Calm-Ish
When I was in labor with our eldest son—my husband halfway around the world and my sister busy inflating latex gloves into udder balloons—the nurses kept talking about how calm I was. But the truth was that I wasn’t calm. I just looked like I was. (Which is why I was in active labor with that poor child for twelve hours straight before I finally relaxed enough to pop him out—relaxing during labor, yep, I just said that.)
This week, as we prep for the Man’s surgery and I try to finish up the school year with our co-op and we prepare to send the kids to their grandparents (without us!) for a week (without us!) and I continue doing all the other things (because: can’t stop, won’t stop), I think I look calm. And most of the time, I really, genuinely feel calm. No lie. Well, calm-ish.
But I also read four fluff novels within a twenty-four hour time span, so it may be that I actually am not. If I’m honest.
There is a fine line here, and I’m going to attempt to walk it. On the one side is over dramatization, whining, and playing the victim. On the other side is stoicism, pride, and making myself the superhero. Neither really reflects reality.
The truth is: we really are okay. And it is going to be okay.
The truth is: there is so very much to be thankful for in this season. And we are thankful for it.
The truth is: we have an incredible community of support. And they are keeping us going.
The truth is: we have gone through harder things and will probably go through other harder things in the future. And God got us through them and will get us through the others.
The truth is also: there is a lot that is making me bone tired, and quitting sometimes sounds like a win.
But here is another truth: pressing pause to read a few novels wasn’t quitting.
I still taught a full day of school. I still wrote. I still took the Man to get his COVID test under a purple tent that absolutely thrilled Twinkle’s little life. I still cooked dinner and did the laundry and washed the dishes.
During that long night of labor with the Little Man, once they finally realized I wasn’t as calm as I appeared, they gave me a relaxant so I could sleep for a while before we tried again. And, spoiler alert, an adorable, poochy-lipped little boy child was born a few hours later. The need for a relaxant helped me realize that I didn’t have it as together as I thought I did. The nurses stepped in to give me a reprieve. And then I was able to keep going.
I saw my twenty four hours of books as a bit of a wake up call to let me know I wasn’t as calm as I thought I was. It was also a reprieve. But I didn’t stay there. Checking out in novels isn’t a healthy long term way of dealing with stress. Instead, I slowed down a bit and listened and processed and wrote and only read a little…and that helped me to keep going.
Books aren’t there to fix everything for us, just like a good nurse or a muscle relaxer can’t actually help you produce a baby any faster or more effectively, but sometimes books are there to show us something we hadn’t recognized earlier. Often they do this in big, worldview changing ways (if we’re reading the right books), but sometimes they (and our other stress relief mechanisms) are just a little nudge to remind us that we may not be as okay as we thought we are. And that’s not a bad thing.
When we recognize that we aren’t necessarily as calm or okay as we wish we were, we can take better steps than drowning ourselves in books (or food or movies or online shopping). But sometimes we need to see that we’re not calm, only calm-ish, first.
And then we can take a deep breath and go from there.
