We all fall short

Today started off crazy.  Our good friends' two little boys spent the night Saturday night and this morning they woke our teens up super early. Everyone was a little tired and we forgot what it took to get little ones ready for church. They are 5 and 4 and of course, we weren't used to anyone getting up early enough to eat breakfast before mass.

We loaded everyone up, after running to grab car seats, and headed to church. The boys were very good, even though it was their first time in a Catholic mass.  We brought a couple books and our kids brought their phones to distract the boys when they got antsy.

I have been struggling recently with drawing my kids closer to the church. I have also been feeling a lot more like a stepmom than usual, feeling a bit left out. It's a natural progression as the kids get older and start figuring out which parent is the "fun" one. Shock of shockers, that ain't me!

I feel like sometimes, instead of leading them to Jesus, I have pushed them further away.  I get frustrated because they aren't following along, they are distracted, they don't take as much time to pray as what I think they should, and it makes me hypercritical.  I see myself getting angry and making biting sarcastic remarks to them and I know it only hurts them.  I can see it in their eyes and it makes me feel so, so sad.  

Today during mass, it struck me that I need to let them see the Church through new eyes.  As with the two boys we brought along today, I need to allow them to have the same awe and excitement that the little ones experienced.  Before, I would make sure they were following along closely in the missal.  I would give them head nods or hand signals to let them know to pay attention, but what I was missing is that we have to also EXPERIENCE the mass.  In the midst of the chaos today, I realized that my stepson didn't have his missal.  It was just after the transubstantiation and I at first thought I needed to grab one and hand it to him, but then I stepped back.  We were at arguably the most important point of the mass.  Jesus became present to us, through His flesh and blood, in the sanctity of the Eucharist.  My stepson was still kneeling down and still looking at the altar.  Did I really need to bother him to make sure he was following along line by line?  What if I stepped back and allowed him to experience the mass in his own way?  Would that be so bad?

I am struggling with lots of emotions regarding my children lately.  They are your typical teens, reluctantly doing chores, sometimes reacting with a negative attitude to certain requests or situations, and I often forget what I felt like during those years.  It's a wonder how my parents (and siblings) survived when I was a teenager in that household.  Would it be so awful to allow them to express their feelings and react how they need to?  Of course not.  The teenage years are hard enough without a harpy of a stepmom on your shoulder!  

To draw them to the church, perhaps I need to show them how loving Christ changes you as a person.  Instead of trying to have them stick to my rigid demands, I need to let them love and embrace Christ how THEY need to.  I need to pray for them LOTS and I need to be sure they know that not only do we love them, but God does, too.  I also need to remember the line from our homily on this Pentecost Sunday, that we ALL fall short.

The Holy Spirit guides us and we need to teach ourselves to listen.  I've fallen short a lot recently and it has left me feeling like I am a horrible mother.  I love these children and I want to see them do well in life, but I also need to remember that they are 14 and 13 and at a very rough time in their lives, regarding identity, self expression, and identifying the truth.  

I'm willing to let God take the lead on this one.  Next Sunday, I will do my best to allow them to immerse themselves in the mass.  I will let them look around in awe at the beauty of the physical church.  I will also let them be reminded of the beauty of the metaphysical Church as well, as we honor God by our praise and worship and remember what the center of our lives should rely on.  

I will do my very best to get rid of the critical tone in my voice that has appeared so often as of late and instead, listen to my children.  It's so hard sometimes to know when you need to push and when you need to let go.  I don't think I'll ever get that balance right.  

But, you know, an off balance life is a good life and one I'll gladly take.

Limitless

Okay so, I don't really have a Tuesday 5 for you today, because as I was cutting up my grapefruit into beautiful segments...(I lie, they were all busted up and scraped out of their rinds, with juice dribbling down my hands and wrists), I was thinking a lot about my anxiety.  I have dealt with it for what, 3 years now, I think, maybe 2 1/2.

I was thinking about how it's actually probably a good thing that I'm not in a more high pressure sort of job.  What if I had become an ER doctor and developed anxiety?  How could I have helped people in life and death situations if I was anxious about my own mortality and my own medical needs?  On the other hand, I would have had a bunch of doctor friends that probably wouldn't charge me much for the occasional paranoid CT scan...hmm.  I got a little bummed thinking about this because I was viewing my anxiety in terms of how it has limited me.

Believe me, I'll be the first to tell you that anxiety hit me like a frickin' sucker punch, right to the gut and chest.  It didn't come on slowly.  Before 2 1/2 years ago, I was a (moderately) sane person.  I was still scared of heights and got the occasional vertigo, but the most that hampered me in Kansas was not being able to climb up to the Capitol dome.

Oh, anxiety has limited me in a number of ways, but I believe that it has also given me several blessings in disguise.

I am much more conscious of the things that I view and if they will be positive or negative.  I do a lot more things outside of sitting and watching TV.  I found more, varied hobbies that I didn't realize I would enjoy.  I am much more aware of the things I put in my body, food wise.  I am hyper aware of the medication that I take and how it affects me and my mood.  I think that these are all positive consequences of anxiety.  The two most positive things about having anxiety?  I have changed my way of thinking about this world and the next.  I have grown closer to God and learned to trust in Him more than ever.

I think deeper thoughts than I did before.  I mean, I never before truly contemplated death and how it would feel or what would happen afterward.  This is one of the best/worst aspects of anxiety, that ability to conjure up the topic that will make you feel the shittiest.  Mine is death.  Death is frightening and thinking about it, as a person with anxiety, would nearly make me have an attack as soon as I did.  However, working through this stressor has actually brought me a lot of relief, because I know I am prepared.  Okay, so how can you ever TRULY be prepared?  You can't, but, you can make sure that you have forgiven your enemies and told your family and friends that you love them and requested forgiveness from God for the things you have done.  You prepare mentally and spiritually, because anxiety will deceive you into believing that death is around every corner.  When you think like that, you plan on how to make sure you don't die with hate on your heart.

I pray like I have never prayed before.  I ask Mary and the saints to help me with every little thing now.  I ask God for all kinds of stuff I never would have asked before, because now I understand the purpose of prayer.  It isn't to just ask for material things to receive or even for people to get better or
for things to turn out differently, it's to be united with God in a quiet moment and recognizing that you can give it to Him because He has, and will always, carry that burden for us.  I know that I have increased in humility and meekness (believe it or not).  I pray for causes and people in new ways.  I pray for God to invade the souls of the people who wish to do others harm.  I pray for mercy for people most would say don't deserve it.  I pray for safety and protection of my family and friends, but most of all, I pray that God will inflame my heart with even greater love for Him.  This is the power of anxiety.

Anxiety has pushed me to the brink.  There were moments where I just wasn't sure how I was going to make it through the night.  I was scared of everything.  When you're scared of everything, how do you truly live?

When I try to explain to people how bad it was and my lowest moment, I always go back to the bathtub.  That moment when I had anxiety so badly that the only thing that could relieve it was literally sitting in a tub of warm water, with the shower head on, pouring even hotter water over me.  I would shut it off for 20 minutes to let it warm back up, then turn it back on.  Over and over and over again, for nearly 3 hours, I did this.

My lowest point, the nadir of my journey, the bathtub, was where I met God face to face.  I cried and prayed and begged for relief.  He has salvaged my soul and helped me grow spiritually in a way that I was limited by without the anxiety.

Huh, imagine that.