I Reek

Most of the time, I think I'm a well-adjusted sick person...but sometimes, it really gets to me. 

I just need to say that it is disappointing to be a sick mom. Usually, I tell myself that I'm doing my utmost, so it is enough, and I am happy. But sometimes it tugs at my heartstrings, like almost every night when my husband tucks our children in bed without me, and I feel sad that I am not more involved. Like when he is massively overworked as the mom and the dad, then he uses the time when he's not working or taking care of our little people to do laundry or dishes. 

I joked with him that I would love the kitchen floor to be mopped for Christmas...but that's like asking someone who babysits for you every day to babysit for you one night so you can go on a date. I can't ask. So I have to be happy with a dirty floor. Our dog walked muddy feet through the dining part of the kitchen a couple months ago, and it is still smudged with streaked mud from when I feebly tried to clean it up. Someone keeps dripping something on the floor next to the barstools. If I have energy, I use it on our family, not on the floor; that's why it's dirty. I read books or snuggle or watch the kids play outside. The floor is just a symbol of lots of things I don't do as a mom and homemaker and how those "I'm failing" feelings get to me. 

Then there is the world. I am impassioned about the refugee situation in Europe, but do I do anything concrete? No. Money donations. I almost went to humanitarian Wednesday at a nearby church building, but did I get out of bed? No. I was grounded to my bed. My only consolation is that we gave an SUV full of clothing and stuff to DI in the summer, and hopefully some of those articles have made it to the people in crisis. We also gave modest clothing to Brazilian missionaries who can't afford or find anything suitable to wear in Brazil. I search for things to do. I feel so selfish for having it so good here. 

Then there is the self-loving piece. It's Tuesday night, and I am wearing the same thing I went to bed in on Sunday. I am a gross, disgusting mess. There is vertigo and nausea and absolutely no energy. I lay in the dark until 3 this morning trying to fall asleep, tortured with my disappointed brain chatter. I felt guilty that I didn't help more the day before with our son who was sick, that I barely saw our daughter, that I hadn't the energy during the day to crack open a book or even watch a movie. I wasn't safe to drive the kids around. 

So when I get the whim to do something for myself, like maybe it will lift my spirits and therefore help my family, or maybe it will help me be more productive so I can start cooking or helping in the house again, and then it falls flat, I'm consumed in scolding brain chatter until the wee hours. 

I'm just having a hard week. I can hardly move. I am stressing over my book and Christmas and some big decisions, yet I feel incapacitated to act. It's dumb. 

We met Brad Wilcox a couple weekends ago, and I whined to him. "I want to the the girl who is putting up chairs right now. I want to be powerful enough to be who I used to be." Brad said, "But you're doing everything you can. God isn't concerned so much about how much your offering is. He doesn't shake the tithing envelope by His ear. He is more concerned with what your offering does to change you." Brad told me I'm doing just fine. I don't feel powerful or proactive, but He said God thinks I'm good enough. "Remember that," he said, then pointing at my husband, said, "When she forgets, tell her that Brad told you to." He gave me two hugs and held my hands and made me feel like maybe I'm okay...even on weeks like this, when I reek and think I have nothing to offer and that I'm a miserable, selfish, lazy person. I have to believe that Heavenly Father views me more compassionately than that. I know it, even if I can't always bring myself to believe it. 

I Wrote a Book

I always thought I would have to be either extremely imaginative or several decades older in order to write a book. Yet during the month of November, I challenged myself to write a complete novel…and I did it. I did it! Heavenly Father showed me what to write.

Several years ago, I went out of my way to take a holistic nursing class. The practice I still use daily is called “dreamwork,” in which one learns to understand the meanings of one’s dreams, maybe even others’ too. It says right in the Bible Dictionary that dreams are another way Heavenly Father communicates with His children, and some dreams are even described in the scriptures. When I learned about dreams, I was thrilled to notice the messages Heavenly Father had been giving me in my dreams during my life. I began to pray that Heavenly Father would teach me in my sleep. Because I pay better attention now, He often does.

During a dream, the subconscious mind bubbles up into our consciousness. If we pay attention, we can be given answers to our problems and guidance for our lives. We find out how wise we are and how connected we are to Heavenly Father, deep, deep, deep down.

While I wrote this book, I felt like I was daydreaming—like I was literally accessing the subconscious parts of my brain while awake. It was wild, and awesome. My characters fleshed out easily, and I loved them immediately. There is no going back once you wake up like that.

Early in the month, I was exhausted with the metaphorical bag of rocks I carry in my waking life. We all have one—just look at that heavy thing slung over your shoulder.

I had an appointment with my doctor and shared my concerns, and also related, as an aside, that I had started writing a novel. She is a published author many times over, so I told her the premise of my book. I mentioned a character who was having second thoughts about a big decision, and how I didn’t know what he was going to do. It seemed to be my own version of “writer’s block.”

In that moment, I realized how much his issue symbolically matched the quandary of my waking life. “It will be interesting to see what he decides to do,” I conceded with a shrug. My doctor expressed interest in his outcome; I bet she realized that his fate would somehow help me realize my own.

Through the coming weeks, that character and I really struggled together. I had compassion for him, and by extension, I learned, for myself. I loved myself for struggling and trying and having growing pains. And my character sure hurt too, but I knew he would be okay. I knew he was strong enough to heft his bag of rocks.

This is my first novel, but it can’t be my last. It is too therapeutic to stop. Heavenly Father helped me access my inner wisdom and get through my pile of rocks.

The greatest accomplishment of writing my novel is not that it is written, though I feel joyful about this. The greatest accomplishment is that, now, I love my Lyme. I love it. I love the gifts it has given to me. Gee whiz, it’s all mine—my struggle, my grief. I see myself as a character that I believe in, who I know will be okay, even if I have writer’s block figuring myself out.

I love my Lyme. The critter that has taken over the function of some of my cells acts out of a loving concern for me. It gifts me with struggles that prove who I am in this epic of life. Fifty thousand words could never contain all this; I must be pretty awesome.

Now, my Lyme is as precious to me as my characters. They were born out of love from my subconscious mind, and I think my Lyme was born out of love too, whenever it infected me. My characters keep slapping me on the back, letting me know I’m as okay as they are. I am safe and remembered, and I am trusted by Heavenly Father to do the right thing in my story.

There is purpose to every rock in my sack, and maybe, in the end, it is a joy to be added upon with more rocks when I need more stretching. I’m a plucky, resilient character who doesn’t know how to quit.

My husband has read my manuscript and likes it. I printed it and spiral bound it into a 175-page book so I can edit easier. I love its heft in my hands, like a piece of my heart and deepest mind has literally materialized. When I read the manuscript last week, I knew which parts in the arc of the story needed to be expanded like an accordion. It is an exciting work.

Writing my novel has been an immensely private, selfish, vulnerable, therapeutic work. I updated my doctor just yesterday as we sat like girlfriends, talking about fiction. She didn’t even charge me for an office visit; it was crazy. Maybe it was therapeutic for her to sit back in her chair and talk about the love invested in story-writing. She thinks my book could help people, like it has helped me.

Someday it may be read by others, but I did not initially write to be published. I wrote to write. My characters and I hang out and heckle each other as I continue to daydream about them and other stories that need to be told.

Maybe it is selfish to hang onto my characters for only myself. Maybe I need to learn eventually end this “book honeymoon” and set them free.

I am grateful for the safety of stories. Stories matter. Families stick together with family legends and stories, everything from ancestor narratives to recent embarrassing moments. Prophets comfort the afflicted and lovingly prick heart with stories. Jesus told masterful stories, each with a thousand levels of understanding. They can be studied for millennia, I feel, and never be fully digested.

I did not know I had a story. But because of Lyme, I do. I can talk about my rocks, look at the rocks of my characters, relate my rocks to other people’s rocks. It is really beautiful.

I am really grateful.