An Allegory

There was a little girl who brought much sorrow to her parents' hearts.  They loved her so much that it hurt them deeply when she was in pain, and she was always in pain!  They tried to help her, but she thought they were just making it worse.  She assumed that they would not want her to be happy, so she hid her passions away in the dark so they could not see them.  Unfortunately, she could not see in the dark, so her passions sat neglected and the girl forgot how to feel.  Her parents wrote her loving notes everyday telling her how deeply they cared for her, but the little girl refused to read them because she assumed that they were nothing but criticism. The little girl would talk to her parents at night sometimes and beg them for love and attention, but, before they had a chance, she would immediately turn and shut herself in her room away from them, hurt that she was once again alone.

This behavior affected her so much that it began to seep into her whole world.  The colors were dull; the food and drink was bland; all of the comfort became like cardboard.  Soon there was darkness around every corner.  Every effort the little girl made to fix her world fell flat.  She repainted her room twenty times, but the walls remained a dull gray.  She kept making new food, but it always tasted the same.  When she went to sleep at night she would pull her blanket up to her chin, but she remained cold.  And she was always plagued by fear so tangible that she could feel it breathing down her neck at every moment.  The harder life became for this little girl, the more she wanted to hide.  The problem was that she was hiding in the cold, dark room that was killing her.  And all the while, letters piled up under her door.

The little girl would glance at a letter every now and then.  "I love you," it would say, "I have good things for you."  But the little girl was sure there was a catch.  She knew that their love would be yet another chain weighing her down, holding her back from happiness and life.  She knew her parents didn't want her happiness; they wanted her to be good.  She sure wasn't good, so she could only envision disappointment, struggle, and ultimately, rejection.

Finally, the little girl got to the breaking point.  She knew if she didn't reach out, she was headed down a road she might not be able to come back from.  So, she hung a sign out her window.  "Help!" the sign read, "I am trapped in this dark room and my life is fading away!"  The little girl was amazed.  Signs began appearing in other windows.

"It's dark here, too!"

"I understand; I used to live in the dark!"

"My sign could say the exact same thing!"

The girl felt a little better.  Her room didn't really get lighter (although, having the window open let some fresh air in which made a grand difference), but the little girl knew that she was not the only one in the world who felt this way.  The darkness was there, but the oppressive loneliness was lessened.

The monotony of the inside of her room was broken up when she held her head out the window.  She began spending more time that way and was feeling better when someone said, "Hey, you should read all of those notes from your parents."  The little girl nodded in agreement.  Yes, she knew very well that she should read those notes.  But she didn't.  She was starting to feel better.  She didn't want to read those notes and be condemned.  She didn't want to hear the accusing, painful words that she knew would be written in those notes.

One day, the girl was sitting in her cold, gray room, and she knew that this was the time.  She needed to see what her parents had written to her, even if it would make her feel worse.  She felt bolstered by the care of the people outside, and she really felt that she should read them, even if she didn't really want to.  The first one was just as she suspected, a list of "don'ts".

Don't paint your room gray, it will make you depressed.

Don't use the same bland ingredients to make your food, it will taste terrible.

Don't cover yourself with that thin blanket you have, you will be cold.

Don't hide away in the dark, you will never be able to live out your passions there.


"I know, I know!" the little girl cried, "I know I am doing it all wrong, but I don't know how to do it any differently!  This is all I have to work with, what do you want from me?"  She resolved to try to do better, but she did not feel hopeful at all.  This was all a familiar routine to her; she had read this much before.  She kept reading, but this time she found something new that she was not expecting.

Ask us for some new paint, because we would love to give you some - any color you want!

We have so many exciting recipes for you to try, and we have all of the ingredients you need right in the house.

We have so many warm blankets and clothes out here for you, if you would just let us give them to you.  If you want, we can turn the heat up in your room, as well.  Just tell us, if that is what you need.

You inherited those passions from us, darling girl, we want you to live them as fully as possible!  Tell us what you need, we will make it happen.

All this time, the little girl had been trying to live and make her parents happy, but she had given up because she felt like she just couldn't live up to their standards.  And all this time her parents had been trying to help.  Their standards weren't so high for the sake of high standards.  They were just trying to teach her how to live the best life possible, a life that would not only make her happy, but influence and benefit the people around her as well.  All she had to do was ask, and the tools to a better life would be hers.  Those letters were a source of hope, not a weight for her to carry.

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I want so badly to say that she lived happily ever after, but I think we all know that stories don't really end that way.  She probably has days where she gets angry at her parents or doesn't understand why they request certain things of her.  Sometimes she gets so caught up with life in her room (especially with its new paint color), that she neglects to read the notes from her parents and she misses out on some wonderful thing they had in store for her.  She has good days, too.  Life goes on for her, as it does for us all, but I hope she remembers life in her cold, gray room so that she never lets it get like that again.

Excuses.

1.  Zephra was sick for a week.

2.  Brandt was home for a week.

3.  There were two other projects I was working on in my 2 spare minutes a day (I'm lying, I really get more than 2 spare minutes on most days.  I just tend to use them to go to the bathroom or shower or sleep.  And sometimes play solitaire.)

4.  I am terrible at endings.  I have a lengthy post written, but it lacks an ending.  I am having some difficulty with it, mostly because I just want to say "So this happened and this happened and this happened, and then it was done.  The end," but that would kind of ruin the post, so I won't do that.

On Being a Mom

I was not ready to be a mom.  Growing up, my plan was to be a stay at home mom, maybe have a daycare in my house (My mom did that until I was 7, and I always had nostalgic memories of that.  Probably because I was a kid and not in charge of all the kids.  She started with a 6 month old and a 2 year old when I was 3 months!  How much in awe of my mom are you now?)  Anyway, I got older and didn't get married in my very early twenties like I planned, which was totally fine.  I had a few jobs in daycares and babysitting and as a nanny, and I realized...I don't really like taking care of other people's kids.  I don't like it at all.  It's a little weird, because kids generally tend to like me and I like them.  I like hanging out with them and playing, but I don't like watching them like it is my job.  So all that to say that plans change.  I married Brandt in 2008 and he didn't want any kids at all.  At that point, I still wanted kids at some point, but I was certainly willing to wait a few years.  I was quite happy to wait a few years, actually.  Then a few months later I was nauseous for a week and I knew I was pregnant.  I took a test and it was confirmed.  Honestly, my immediate reaction was, "Oh shit."  (Sorry for swearing, but that is really what I said.)  So after being sick for nine more months, we were blessed with Zephra Katheryn Sanderson.

That was a really long intro.

I have to say that my advice to people who are pregnant is to stop reading things about being pregnant.  You get fat and your body goes completely haywire for the duration.  If there is a part of you that starts doing something strange, it is totally normal.  Be worried if nothing changes.  What you really need to read is what to do after the baby gets here.  Oh my gosh, why didn't I do that?  I think the problem is that raising kids is so absolutely hard and crazy and individualized that there are too many opinions.  There are sooooo (infinite o's here) many different "methods" to raising kids.  Here is a personality trait of mine:  when I am faced with too many options I cannot choose.  Don't ever tell me, "Anything you want," because I will totally freeze.  I will have to go through every option available in detail so as to be sure to choose the very best one.  (This is probably why I can never seem to settle on what I want to be when I grow up.)  The other thing (back to baby-raising here) is that everyone is so damned certain that their method is the right one and if you use someone else's you are wrong.  No matter how you make your decision, there is a book out there designed to make you feel like crap about it.  But this is why you need to read a lot about this while you are pregnant.  That way, once the baby is here you at least have a strategy to start from.  You might throw it completely out the window, but then you will have read other strategies and can have some fall back options.  Maybe this is good for you or maybe not, I don't know, but I think it would have helped me.  Not to mention that once the baby is here, you are not firing on all cylinders (Lord help you if you are like me and are short some cylinders to begin with).

Well, that made a long intro even longer.

So.  There I was with a bouncing baby girl (emphasis on the bouncing in this situation) on November 20, 2009 without one clue on what to do with her.  Brandt and I have done our best.  People tell us we are doing it wrong all the time.  Other people say that we are not.  It is pretty hard, like the hardest thing ever.  But we think that Zephra is the coolest little kid that could possibly exist anywhere.  Obviously, we think so, we are her parents after all.  But, oh my goodness, is she tough sometimes.  She isn't bad, really.  I mean, she's one, so it's not like she's out smoking and drinking past her curfew (We have a strict limit of no smoking after 7pm for her.  Kind of strict, I know. ;-)  ).  She tests her limits constantly, she has a one track mind and a very strong will.  She is a girl who knows what she wants.  You can't pull the wool over this baby's eyes (unless it's a blanket - she loves that game).  She is not easily distracted away from what she is doing.  She hates sleep like crime hates justice (by far, the hardest test ever), and she thinks discipline is hilarious (Like, the funniest thing she has ever come across in her whole 14 1/2 months.  Honest, and I'm super serious with her, sigh.)

What I'm coming to realize now is that some of these qualities are harmful to her.  She needs to learn to embrace sleep as a friend (Personally, I view sleep as a long lost friend.  Absence has absolutely made my heart grow fonder).  Her life will go so much more smoothly if she would do the same with discipline (Isn't that the case for all of us, though?).  But there are other qualities she has that may be a pain in the butt to me now, but that will be very useful to her later in life.  Boundless energy, determination, and the ability to focus?  Yes, please, and could you share some with me?  My job (and I would soooo appreciate you coming along side me in prayer and encouragement in this) is to guide her and help her learn to use her powers for good.  I don't know if I'm up for the task, but I don't really have a choice in this, do I?  My job is to keep her safe, while still allowing her to learn things on her own (a terrifying prospect for a control freak like me); to teach her the value of listening to and loving others while still being able to think for herself; to allow her to have passions that are her own; and to let her be hurt (gah!  Do I have to?  I don't know if I can do it; it will break my fragile heart.) so she can grow and mature and turn into a capable and confident adult.

So, yeah, that's it.  Discourage the harmful things, encourage the good stuff, and embrace the annoying, but good-for-her-later things that sort of stink for me now (Example:  I can appreciate her ingenuity that allows her to figure out how to climb up onto a chair, but I am wary of the world of opportunity for trouble that this opens).  Easy, right?

Just Another House

I was going to do a post on being a mom, but I'm not ready to do that yet.  It's hard, we know.  It's hard for everybody, you just have to do it and learn to love it (I am, I really am).  So I'm not ready to write about it because I feel like I have nothing new or very inspired to say.  (Haha, I'm so weird.  After I wrote that I immediately thought, "Hey!  I know what I want to say!"  So I wrote a sentence down to write about later.  Anyway...)

Today I want to talk about one more struggle I am having.  After I talked about the others, they seemed to get a little better, so I might as well keep going, right?  This one is different, but totally related to my other struggle.

I want a house so bad.  Sigh.  I know, I need to learn to be content.  I am so blessed.  I have a place to live that is warm and safe and in the town where we want to live.  It's even bigger than the house where I lived with my parents until I was 7.  But.  I want to be settled.  I want to live somewhere and not move any more.  I want to own it and be able to do anything I want to it.

It might seem like a silly thing, but I have moved every year since college except one (I switched roommates that year instead of moving).  I have lived in 7 different houses in the last 7 years.  In the first apartment I moved into I painted every room and put up pictures and decorated.  I made it homey.  The next place I painted, but I didn't quite unpack everything.  Every house since then I have done less and less until now I haven't even considered painting and didn't bother unpacking anything decorative.  I just don't have the will to make yet another house a home if I'm not staying here long.  That mentality is taxing on me because I don't have a sanctuary.  My house is more of a frustration than a home base.  I look at the mess around me that I can't figure out what to do with and just sort of give up.  Why bother getting everything organized again?  But when my environment is scattered, my brain is, too.  (Which is all I need when I am running on minimal sleep).

The other thing is that we are renting and our rent is as much as a mortgage payment would be, if not more.  It's at the top of our budget, so we aren't really able to save very much (when we do our car breaks down and we use all the savings to fix it).  Which means we will never have enough for a down payment. 

There, I said it.  My whine is complete.  I'm sorry for being so materialistic.  I truly want to learn to be content in whatever situation I am in.  If you have advice or prayers for me, I will gladly take them.

Appreciation (and Germans)

I know it has been another long while since the last post, but you are going to have to get used to that.  I have a one year old who has a pact with sleep that she won't bother it if it won't bother her and a husband who likes to play games.  And a really messy house, but who am I kidding?  That is definitely not what is keeping me from blogging, it's not like I've been cleaning it.

I was singing in church on Sunday and I heard a line that really hit me and I thought that I should blog about it.  It's kind of funny, because there I was up on the stage thinking about blogging.  I was not the one singing at that exact moment, though, so I think it's okay.  I'll actually get to that line in the next paragraph, but I'm going to take a side trip here to tell you that as a "worship leader"  I am definitely not standing up there...hm.  I've been sitting here for a little while thinking about what you might think that I might be thinking about.  (Haha, let me know if you can figure that sentence out.)  I'm not sure, but I will tell you that I'm still the same me there as anywhere.  I'm having a hard time explaining this right now.  I can tell you that my worship is always from my heart, but not necessarily always from my head.  Like, there was also a point this week when I noticed that the slide on the video screen was an ocean wave and it reminded me of the dream I had had the night before where we lived happily on an island until the Germans took it over and our house burned down.  And I laughed to myself at the strangeness of the dream. 

But I definitely don't take it lightly (worship leading, that is, not the dream about the Germans... Okay, I lied, you have to wait one more paragraph before I tell you the line that inspired this post to begin with.)  Every time I get up on that stage (or very nearly so, I am not perfect) I am doing it because it is one of my acts of worship to God.  I don't sing a song that I don't believe and I try very hard to ensure that I never sing without thinking about it and what I am saying.  But that doesn't mean that I don't wince when someone hits a wrong note (myself included) or think "shoot, I hope I remember how this part goes," or "Yay!  The whole band remembered to come in on 1, not 4!"  I could go on and on, but that is not what I am here to talk about, so...

"All we are and all we have is all a gift from God that we receive."  There you go, that is the line that must change everything.  It is from the song, "Made to Worship" by Chris Tomlin.  I have spent so much of my life a little mad at God for who I am.  I have been ungrateful for the me He gave me.  I am not good at appreciating who I am.  I am not going to use the phrase "loving myself," because I think that society puts way too much emphasis on that now and it wouldn't bother me if it didn't result in people being complete assholes ahem, jerks to everyone else.  But the me that I am is the me that God made.  And I am alive.  Ha.  A-LIVE.  Living.  Sitting here just straight up BEING.  So there.  I have choices and I can choose to be grumpy about the way I am wired or I can just learn to be grateful that I am here.  I get to experience the marvelous wonder of my life.

"Hm," you might say, "this is quite a turn around from previous posts."  Well, yes, sort of.  I don't suddenly have a joyous outlook on my life, but I do recognize now that I think I can find the wonder in the little things that are maybe not so little.  I have the option to, anyway, maybe you can help me be accountable to doing so.  Or maybe I'll be upset and you can remind me that there is wonder in the simple state of being and I can be annoyed with you for bringing it up when I was perfectly content to be grumpy.  Either way, I know now that it will help my outlook if I am grateful for the me I am, rather than there being no me at all.

Well, this was a lengthy post, wasn't it?  Congratulations that you made it to the end.  Really, I do so appreciate you.  I think this is helping me quite a bit, getting everything written down and out there.  Thank you for listening and for the comments you have left.  You are really quite encouraging.

P.S.  I re-read this before I posted it, and if you made it past the paragraph with the thought about the blog and the Germans, then you deserve far more praise than I previously gave you for getting to the end.  Thanks.  :)

The Best Me

I just finished the pistachios that Brandt got for Christmas (well, all except the last four that weren't open enough to eat without some sort of tool).  He wasn't eating them anyway.

Whew.  Each of these last posts, I have put up on facebook and gone to bed.  Then I would think about them the next morning and decide I didn't want people to read them.  By the time I would try to do anything about it, I had received a comment or two or an email from someone and it encouraged me to keep going.  There is a war going on in my mind.  Why am I writing all of this crap about myself?  It is true, to be sure, but who wants to read that?  What good is it doing anyone?  The other side says, well, some people say they identify with it.  Maybe it is making them feel less alone.  But I think of all the other people who might read it who might not identify with it, and I think maybe I don't want them to read it and look at me funny.  But then I think, well, I am being real; this is who I am.  I guess they should know.  Or should they?  (I could go back and forth for a long time, but I will spare you.)

All of my life, I think, I have always wanted to be good.  I don't mean do good things, but actually BE good.  I'm not, though.  I am truly awful.  I have bad motives, I have a really hard time loving people, I worry ALL. OF. THE. TIME.  I am terribly lazy and unmotivated.  I get overwhelmed easily and I get super frustrated and take it out on other people.  I am sad most of the time.  I am totally disorganized and messy.  Most of the time, I just give up.  I have in my mind exactly the person I want to be, but I am no closer to being that person now than I was ever.  Maybe I'm even farther.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be someone I am not, but I want to be the best me.  I can't seem to figure out how to get there.

There is definitely a big part of me that is struggling with being a mom.  That is probably enough for a whole other post, so I will just say for now that I am starting off not operating on all cylinders.  I am exhausted from lack of sleep and depleted from lack of time to myself.  That doesn't help.  But the thing is, I am a mom, and, Lord willing, I will be for the rest of my life, so I need to figure out how to be the best me while being a mom.  This is the new normal and I don't want it to be second best.  I want to live this new life and love it.

I am really excited to be getting together later this week with a couple other moms who are in a similar situation.  I hope we can really talk about things and help each other out.  I really suck at talking about things like this in person, but sometimes when other people start, it makes it easier.  We'll see.  I'll try to write the mom post soon.

Goodnight.  (Hey, and thanks for reading, even if you are someone who is going to look at me funny).

If You Ask, I May Not Answer

Oops.  I waited too long to write again.  I'm not really sure where I'm going with it anyway.  It's funny how hard it is to write a follow up.  I got a few wonderful responses to my last posts.  They were so supportive and understanding.  A couple people knew how I was feeling because they felt that way too.  Now I don't really know what to say.  I feel glad that some people know and that it isn't quite as dark in here as it was, but I still feel crappy, too.  It's definitely not bright yet.  I always hit this block when someone reaches out to me.  B said it exactly right in his comment that I hold my cards pretty close to my chest.  I can't help it.  When someone notices me and really wants to know how I am, my immediate reaction is immense joy (what am I, a puppy?) followed so closely by "Nevermind, I'm fine," that they are almost simultaneous.  It's like my real self just shuts off and I can't even access it, let alone let someone else in. 

I think I feel ashamed.  I can't come up with one good reason that I feel so sad, so I feel guilty, like I'm stealing or cheapening someone else's right to feeling like this.  I didn't have a big tragedy happen to me.  I have a good life with a loving husband and a beautiful daughter and so many wonderful family and friends.  I have a place to live and food and clothing.  I have everything I need and more, so I must be a pretty ungrateful person to feel like this.  I think the biggest part of my sadness stems from frustration with myself.  It is not the outside that makes me unhappy; it is the inside.  It is ugly in here, and I feel really powerless to change it at all.  My thoughts are driven by fear.  I am so overwhelmed by life and the prospect of living it all that it makes me shut down.  I am paralyzed by it.  I can't be a good wife and mom, as I so desperately want to be, because I can't even be a good me.  I circle down.

Even as I read what I have written over, I am disgusted.  How self-centered that last paragraph was.  Absolutely every sentence had "I" or "me" in it several times.  Well, there you go, that is some of the ugly truth.  That is part of the answer to the question.  I don't like it, but I'm stuck here for now.  I feel really bad telling you because I don't want to put darkness in your life (not that I think that I am actually making your life worse or anything, but this is certainly not uplifting reading material, and I would so prefer that it was).  I think that I just need to be open a little with someone, so you are it.  Don't feel obligated to be the question asker. 

I have been sitting here way too long.  I'm going to go to bed now.  But I typed and deleted a sentence that I will use in an upcoming post, so maybe it will not be so long before I post again.  Thanks for listening.