friday stream of consciousness
I am sitting in the dark next to a burning candle, my coffee growing cold in the mug next to me. My white noise app is still casting a soft whooshing sound through the room, failing miserably at drowning out the construction happening on the other side of our backyard fence. It is 6:20am and the machines are already growling, along with my stomach.
I knew the first week back to school would be rough. I did not know a mob would try to overtake the Capitol, or that I’d suddenly, unexpectedly, be forced to make some big decisions in my work.
Alas, here we are.
***
One minute he was fine, the next he wasn’t. On Tuesday morning, my kindergartener went from sitting at his desk hunched over a notebook to spontaneously sobbing in my arms. Face scrunched up, tears falling down his cheeks, he was crying so hard he couldn’t even tell me why.
Buddy, what’s wrong?
What happened?
Why are you crying?
I looked at his open laptop, his notebook, trying to piece together clues of what had caused this meltdown. Did he make a mistake? Did he do the assignment wrong? I couldn’t tell if an isolated incident occurred, or if the culmination of almost five months of distance learning finally hit a breaking point. He had no words, only tears. I held him tight and let him cry on my sweatshirt until he finally broke free and looked at me, ready to talk.
“Why are you crying, babe?” I asked again, gently.
He sniffled, working hard not to let his face crumble again.
“I’m ... crying for no reason,” he said between small sobs.
A tiny laugh escaped my mouth. I pulled him in for another hug and whispered in his ear: That’s okay, sometimes mommy cries for no reason, too.
***
When I was in high school, I used to carry 10-15 pounds of books in my backpack, uphill, from the parking lot to the campus each morning. I remember feeling a sense of relief once I’d get to my locker and could put some of the books inside.
Every day, the relief surprised me a bit.
Almost as if I didn’t realize how heavy the backpack had become until I had emptied half of it.
***
I have felt nothing but dread about resuming distance learning this week. Having two weeks off from Zoom calls and daily assignments and emails from teachers felt like a true vacation, like our entire family could exhale. Our home felt lighter, easier, more peaceful. I noticed a huge difference in my kids, in the way they walked and talked and played. They didn’t seem so fragile, on the verge of breaking every five minutes. They were my happy-go-lucky kids again.
In other words: I didn’t realize the toll distance learning was taking on my family until I was able to set it down for two weeks. But now we’re here again, and boy oh boy this is heavier than I remember.
***
The news comes quickly. A decision has been made that impacts me, my job, women I care about. I get off the phone, drive through the Starbucks drive-thru, slip into a parking spot, and burst into tears.
It feels like seven more books have been added to my already-heavy backpack. When did I agree to carry all these responsibilities? Who put me in charge? A familiar thought creeps up in my mind, slithering around my brain like a vine: You’re not good at this.
Some days I wake up and don’t even know how I got here. Today is one of those days. The pressure to keep every facet chugging along, to be the glue in every crack, to keep every dollar from vanishing into thin air—it feels insurmountable.
I cry a fresh batch of tears sitting in my car, feeling so alone and desperate for a break. Sometimes I want to hide in a cave, not make any decisions for a week. I want to shut my email down, log out of every single app, throw my phone in the river. Sometimes I dream about working in a cubicle again, clocking in and out, being handed a paycheck for a job well done. I dream of having a boss instead of being the boss. I dream of leaving my work on a desk, under fluorescent lights, shutting the computer down at 5:30pm and not thinking about it until the following morning.
The grass is always greener.
I used to hate working in a cubicle.
I open up Voxer and send a message to my friends. I’m tired. I’m stressed. Please pray for me. I turn the car back on and drive home, thinking of my New Year’s resolutions:
More faith, less fear.
More prayer, less panic.
Here we are, one week in. God’s already giving me opportunities to practice, nudging me, again, for the billionth time, to put the backpack down at His feet.
***
A few hours later, I am standing at the stove, stirring ground beef with my headphones on, fighting the urge to turn on the news. I hit play on a message from a friend.
“It’s going to be okay, Ash. It’s going to be okay.”
She offers a reminder from Psalm 121—our help comes from the Lord.
Another tear starts to fall down my cheek. I whisk it away before it falls into the pan.
***
I fall apart one more time, in our bedroom, with Brett. I process out loud everything I’m worried about, everything I need to figure out, everything I’m scared of losing, all the worst case scenarios. I cry, again, for the third time that day.
He holds up the Jesus Storybook Bible, still sitting on our bed from the devotions we just finished with our boys.
“Remember what we learned tonight?” he smiles.
We had just finished reading about the time Jesus fed 5,000 people with two fish and five loaves of bread—a miracle I’ve read dozens of times.
As the Storybook Bible tells it: Jesus did many miracles like this. Things people thought couldn’t happen, that weren’t natural. But it was the most natural thing in all the world. It’s what God had been doing from the beginning, of course. Taking the nothing and making it everything. Taking the emptiness and filling it up. Taking the darkness and making it light.
More faith, less fear.
More prayer, less panic.
Brett asks what he can do. I tell him I want a McFlurry.
“I hoped you were going to say that,” he says.
He grabs his keys, throws on a sweatshirt, and leaves. After five minutes of doom-scrolling images of terrorists masked as patriots destroying property, carrying confederate flags through the halls of the Capitol, I set my phone down and pick up the Anne Lamott book sitting on my nightstand.
She writes: Love has bridged the high-rises of despair we were about to fall between. Love has been a penlight in the blackest, bleakest nights. Love has been a wild animal, a poultice, a dinghy, a coat. Love is why we have hope.
Brett reappears with two cups. We eat ice cream in bed, our favorite coping strategy after a long day. He asks what time he should set the coffee, always giving me an out to sleep longer if I want. I tell him 5:30, like always. I brush my teeth and swallow a melatonin pill before climbing into bed.
Matthew 11:28 starts running through my head. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I pull the weighted blanket up over my body, all the way to my neck. I close my eyes and picture myself taking the backpack off, rolling my shoulders a few times, feeling light and free.
I slowly drift off to sleep thinking of my kindergartener, how much I love him, how hard this all is, how good it feels to cry—sometimes for all the reasons in the world and sometimes for no reason at all.
