.  I STILL felt off.  2)  Had it not been for me becoming informed little by little, and then having the luck of seeing a physician who both had a clue and gave a damn, I wouldn’t have known I had a problem or believed there was hope to deal with the problem.   For me, information was power.  Denying the problem left me hopeless.  But, armed with the knowledge that I had a REAL physiological condition that could be TREATED a variety of ways left me empowered.  And gave me the chance to dig out of the ‘offness.’

 

The MOTHERS Act was written for women like me.  It was written so that women who might not think they fit the mold for a problem like postpartum depression can become informed, and ultimately empowered.  It was written to bring awareness to health care providers so that a greater number of them will have a clue and give a damn.  It wasn’t written to drug women into mindless zombies or so that health care providers could dupe women into taking drugs they don’t need to pad the pockets of the evil entity known as “Big Pharma.”

Education is Power.  Even more, Education EMPOWERS.  That’s why I support the Mother’s Act.  That’s why I encourage you to speak louder than the opposition.  How can you do that?  Stealing from the, now infamous, Katherine Stone: 

Here are ways to take action:

• Go to the DBSA and sign the petition.
• E-mail Susan Stone at susanstonelcsw@aol.com and put your name on the state-by-state list of people who endorse this bill.
• Call and write your senator or Congressperson
• Write about the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act in your blog.
• Call or e-mail every one of your organization’s members today and tell them to get up and get to work for goodness sake.
• Join Postpartum Support International as it works to create more and better services and education for the women who suffer.

All is well

I haven’t blogged in ages.  The move in to our new house took out our Internet for almost three weeks and since then I’ve signed in and started typing and just haven’t had anything to say.  I’ve been trying to be more balanced about my time online and have had some really sweet time with God…  But I don’t have much to say here. 

All is well here.  Very well. 

I’ll be back when I have sometime to say.