After seven months of intense drama with questions about faith, fear, and suffering, and physical, emotional, familial, financial, vocational, and spiritual changes, I'm finding it difficult to just live normal life. The mundane is boring in its blandness. I find myself having conversations about curriculum or cooking, weekend plans or vacations and walk away feeling hollow. Topics that used to rev me up, leave me somehow dissatisfied.
Before you suggest it, I am not depressed. I have been there and this is not it. I love life and feel as if I have just emerged from the longest postpartum period of my life. I look forward to each day, laugh often, and cry little. I am grateful for all the things God has so graciously given me.
I do wonder if I've become an adreneline junky. I don't miss the hospitalizations, surgery, or the newness of a Ds diagnosis. But, with all that came a passion to grapple with the tough questions, to wrestle with my faith, to solidify my thoughts, and to dig into the Bible and see it come alive. With it also came a passion for a segment of the population that has an extra chromosome and, because of that, will never make it out of the womb alive; and a passion to bring home those that have survived the womb, only to be born into a country that refuses to see their value, and sentences them to languish in mental institutions.
My other passions - to know the heart of my savior, Jesus Christ, to love and train my children for His glory, and to love and respect my incredible husband - are still alive and kicking. But other things that used to seem important - grocery lists, vacations, enrichment activities, TV shows, popular music, etc. - pale in comparison. Unfortunately, the latter seem to make up the fabric of our society, so I find myself on the outside of the camp. The tedium is too much for me.
I don't have a solution. I'm just sayin'.
You don't sound depressed, you sound like you have been smelted and refined.
ReplyDeleteThe little doll in my post is Ella Grace. http://theamazingellagrace.blogspot.com/
I think the diagnosis really does change all of us, and I would hope for the best, I know it has me. You don't sound depressed. You just seems like you are focused on the important things in life, less superficial. Sometimes getting rid of the superficialities in our lives does put us on the fringe in some circles and can create lonliness, though.
ReplyDeleteTara, this is not depression. This is acceptance. Acceptance of realities of what is no longer what's top-dog on your list. Motivation, for me, my catalyst was Joseph. Eon is your's. Don't fret it, don't sweat it. I agree, you have been smelted. Let it shine and sparkle for all the world to see. I have not regularly watched any of my "old shows" that I used to love. I am too busy watching the world for the first time in my 35 years. It is different when you have a child with special needs, and Stephanie is right. Sometimes there is an abandon/loneliness that comes too. I have found great solitude in my abandon.
ReplyDeleteAaahh. You have touched a very sensitive place in my heart and given it a name. The deeper the walk the less time and emotional energy I have for the mundane, the closer I grow to Him the further I get from the world. Thank you for giving me more to chew on.
ReplyDelete