Laden with Thoughts

Sometimes it’s a relief to know that someone else feels the same way I do about something. At other times, it’s almost painful to think of another person experiencing the same emotions I experience during certain days (weeks, months, etc…).

Kari recently posted about being worried that people may not want to hang out with her. She often feels that if she calls her friends she will be bothering them. Kari… I feel the exact same way as you do. And I also think it stems from feeling not good enough. I constantly feel like I do a bad job at being a housewife, a friend, and a Christian.

It’s such a bad feeling… and you just feel more and more lonely. Tonight I am at home alone, and will be going to bed alone (Josh is out with friends). I feel sad and neglected, even though it was my decision to remain at home tonight. No one made me stay behind. Yet here I am, sitting on the floor of my living room, feeling tired, sad, and terribly lonely.

However… as much as I hate to be alone, sometimes I crave being alone, just because it means I won’t be bothering anyone.

During service on Sunday morning I realized my stomach was upset, so I left the room and sat on a chair outside of the worship center. While I waited for the service to finish I applied myself to the important task of people-watching (one of my very favorite occupations). For the most part the only souls my gaze encountered were mothers trying to comfort their fussy babies and a few wayward children who seemed to have escaped the grasp of their over-burdened Sunday school teachers. The former chatted happily with each other, comparing weights and heights of their respective children. The latter amused themselves by running in and out of bathrooms and taking frequent trips up and down on the elevator.

Just before service was due to be over, a door across the hall opened and two women emerged from one of the classrooms. One of the women, Beth, was escorting the other to the kitchen (apparently in the hopes of obtaining donuts to bring back to the rest of the class). The other woman, who is mentally retarded and goes to the Agape Sunday school class that Beth teaches, suddenly turned to Beth and shouted:

“Guess what!”

Beth turned to her. “Yes?”

The woman threw her arms in the air and said, triumphantly, “Today is my BIRTHDAY!”

Beth yelled in return, “Hooray! What a GREAT day!”

As I sat watching the two women hugging and laughing, tears came to my eyes and I laughed with them. I had envied the mothers who held beautiful children in their arms, and I had envied the children running heedlessly around the building without a care in the world. But now I mostly envied the birthday girl and all the joy she found in something which I had long ago forgotten to find so worthy of joy.

There’s so much I love about being married that it would take me days to explain it all. I don’t know if there is anything more fulfilling to me to wake up in the morning and realize that I belong to someone, and he belongs to me. After a year of marriage I am still very happy and looking forward to future years to come.

One thing that I may never get used to is my husband’s family gatherings. In my family, parties are quiet and civilized. No one yells or tells dirty jokes or drinks just to get drunk. In my husband’s family, things are quite the opposite. Yesterday my sister-in-law had a huge graduation party at the house. At the beginning I was having a good time but once the booze was flowing and the party became more rowdy I felt very uncomfortable and made frequent trips into the house to “take out the dog”. When Josh asked what was wrong I told him, “I don’t belong here. I just want to go home.”

Living with my in-laws is wonderful in many ways, and I care for them deeply. But a part of me still can’t consider this place my home. As happy as I am living in this apartment with my husband there are lots of days when I want to drive to Sherborn, pull in my parents’ driveway, go inside and curl up on my bed in my room. I’m still most comfortable in my parents’ house. I wonder when that feeling of comfort and support will follow me into the home I now inhabit.

Life is hard for me to understand sometimes. My life, specifically. Why do I feel the way I feel? Why am I nervous around people I respect? What’s with the constant blushing? I have a lot of questions like that.

I’m so tired, but I can’t bring myself to go to bed. If I go to bed, it will be tomorrow sooner. I wish I was like Evie from “Out of This World” and could put my index fingers together to freeze time.

Which is more desirable? A lifetime of comfortable love, or a shorter amount of sheer romantic bliss? If someone asked me that question I would tell them, of course, that a lifetime of not-so-exciting love is infinitely preferable to me.

But would I be telling them the truth?

Who among us, ladies, has watched a romantic movie and not longed for a man to fly halfway around the world just to tell us he has fallen madly in love with us? Who has not dreamed of the most romantic proposal, complete with candlelight and rose petals? Who has not yearned for the single moment in which we realize we are desperately in love?

A life of comfortableness is most likely more fulfilling. Though, to be honest… I wouldn’t say no to a room full of rose petals.

(Please ignore me. I’ve been watching swoony movies again. Damn those Walmart discount DVD racks!)

Josh and I are both involved in the worship ministry at our church, The First Congregational Church of Hopkinton. On our worship team, Josh plays the bass guitar and I am the lead female vocalist. Our team leads the congregation in worship once a month for both Sunday morning services.

Music has always been one of my greatest passions. I am so thankful God chose to give me some talent in the singing department, and I don’t consider it a coincidence that singing makes me more happy than most other things in my life. When I close my eyes and sing to God I find myself transported to a little world where only He and I exist. Singing is also an effective way of focusing my mind during devotions or prayer when I find my mind is wandering. There’s some kind of power involved with singing (and music in general) that I can’t explain.

After a service where my team has led worship, I inevitably have a few people come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed the worship music that morning, or how a certain song encouraged them in some way. It’s so wonderful to hear how God changes people through my service to Him, so I look forward to getting that type of feedback. I’m sure that sometimes there are people who didn’t particularly enjoy the worship music that morning, but usually I don’t have them come up and say that to my face. (And that’s just fine with me!)

One piece of encouragement I often hear which challenges me each time I hear it is: You did such a wonderful job this morning. I could totally see the love of Jesus in your face.

Wow.

That floors me. What a precious gift God has given me! And what a burden. Sometimes I think these people see me as some kind of sweet, pure, young woman with an incredible relationship with Christ, whereas I see myself as an immature, impure, young girl with a struggling relationship with Christ. Obviously, they don’t know me apart from what they see of me on Sunday mornings. But the question remains in my mind: if these people saw me during the week, would they see the love of Jesus in my face?

Lord, let me be more like the woman these people see: a young woman with the love of Jesus shining through her.

When Josh walked into the kitchen this evening he made a face and asked, What smells like poop? Do you smell that?

I couldn’t smell anything.

That is, I couldn’t smell anything until I walked over to the sink and leaned my head over the dirty saucepan that’s been sitting there for a week waiting for me to wash it. Ohhhhh boy. Suddenly, the poop mystery was solved.

At first it was funny to have a poopy pot in our kitchen. Hahaha, how gross is that, poopy pot in the sink. But after my giggles went away, I got this tight feeling in the pit of my stomach. (I’d know that feeling anywhere.) Guilt.

What kind of wife makes her husband live in a house where he has to worry about poopy pots? What kind of wife can’t sleep at 11:30pm because she’s thinking about how dirty the bathroom is? At midnight last night I was on my hands and knees, in my nightgown, scrubbing the bottom of the bathtub. I’ve always known I had some low self-esteem issues, but what I didn’t expect was for marriage to suddenly bring on a whole new onslaught of guilt about what a “bad person” I am.

Do I intellectually think I’m a bad person? No, I don’t. Does Josh think I’m a bad person? Of course he doesn’t. And yet I still feel like I am one.

Tonight while eating dinner (pizza!) Josh made fun of me about something and I told him as punishment he had to wash the poopy pot. He laughed and said, No way! That’s your responsibility! (When we were first married we each established our assigned duties.) Right after he said that, I felt so sad. Not because he did anything wrong, but just because I was so disappointed in myself. I think I always pictured my career as a housewife as a stellar one. I thought everything would be clean all the time and I would have dinner on the table by 6pm.

Who was I kidding? And now that I’ve completely not lived up to that expectation of myself as a wife, I feel like I’ve let down everyone. I’ve let down Josh, I’ve let down my mom, I’ve let down myself.

Really, it’s not so bad. I know I’m loved despite my “deficiencies”, and I’m so glad to be where I am at this moment of my life. God is taking care of me. I think sometimes I just need to write things out… it helps me put it all in perspective a bit more.

Plus, there’s Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer. (Girls, you know what I’m saying.)

George Washington is getting cheated by me today. Although I appreciate everything he did for our country, I’m not spending my Monday off of work thinking about him, or being grateful for him. Nor am I thinking about the good qualities of our other past presidents. Instead, I am thinking about myself.

(It’s not that I’m a very selfish person. This happens to me everytime I have a holiday from work.)

My day off always begins with an inner battle about what time I will rouse myself from the comfortable, warm cocoon I have made with the crumpled sheets and quilt. I think, I don’t need to get up at a reasonable time, this is my day off! Inevitably, guilt shortly sets in due to my disdain for my incredibly lazy attitude and I find myself in a grumpy sort of half-awake state, wishing I could either go back to sleep or get up cheerfully with no regrets. This goes on until a) it’s 11:30am and the guilt has reached an unbearable level, and/or b) i really really need to use the bathroom.

This morning, it was the bathroom reason.

Once I am actually awake and out of bed, a new struggle begins. This second ordeal focuses on my need for a shower and the knowledge that if I do not force myself to take a shower I will most certainly wind up on the living room couch in my mismatched pajamas, watching BBC America and eating stale crackers which have been sitting on a shelf in the kitchen for at least 2 weeks. If, miraculously, I win the battle and find myself showered and dressed, I will half-heartedly clean a few things downstairs. Encouraged by this show of anti-laziness I will then reward myself with some sort of snack and an hour or so of BBC America.

This morning, I did not shower. (I love that show “Ground Force”, don’t you?)

Once I have watched more television than is good for me and eaten something which satisfied my hunger but left me with a tummy ache, I find I have reached a critical point in my day off. Now is the time where I sit on the couch with the television off, stare around the room forlornly, and wonder what is the matter with me. Why don’t I clean up like a good housewife? Why don’t I begin that correspondence class on Federal Regulations I’m supposed to complete for work? Why don’t I (gasp) leave the house and do some grocery shopping? Why don’t I want to do ANYTHING?

On every day off, I always arrive at the same conclusion. I need (no, I want) to be a different person. There are two options for me: I must either learn to sleep blissfully throughout each day and night, or I must learn to get up with readiness and a desire to accomplish something during the day. These are issues I’m praying about. Josh assures me I am not a bad housewife, despite my lack of cleaning and grocery shopping skills.

Did the presidents worry about these things on their days off? Did they ever find themselves, at 3:20 in the afternoon, sitting unshowered at their desk in their pajamas, complaining about their lack of motivation?

Is it Tuesday yet?