muddy water

Lately I have been reading Tracy Thompson’s book, “The Ghost in the House”, on maternal depression and have found it facinating and informative. It has been a serious wake up call to me and has clenched my heart several times. I’ve learned so much about myself that I didn’t realize. Like how long I’ve struggled with depression and haven’t realized it, that just because I tend to bite people’s heads off and hyperventilate rather than hide in bed with the covers over mine, that my struggle is still called “depression”, that the tapes I play over and over in my head about my body image, my self-worth, my need to be perfect, my “all or nothing” mentality, the guilt, the failure etc come from a depressed mindset not a fatally flawed person, that my craving for carbs when I’m down makes sense (as does the subsequent guilt and vomitous feeling I get when I look at my butt in the mirror) and finally, that I am not alone.

I have been trying so hard to feel better but it is just not working. I’ve been doing all the things that I know how to cope but nothing lifts that black cloud of irritation and anxiety. I am lonely. I am overcome with a general sense of my complete inability to seemingly do anything well. I doubt my friends. I question my husbands motives. I am profoundly comforted and madly overwhelmed by my children. I can’t stand my dog. I hate the clutter in my house and feel like I am just not a good enough housewife. I know that I am a good mom to my kids but I drown in the guilt that I don’t do enough, play enough, have playdates enough… I just want to feel as though I have gone through a day knowing that I did my best and that it was good.

I don’t know how to feel better when all I want to do is lie on the couch in silence. I don’t want to get anyone “juice and water”, I don’t want to read, I don’t want to do laundry, make supper, do the dishes, clean the pooh left on the side of the toilet by a little girl who just couldn’t stay put, direct the kids to pick up the toys in the playroom, chase the dog around the kitchen table like an idiot trying to get a freaking pull up away from her. I DON’T WANT TO DO IT ALL but I am the Mom so I do it all because if I don’t, who will?

Lord, in your Word you promised you wouldn’t give me more than I can handle. This feels like too much. Up to this sentence I’ve had to comfort one child twice, get water for another and then fold myself into a toddler bed, have snot bubbles blown on my cheek and grubby fingers shoved in my mouth by a third (thankfully the fouth child settled into sleep as soon as he was in Mommy’s bed with the covers pulled way up). Is there healing power in snot that I was not aware of? Do you want me to feel better by giving to others? I told the first one that he is special and that I love him very much, I told the second that I am glad he is here today and later I held my little girl and prayed for her. I am good to the kids. I have given and they have drank deeply from my well. It’s just that they are never satisfied and the well is running dry. How do I quench their thirst with muddy water? I feel that is all I have to offer right now, muddy water.

test Filed under A time to cry, Me, me, me, me |