It was one of those days. Nothing extraordinarily stressful, but not exactly calm. Crazy with moments of beauty that fueled the stamina to get through another day of my husband traveling. Times of patience, times of crying, and times of gritting my teeth to not scold, become short with, or unintentionally insult or offend anyone. Just one of those normal, chaotic-life-that-we-live kind of days.
About five minutes ago, at the end of this not-so-particularly-significant day, I was washing our not-so-particularly-significant dishes that were still in the sink and began listening a God Centered Mom podcast episode, my heart looking for hope and guidance and direction and comfort, feeling ever so slightly (…) crushed and defeated from the week. And within the first five minutes of this podcast, I listened to the guest, Paul David Tripp, state the following in response to the host’s prompts:
“So maybe start with some questions here. If you’re a parent, what keeps you going when you just don’t feel like going anymore? What makes you willing to do the same thing over and over and over again? What gives you hope when your children don’t offer you any hope? That’s where we all live. We all live with the repetitive nature of parenting, with times when we just feel like we’re at the end, or when we want to think hopefully about our children but we don’t see the things in our kids we’d love to see. And I think that’s when this deeper sense of the beauty and glory of ‘what I’ve been called to’ is what makes me willing to do that again.”
{pause for ugly cries here}
Whoa. Just…whoa. It hit my gut hard, in the, I’ll leave the dishes soak while I go type my thoughts to process kind of hard. I’ve been wanting to write for the last two weeks, and have not been able to get the wheel spinning. Thoughts with no depth, no direction, no exploration. But today I kept thinking about a conversation I had a month or two ago with a dear colleague. As we always do when we meet, we cover a thousand topics, personal and professional, and she is always, ALWAYS, a gentle, insightful soul to be around. During this conversation, I was talking about the difficult dichotomy of being the “unorganized parent while simultaneously being the parent who organizes, administrates, and plans”. She offered the empathy that she always does (the true depth of understanding empathy, not the “I know that must be tough” kind, but the kind where she can explain better how it feels than you can), and as I went to offer my routine, “I have to…”, I stopped.
For the first time, I couldn’t say, “I don’t have a choice”. It didn’t feel right. Instead, a swarm of thoughts rushed me at once; thoughts of parents I’ve worked with, people I’ve known, foster children I see, people who don’t make that choice. And I realized…and said…”You know. I’ve always said I don’t have a choice. But for the first time, I realized I do. And I need to stop saying that. Because I do have a choice. There are so many days I’ve wanted to just drive away. To quit. To make sure the kids were taken care of, and take off. To stay in bed and not get up. To check out. But I don’t. And I wouldn’t…I couldn’t. But it’s not because I don’t have a choice. I have that choice. I just don’t make it.”
So I guess tonight’s podcast, well…it makes me take that a little deeper. What makes me keep making the choice that I do? I didn’t keep listening – my thoughts were swirling too much to hear anything else that was being said – but I’d imagine that much of where he was headed was faith and our “calling” due to the couple of sentences that followed the above quote. And yes. Faith has a role. Faith and the belief that life is bigger than me, that God is lending me the beautiful souls I’m blessed to call my children, that there is a bigger and higher purpose. These play huge roles.
There’s also something in me that refuses to quit. It won’t let me, even if I want to. Even if I want to make the choice, consider the choice, explore the choice. There is – and always has been a piece of me that will not give up.
There’s a morality piece. A piece that reminds me that it’s not just about me anymore. The piece that says, “once you decide to have children, it’s not longer about you” that runs through the very depths of my being. That they didn’t choose to be here, and I have been given the responsibility AND the privilege of raising them the best that I can. It’s self-sacrificial to become a parent. While the sacrifice should not be at the cost of your own health and well-being (in classic airline style, please put your own mask on first…), but it SHOULD be a change.
I have never been a person who believes we can just “choose” to be something. I can’t “choose” to be happy when I’m depressed, I can’t “choose” to be focused when I’m distracted, and I can’t “choose” to be calm when I’m stressed. Contrary to the belief, it’s similar to being told to “calm down” or “just smile” or “be happy” or “pay attention”. If we could, wouldn’t we? I mean, really think about that. Of course. And if we wouldn’t, then it’s so much deeper than that single choice.
You see, it’s a practice. A practice of self-discipline. A practice of gratitude. A practice of mindfulness and meditation. A practice of self-care. A practice of coping skills, reminders, breathing…repetition of things to help until they become the norm. A rebuilding of the natural neural pathways.
But I’ve tree-branched, and I might be losing you. So I digress.
At the end of the day, YOU need to be able to answer Paul’s questions. And the bottom line? You do have a choice. You have a choice to be different, to do different, to learn different…you have a choice to find the skills, the people, the resources, the tools to help you find a different path. To practice, to learn, to find accountability, to grow. You have the choice to learn if it’s a choice you want to make. It’s not easy. At. All. But we have the ability to say, “enough is enough” and to keep saying “not today” if we need to. But…if you can’t find it in yourself to believe that you have a choice? Well. I’d love to hear from you, because maybe we can find it together <3
There is always a choice.
