I'm So Stressed I'm Laughing

Hey y’all,

WHAT A MORNING. Seriously. And boy what a weekend. My last post was about handling feelings of anxiousness and just our overall emotions in times of trouble. You know why I wrote such a post? You guessed it. Because I’ve been struggling. Since I started having babies, but also over this weekend.

We spent Saturday afternoon watching the Iron Bowl at my in-laws’ house because we’re rival teams and War Eagle. 😉 Since Jacob was off for Thanksgiving last Thursday, he had to make it up on Saturday. He met us at his mom’s when he got off of work that afternoon and caught the second half of the game (hardly worth watching, but I digress). My mother-in-law insisted on keeping both kids over night so we wouldn’t have to make the drive back out after breakfast in the morning – she usually gets the kids all day on Sundays to get some time in with them and to let Jacob and I have a break and some time to ourselves. Yes, I have extremely generous family, I am well aware. <3

It would be Mason’s first night away from me; and needless to say I was super anxious about it, but was grateful for such a night and Sunday of possibilities. (At around ten that night I went to the bathroom on the kids’ end of the house and shouted, “I CAN BE AS LOUD AS I WANT AND USE THIS MORE CONVENIENT BATHROOM BECAUSE THERE ARE NO SLEEPING CHILDREN” It was grand.)

Jacob and his mom worked together to get me out of her home without babies in tow and since we had driven separately, I followed Jacob the fifteen minutes back home.

Roughly two minutes from the house, I ran something over. It was firm and smelled like a skunk? but didn’t feel serious and we made it home just fine. I pulled into the garage and got out of my car and there was coolant pouring everywhere and I had some kind of hose dragging the ground. Lovely.

Jacob only stood there in shock for a minute before sliding under the front of my car. He tugged on a plastic piece and even more liquid spilled out of my engine area.

He spent Sunday (his only day off for the weekend) under the hood of my car, only to declare grimly that my radiator was pretty much totaled and probably so was my AC condenser. It took him about an hour to finally decide that he would, indeed, order the part and make the repair himself. (For anyone who doesn’t know, Volvos are evidently a pain in the butt and unnecessarily difficult for mechanics. And Jacob absolutely hates working on cars.) Then he told me that his truck hasn’t been wanting to start all week. He gets it there, but with much effort. It needs a fuel pump, he informs me now. A roughly $300 part now on top of a $200 part for my radiator. And my car isn’t going anywhere until we can find one and he can find the time to install it. We both turn to the Mustang – the fancy car that we’re making payments on that’s been sitting in the garage because we have kids now and it has no battery so it can’t move anyway. And it’s Christmas and this happened last year and I need to run to Sam’s Club desperately to spend $100 on diapers. Talk about depressing. Talk about feeling all kinds of anxiety.

Fast forward to Monday morning. I slept great and therefore woke up super motivated to tackle my to-do list – or at least, the half I got to write down before getting interrupted.

• ·         Ride Skye at 6am – check
• ·         Get bucked off Skye at 6:30 – check
• ·         Make coffee for husband before jumping into shower and (finally) shaving – check, check
• ·         Begin work on Christmas letter while kids are sleeping and actually DRINK COFFEE WHILE IT’S HOT – check and check. I even added a drop or two of peppermint as a trial run on it’s energetic and festively tasty qualities. Boy am I glad I did…

The rest of the morning proceeded as follows:

• ·         Begin breakfast for children and realize that I have no cash to pay the farrier who texted me late the night before asking if I was available for him to come work on the horses.
• ·         Dash around like a mad woman, getting children dressed and in the truck after finishing half their breakfast so that we can get to the bank and back before the farrier shows up. Praying the truck actually starts.
• ·         Get to the bank thirty minutes too early. Kids are hungry. I’m hungry. Farrier texts and asks to push the time back to an hour later. I agree gratefully.
• ·         Go back home and finish breakfast. Begin laundry and start unloading dishwasher only to answer a call from Mom to tell me they have a stomach bug we may have picked up and my brother had a car accident. Spend time in tear-filled prayer thanking the Lord that he’s ok.
• ·         Swoop not-hungry kids back into the truck to go back to the bank and praying again that the truck will start at least one more time.
• ·         Get home, kids scatter to play, I start on the kitchen again only for the farrier to show up ten seconds later.
• ·         Drag play pen out into unexpectedly cold morning so Mason can play in the sun. Look for scattered articles of clothing so we can all go and hold horses for the farrier. While we’re outside, I realize the cat escaped into the attic while we were dragging out our 9ft Christmas tree last night. So now it looks like Christmas threw up in my front room with a half-fluffed 9fter, and the cat is screaming from the eaves of the house. The kids want inside, then they want outside, then they want inside….etc.
• ·         Pay the farrier, put the kids on toy cars in the house, go upstairs to rescue “starving” cat. That took a solid 15 minutes.
• ·         Serve lunch and start again on kitchen only to have a gentleman knock on my door from the pipeline company asking if they could use our driveway to get to the pipeline on our property to do some work. YES, JUST LET ME CLEAN MY KITCHEN.
• ·         I have lunch because I’m feeling queasy. Listen to my “potty trained” toddler strum on my guitar and sing a song about how she’s pooped in her pants instead of on the potty. Fix that situation and scrape my bowl into a leftovers container for later.
• ·         FINISH the kitchen, gosh dang it, while the cat tells me how she never thought she would see the light of day again and she still thinks she’ll never see a crumb of food for the rest of her life. Calm down.
• ·         Start another load of laundry. Answer a call from a grandmother. Feed the dang cat who runs in, grabs two bites, then takes a bath between my feet. Seriously?
• ·         Try to practice Christmas carols on the piano. End up reading to my kids instead.
• ·         Serve a snack because oops lunch was early.
• ·         NAPS.

And here we are, gosh a’mighty. My phone has been going off with texts while I type this post; and roughly ten minutes ago the mail lady came roaring up the driveway, laying on her horn right outside Katie Jo’s window…

I’m diffusing my bedtime blend from last night and it’s helping me feel less frayed. This mama needs a cup of tea and a nap. I can’t wait to get a hug from my husband later.

A Word About Mental Health + Faith + Essential Oils

Hey y’all,

I get just as annoyed with all the “essential oils” sales pitches that are all over my Facebook feed as the next person does. I have been almost completely turned off by the idea of even looking into their relevance because of obnoxious sales gurus who send me all kinds of evites and copy/pasted messages that they’re sending to all of their contacts, just trying to get me to buy from them. Or at least, that’s how they come across. I get so sick of it.

Then I met a new mom friend at an annual homeschool camp that my folks have been attending for the last ten years. It happens in October every year and it’s a weekend filled with fellowship of like-minded people – swapping horrific stories about homeschooling their horrific children for the moms, football for the dads (who all always have television sets and radios tuned in, hooked to their campers on the outside so they can share the fun), and game after game of volleyball for all of the kids, young and old. I even got to play this year after sitting out the last two years, due to my condition of being, how shall I say? As round as the volleyball itself and even more ready to pop.

One of the biggest reasons I went to Dixon this year was to meet a new mom friend that my Mom had told me about. She had four girls my kids’ ages and people were trying to talk her into coming, too.

“I commend her if she does, and I don’t blame her if she doesn’t,” I told my mom with raised eyebrows. Thanks for destroying my ego as SuperMom, Hope. 😉 

Seriously, though. She came, we met, and we hit it off. She told me she had just moved near my area and we swapped phone numbers and promised to schedule a playdate asap. Of course I went home and stalked her on Facebook.

“Oh no,” I said to Jacob beside me in bed. “She does the oils thing. I don’t know if we can be friends.” (That’s how turned off I was to these kinds of people. They can be so obnoxious.)

But this gal isn’t. She even invited me to a “make and take” oils party that was geared up more so that we could spend some more time together. I even went. And I even left Jacob home with the kids to do bedtime without me and I even took my mom. I didn’t want to be rude, and I was genuinely curious about these oils. Especially if party food was involved.

She told us a little bit about how she got started on oils. (Her dad is a doctor, actually.) She also told us a lot about why she had finally decided on the company she buys her oils from and a lot about what kind of company it was. 

I won’t mention any names because I’m not trying to push a sale or anything like that. But, y’all, she sold me. It wasn’t even about the oils; I wanted to be involved in helping people’s lives for the better like this company seems to do. The oils were just the bonus; and what a bonus they have been!

I saw a mom friend of mine recently send out a post on Facebook about how defeated she feels in being a mom. She feels things like anger, frustration, shame, guilt, stress overload, loneliness – I’m paraphrasing here, but don’t we all feel the same as she does at one time or another (or maybe all the time)? Even if you’re not a mom, these emotions may be a huge part of your daily routine – maybe even a huge part of who you have become. But they are not who you are. Especially if you are a Christian.

Read that last part again because it is so important. These (especially the added problems of depression and anxiety) have been my faithful companions for many years. I have always struggled. But one thing that always manages to keep my head above the waves (check out the song “Oceans” by Hillsong United) is to remember that these are normal feelings during the process of sanctification – which is something I will be constantly struggling through until I reach perfection in Heaven only. They are normal feelings, but they do not define who I am. Who I am as a Christian woman is so much more powerful than those labels I may tend to give myself and my days. I say they are normal, because if we desire and strive to be better than we are, then it only makes sense that on some days at least, we would be frustrated and even angry with not becoming that better person yet.

My God is not finished with me. I can see that almost every second that I am a parent and my two toddlers are awake. I struggle almost every minute of this journey, and the fight against those feelings seems overwhelming and too hard. But I have hope because I know that I do not fight in vain. I have hope and forgiveness for myself each morning because that’s when God has hope and forgiveness for me, too. (New morning mercies, anyone?) Open your Bible – it is all about second chances. And third ones, and tenth ones, and one-hundred-and-tenth-chances. How’s that for encouragement? Lean on the Lord, lovely lady. He said to everyone who feels like they are carrying a burden that just feels too heavy, to come and simply give it to Him. He will carry it for you. Because He cares about you. Read Hebrews: He is empathetic. Read the Psalms: He is near to you. Read the Old Testament: He is a God of many chances. Read His Words: they are only encouragement to the believer.

This is something He has been putting heavily on my heart lately. On my chalkboard in my kitchen last week I had to write out, “Just like divorce is not an option in my marriage, yelling is not an option in my parenting,” to remind myself to speak softly; because Mason getting all four of his front teeth at the same time that I’m trying to potty train his older sister just seems unbearable as the daily routine/headache that it has all become. (And don’t let anyone fool you: potty training is definitely worse than labor.) Thus, the Lord introduced me to a new arsenal of weapons to have in my inventory to fight against that old me that I struggle to put off and keep off.

The night of the make-and-take party we swiped a happy rollerball on our wrists and made a couple of our choosing to take home with us. (I have been struggling with insomnia for a few months now, so I made a relaxation rollerball, and then went along with everyone’s choice of an immunity-booster.) I walked in the door at home later that evening to an unhappy husband who claimed to have been feeling sick all day and that the kids had been horrendous. Normally, I would have made some unsympathetic comments along the lines of “welcome to my world” or “of course you’re sick the one night I would like to escape.” But I didn’t even have the desire. I was strangely compassionate (ask my loved ones, they will tell you how terrible I really am at that).

I had ordered a kit of oils complete with a diffuser at the party to try them out for myself (and to begin investing our money in growing communities around the world). When it arrived only a few short days later, I began reading the book that came with it that explained the benefits of each oil. In the mean time, I had been swiping away with the relaxation rollerball I made and had noticed a major difference in my attitude. Then I read a little about the science behind essential oils and it suddenly clicked for me: As someone who has rapid misfires and balancing issues when it comes to hormones, if I could somehow chemically change those hormones that are polluting my brain – kind of like hacking the system – why wouldn’t I?? What if when I recognize that Monster Mommy is coming out, especially over something insignificant – what if I diffused a counteracting fragrance that were to deal a serious blow to the steam she was picking up? I tried it. Over and over and over. It has worked wonders.

I was reading the Creation story to Mason the other night before bed and was suddenly struck. God created every living plant, complete with all of its current properties. We were instructed to cultivate the land and its vegetation; and suddenly it made sense that these oils from these plants were being such a helper to me in my desire to be better: they were created by my loving God who helps me every day.

My point is, though, that it’s time to recognize what helps you to become better than the person your emotions want you to be. Enough being dragged down. Declare war on that old person and put them off, as the Bible says, just as if you were taking off a coat and laying it aside.

For me, as a Christian woman, my helper is the Holy Spirit; and He is using tools such as His Word (my Bible), these essential oils, fellowship with like-minded women, and other things – like this podcast that my mom recommended to me. I’m addicted and I listen to it every time I head to town thirty minutes away. It is such wonderful and sound teaching. I encourage all women to listen to this podcast regularly.

But seriously, anything will do. I sometimes tune in to encouraging music on my radio, or sing encouraging songs that I know – I especially do this as two toddlers scream over the top of me while they are taking a bath. I found singing such songs as “JesusDraw Me Ever Nearer” helps to keep me grounded when I must plow through with a task, regardless of how my kids feel about it. Fun fact: I used to sing this song while rocking Katie during a rough night. Sometimes I growled it, sometimes I wept.

Sometimes having soft instrumental music playing in the background of my home while I tend to chores and children helps to set the mood of the house. Sometimes taking fifteen minutes to read an encouraging book or blog post (or my Bible) while Katie is on the potty. I write uplifting phrases on the menuboard in my kitchen regularly. I diffuse lavender or citrus scents in my living room to help diffuse any negative emotion that I – or even my kids – may unknowingly have lurking in the back of our mind. I use my manners with my children because even that little thing helps to put me in a better mood when “dealing with” them.

Mental health is just as important as your physical health -- it is a part of your physical health, because technically speaking, your brain is a muscle. 

If you’re really struggling, sweet friend, then I strongly advise you to find someone that you would feel comfortable talking to on a regular basis. An accountability partner, of sorts. Taking care of yourself -- especially your mental health -- can have a major positive impact on your kids. Praying definitely helps me, but sometimes I do need a little extra “kick in the pants” or encouragement. That can come from someone that God has placed in our lives, though be discerning who you choose.

My heart goes out to any hurting mamas, or anyone struggling with such feelings in general.

Remember it’s a bad day, but never a bad life.