In the Heart of my Home

Posted at 05:39 PM in Burnout & Depression, Faith, prayer, Velveteen me | Permalink

July 08, 2010

Velveteen Me--The Years the Locusts Ate

The mechanical toys were very superior, and they looked down upon everyone else. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel very insignificant and commonplace and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse. --The Velveteen Rabbit

Fourth in a series

This is the part of my journey that is most difficult to write, to share. About six weeks into the project, I had to come face to face to what was really tormenting me. My children are growing up so fast. It's astonishing to me how quickly the time has passed. When I began "the new habit project," I sifted through old columns and set them aside to post while I was away. I enjoyed reading them so much! I enjoyed re-living the moments they captured. I found myself wishing for that girl again. That girl--the one who wrote about ten years ago--that was the real girl I knew and loved. But where did she go? Why did she feel so elusive? And oh, what have I done to allow something, anything, to take her away and leave in her place an exhausted blob of a person who doesn't have nearly the idealism and enthusiasm as the girl she was? I don't want to be thirty again. I'm not looking to turn back the hands of time. But I want to take hard-earned wisdom and marry it to the positive optimism I once had in such abundance.

I sat today to write all about how I've restructured my time and my perception of the online world. but then I realized I've already written it. Nothing has changed really since those three pieces. Kind Conversation is new since then. It has a very tightly defined mission statement and I hold myself to it. Not everyone needs this kind of definition. I do. I use Kind Conversation as my portal to Twitter and Facebook, updating from there because being there holds me to that standard and the prompt is phrased in such a way that I am reminded to promote a culture of respect, dialogue, and friendship. I give social networking--Facebook, Kind Conversation, Twitter--no more than one hour a week total. I set a timer. I keep track. I have to in order to guard the precious, precious time I have. There was a time when I spent more than 20 hours a week nurturing a message board. I honestly believed I was doing the right thing. I was grateful for a ministry opportunity that allowed me to share this lifestyle without leaving my home. I invested my heart into the women there with all good intentions. In my sharing though, I traded the lifestyle. I gave away so much of myself that I lost the real. Struggles on the internet have yielded at last to an insight about myself for which I am very, very grateful. I see that for me, in this season, I need to look away from the computer and sharply limit my conversations there. I can attribute the insight, the resolve, and the ease with which I can keep those resolutions only as a blessing of this time of intense prayer and fasting.

Right around the time I was wondering where all this was leading and why peace was so elusive, I got an email from a friend who was inquiring on behalf of her friend. She was wondering how we decided to go ahead and try to conceive after chemotherapy and radiation. The gist of her question was whether we had researched and worried about the effect of chemo on my ovaries and the precious cargo therein.

I responded:

I don't let myself go there too much because it's really a waste of emotional energy. Christian was conceived in 1991. Six months after I finished chemo and radiation, I asked my oncologist about getting pregnant. He said it would probably take awhile to conceive but that if i could, he thought it highly likely I'd live to raise my child. We conceived that night. I didn't go home from that doctor's appointment and consult the internet. There was no internet access. I didn't get bogged down in medical studies or anecdotal reports on message boards or anything else. I trusted my doctor medically and then I trusted my husband with my life and the life of our child. That's the way our marriage works. We gathered expert information and then asked the Holy Spirit. We discerned that it was God's will to be open to conception and we were.

Wow! The biggest decision of our lives and that's the way we made it. Actually, we consulted two priests as well; both of them celebrated Christian's baptism nine months later. We have continued to make that decision that way for all these years. As my childbearing years come to a close, I am profoundly sad. I wish there more more babies. But I am also consoled by the fact that I know we have been open to every single one of them. I used to say (until very recently) that I have no regrets about these years. Now, I see that I do. I most definitely do.

I regret the way I allowed what I read on the internet to influence my life at home.

The thing that has changed is that now I look on those heavily- influenced- by- the- 'net years and my regret is not that I let my children play with felted fairies. My regret is that while they were happily engaged, I entertained countless conversations with women on the internet. And I let their opinions, their judgments, and their understanding of the faith color mine. Over time, the real me was rubbed away and what was left was a facsimile that was further from the image God I was created to be than I ever thought possible.

I regret that I made school decisions, house decisions, even clothing decisions in a way that was so counter to the way we made childbearing decisions. And I definitely regret the time I spent "consulting" about such things. I have always taken the gift of time very seriously. I regret that I wasted time online. I regret that I allowed online conversations to rob my family of the wife and mother God intended for them. Those were the years the locusts ate.

~~~

"I tell you, on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter" (Matthew 12:36)

Kyrie Eleison!

~~~

My experience with social networking isn't a unique one. It isn't universal either. It is what it is and I am where I am. The internet can be a tool for the good. It can be a font of community, prayer, and genuine support. And it can be a tool for evil mischief. Some people can engage in online banter or vigorously debate an online correspondent and click the computer shut and walk away, no better or worse for the exchange. Not me. I carry it around in my head. I laugh about it. I cry about it. I mentally write responses to it in the shower. I feel it. I live it. Some wounds run deep. And for those of us who feel those wounds, who struggle still to let Him heal those wounds, internet conversations can be a place of peril.

Let's bring the cancer thought to its completion. When I first got online, I joined a Hodgkin's survivor's group. At least I thought it was a Hodgkin's survivor's group. It was an email list that actually included survivors and people in active treatment. The week I joined, someone died. The first three days, there were graphic reports from his wife, delineating in detail his suffering. There were all kinds of posts second guessing his treatment, and everyone else's treatment. There were conflicting reports of longterm survival and early demise. There was utter confusion and despair in almost every thread. It was the blind leading the blind and they were all going some place very bad. On the fourth day, the man died. I unsubscribed. I was about 7 years out of treatment at that point and I'd avoided groups all that time. I knew myself well enough to know that I would take everyone else's experiences and make them mine. I'd feel their pain, live in fear of their struggles, share their confusion, and empathize so thoroughly that I'd never recover. That's who I am. That's how I'm made.

And I knew myself better than to do that. I don't believe that positive thinking can cure cancer, but I do believe that negative thinking can seriously compromise recovery. Recovery is too precious to me to risk. Ever. I am sure that there are very nice, medically sound cancer support groups out there online somewhere. Do I want to risk stumbling around in the negative ones until I find a positive one? Not really.

About a year later, pregnant with Stephen and feeling so happy and full of life, I found a Hodgkin's message board. I had one purpose: I'd get on and share the joy. I would shout to the world the good news of recovery. It just so happened that on that very day a dad was doing research for his daughter. He asked if anyone had every gotten pregnant following treatment, since she'd been told it would be nearly impossible. Oh yes! Someone had! I was expecting my fourth post-cancer baby. Wasn't that grand and glorious news? To my dismay, people started weighing in on how what I was saying couldn't be true. How "irresponsible" it was to raise her hopes. How I really shouldn't gloat on a board where so many people were suffering. And my joy? It was awash in tears of rejection and fear. Never again with that kind of board. Ever.

Over time, I settled into a Catholic homeschooling mama niche online. Mostly, the conversations were very enlightening and very friendly.It takes hours and hours to form relationships online and I invested those hours. All was well with the conversations there. Except when they snuffed out the joy. I didn't recognize it at first. Hah! I didn't recognize it at second or third or... Instead of clicking away, I tried to see the perspective of these "other people out there who must know so much more about God than me." I tried to believe their perspective. I formed my opinions and changed my mind according to the ideas and "authority" of people online, rather than using the discernment process of ageless wisdom. I listened and empathized and believed and felt until I wasn't even me anymore. I knew more and more about religion and I spent less and less time with Jesus. And the joy? Gone.

Anyway, I was slow to see the same dynamic as on the cancer board. Now I do. Now I know where the places are that I must avoid in order to guard and preserve my own interior peace. And there are lots of them. Apparently, I am a bit hypersensitive in this regard.This experience is mine alone. Why then, do I share it?

Because confession is good for the soul.

Because in writing I can begin to make sense of it for myself. Because the mere fact that I am able to write again means that there is healing. I stopped blogging because the voices of the people who would rob my joy had grown so loud that I couldn't hear myself think.

I shut it all down. And there was quiet.

The good news is that I found God there. I have quieted the voices of other people that have pelted my thoughts for so long and when I stopped hearing them, I heard Him.

Good trade.

Only God can love me back to real. Well, God and the sweet family with whom He has abundantly blessed me.

The whole series:

Posted at 07:54 AM in Burnout & Depression, Friendship, Velveteen me | Permalink

July 07, 2010

Velveteen Me--My Heart in my Home

Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this? And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground. ~The Velveteen Rabbit

Third in a series.

As I pulled away from the internet and the telephone, I became more aware of my home and the people in it. My goodness! They had all acquired some very bad habits, too. My little ones were bigger now. Technology had infiltrated every corner of our home. My television can do things that astound me. My daughter can text so fast and so frequently it makes my head spin. And we are all iPod Touch junkies, just ask Karoline. But this is not where I tell tales on them. Just know I'm working on sharing with them some of my own insights. I've also bookmarked just about every article or post that has come down the pike lately about this topic. Ironically, I've read very few of them, but I intend to read them all, when I have time to talk them over with Mike.

I have set some new limits on screens and such, but more than that, I've given them something else to do, to think about. I've gone room by room through my house with one thing in mind: I'm home.

Sarah Anne plays this sweet game where she takes a much-too-large-for-her tote bag and slings it over her shoulder. She walks across the kitchen, staggering a bit beneath the wight of the empty bag, and then she turns around and comes back to me. She smiles brightly and says, "I'm home!"

This is her reality.

This is my reality. This is what is real in my home during this season. It is a place of coming and going. For this baby, home is someplace where people leave and then they come back. Try as I might to stop the march of time and pretend that they are all little and running in concentric circles around me, "I'm home!" is what is real. It's so obvious that the smallest among us recognizes it.

It is time for me to recognize it. It is time for me to look again at the rhythm of our lives and establish our home as a place of welcome and soft landing. So, room-by-room, I went, looking with a critical eye and seeking to make this place a haven for all of us. My goal was especially to be certain that God was palpable in every nook and cranny. That doesn't mean that I stuck a statue and hung an icon in every corner. But it does mean that I ensured that my children will never doubt that home is a haven and that the transcendence of God himself will envelope them here.

Perhaps I will give you a tour some day.

Ironically though, "I'm home" often means I'm not home. Only two of my children are old enough to drive, so if the rest of them are coming and going, it means I'm driving. I hate to drive. My daughter takes ballet 9.72 miles from my home. It can take me an hour and 15 minutes to make that trip in traffic. Imagine what it's like during rush hour with a toddler and a three-year-old for company. Now multiply that out over five children who need rides four days a week. Throw in weekend soccer games, recently as far as 65 miles away...

Therein lies a huge source of stress. I am a homebody who is never home. I am a terrible driver who is always driving. I am a mom who believes in providing opportunity to her children who often wonders if they are over-scheduled. And my husband travels. A lot. It is a life of contradiction. A life of constant re-evaluation.

For now, it is summer and with the heat and humidity comes also a change of pace, a chance to catch my breath. We are seriously considering all our options for the fall. Exhaustion happens and exhaustion is often what I mistake for depression.

The whole series:

Posted at 07:55 AM in Burnout & Depression, Homemaking, Sports, Velveteen me | Permalink

July 06, 2010

Velveteen Me--To Desire Him More

Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. --The Velveteen Rabbit

The second in a series

After the first three weeks of exercise and prayer, I recognized that more habit-changing had to happen. I was no where close to the peaceful healing I so wanted and my family needed. I decided to stop blogging for the month of June. More about that in the next post.

In addition to the blogging break, I undertook the Saint Diet. I knew I wanted to fast--I wanted my body and my soul to be oriented towards dependence upon God. I considered other fasts, but this fast made the most sense to me. I wanted to overcome my tendency towards gluttony and to be reliant upon the tangible help of the Spirit to do it, but I wanted to work with my body chemistry, not against it. My body reacts very badly to sugar and to wheat. A fast that eliminates other foods, but allows wheat and sugar would have conspired to make overcoming my gluttony more difficult and it would have been detrimental to my physical well-being. Furthermore, I have learned that essential fatty acids are, well, essential, for me, particularly when battling depression. I paid careful attention to increasing fatty fish, beneficial oils, and EFA supplementation. The Saint Diet offers ample opportunity to whisper imploringly to the Spirit, "Please God, help me to desire you more than I desire this food." Jen does such a good job connecting the physical and spiritual dimensions in her posts, that little more needs to be said here.

After the first week or so of the "s" focus, I read this piece. And that finally resonated in a way no other look at fasting --and everyday eating--ever had. Again, I had to tweak a bit to reflect a healthy diet for me. But I have pretty much adopted this monkish meal plan.

My family does not eat this way. One of the other things I did during my detox time was to make well-considered meal plans and detailed grocery lists. I've always done this, but this time I did it with a distinct sense of detachment. I still believe in the beautiful expression of love and community that comes around the dining room table. And I still believe in healthy, well-prepared food. My personal perspective has changed a bit though, in a way I can't articulate very well.

This was about the time I added an intentional reduction in telephone use. I have long had a tradition of little or no telephone use when my husband is home. In searching my heart to see how things had gotten so out of control, I could see that my telephone and computer use had gone up exponentially when he stopped working from home and took a job downtown, right around the time Karoline was born. So, in order to train myself to be sensitive to computer and telephone use once again, I endeavored to refrain from both when my children were present and awake. It's crazy how much peace that practice brings! Truth be told, I have never been idle while on the phone. I use a headset and fold laundry, clean the kitchen, cook meals, but there's always a bit of chaos around me as I do.

And then there is another thing: my children are older now. Adult conversations don't sail over their heads. They hear them. They understand them as well as one can understand when he only hears one side. They shouldn't. It's not their world. Nor should I carry on a conversation with someone else while they are in the room. It's just rude. There are rare exceptions, of course. But they are exceptions. It's amazing how much this has affected the quality of the conversations I do have. When I wait until I can fully focus on talking instead of being distracted and interrupted by my children and couching my speech so as to protect them and the listener, I have better conversations. I can share more deeply. I can reach my "real." What's more important is that I can reach the "real" of the person to whom I am talking.

So, the second three weeks was more of the same exercise and prayer, with the addition of sharply curtailed internet use, very little telephone, and the Saint Diet. About a week into this phase, it was Memorial Day weekend. Three soccer tournaments, three different towns, all far away. I drove and drove and drove. I schlepped my poor baby around in 90 degree heat and DC humidity. I got to know every corner of rural Maryland.I didn't even think about the computer or the phone. When I got home at night, the only things I read were soccer-related emails. And I felt utterly detached from the bloggy world. That was the good part.

The bad part was that I was so unbelievably, incredibly, overwhelmingly tired that I seriously wondered when I would fall over. Around Thursday of the week following Memorial Day, I crashed again. And I despaired. All this work! All these habits! Hours and hours of prayer. And all that driving time? I had spent that listening to spiritually uplifting and challenging podcasts. Still, here I was a sobbing, exhausted heap.

What in the world was the problem with my program?

The whole series:

Posted at 07:31 AM in Burnout & Depression, Food and Drink, prayer, Velveteen me | Permalink

July 05, 2010

Velveteen Me

For a long time, he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon everyone else; they were full of modern ideas and pretended they were real. ~The Velveteen Rabbit

First in a series.

In early spring, I wrote about my struggle with depression. It was an easy post to write and a not-so-easy post to publish. I wasn't at all sure that it was a good idea to put it all "out there." But I hold myself to a very strict honesty policy on these pages. I try not to sugar-coat things or to only put forward the polished, pretty, happy times. So I wrote it and then I pushed "publish."

I received a flood of mail. Mail I have not yet finished answering-- dear letters from dear women who ministered and shared in a genuine outpouring of kindness.I tried very hard to employ all the old tricks and to nurture myself past this bump. In early May, the books were published. I looked on that long-awaited event not with gleeful, joyful anticipation, but with foreboding and trepidation. I was already so raw that I knew I had little reserve.

And then, frankly, I hit a wall. I reached a point of spiritual, physical, and emotional exhaustion that dictated a drastic change of lifestyle. Somehow, over the last decade, I had lost the real me. The ways I was spending my time didn't authentically reflect what I thought was important. The voices I was listening to and the things I was thinking about weren't voices I genuinely valued. Everything was off-kilter--from what I ate to what I read.

I recognized that in the last few years of over-forty childbearing and mostly sedentary living, I have grow rather plump. We go to Mass on Sundays in a school gym two blocks from my house. During Lent, I noticed that I got winded just walking there. I sit in the bleachers. When we kneel, there is no pew in front of me to hold and the bleachers are unrelenting. Sadly, I don't have the core muscles to kneel upright without occasionally resting back on my heels, something that is impossible when kneeling on a bleacher seat. I find that rather horrible. I recognized that I was not eating as I should, was not sleeping as I should, and was not praying as I should. I was not spending enough time out of doors, was not spending enough time just relaxing in the presence of my children, was not spending enough time with my husband. I had developed some very bad habits.

It was time to lay down some new rails.

The first thing I did was to get up earlier. I got up early enough to put 16-20 miles on a stationary bike every day. That's 45 minutes (or more) of hills, 6 days a week, for the last eight weeks, my friends. I didn't start small. I went all-in. I wish I could tell you--some eight weeks later--that this discipline and sweat has resulted in an astonishing weight loss worthy of the cover of a woman's magazine. I wish I could tell you that the fat just melted away. It has not. Just a pound a week (give or take five pounds, depending on the day). Nothing spectacular. The reality is that I am a 44-year-old mother of nine who has had two babies in my forties. I am still nursing. I might never weigh what I did in my twenties. But I intend to be as healthy as I possibly can. I love these kids. I want to be here for them in every sense of the world. I want to be a genuine blessing to them in the next phase of our lives. A plump, lethargic, slow-moving blob will not do.

I also gave myself enough time to pray the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer first thing every morning. Words cannot convey the healing effect of this practice and I won't even attempt it. The Divine Office and exercise and then-- because I was too sweaty to do anything else-- I was straight into the shower. This had the effect of creating a clean, dressed, contacts-in Mom, ready to face the day.

If I had accomplished all of this and still the house was still quiet, as it most often was, I lit a candle by the icons in the living room and sat with a cup of tea and my Bible. Maybe it was just minute or two or maybe it was many, many more. Whatever I received in that gift of time was spiritual treasure. Morning by morning, candle lit in my living room, the Holy Spirit has been very good to me.

I need time alone. In the early morning, when my eyes were literally begging to stay closed and fighting mightily against my best efforts to open them, I was compelled from downy covers and the enticing companionship of both husband and cherub by the very thought that if I got up I could have hours--maybe two or three--in my home with no one else. I so need that time alone. This indulgence in time alone has required a ridiculously early waking hour and so fatigue still lurks, but I'm working on that angle.

Time alone in prayer became genuinely quiet time. Now, I pray the Hours, but then I just sit and listen. I try to empty myself of anything and everything and just let God pour his mercy into me.

Morning time had previously been blogging time and I thought that was "me" time. Time to write and to read on the internet. In reality, it was quiet, but it was incredibly noisy. Introverts need time of genuine quiet. Heck, I think we all need time of genuine quiet. I sacrificed my internet time, my time to hear everyone else's ideas and to contribute to the conversation, for time of genuine quiet. It was an experiment of sorts. If I would just shut up and be still, would God reveal to me the real me?

The whole series: