It's a Season...

It’s a Season….

This season has been hard – it helps to think of it as a season. It is easier than saying LIFE is hard. If I think of it as a season, then it may pass like Winter into Spring and Spring into Summer. This season has been a battle with anxiety, depression, hormones, and exhaustion. There I said it out loud – I love my son dearly and he along with his sister –they are truly a delight on most days, on others they can overwhelm my senses and my rawness comes through, but since he has been born – I rarely have days where I felt like myself. Anxiousness over the littlest things. Depression that causes physical pain. Exhaustion because I can’t get him to a normal sleep cycle. Hormones because I have been pregnant or nursing or both for three and a half years. All of these things make me feel very alone. I know I am not alone, I know Mothers all over the country feel this way but NO ONE talks about it. When you see other mothers in the grocery store or pick up or drop off, they look polished, professional, rested, excited to be contributing to society. I feel like I am spending every drop of energy I have to put one foot in front of the other. I make myself eat, hold down my breakfast each morning and live off coffee. I have lost all my baby weight and then some and I am told daily how great I look – I feel like my life is in shambles but I am portraying that same shell that is expected of me.

Recently after a night of jagged sleep, picking up a new med for anxiety (which didn’t work) while holding the baby and trying to keep his sister from rearranging the shelves at the pharmacy I was told I looked happier than I have ever been… I almost cried. I wanted to scream I am miserable. Yes my children are beautiful and yes Clara is so smart it is almost scary but mere minutes before –that pronouncement – the last word on my lips would have been HAPPY and I would have given anything to know when this season would turn into another.

I struggle with comparison – and not feeling good enough, rather than focusing on gratitude. I tell myself I am not enough, not good enough at my job, not good enough as a mother, not good enough as a wife, not good enough as a friend. This is a season of not good enough. Comparison is killing my soul. I see other mamas and think they don’t have it as bad as me –their kids sleep or if they don’t they don’t work, or if they have to work –they…. Fill in the blank. It is ridiculous.

OK so now you are depressed or anxious too –if you have made it this far- but here is the truth that I have to remind myself of daily, hourly sometimes even. I am not enough but that is ok. God is enough and through HIM I am enough. He has provided me with more than I can ever imagine and through Him I am equipped to conquer all that He needs me to conquer. I might not be enough in my own power to handle these things –and trust me they are little things in the grand scheme of the world – but if I lean into Him and trust Him, I will be just fine. Yes I wish He would just remove these burdens from me, these voices that tell me I am not enough, the anxiousness that overwhelms me from out of nowhere that I can’t explain and the exhaustion that pervades my daily life but right now He has not chosen to do that. Right now – I am just walking daily trying to see His grace in this, taking the little moments as I get them, breathing deeply when I am hurting, resting when I can, and knowing that someday this will be used for good. That someday I can take another mother’s hand and instead of saying –they grow up so quickly enjoy them while they are little – I can say I have been there in that season and it is very hard, please know you are not alone.