Sleeping Through It
I wish I could just sleep through it. I think that’s what a number of depressed people say or the parent of a small child. I’m sure they say it too. In fact, I know they do. I can remember saying it and tonight I thought it.
I said it a bit in seminary. I lived alone in Atlanta and was burdened with stress and a bit of personal turmoil that I brought to Atlanta with me. My self-worth-ometer was never too encouraging. If I woke up in the morning and had that thought — that, I wish I could just sleep through it, thought, I could. From time to time I did. Straight through class in my dark apartment bedroom with the black-out curtains drawn until whatever “it” was passed and I could gird up my loins and see to the difficulties, and stress, and self-doubt as it presented itself.
I can’t sleep through it anymore. I can’t draw the black-out curtains in my bedroom and skip church in the morning. Besides, I don’t want to. But at times………I’m pretty sure I’m still tempted by the thought of just sleeping through the hardship until it passes. And at the same time, the hardships have changed. They don’t really pass anymore. Now, in standard adult-like fashion, we work through them instead.
No doubt it’s been a year with substantial challenges. It’s been a year of incredible blessing as well but just as it is easier to come to God with difficult things, it’s pretty common to be more weighted with the hard than with the good. I never dreamed I’d be where I am. I didn’t come from a broken home (if they still call it that). Divorce wasn’t really something you did. You worked and worked hard to fix the problems and patch the wounds. But here I am needing to remind myself that I did a very brave thing and a very smart thing.
Everything will be final within the week. I can already tell that I have mixed emotions — not the kind of emotions that send me into retrograde because there is no going back. The kind of emotions that I feel when I realize that I still sleep on “my” side of the bed. The kind of emotions that come from being so tired from doing all the heavy lifting on my own. The kind of emotions that cause me to wonder if the boys aren’t really missing out on something not having a constant dad figure in their lives. Then I feel the kind of emotions that come from a heavy weight of self-loathing, worry, paranoia, fear, pain, doubt, discontent, and a thousand other things that are very heavy — that weight is lifted, and so that emotion is related to peace I think. Then there’s the emotion related to fear. When I made this choice a year ago, I promptly conceded to the fact that those parts of my life were simply over — that the happiness of being married and being in love (etc.), would simply not be a part of my life anymore. That may be a reality, actually, and so the emotion is fear because I was really hoping for a “When I’m 64” kind of ending to my life.
Either way, they all float questioningly in my head, and I can’t sleep through them. I’m not allowed to. “Adulting” requires me to work through them. Faith requires me to pray about them and ask God to “adult” alongside me. And maybe selfishly I ask my friends to walk the path with me too.
I feel like I’m on the eve of something. I can’t tell if it’s good or terrible. I don’t really regret yet but it is terribly scary — sometimes joy-filled — always daunting. And so I guess we’ll see. Pastormom is pretty much the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Flying solo was never on my radar but here it is. And after a year of immense struggle, a move further away from home (where ironically I thought I should be), adjustments for the kids, and a grand adjustment to being alone, deferring ordination to keep my single-mom head above water and not completely mess up the church work I do, here I am.
I can’t really tell anymore if doors are open or closed or if they’re even on the hinges, but I’m here. I’m not broken yet. I’m not frantically drawing the curtains because I can’t make it. I’m still doing everything the best I know how, praying without ceasing, and reminding myself that the thing that takes more patience than anything in this world, is healing and I need it just like anyone else.
6 weeks in to 2016 and through gritted, stubborn, teeth in a mouth that would rather be doubtful, I’m speaking hope — at the very least, hope for healing. And I do genuinely hope for that and many, many other things — even the things for which I intentionally closed the door.
