Honesty Hour: My mom is a liar. She said with her mouth that raising children is difficult but even when we were all little and my dad was working in San Jose while we were still living in Rialto, she made it look easy. Let me hand make all the Halloween costumes and Christmas dresses and Christmas jammies for five children, every year. Raising children seems so effortless for her that I thought it was. And, let's be honest, three children is pretty easy. Even when we had three kids I thought it was pretty easy. But four is a different story. Four is hard.
I have felt like I'm walking through molasses; like I have rocks on my shoulders; like my head is full of cotton; like I will never get anything done or never get enough done; like the walls of my house are closer in on me; like the dark is taking over; like all I want to do is sleep; like my life will never get any better because once my kids are out of the kid stage, they become teenagers and by all accounts that's worse than now. You've guessed it. I have a bit of postpartum depression. It's a bit late setting here, but here it is. The main culprit: lack of sleep. While I go to bed between 9:30 and 10 every night, I sleep in 15-20 minute segments, sometimes, if I'm lucky, up to 45 minutes. Zora is a terrible sleeper. Really terrible.
So last night, as I'm rocking Zora to sleep at 2:30 am, after she'd woken up at 1 am, and am having sleep-deprived hallucinations of the kids putting plastic bags over Zora's face, I decided it was time to pray. So I did. I asked Heavenly Father to help Zora sleep. And you know what. He did. Not right away but He did. I finally got her back to sleep at 3:30 and she didn't wake up until I woke her up at 8:30 to go to church. I had to get up at 7 (after hitting the alarm a few times), but that's still 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep! I woke up happy. My head was clear. The cloud was gone. Today was a good day.
This wasn't the first time this has happened. (Well Zora sleeping yes, but answers to prayers no). I've had to pray every day for energy and motivation to get through the day. And every day I remember to pray, Heavenly Father blesses me with energy and motivation and insight on how to change so my days are less chaotic--until about 6 and the sun sets and the walls start closing in again.
Today's revelation: I need to not be doing stuff all the time. When I would usually start telling the kids to get ready for bed, I sat on the couch and nursed Zora while watching the other kids play. And I let my shoulders relax and enjoyed watching them play. And it felt good to sit and enjoy and not get things done. And guess what? The dishes still got done and the house still got cleaned up. And now I'm posting to my blog. Life did not end because I enjoyed it for a while.
New goals for this week: get out more and spend more time with my friends. The more I've felt my house closing in on me, the less willing I've been to leave it. But the Spirit gently reminded me this week, that I feel better when I get out more. So that's the goal for this week--stop stressing about the train wreck that is taking 3 kids anywhere and just get out.
I also took a 2 hour nap after church today. I'm feeling pretty good.
Hey, Heather. Totally random comment from a friend from the past here. But I had just been thinking about you, and wondering how things were with you when I remembered you had a blog! Lo and behold, you are still blogging, and I'm so glad. This post was well-timed for me. I've got plenty of anxiety issues to deal with myself, and some of your gentle inspirations resonate with me and seem like they'd be helpful for me, too. So thanks for sharing them on your little corner of the internet. 🙂 It's good to see some posts to "catch up" with you!
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