It’s Up to Me
I realized today that I have a profound responsibility to order my thoughts and my moments, that how my days unfold is, largely, up to me.
Adam is out of town on a work trip, and I got up no fewer than six times in the night to deal with my fussy baby boy and scared little girl (rumbling thunder in the night made her understandably anxious). I say no fewer because I know it was at least six, but sometime around 3 a.m. I lost track of who I was comforting or what was going on, so I might have missed something.
Around 4 a.m., both kids were rolling around in my bed pretending to sleep, and at 6 a.m. I decided it was time to stop fooling and make breakfast already. So we made bright-yellow scrambled eggs and healthy-green avocado toast, piling our sweet, multi-grain bread high with smashed ripe avocado, salt and pepper. We snuggled on the couch with coffee and blankets, and watched VeggieTales together while the sun rose behind us in vibrant oranges and reds.
Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. I decided I wasn’t going to be mad about how the night was going. Oh, it was tempting – I could see my justifiable frustration paved before me in all of it’s woebegotten glory. I could snap at Addy and make myself feel better for a glimmer of power, a moment of sanctimonious, “look at all I do for you” high-handedness. I could complain to myself, roll my eyes at my kids, make excuses for my bad behavior because of my hard, sleep-deprived reality. I could succumb to anger. I could feel sorry for myself.
Or, I could choose the better way, the way that says I am 34 years old and healthy enough to miss some sleep sometimes. The way that remembers the nights I burned with yearning, alternately heart-broken over my lack of motherhood and filled with an ennui that only longing non-parents understand. I can set my little girl up on the counter and cook breakfast together, relishing that her one dream is to be near me, doing as I do, learning to scramble and saute and simmer little by little. I could remember that my baby won’t be a baby forever, that while I want him to sleep (trust me, I want him to sleep) it’s just a season, and seasons so often fade away before we even smell their sweetness. I could practice patience. I could choose joy.
I’m writing this as a reminder to myself: it’s up to me. I get to choose which way I will walk, and all too often I make an unconscious choice, not giving it the thought it deserves. I don’t decide not to be angry, so I just power up and scream on, unaware and icky. I don’t decide what and where my boundaries are, so I wake up one day, gasping like a fish stranded on the shoreline, wondering why I let the lake get drained away from me and how I wound up here, desperate, thirsty and drying out.
Every day it’s up to me. Today could have begun with sighs and squabbles, but, by the grace of God, I chose a better way. There’s a great Ben Harper song, Better Way, which has these perfect lines: “What good is a man/Who won’t take a stand/What good is a cynic/With no better plan?”
All too often I’m a cynic with no better plan. I’m meandering through my days in a haze, frustrated by my own inability to get off my phone, eat a decent meal and give the people I love the attention they deserve. I want to live a better way, and it’s with humility that I realize I can. It’s up to me, I just have to decide.