When You Stop Trying to Make it All Better
... and just surrender to it.
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It’s 3 PM on a Sunday afternoon.
I’m 8 months pregnant and exhausted. I’ve been waking up at about 4:30 every morning throughout most of the pregnancy, and the likelihood of that happening has increased as I’ve entered into the third trimester.
I’m attempting to nap on the couch with the dog as my husband is working on about 3 different projects at the same time on his only full-day off.
Next to me on the coffee table is a mess of papers, boxes, and items that we’ve been attempting to organize. Each item telling a small part of the story of how our lives have been the last several months.
Boxes of lightbulbs that we found in a cabinet that now need to be moved in order to accommodate for baby items
Stacks and stacks of papers of health insurance documents and information from the last 6 months or so
Baby bottles and breastmilk storage bottles
A notice to attend jury duty in a few weeks
A stack of documents to vote in the upcoming election
A diffuser that’s running in order to help with my dry sinuses
A notebook that’s filled with 2 years of our desires and dreams of creating our ideal home as well as budgets and so many other things
Under normal circumstances, I would probably be trying to organize something on this coffee table to help reduce the clutter. To solve the issues. To get rid of the mess. To put forth some effort into reducing the noise that it all represents. To try to make it all better somehow.
But on this Sunday afternoon, with such little energy in me, I felt no choice but to just surrender to it. To be okay with the chaos going on around me. To just stop and just let it all be.
“Make sure you color inside the lines,” my mother says.
I’m about 3 years old and sitting on the kitchen floor with my coloring book and a box of crayons at the end of the breakfast nook as my mom drinks coffee with grandma.
I look back down at the bear that I’ve been coloring red. It certainly wasn’t neat or within the lines by any means. I flip back through the previous pages I colored where I’ve already scribbled over the characters with a different color on each page.
I already knew that I wasn’t supposed to color outside the lines. I had been told that many times before, so this wasn’t new information.
I flip to the next page and begin to color the next one within the lines, but I immediately feel less enjoyment in coloring. I quickly notice how coloring in the lines takes a lot longer. I have to be more careful over how I hold the crayon. There is less ease. I can feel how it somehow puts more strain on my arm, hand and wrist.
Fairly quickly into my attempt to color in the lines, I stop, get up, and go to the other room to play with something else that doesn’t feel quite so… restrictive.
Starting from a very young age, we’ve been taught, in various ways, to not be messy.
That if we drop something to pick it up.
That if we spill something to clean it up.
That if we take our toys out to put them away.
We’ve been taught to always try to make it all better somehow.
And yet, in real-life, sometimes all of the components that make up the mess are far too much to take care of.
When the bills keep coming in the mail.
When people keep asking for more from you.
When various businesses and institutions seem to constantly be reaching out asking for more and more of your time, energy and/or money.
When you’ve attempted to create changes in your life to help make things better and easier for yourself, but roadblocks just keep showing themselves.
Sometimes it becomes far too exhausting to keep up with it all.
Sometimes it becomes far too tiring to try to push yourself to somehow make it “neat”.
Sometimes it becomes far too much to try to organize.
Sometimes it becomes far too much to try to “fix it”.
Sometimes it becomes far too much to put forth the effort to somehow make it all look “better”.
Perhaps the real growth happens when are able to stop trying to do all those things.
Perhaps the real growth happens when we drop the facade that we’ve been taught we need to have in order to receive praise and acceptance.
Perhaps the real growth comes in the moments when we can just accept how messy it all is, how challenging it all is, how hard it all is.
Perhaps the real growth happens in the moments when our bodies tell us that we have no more energy to give, and we finally give ourselves permission to just be in the messy challenges of life for a while.
Things I’ve found nourishing this week:
Green juice (specifically, homemade celery juice with a touch of lemon)
Naps… always naps
Staying inside with the AC during the really hot days
Sleeping with the windows open on the cool days… so I can wake up in the morning to the birds chirping
Saying no unapologetically
Allowing myself to cry upon hearing the news of the Texas elementary school shooting. While a part of me wished I could already hold my baby close, another part of me realized that I am already holding him as close as I ever will right now.
Getting off of social media when it starts to feel far “too noisy” or far “too activated”
Snuggles with the dog
This song… for some reason
Writing, writing, and more writing
Walks along the bay to smell that fresh cool sea breeze