Today.
I have been reading a lot of Anne Lammott lately. And by a lot, I mean I just can't read fast enough to get to the next book. There are most definitely some extremes in her writings and in her life that I can't relate to exactly, however, I think if she and I were to meet she would just get me, as I feel so connected to her and her candor when it comes to the subject of faith. It's refreshing to connect with people who aren't wearing masks.
The other day I was given a kind of backwards compliment. Someone told me that my constant cheerleading in public was a gift that most people don't have (compliment), but that he wondered if the pendulum swung the complete opposite way when I was in private (backwards part). I have been stewing on this concept ever since.
I talked to Tricia about it in our session this week and she came up with the mask analogy. We wear these masks in public that seem to say "I'm okay, you're okay", but there are very few people, if any, in our lives who ever get to see the pendulum swing to wear the mask is taken off in private. I think deep down we all know this to be true, however, how many of us are willing to admit it to ourselves and how many of us are willing to go a step further and start taking our masks off in public? What would that look like?
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Friday, June 28, 2013
The Loss, The Revelation & The Beginning of the Journey
Entry 3. Today.
I had a miscarriage. For lack of a more profound term to incorporate all the emotions involved, it sucked. It sucked hard. Shortly after the news from the doctor that we were going to lose the pregnancy, one of my friends asked me if I needed anything. I told her I needed to get completely obliterated, go outside and yell several f-bombs into the universe (yep, this "good little WV Christian girl" said that...), and get a really bad tattoo. She graciously answered that she could take care of the first two, but let's hold off the tattoo...ha! While we may not have participated in any of my reactionary ideas, I absolutely love my friends and have been incredibly blessed to have found some of the greatest women alive who I can count amongst that category in my life.
I would be well into my 2nd trimester by now and probably not traveling much, as I would have been a high-risk pregnancy, but instead I just returned from a weeklong mission trip to western Honduras. While there were most definitely times of great sadness, there were also times of great joy and reflection. You see, the miscarriage has caused me to do something I have never done in all my 40 years of life...figure out who I really am and who I want to be.
This journey to realizing I still hadn't "found myself", a quest I was convinced I surely must have completed by the end of college and after several mistakes along the way, came straight out of left field for me. After all, I was a 40-year-old woman with a husband, a child, a faith and a routine, so how was it possible that I didn't know who I really was or wanted to be at this stage in the game? I realized the "routine" I mentioned had been clouding my vision for longer than I wanted to admit...
The revelation came to light when I started seeing a pregnancy loss/grief/women's health therapist, Tricia, shortly after we received the bad news, as this was something I promised Jason I would do if anything happened to this pregnancy so that he wouldn't "lose me" in my loss. One of the most poignent subjects we will tackle on this quest to find myself was asked during my initial intake session. She asked about my faith. In particular, she asked me if I had my own faith or I have faith by habit. This shook my frame.
Up to this point in my life, particularly the last decade or so, I had convinced myself that because my ideas and philosophies were more "open-minded", lets say, than my family's, that I had adopted my own faith; however, it seems that I may have just been practicing a more open-minded version of their faith that had honestly just been a habit all my life instead of truly developing my own.
How had I come so far and just now realized I still have so far to go?
I had a miscarriage. For lack of a more profound term to incorporate all the emotions involved, it sucked. It sucked hard. Shortly after the news from the doctor that we were going to lose the pregnancy, one of my friends asked me if I needed anything. I told her I needed to get completely obliterated, go outside and yell several f-bombs into the universe (yep, this "good little WV Christian girl" said that...), and get a really bad tattoo. She graciously answered that she could take care of the first two, but let's hold off the tattoo...ha! While we may not have participated in any of my reactionary ideas, I absolutely love my friends and have been incredibly blessed to have found some of the greatest women alive who I can count amongst that category in my life.
I would be well into my 2nd trimester by now and probably not traveling much, as I would have been a high-risk pregnancy, but instead I just returned from a weeklong mission trip to western Honduras. While there were most definitely times of great sadness, there were also times of great joy and reflection. You see, the miscarriage has caused me to do something I have never done in all my 40 years of life...figure out who I really am and who I want to be.
This journey to realizing I still hadn't "found myself", a quest I was convinced I surely must have completed by the end of college and after several mistakes along the way, came straight out of left field for me. After all, I was a 40-year-old woman with a husband, a child, a faith and a routine, so how was it possible that I didn't know who I really was or wanted to be at this stage in the game? I realized the "routine" I mentioned had been clouding my vision for longer than I wanted to admit...
The revelation came to light when I started seeing a pregnancy loss/grief/women's health therapist, Tricia, shortly after we received the bad news, as this was something I promised Jason I would do if anything happened to this pregnancy so that he wouldn't "lose me" in my loss. One of the most poignent subjects we will tackle on this quest to find myself was asked during my initial intake session. She asked about my faith. In particular, she asked me if I had my own faith or I have faith by habit. This shook my frame.
Up to this point in my life, particularly the last decade or so, I had convinced myself that because my ideas and philosophies were more "open-minded", lets say, than my family's, that I had adopted my own faith; however, it seems that I may have just been practicing a more open-minded version of their faith that had honestly just been a habit all my life instead of truly developing my own.
How had I come so far and just now realized I still have so far to go?
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Do We Commit or Receive and Leave?
Entry 2, "I'm really starting to wonder if people understand what being committed to something really means. I think that people tend to commit to being a part of something for the feelings they get out of the place at the time they decide to commit...it becomes more about what they can get out of it than what they can give to it, and that's just unfortunate. I've noticed then that things tend run their course, and said "committed" people are no longer getting the perfect "about me" feeling factor out of it, they generally head to where the grass is greener on the other side instead of digging in their heals and making the place they already are the place they want it to be. The sad part is, they generally don't think about how this will affect others around them and how that, at some point, the place they went to will ultimately have the same issues as the place they left, because again, they aren't putting into it, they are only getting out of it, and you can only get out for so long before you ultimately have to give or get out. It truly saddens me."
There's more to me than the letters SAHM and quoting Sam I Am from Green Eggs and Ham
What's funny to me is that I started this blog a few years ago, when I decided to stay home with my little guy full time, and yet when I revisited the idea of starting a blog today, I found these first two entries that I had never been brave enough to publish. I still feel the same way about both of these subjects, so, here goes nothing...
Entry 1: "I despise acronyms. I don't know if this stems from years working in corporate America or years of fertility treatments, but of all the words in the English language, the word acronym does not conjure up happy thoughts. To me it is simplifying something for the sake of brevity that may not deserve simplifying at all. For example, when one makes the decision to leave their career to stay home and raise a family, I find it offensive to simplify this major life shift to 4 simple letters, SAHM. I am more than just an SAHM, I am first and foremost a Christian, then I am a wife, a mother, a friend, an educated woman, etc. How in the world do four simple letters reflect a full life?"
Entry 1: "I despise acronyms. I don't know if this stems from years working in corporate America or years of fertility treatments, but of all the words in the English language, the word acronym does not conjure up happy thoughts. To me it is simplifying something for the sake of brevity that may not deserve simplifying at all. For example, when one makes the decision to leave their career to stay home and raise a family, I find it offensive to simplify this major life shift to 4 simple letters, SAHM. I am more than just an SAHM, I am first and foremost a Christian, then I am a wife, a mother, a friend, an educated woman, etc. How in the world do four simple letters reflect a full life?"
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