May 12, 2017 - Some bearded man with the clip board

I’ve read that when you are grieving it can take 18 to 24 months (MONTHS) for sleeping and eating patterns to return back to normal. I find that to be an interesting data point. And is that an estimation? Do you take all people that are grieving, throw them into a bucket, take a poll of raising hands and come up with 18 to 24 months? Does it matter what relationship you are to the person who died? Was this a scientific study? Did someone send out a survey? Or maybe some bearded man with a clip board followed you around for hours on end from meal time to snack time, table to table, and again stood at the foot of your bed counting the fretting and rolling patterns of your not sleeping. Maybe they weren’t sleeping because of said tall bearded man in glasses standing in the dark scrawling notes on a note pad? Call me crazy. That intrigues me, 18 to 24 months of awkward, or at least “off your normal” pattern of eating and sleeping. I’m sure it’s true, at least for some duration of time. Well, I know it’s true.

For me, early on, it was the sleep and the eating. I remember the first few days after my brother’s death (if you are new to this, my brother passed away unexpectedly a few months ago) I simply could not eat. I could fill my plate with food and I could sit down at the table, but I could not eat. I might be able to manage a fork full or two, but then it simply would stop. There was not hunger. There were no stomach growls. In fact, to even see someone else eat seemed utterly out of place. Why would anyone need to eat? (The mind games of the subconscious have been enlightening these last 5 years since mastectomy). This drastic transition in eating was short lived. I soon returned to eating, obviously, but the patterns of eating were indeed different and that lasted for a while. It was subtle, but was there and that lasted for a few weeks into months. Eating became something you did to survive. Gone was the enjoyment of the smells and tastes of food. The enjoyment of watching ingredients come together into a masterpiece was obsolete. Favorite foods didn’t carry an accolade.  The entanglement of nourishment with social interaction became untangled. Food had transition to its organic structure intent on becoming part of mine. And there were other things, not just food and sleep, that teetered out of balance as my world shifted on its axis in this new state of grieving life without Andy.

While eating and sleeping habits seems to be back to normal, though at times sleep can still be a battle on any given week, I’m finding I still greatly struggle with maintaining motivation.  Going to work every day and functioning at the top of my game seems to be absolutely all I have to give. Anything above that is a motivation sucker. I get home and it’s time to cook dinner and I can’t find the motivation to get ingredients into their pot. It’s a Saturday morning and I need to get some stuff done around the house and it takes every ounce of my power to get that task started. Once I do get started, I seem to be good to go, but that actual process of starting the given task is completely touch and go. And this has been going on for 4 months now. I seem to have nothing to give to you, to the house, to anything other than my job (and that is out of necessity) without a serious internal power talk to get me going. This is 100% out of the normal for me. To give you some perspective,  I am a complete go-getter at baseline. Prior to Andy’s death, I would see my to-do list and the first thing I would do is see a list of 10 items, with plans of tackling 2, and end up tackling 8. That is just how I work. No procrastination in me. Not a bit. Get in there, get it done, do even more than what you have on your list, get out, enjoy the rest of the day. Now, it is like signing up for a root canal just to take out the trash. I have nothing left to give. And it drives me crazy. The bathrooms need to be cleaned. The house needs to be vacuumed. The bags need to be packed for the trip. The gifts need to be purchased. The list needs to be made. The groceries need to be shopped. The meal needs to be prepped. The laundry needs to be laundered. The gathering needs to be attended. Instead, I see those items and can’t find the motivation to get it done. And when I do, I get one item done (usually that’s dinner) and then find myself mentally spent and not wanting to do anymore. This is not the me I know. And it’s not acceptable. Type A Sally needs Type A Sally back and she needs her back now. I miss her. She was a delightful and productive soul and she totally made me whole. Listen, I don’t need to over achieve, I’d settle for simply achieving at this point in the game, because this level of perpetual underachieving has me out of sorts, not in that it’s not ok for that to be where we are at times, but because I find this new Sally so completely unreliable and foreign and exhausting and challenging and frustrating and guilt inducing and simply not-ok-for-the-long-run and most certainly not where I want to land. 

There, it’s said. This is not where I want to land. I didn’t lose Andy to land here.  We don't always choose where we land. But maybe we do get to say where we want to go after we land. I want to at least be able to balance again. I want to be the woman who can balance work and home and do them both well instead of conquering work and then swimming upstream outside of work. And it all comes down to motivation, and I guess throw in a little being mentally spent at the end of the day. I lost Andy to be a better version of Sally as I learned to thrive in this new scenery. I know it is coming. In so many ways I am thriving…but not yet in task motivation. In fact, I’ve under achieved. It’s complete de-motivation.  I’m sure it’s just my brain still doing its sorting dance as the pieces continue to fall into place. Maybe I can hire said bearded man with the clip board tallying up grieving statistics to come keep me on task. 

So, why am I throwing all of this out on the table for the world to read? Well, if you have been reading my writing for any time at all, by now you know me. We in this one-up-each-other  society spend too much time sweeping life under the rug, instead portraying our life’s perfect moments, our perfect days, and our perfect families. Meanwhile women (and men) are drowning in everyday life wondering what in the world is wrong with their “imperfect life”. And that makes me utterly heartbroken for our world and what we’ve done. If you are grieving, you need to know that these strange new pieces of your personality you are seeing, still 4 months later, are completely normal. (And this doesn't just apply to grief, it applies in many scenarios in life that punch you in the gut. I was just speaking of this with a friend whose spouse just got a cancer diagnosis.) Grief is a superpower. Not in that it makes you better, but in that it has super natural abilities to impact you. There is no shame in that. There is awareness in that. We need to lower the expectations for life to be what it used to be, at least initially. You simply may not be able to juggle it all for a while. Is the world going to crumble because I have an extra layer of dust on my bedside table this week? Nope! Is the national debt going to grow because I didn’t get that extra load of laundry done? Nope! Might I have improved mental stability because I skipped vacuuming the loft? Quite possibly.  I can’t skip everything forever, but I can allow myself different expectations and prioritize differently than I did before. And I can ask for some grace period with family and have open discussions about “this is what you can expect from me, this is what I can and can’t do successfully right now” and “this is how you can help me” moving forward. I’m also telling you this because I spent an entire month wondering what in the world was going on with me.  I can only imagine the upcoming anesthesia is going to worsen this for me. You know how me and anesthesia don’t mix so well. So there’s that. 

Eighteen to 24 months of disrupted sleeping and eating patterns. I’d say motivation is totally reasonable to add to that list, well and maybe a few other things as well Mr. Bearded Man with a clipboard. Maybe things get under my skin a little easier too.  Here’s the silver lining. I’m overly motivated in other ways. Like cherishing things in life.  God’s gifts in chaos. 



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May 5, 2017 - Thirteen minutes

“Oh, my soul, you are not alone. There’s a place where fear has to face the God you know.” -  Oh, My Soul ; Casting Crowns

My friend, Kelli, posted this song quote exactly at the time I was  finishing up writing this piece. I’ve been standing in awe these past two years at how God has been so perfectly timing and aligning his teachings in my walk (I'm silly, we all know my walk has been simply traversing his teachings). Last year was my “Be Still” year. It seemed everywhere I turned and in everything I read or attended, God was reminding me in his teachings and readings that he was calling me to a year of being still and to rid my life of worry. Being still was not my nature as I am a full blown type A personality (except I’m introverted) driven to details and needing to control the outcomes of life. I was quickly learning that God was wanting to slow me down to see his pace, pray the worry out of life, and experience his presence in the details of the here and now. It's totally worked, by the way, as worry is almost non-existent now for me after a year of His indwelling in me its harsh consequences and lack of value in my life.  Be Still has now carried over into this year of my “Waiting” year as I see God very purposely showing me to live in the present in acute awareness of the people and opportunities around me. I used to live every moment in anxious anticipation of “what next”, “when is the next thing coming”, “how come I don’t have all of the desires of my heart”, “when will I marry”, “when will I have children”, “when will I retire”? There was the insatiable desire to have the next thing.

In this constant anticipation of having the thing I didn’t currently have, I was missing out on the blessing of the thing I currently DID have. When I was in middle school, I couldn't wait until I could drive. When I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to be in college. When I was single, I so desperately wanted to be married. So I missed out on so many blessings that came in being single. The freedom to spend my time choosing to do what I wanted to do. The freedom to pick up and go wherever I wanted to go. To spend my money how I wanted to spend it. To sleep when I wanted to sleep. You get the idea. The idea that Sally got to be who God and Sally wanted me to be in that life stage. Now that I am married and in an incredible job, I want the next thing…to be married, retired and traveling. Let’s break it down even more simple that that. Look at any given day. How many days do we spend the entire morning thinking how we can’t wait to get home from work to the evening? Or we spend our entire week in anticipation of the weekend. It’s not that anticipation is bad. It’s awesome to be hopeful and looking forward to things. But there comes a point that we are living so much in anticipation of the next thing that we totally miss out on what God has placed us here for in the first place. A relationship with him. God walks with us here in the present. And only in the present. I’ve been living in anticipation of the next life stage missing out on the blessings of the current here and now of what God has placed me in. He hasn’t created me for tomorrow. He created me for today. For this very moment, for a relationship with him, for my story, and for the person sitting right next to me.

It’s easy to have this perspective when we are talking about the good things in life. I’m in a good job and an awesome marriage and place in my life. So it’s easy enough for me to say “Sally, focus on the present. Focus on this good job. Don’t think about retirement yet which is 20 something years down the road.” It’s a little more difficult to want to live in the present when your current situation isn’t so delightful. And that is where my year of “waiting” becomes a little more evident. What if your “present” is heartbreak? What if you are 40 years old and you have spent the last 20 years of your marriage, and 3 miscarriages, waiting for children? How are you supposed to enjoy the present and waiting? Or what if you are 63 years old and still single and your only desire is to be married? What then? How do you enjoy the present and still waiting? What if you just lost your 3 year old to cancer and you are currently standing in their empty bedroom for the first time? What if you are standing at your mailbox holding divorce papers? What if you are looking at the MRI seeing your brain tumor grow? What if you are heading into your 13^th surgery in a few weeks? What if you just tragically lost your 44 year old brother?

I don’t have the magic answer for you, but I do know that I can identify with some of the scenarios above and have found a way to find joy despite circumstance because Christ has a way of bringing perspective when you spend time praying for it. But particularly in this last year of his teaching me about times of wait a few things have come across my path that have gotten my attention. One in particular that really turned things around for me was hearing this statement recently for a second time:

“We desire relief more than we desire righteousness.”

Let that sink if for a minute. Do an honest self-evaluation of your current circumstance. How would you rank yourself on this? If God uses circumstance to grow us to him, we should almost be more joyous in circumstance than out of circumstance for we know that it is in that circumstance that we are growing in relationship with Christ. When I learned to grasp this truth, it also gave me endurance for the storm. It’s as if this awareness gives me that extra boost for those last three miles of the marathon. I want so richly to be in communion with God that I can endure the waiting, the trials, the grief. While I crave RELIEF, I want RIGHTEOUSNESS more. Now that certainly isn’t absolute. Because when is the last time I have had to endure true persecution, or when is the last time my storm has been unbearable. But it does help in the day to day trials of life and it helps me when I do face those tougher battles of life. Even when my brother died a few weeks (now months?) back, I can see that God is growing me, and many of you, closer to him in Andy’s loss. So I am weathering that Storm better in that knowledge. I want relief from the grief, but in the grief, I am growing. So I keep walking.

An additional truth that has carried me through periods of struggle was when these words were spoken to me.

“How can God use you where you want to be, when you won’t allow him to use you where you are?”

This was absolutely eye opening for me. It’s as if I am saying to God, you can only use me as your vessel if you give me the desires of my heart! Never would I be so bold as to say that, but don’t I sometimes act that way in my bitterness, anger, and entitlement for not having something? Instead of embracing my current situation and allowing God to use me in my present situation (this doesn’t mean removing a healthy longing), I spend all of my time wishing this away in expectation for “what next?” Hasn’t God purposed my here and now to be my story exactly as it is - every sentence, every word, every letter, every punctuation- for growing me in relationship with him and the people around me? “What next” will serve its purpose…but only when the time comes. Let God use us where we are. Look around you. What does God want you to do right now that you are missing because you are living for tomorrow? God wants to use your today, this very hour, these thirteen minutes in between meetings to do something. This is your story. Today.

Loosely related, in a few weeks, I head back into the operating room for surgery #13. I’ve known about this for a few weeks but have yet to put it to paper, or really even to words. Earlier this week I was saying how strong emotions must be inter-related. When I feel mad, I often cry. When I face giants on any given day, I miss my brother more. Our hearts are connected to our heads. So when I am passionate, I’m am fully passionate. I’m headed back to the OR for some respiratory issues – some shaving here, some shaving there, some stents up over there. It’s an easy surgery I’m told (I don’t know how you decide that), but after 12 surgeries in this lifetime, particularly after these 6 for mastectomy, they all become inter-related emotionally. That’s why I haven’t put words to it as of yet. But God is the God of surgeries, and anesthesia (which I detest and don’t do so well with), and all the things that come with this, so I put it there for him to heal. This too is my story. Life after cleft lips, lymphoma, radiation, fibrosis, and mastectomy. The OR is my nemesis. But I’ve learned that in my fears and emotions too, not just while I wait, I find God.




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