The Hole

 For some people, the hole is smiling, showing up, never letting anyone (even sometimes yourself) realize that you're empty on the inside. You're making an effort. You're climbing out. You might crack, but you're an expert plasterer, so you paint on a good attitude and push yourself and keep yourself busy and move on without stopping to rest or stopping to think. When you're forced to stop and think, the deepness catches up with you and you're at the bottom of the pit again. 

For other people, the hole is not leaving your room. It's a constant ache in your head that somehow is physical -- even though it comes from the fear that you're useless, that existing is pointless, that the hours are prisons that keep you from the night. Night is a safe time because it's when you're allowed to stay in bed without anything being wrong with you.

For the next person, the hole is never sleeping. Sleeping brings the next day, which means all the hours of things that are impossible to do. Doing the dishes, which you didn't do the day before, because you couldn't bring yourself to the task. Or refilling the prescription, because walking out to the car seemed like too much effort. But night comes, and you won't release yourself, so you binge episodes of a show you've seen 10 times before in order to postpone waking up to face yourself the next day. 

For another, the hole is always looking for something new. It's always having plans on the horizon because facing a week of monotony is like facing the bottomless ocean without gills. It's ordering things to come in the mail and watching the tracking information to feel something positive. It's feeling the disappointment when plans fall through and you have to face yourself for a moment. 

The hole is running. Hiding. Facing reality and hiding again because it is too much to contemplate. 

The hole is always deep. 

The hole is you jumping up like Shadow and falling back in again because you're too broken and tired to climb out. The hole lets you see the light but never lets you really touch it, so you believe that sunlight is possible but you never get to stand in the warmth of the rays. 

Hands can reach down into the hole, but only really when people know you're in there, and sometimes they don't realize how far down you are. You hope someone will stop to help, but you're also terrified they will see how far down you've fallen. 

You wish you were stronger. But wishes let you down, so you learn not to rely on them too much. They are weak climbing vines. 

You try explaining your hole. The sides are steep. The edges are slippery. They are lined with things people have said, mistakes you've made, the people who left, the precious things you lost. And tears. And dry patches where the tears dried up because there were none left, and those places cause a different sort of pain -- not a bruise, but a scrape that draws out real blood. 

Some people are strong enough to keep climbing no matter what. They never stop. Some people get tired of trying and just wait at the bottom, which takes a different kind of bravery. Embracing life in darkness is a new type of endurance. And for others, the hole becomes their grave as they break one too many times, believing the hands reaching down to grasp them would be better off without a constant rescue mission. 

Brave

 I've tried in vain to find words written by someone else to accurately describe my feelings the past few weeks. 

I have anxiety. It's not a secret. Most of the time, it's a lingering discomfort that makes everything just a little bit harder. Things--like sleeping through the night, or talking to someone new, or going to the store, or driving a car--are harder. But I've learned to work through them because there's really no other option but to work through them. I have to be stronger than the constant fear that lingers in my head, or sometimes in my chest, or sometimes in the pit of my stomach at 3 in the morning.

But life threw a curveball at me, and I wasn't really ready. 

I'm going to have another baby.

I think I went through all five stages of grief. I didn't want to tell anybody. I was not excited. In fact, I was in a full blind panic. 

I had reasons. Things were finally getting into a good rhythm. I felt like I had a lot of stuff under control. But my weight wasn't where I wanted it to be-- the past year I've been working on healing my body image and not focusing as much on counting macros and calories and following any sort of plan, and my weight went up (as it naturally would) because I was eating normally after years of disordered eating patterns. I was so afraid all my careful work would be undone, that I wouldn't be able to exercise the way I like to, that people would look at my body and judge me for my size. All the careful work I'd put in would be undone.

And then there were the bald facts: I have hard pregnancies. I knew I was looking at weeks, if not months, of constant nausea, of hip pain, of maneuvering my short body up and downstairs and in and out of cars. I knew I would get depressed and angry and want to hide from the world and hide from my family and that I would feel alone and isolated. 

It was a mountain, and I panicked at the thought of suddenly having to climb it. 

So, here is what it means to be brave.

It means to feel the panic coming at you like a speeding train, but you can't escape it or run away from it, so you just let the train hit you. It means feeling the fear and feeling it again and again and again, but still somehow you're able to keep breathing.

Bravery means seeing that pain can make you stronger.

Bravery gets you up in the night and stays with you, telling your fear that even though you're afraid of what the day holds, you'll be alive at the end of it.

Bravery is recognizing that everyone might see you, and even though you don't want to be seen, you leave the house anyway. 

Bravery is what lets you give yourself away because loving someone means hurting when they hurt, it means sacrificing comfort, it means going against the current if you have to, it means creating something from nothing when there's no other option. 

Bravery is when you choose to do something hard. Bravery is eating another piece of toast. Bravery is hoping this one will stay down. Bravery is accepting that things will be okay -- eventually-- even if they aren't okay now. 

Bravery is trying to climb a mountain without knowing if you'll ever reach the summit. 

Bravery is trusting God, even when you feel like you can't trust yourself. 

Squirrel Suit

 In the Super Mario Deluxe game for the Nintendo Switch, Mario can get a power-up from red acorns that give you flight powers in the form of a squirrel suit. 

Nadine often watches her brothers play, and whenever an acorn appears, they say, "Get the squirrel suit! Grab it!"

She found a wooden acorn toy at our house today, and when Jonas tried to take it from her, she said, "No, that's my squirrel suit!"

She actually believes that acorns are squirrel suits. She pranced around the room, pretending the acorn was giving the power of flight. 

We all know that, in reality, acorns don't allow you to fly. But sometimes, we hold onto these ideas that certain things have power, even when they don't really give us anything at all. They won't help us level up the way we think they will, and yet we lose so much sleep and time and money and energy trying to access them anyway because we believe those things are squirrel suits. We want to fly, and we've been told that these simple acorns are our ticket to the sky. 

I have tons of these fake-corns in in my own life. Everybody does. And a lot of fake-corns are learned from the messages around us. We even reinforce them with each other.

Instead of refraining from gossip and talking negatively about people, we engage -- in the hope it will help us fit in socially or gain influence from a sphere of friends. We hope that by speaking about someone else in a certain way, we will define ourselves differently. 

Instead of committing and really living a certain moral code, we compromise it for fear of being an outsider, for looking and sounding different, for being perceived as weird. We even go so far as to laugh at, shake our heads at, or pass judgement on people who really are dedicated to something beyond themselves. How naive and silly they must be, how much they must miss out on, how strange to give up so much. 

Instead of recognizing that a body is a gift, a tool, a help, an amazing thing, we put it down, we starve it, we talk badly about it, we compare it with other bodies, we hate it, we decide it is disgusting and useless and unworthy. We make excuses for it, apologize for taking up space, cover it up when it might not be beautiful, and still spend money trying to make it -- cough, cough -- better (looking) than it was before. 

In the first example, the space for kindness narrows, while the path for hurt and dishonesty broadens to a highway. Our potential for influence decreases, while our ability to cause problems for others increases.

In the second, the potential for true self-mastery is laughed at, and the opportunity cost is celebrated. The door of personal responsibility shuts gradually, while the window of self-indulgence opens as an alternative exit. 

And in the third, the chance to define our lives based on what we can do, instead of based on what we look like while we do it, fades into a graveyard of missed opportunity. Hundreds, no thousands or tens of thousands, of people are overlooked because they just weren't enough of a body to be seen at all. Instead of looking outward at what we can offer, what we can do to help, what we can give, and what we can achieve, we see ourselves as objects for other people to view and approve of, always stopped at the border of a better country by the patrol of our own self-hatred. 

Don't chase the acorns that are only just acorns. They don't have the power of flight. They won't take you higher. They aren't balloons; they are anvils. 

Cinderella

The best version of Cinderella is the 1997 film adaptation of Roger's and Hammerstein's play. It features Brandi and Whitney Houston and Bernadette Peters (who we can all agree is a treasure and a half, even when playing the evil stepmother). This musical is obviously the best thing since sliced bread.

Alongside fabulous costume design, some truly bizarre sets, and some bread-centered choreography (choreographed dancing with bread is on my bucket list), the script offers this little gem.

Cinderella: "I wish I could go to the ball."

Fairy Godmother (AKA Golden Whitney Houston): "Then go to the ball, Cinderella, go. No one is stopping you but you."

As a kid, I felt this was kind of unfair. But she doesn't stop there. "That's the trouble with most people. They just dream about doing something instead of really doing it."

Talk about kicking a princess while she's down. But FGM was right. Cinderella could have gone to the ball, but just rested back on the assumption that she couldn't, and (in this film) was far too accepting of her fate. Sure she got some horses and a fancy dress and some truly uncomfortable and impractical shoes from Madame Fairy, but the real person standing in her way wasn't a vindictive and jealous maternal monster or a pair of ugly inside-and-out housemates. It was herself. 

No one is stopping you but you.

Now, you might have some insane obstacles in your path. You might, for example, live twenty miles from the castle and those twenty miles might have dragons and thickets of thirsty piranha plants (thanks, Mario). 

You might think you are too old to try something new. You're not. 

You might think that because you've failed 500 times before, you should just give up. You shouldn't.

You might believe that other people have what it takes. They're more talented, more athletic, more intelligent, more beautiful. 

And the truth is, your limitations will never go away. Some people do have it easier. Some people are gifted. Some people don't have to work as hard. Some people don't have back pain or health problems or consequences from decades ago still haunting them. Cinderella still had evil step-family members and chores and a midnight curfew.

So you hit the thicket, and you have bare hands, a broken leg, and no machete. The only way is through, but you don't have the tools. Does the journey end there?

For some people, the answer is yes. The thicket is too much, and they accept it. They blame the thicket. 

For others, the answer is to create new tools. They want to get through the thicket, to pass those twenty miles, to get there before the clock strikes twelve. They attack the problem head-on. They get help. They ask questions. They get feedback. They improve their fitness. They watch a YouTube video on DIY thicket crushing. They build an airplane after taking several semesters of mechanics and physics courses. 

For others, there is a third option, and it's not as simple as quitting or as flashy as pushing through at all costs. It's finding a new path. It's recognizing that changing course is not giving up, but applying their immense talent and drive in a new direction -- aiming for the same satisfaction, the same accomplishment, the same desire to never stand in your own way. These people change the world. They build roads through thickets for others who need help. They campaign that balls are an antiquated way for royals to romance, and try to implement a Kingdom Dating app instead. They teach fairies to make shoes out of leather instead of glass, and they start a college fund for orphaned step-children. 

In some ways, I have discovered I have a fear of success. I almost like being mediocre, even while I say I hate it. I like the excuses that allow me to underperform. I don't want to have to face the truth that when all my excuses are taken away, the only real reason why I'm not succeeding is that I am not brave enough to commit. I am not brave enough to fail. And I am not brave enough to see that I'm not enough when all is said and done. So, my excuses give me a buffer, a safety net to fall back on when I don't feel like trying anymore.

FGM was right. The only thing stopping me is me. 

Going Going Gone

 Do you ever do things you don't want to do because you know it will help make someone else happy?

Ever since Tennyson could talk, he has adored cats. His masks have cats on them. If he visits a house with a cat, he gets so excited to pet and play with them. When told he could choose between 200 dollars and a cat, he chose a cat. 

So last week we went to the Animal Rescue League and found Cheezly.

He was orange. Friendly. Patient with the children, even in the stressful environment at the animal shelter. He took his first nap on the shelves in the laundry room. He would follow me around and beg to be pet whenever he felt bored.

As the week went by, he proved to be ever the most perfect cat we could have found. He would sleep on top of the cabinet in the living room. He would chase a fuzzy rainbow mouse up and down the stairs. He always was clean in his litter box. He tolerated being picked up by Jonas and never scratched, bit, or hissed at anyone. 

Everyone was happy.

Except me.

I panicked when we brought him home, and stayed panicked for a full day. Clark had to take a night off work because I was a complete mess. I kind of put myself together, but the discomfort was building. 

But I told myself, I'm handling this. I promised Tennyson one day he would have a cat. It'll be fine.

Anxiety never bows to logic. It just sidesteps. Builds a bypass. Creates a new path when logic is standing in the way. 

As the week went by, my irritation levels were on high. Things would bug me easily. Then, the trouble sleeping. And a sudden fear of leaving the house. I would feel twinges of panic at the thought of even going to the grocery store.

I called the doctor to set up an appointment to discuss reintroducing medication (I've been off for about 3 months). I called a counseling group in Des Moines to talk about starting cognitive behavior therapy. 

Returning the cat to the shelter was not an option. I needed to find something else to do. I found myself hoping that maybe the cat would stay for a year or something before he would get sick and need to be put down. Yes, that is my horrible brain working for a solution when it's unreasonably stressed to the max. But the kids loved him. I couldn't ask for a more perfect pet.

And then Tennyson, overhearing my conversation with Clark about what was to be done said, "I'd rather have a happier mom than a cat."

I cannot tell you how much relief and guilt I felt in that moment. My son had waited years for a cat. He had asked and asked and always been told, "When we move. When we own a house." He waited until we unpacked. He saved up money to help buy the cat a bed and toys and food. And the guilt I felt about his giving all that up because I couldn't handle it cut me deeply. I felt even more guilty as my anxiety lifted almost immediately. A solution came from the tender heart of my oldest son.

I was very proud of him, and how somehow, in that moment, he was more than seven years old. I saw a glimpse of the kindness, understanding, and compassion I hope to see in him for the rest of his life, something that hopefully will never fade with time. We cried together. He was somehow better and stronger than me, and I loved him for it. 

Today, Tennyson went with his Dad to take Cheezly back to the ARL. Then they will go get a hamburger and pick up a tye-dye kit to make a craft. 

I will probably never attempt to give my children any sort of pet ever again. But I will attempt to give them more of my love, more of my time, and more of my patience. Because that is what they have given me this whole week, and their grace and forgiveness were what I needed. 

In this thing, my kids outperformed me. They did something they did not want to do in order to make someone else happy. I hope I can be like them when I grow up.