Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Amigdala Hijack

I am leading the singing for our Churche's Kids Camp and realizing I am not able to focus, which is stressful when all eyes are on me! [I bet I wrote this same post a year ago today, the last time I lead music]. I have been on the go with travel, childcare, out of town friends and life commitments.  Now I need to remember when to have my hands up and down, out and then in as 100 kids try to follow my lead. At one point this morning, I went blank and worried I would stay that way, limping to the end of the song as kids looked to the other lead person. I want to be praising God and honestly, hearing people say I am doing a good job and the reality is, I can't trust myself to remember. Further, I can't serve hot dogs for the fifth consecutive default lunch and dinner meal, since my six year old started breakfast with, "Mom, maybe we can take a break from hot dogs for a while."

A friend visits from far away and I can't enjoy sitting, though I might have enjoyed the one beer I gulped down in her presence. There is a huge self-care piece missing. My husband strongly encouraged me to take a few hours for myself yesterday and I couldn't even get myself to consider it. Now, after what feels like weeks, I am at my computer for a few hours trying to rethink my own equation of daily functioning. The equation of just run and collect the pieces on the second or third or fifth loop around leads to burnout. Should I do more to prepare or do less worrying about it or just sit here for a while and let other pieces fall as they will? Do I lower my expectations that I will remember the motions or make a healthy dinner? Do I allow myself to be tired as I sing to God? 

The truth is that in my tired state, I default to my emotions. I'm like a two year old who is overtired and just needs sleep, but fights it. Thankfully, I am thirty-eight and do know how to be still, as I am doing right now. I can sing to God and can kiss my boys on the forehead and tell them how much I love them, even as I entrust them to others care. I pray that I can remember to be loved and to love, despite all that I do and don't do, all that I am and am not. It is for God that I live and breath and may I always keep my hands and eyes up! 

Monday, June 23, 2014

Marilyn Robinson's Lila will be my favorite!

I seem to think about people I see, like a mom and son at Greenfield Village and instantly want to tell the mom to control her two year old, to get down and connect with him, to do any of a number of things, but as I think about it, my kids are running out of control near a puppet show. Why do I presume to know what other people should do?

Even sitting in a coffee shop, a guy says, every woman should shave her head at least once, and I want to raise my head and say, Not me. I have all these bumps on my head that would make me look diseased. This morning I complimented a middle aged woman's adorable short hair and she pulled me in and said, "It's just browning back after chemo treatments." Right next to me two women are talking about creation and the word evolutionary, ticks and diseases and birth control and IUD's so she is choosing abstinence. I want to jump in and argue something.

There's a proverb about taking the plank out of your own eye before seeing the speck in someone else's, that always hits me.  I'm so ready to point fingers and yet can't come up with my own solutions to things like, what to make for dinner, how to help my sons know they are loved, how to carve out time to play and draw and sit with them. 

I have a character, a female preacher with no seminary training or church to speak of, who is just like this. She seems to know everything about everyone else and nothing about herself. I wonder if I could write a blog from her perspective as a backdoor way of gaining clarity to my own dilemma?  Somehow the degree of separation and ability to go down rabbit trails without risking owning them, feels safe. I think this must be what Marilyn Robinson does as she hops from book to book, giving voice to different characters within the town of Gilead. I know without reading one word, that I will love her, Lila, more then any of the others! 

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Expectations Good or Bad?

I recently came to believe that I would be great if I didn't have expectations. I could go along for the ride and have a great time, without worrying or feeling disappointed. I felt pretty good with my new mantra and had friends try it out and feel the same, until I proudly told my therapist of this breakthrough. Typical of life and especially therapist he asked, "What's wrong with expectations" and followed that with, "When did I learn that expectations were bad?"

Here is where I pause and sigh. Of course I have to go back and consider my relationship to desiring, to commitments to myself and others and possibly the value of expecting thing. What do I want when I am not alone buying art supplies just for me or working on my novel that might never get to the second chapter. Conflict comes when I am painting an old man with a large nose during a class, and then see him looking at students work and realize he will come around and see how I portray his large noggin, that I frantically shrink to medium-small. As people view my work, how do I feel I am honest or dishonest, good or bad and why? To meet expectations, to avoid criticism, to be perceived as kind? 

I have read about intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and I think I am lacking skill in how intrinsic motivations work outside of myself. This man is a professional model who is drawn regularly and seen his nose for many years, so why do I try to hide it from him? I realize that I was waiting for permission or the teacher to come redraw it with her brush. There is a neediness and dependence that I count on. 

There has to be a better solution then waiting for someone to tell me good job or to bring me dinner or tell me I am worthy of painting a nose. My therapist suggested the habit of not expecting anything of myself and waiting for others to take care of me has been an answer to something (there is a rationale to it).

I know there is a better way, some counter-dependence of consistent receiving and giving. Even as I write, I am hoping for the gut knowing of why I act helpless about what matters, how I can connect the dots and make changes. 

This brings me to my next blog post, which will be how I keep arrogantly theorizing about what others should do to fix what I perceive are their problems.