I have been beating myself up for not being more disciplined with my writing. For the past few weeks, I've met with a friend to develop weekly goals. We both needed the accountability and structure.
Every week, I've put a goal of writing something every day. Of course, the fact that I have issues with scale have meant that if I'm not blogging every day, I'm failing at the goal. I'm reading the Bible in a year in the Bible app. I am behind (more self-flagellation), but the readings this week have been about talents we are given.
There is the classic parable of the men who were given talents. The men had three different reactions when given the talents (a talent, in this context, was a unit of money). One man multiplied the talents aggressively, one man was less aggressive and one buried his talent.
I spend a lot of time thinking that I want to be given a lot. I have this recurring fantasy of opening my front door and seeing a large sack with dollar bills sticking out of it. I'm very sad to report that as of the writing of this post, I've yet to encounter said sack.
More recently, as we've been in a season of unemployment for Brian, we've encountered blessings from God that are much smaller in size. At the same time, they have made a huge impact on our situation. More importantly, they've made a huge impact on our faith. Every time we receive an unexpected windfall or some kind of assistance comes through, it's a reminder that though we don't know where the path is leading us, we do know that God is guiding our steps.
But I digress.
I have this idea that I should (that it is reasonable and, therefore, mandatory) be able to sit down every day and write a blog post. I confess that some days, I let small things like my phone and mindless activities crowd out the more important things. On other days, though, I am unable to carve out the time necessary to sit down and write down several paragraphs at a time.
Up until today, I spent a lot of time criticizing myself. I figured it was some sort of moral failing, a lack of discipline. At church, though, it occurred to me that I have, in fact, been writing every day. It may not always be a blog post, but I have been texting with a friend who struggles in many of the same ways I do. I am realizing that in texting her, I am uncovering God's truth about my own situation.
I feel like I need to work harder to quiet the distractions and dedicate myself to my craft. I mention the parable about the talents because I think it's evolved into a meaning of actual talents (or spiritual gifts). If I am not honing my skills, if I am not building my writing muscles, I am like the servant who buried his talent in the ground.
I firmly believe that God has gifted me tremendous talent when it comes to writing and even public speaking. I don't mean that in an arrogant way. I know that I have blessed people and helped people as a result of either blog posts or lengthy Facebook posts. I have tried hard to be transparent and vulnerable about my struggles with depression and anxiety. Many people have encouraged me to continue sharing because I won't even know who all is being impacted.
In the end, the important thing is that when I do receive compliments or accolades, that I throw that glory right back up to God. I may be the one typing, but he is the one who sometimes speaks through me. (I will readily admit that I am equally as irrational and filled with fear as I am rational and hopeful. I don't want to pretend to be someone I'm not and I don't want people to think it's all sunshine and rainbows. I'm just as likely to think my headache is a malignant brain tumor as I am that the right job is just around the corner for Brian. That's the beauty of being a woman--I can hold multiple feelings and thoughts in my head at the same time.)
I'm also happy to report that we decided to hit the pause button on potty training Brooklyn. For anyone who has ever had to potty train a child, you know that the process can be frustrating and draining. Jeremy took forever to potty train (which we found out later was directly related to his sensory processing issues). Bekah was pretty easy. Doug was older than Jeremy when he potty trained, but our experience with Jeremy taught us that it's no use to fight a toddler's will.
Our ordeal started on Friday. She is not keen on wearing underwear. (As a reminder, she wore the same sneakers religiously, even to the beach over the previous summer. We were worried that her feet would become deformed as we continued to cram them into the sneakers. It was nothing short of a miracle that she finally acquiesced and started wearing a different pair. Now we've even gotten her to wear a pair of sandals!) We have been trying to sell the idea of potty training for a few months. She has shown interest at times. She hides when she has a BM. She is able to undress herself.
It would be easy to conclude, then, that she's ready. Our experience on Friday showed us differently. She asked for a diaper on several occasions. We said no. She peed in about four pairs of underwear, peed on the floor three or four different times and even refused to pee on the potty (but instead stand in the doorway to the bathroom and pee on the floor, right in front of me).
This is one of those times that I want to go head-to-head with a toddler and prove my intelligence. It comes down to the idea posited in War Games, though. The only way to win that game is not to play. Toddlers, by their very nature, are not ruled by logic and thoughtfulness. Brooklyn is currently terrorized by something she calls "spiders." Are they actual spiders? Nope. So far, the most we've been able to ascertain is that they resemble spiders but are actually dust bunnies (or dust elephants, more like).
She insists on using a fork to eat, even if the food shouldn't require a fork. (Jeremy, who is reading over my shoulder as I write, has encouraged me to share that she used a fork to eat a donut this morning at church.) She likes to carry around random assortments of objects, each of which have significance to her.
We decided that given her stubborn nature (not sure where she inherited that), we will take up the task again at a later date. We are blessed with the gift of time, in that she isn't required to be potty trained until September.
I'm hopeful that this is the week I will be posting more blog posts, but I'm also going to be okay if the most I'm able to do is share my experience, hope and strength with someone via text or Messenger.
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Monday, March 18, 2019
Starting Over....Again
It's been a week or so since I've been able to sit down and write. I have developed the habit of meeting with a friend on Saturday mornings. We sit down together and physically (pen and paper) write down goals for the coming week. It has been helpful for me. It helps set the tone for the upcoming week. It also helps me look back and realize the things I was able to accomplish in the previous week.
I continue to battle my weight. I have reached a point where the cardio I'm doing (walking dogs) is not intense enough to maintain my weight or help me lose weight. After Brian lost his job, well, really before that, I lost some of the previous discipline I had regarding food.
The simple reason is that Brian is not home every night. This means that there isn't always an adult with me at the end of dinner. If there is an adult with me, then it is easy to close the kitchen. I can put away leftovers, load the dishwasher, etc. If there isn't, then I have to leave the leftovers out for when Brian gets home. I am alone fielding the multiple requests from each child, trying to negotiate terms with one or two of them about their amount of screen time, or signing homework slips or the like.
The stress wears on me. And in the best circumstances, when the stress hits, I can take a quiet time or write something or do some deep breathing.
If I have no one around who can run interference, then it becomes tricky to set a physical boundary between me and the food.
Back when I started this journey, I set a rule for myself that I stopped eating at 8 PM. Over the past couple of months, I relaxed the rule and then struggled to set that boundary again. The picture I have in my head is of a herd of sheep being let out of their pen. I'm positive, though I've not experienced it firsthand, that herding all the sheep back into the pen is not easy.
Similarly, it has been tough to set that boundary for myself again.
I've also reached a point where the dog walking is not strenuous enough activity. I am racking up the steps on a regular basis, but my heart rate isn't getting into the right zone. I've been threatening to start strength training for several weeks. As usual, I've been overthinking it. It's tough to have to to start over again.
Meanwhile, I've also decided to stop weighing myself. I had developed the habit of weighing myself every morning. It was not serving me well.
I've written about that number before. It's a fixed point in time. It is a snapshot of where you are, but it's really only one of several factors when discussing health. So instead of obsessing over one of those factors, I'm going to focus on my measurements. I am going to ask a friend to help me take my measurements. I am also going to mark my watch band and take pictures of myself. I will then set all of that aside for a month. After 30 days, I will pull the scale out, but I will also check my measurements, see how my watch is fitting and look at my before and after pictures.
There's no point, when I am just coming out of a major depressive episode, to measure something that will end up weighing me down and possibly dump me back into the morass. I won't lie, it's going to be difficult. Breaking old habits and trying to develop new ones is exhausting. Our brains are malleable things, capable of a great many things.
We all have pathways in our brains. Each pathway represents a learned behavior. Some of them are more important than we realize. Take going to the bathroom. It's seldom that we stop and consider all the steps involved in doing that. Our brains figure out how to do simple things like that and then it becomes second nature. It becomes a deep pathway in our brain, like a well-worn path in a forest preserve.
The problem becomes when that pathway is no longer good. Think about a path in the forest preserve that gets flooded. If we try to take the same path we've always taken, we'll drown. We need to find a new path, but it will mean getting through underbrush, fighting off brambles, etc. It's not for everyone. Quite frankly, most would probably just turn around and go back. But when you know what's at the end of the trail, it can be enough to propel you through all of the yuck.
For me, I'm not looking for a specific number, clothing size, etc. I'm looking to be fit. I want to be more muscular. I want my resting heart rate to be lower. I want less body fat.
I will continue to meet with my friend every week. I'm going to try to make small, manageable goals. I am optimistic that even if I don't transform into the person I've always wanted to be by next month, God will have shown me what the goal should be instead.
(I apologize if this post is rambling. Usually, I write them all in one sitting. I'm trying to write everyday so I started yesterday, but got too tired to continue. I don't feel like it flowed as well as usual. On the flip side, I did write yesterday and today, so I'm counting it as a win.)
I continue to battle my weight. I have reached a point where the cardio I'm doing (walking dogs) is not intense enough to maintain my weight or help me lose weight. After Brian lost his job, well, really before that, I lost some of the previous discipline I had regarding food.
The simple reason is that Brian is not home every night. This means that there isn't always an adult with me at the end of dinner. If there is an adult with me, then it is easy to close the kitchen. I can put away leftovers, load the dishwasher, etc. If there isn't, then I have to leave the leftovers out for when Brian gets home. I am alone fielding the multiple requests from each child, trying to negotiate terms with one or two of them about their amount of screen time, or signing homework slips or the like.
The stress wears on me. And in the best circumstances, when the stress hits, I can take a quiet time or write something or do some deep breathing.
If I have no one around who can run interference, then it becomes tricky to set a physical boundary between me and the food.
Back when I started this journey, I set a rule for myself that I stopped eating at 8 PM. Over the past couple of months, I relaxed the rule and then struggled to set that boundary again. The picture I have in my head is of a herd of sheep being let out of their pen. I'm positive, though I've not experienced it firsthand, that herding all the sheep back into the pen is not easy.
Similarly, it has been tough to set that boundary for myself again.
I've also reached a point where the dog walking is not strenuous enough activity. I am racking up the steps on a regular basis, but my heart rate isn't getting into the right zone. I've been threatening to start strength training for several weeks. As usual, I've been overthinking it. It's tough to have to to start over again.
Meanwhile, I've also decided to stop weighing myself. I had developed the habit of weighing myself every morning. It was not serving me well.
I've written about that number before. It's a fixed point in time. It is a snapshot of where you are, but it's really only one of several factors when discussing health. So instead of obsessing over one of those factors, I'm going to focus on my measurements. I am going to ask a friend to help me take my measurements. I am also going to mark my watch band and take pictures of myself. I will then set all of that aside for a month. After 30 days, I will pull the scale out, but I will also check my measurements, see how my watch is fitting and look at my before and after pictures.
There's no point, when I am just coming out of a major depressive episode, to measure something that will end up weighing me down and possibly dump me back into the morass. I won't lie, it's going to be difficult. Breaking old habits and trying to develop new ones is exhausting. Our brains are malleable things, capable of a great many things.
We all have pathways in our brains. Each pathway represents a learned behavior. Some of them are more important than we realize. Take going to the bathroom. It's seldom that we stop and consider all the steps involved in doing that. Our brains figure out how to do simple things like that and then it becomes second nature. It becomes a deep pathway in our brain, like a well-worn path in a forest preserve.
The problem becomes when that pathway is no longer good. Think about a path in the forest preserve that gets flooded. If we try to take the same path we've always taken, we'll drown. We need to find a new path, but it will mean getting through underbrush, fighting off brambles, etc. It's not for everyone. Quite frankly, most would probably just turn around and go back. But when you know what's at the end of the trail, it can be enough to propel you through all of the yuck.
For me, I'm not looking for a specific number, clothing size, etc. I'm looking to be fit. I want to be more muscular. I want my resting heart rate to be lower. I want less body fat.
I will continue to meet with my friend every week. I'm going to try to make small, manageable goals. I am optimistic that even if I don't transform into the person I've always wanted to be by next month, God will have shown me what the goal should be instead.
(I apologize if this post is rambling. Usually, I write them all in one sitting. I'm trying to write everyday so I started yesterday, but got too tired to continue. I don't feel like it flowed as well as usual. On the flip side, I did write yesterday and today, so I'm counting it as a win.)
Monday, March 4, 2019
In My Defense
I can't decide what to write about tonight. It was my birthday last Thursday. Facebook has a way of making one feel very special on their birthday. I enjoy all of the notes that people send me. It also has this unique ability to raise my anxiety.
You see, I was raised by a devotee of Emily Post. I was taught to write thank-you notes, a tradition I follow to this day. I handwrite all of my thank-you notes. If I don't write a thank-you note, the anxiety starts to creep in. I begin to feel fairly certain that the person who gifted me something is waiting, foot tapping, at their mailbox. I get a creeping feeling that I am going to be unfriended because of my lack of gratitude.
I start the day off trying to type a funny comment or react to each post. As the day wears on, though, and the chaos of my life gets unleashed, I lose track of which post I've read. I turned off notifications for Facebook on my phone a year ago, so my phone isn't pinging all day. At the same time, I tend to check more frequently on my birthday.
I 100% meant to go on Facebook on my birthday, at the end of the day, and say a collective thank you. But Brian was working and it was nuts at bedtime. Then I thought, "that's okay, just go ahead and post something on Friday." But I had the chance to go to a friend's house and do nothing, which I did with great panache.
By Saturday, a vague feeling of guilt started to wash over me. I hadn't posted anything. Now, I will admit that seemingly no one unfriended me. I didn't feel any dirty glances being thrown my way as I ventured out and about. I didn't discover a flaming bag of dog poo on my front porch.
None of that mattered, though. The guilt continued to hover over me.
I honestly haven't felt much like posting anything the past few days. My depression has persisted in earnest. I thought maybe I had some unresolved issue with aging. Maybe after my birthday, I surmised, my depression would abate. To no avail.
I have had a couple of close friends suggest that I need to have my medication adjusted. That seems to be a strong possibility. I am struggling with that idea. Side effects can be bothersome and range from small things like dry mouth to larger issues like insomnia. Body chemistry can change over time and it's possible I need to change my medications all together (the thought of which is causing my anxiety to rise).
In any case, this is the kind of useless dialogue that I spend my days obsessing about. It is, in a word, exhausting.
Also exhausting? Putting an angry 2-year-old to bed when she is overtired. And assembling meals for my four kids. I've long since given up on trying to make a meal that appeals to everyone. There are only two foods that appeal to everyone--skirt steak from Costco and pizza. Both are very rare treats around our house. Aside from that, I have to place every meal on a segmented plate. Everyone has their own plate. Every segment on the plate has a specific food that belongs in it. Jeremy gets green pepper, baby carrots and cucumber. Doug does not. Doug only eats grapes, purple grapes without seeds in them. Brooklyn requires purple grapes and pretzels. She also has to have a fork, even if she doesn't intend to use it.
I cried today. Kind of an ugly cry. It's tough, day after day, to try and understand why I feel so sad when there don't seem to be reasons for me to be sad. I feel like I should be getting close to cried out, that the heaviness tugging at my soul would already have ripped and fallen off. I feel like I am failing my family in some undefinable way. I am irritable and unable to complete simple tasks.
Which is why, now that it's Monday and I've wasted the whole weekend obsessed about it, I'm saying thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. It was a good birthday and I really appreciated everyone who took the time to wish me well.
You see, I was raised by a devotee of Emily Post. I was taught to write thank-you notes, a tradition I follow to this day. I handwrite all of my thank-you notes. If I don't write a thank-you note, the anxiety starts to creep in. I begin to feel fairly certain that the person who gifted me something is waiting, foot tapping, at their mailbox. I get a creeping feeling that I am going to be unfriended because of my lack of gratitude.
I start the day off trying to type a funny comment or react to each post. As the day wears on, though, and the chaos of my life gets unleashed, I lose track of which post I've read. I turned off notifications for Facebook on my phone a year ago, so my phone isn't pinging all day. At the same time, I tend to check more frequently on my birthday.
I 100% meant to go on Facebook on my birthday, at the end of the day, and say a collective thank you. But Brian was working and it was nuts at bedtime. Then I thought, "that's okay, just go ahead and post something on Friday." But I had the chance to go to a friend's house and do nothing, which I did with great panache.
By Saturday, a vague feeling of guilt started to wash over me. I hadn't posted anything. Now, I will admit that seemingly no one unfriended me. I didn't feel any dirty glances being thrown my way as I ventured out and about. I didn't discover a flaming bag of dog poo on my front porch.
None of that mattered, though. The guilt continued to hover over me.
I honestly haven't felt much like posting anything the past few days. My depression has persisted in earnest. I thought maybe I had some unresolved issue with aging. Maybe after my birthday, I surmised, my depression would abate. To no avail.
I have had a couple of close friends suggest that I need to have my medication adjusted. That seems to be a strong possibility. I am struggling with that idea. Side effects can be bothersome and range from small things like dry mouth to larger issues like insomnia. Body chemistry can change over time and it's possible I need to change my medications all together (the thought of which is causing my anxiety to rise).
In any case, this is the kind of useless dialogue that I spend my days obsessing about. It is, in a word, exhausting.
Also exhausting? Putting an angry 2-year-old to bed when she is overtired. And assembling meals for my four kids. I've long since given up on trying to make a meal that appeals to everyone. There are only two foods that appeal to everyone--skirt steak from Costco and pizza. Both are very rare treats around our house. Aside from that, I have to place every meal on a segmented plate. Everyone has their own plate. Every segment on the plate has a specific food that belongs in it. Jeremy gets green pepper, baby carrots and cucumber. Doug does not. Doug only eats grapes, purple grapes without seeds in them. Brooklyn requires purple grapes and pretzels. She also has to have a fork, even if she doesn't intend to use it.
I cried today. Kind of an ugly cry. It's tough, day after day, to try and understand why I feel so sad when there don't seem to be reasons for me to be sad. I feel like I should be getting close to cried out, that the heaviness tugging at my soul would already have ripped and fallen off. I feel like I am failing my family in some undefinable way. I am irritable and unable to complete simple tasks.
Which is why, now that it's Monday and I've wasted the whole weekend obsessed about it, I'm saying thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. It was a good birthday and I really appreciated everyone who took the time to wish me well.
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