I Am Going to Make It Through This Year, If It Kills Me.

This line from my favorite Mountain Goats song (called ‘This Year’) has become my mantra. I play it in the car as loud as the kids can stand it, and I sing along with the band’s signature melodic shouting as I drive around running errands. The very nature of their music releases tension.

I’m obsessing over a million thoughts in my head, and as I’ve written them all down over the last few days it’s turned into one long, slightly crazed collage of thought – all related, yet still in incomplete pieces. So now I sit and wade my way through the free write – an edit, if you will.

This blog has become a place where I sort out my thoughts, where the irrationality can be seen in black and white, and therefore named. I find that if I deprive myself of the release of writing, my mind becomes wound tighter and tighter until I plunge into a depression, unable to escape the confusion. Here is my attempt to begin naming what has been plaguing me.

Thoughts On My Children

I’ve been realizing lately that I associate all things FUN as being anything that doesn’t involve my children, and anything OVERWHELMING as the definition of being a mother. I dredge through my days as if these little creatures hanging off me are weights drowning me in the water, and I look forward to each moment I have without them.

This devastates me because my children are so. much. fun. Yet, I act so inconvenienced by them. I pray that my heart changes, that it truly becomes transformed, because I never want my children to think they are unwanted or burdensome. I want them to feel loved and secure. But specifically, I want to enjoy my children, and I want my love to radiate from me and be known through my actions, just like it says in 1 John 3:18, “Let us not love in word or deed, but in actions and in truth.”

Thoughts on My Recovery from Rage

This weekend I have felt great conviction that I have not been listening to the voice of God, that I have not even been interested in what he has to say to me. This conviction has been brewing all month, actually, but in my spiritual laziness I have busied myself with noise.

Prayer. Prayer. Prayer.

I keep hearing this in my head, not as a guilt trip to kick me under the table, but as a loving God calling out for me to know him. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). I complain about my life, I feign action against my sin, I seek to conquer my rage through my own understanding, but I am still trying to control what is happening.

I have forgotten how to listen to God, and I pray that a miracle of faith will urge me to seek him out in prayer.

But It’s Not All Bad

Today in a training I attended for leading recovery groups, we talked about how we can turn a relapse into something positive. Instead of feeling defeated by failure, I can view it as a barometer of trust – what am I still holding onto in my own strength? What do I still need to release control of?

I feel a lot like I do when I clean out a closet – it always gets worse before it gets better, because you have to haul all the shit out of the closet before you can sort, purge, organize, and put everything back together. I’m totally at the overwhelming messy part where the crap is piled up all over my living room and dining table, and I can’t seem to get to anything useful because of all the clutter.

I am sorting and purging.

I know the Word is in me, written on my heart. Though it may be buried deep under a Pile, God will draw it out and dust it off. And he will make it new.