Last night, however, was a much different experience.
You know how, when you've got the flu, you lay around for a few days, and then you think you're better, so you go out for groceries and the second you walk in the store you're like...nope?
That. Only post-miscarriage.
I listened to everyone talk about their week. I liked it. I liked it like I always do, but there was one important thing I noticed of elephant-sized proportions. Everyone else's normal is normal. To be fair, they often have outlier-type weeks, and I heard about some of those. They stress about their kids and their budgets and their post-baby bodies and things normal people have trouble with. My normal, however, is catastrophes (like, life-changing catastrophes--not losing your earring down the garbage disposal), strung together like terrible beads, one right after another.
Now, don't get me wrong here. It wasn't a moment of self-pity or judgement of my friends for not having struggles horrible enough or something stupid like that. I happen to know that as one of my beautiful and amazing friends talks about her week with a genuine smile, I know that she carries the profound pain of a second-trimester pregnancy loss this past summer. But I listened to her talk about her blog and it was kind of an obscure moment for me to realize--her loss was devastating and it's devastating all the time. But she's arranged her life to accommodate it, and she's healing.
Then I looked around the room and realized, every one of these women have arranged their lives to have an even, simple rhythm. If catastrophe strikes, they flex, move things around, move on. I couldn't judge or feel jealous (okay I was a little jealous). It was just a matter-of-fact (or very emotional) moment of realization: I need to overhaul my life. When catastrophes strike, right now, I have way too many wheels in motion. If one thing breaks, five other things break, too, because they were depending on everything working properly. This can't go on, or I am not kidding--I'm going to die from a heart attack or I am going to kill myself. Seriously.
True: I cannot help that my son has autism or that I had a miscarriage or that I was in a car accident a month ago. But I have control over the health of my marriage, over the events I commit to, over when we travel and when we host holidays, and over the work we put in as a couple toward the plans we have for our future. I need to acknowledge when one of the working parts in our life breaks, so I can shut the machine down to fix that one thing.
So I talked to my husband. I said, Husband? We gotta do something.
He said, I know.
I said, no I mean something big. It's going to hurt. It's going to touch everything--our health, household chores and organization, being on time, prioritizing marriage and family and church, and other things I haven't thought of. I'm talking about ripping our lives to shreds so we can put it back together again. It will include giving up some things we don't feel like we can give up. It will involve having some sad and possibly uncomfortable conversations. It will likely require us to fight one another because we're trying to hold each other accountable and the other one doesn't like it at all. And it's going to take a long, long time before we feel like we're getting the hang of it.
He said, I know.
So, despite the holidays approaching at lightning speed...no wait! Not despite. Let's say because the holidays are approaching at lightning speed (and what better time is there to simplify and get your life right? I cannot handle holiday stress at this rate), tonight we're starting with lists.
Hold onto your hats, people, because here comes a series. Tonight, we collect our whole life, and we dump it in the paper shredder.
Adios.
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