Day 27: I was in need of rescue from the “hollow motions”.

I think I have always been someone that tries to enjoy life, have even celebrated it by acting silly at times. But there was a time period in my life when I seemed to have gotten a little stuck. It probably started sometime around when our son, Kekoa was a toddler. Being a mom is so scary. It makes you imagine all these possible scenerios that could potentially cause harm. Insecurities about so many things (body image, relationships, not doing the best for your kids, etc) rise to the surface, big time! Then personal time starts to dwindle away. I didn't have as much time to be with friends, and for an extrovert like me that could push me over the edge. 

What really pushed me over the edge was pregnancy with our second. Those close to me can attest, I am quite a different person when “with child”. I probably take on a shade of green because I feel so horrible. {I liken it to chemo but that is for another post}. So several months of a new-mom rut turned into nine months of blah from pregnancy, and then an infant enters the picture. I became so discontent with my life because I felt so overwhelmed by it. I couldn't possibly do it all and please everyone, including myself that I checked out a bit.

I am reading through Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts now {I know, what took me so long, right?}, and there is a paragraph from chapter two that nails it on the head for me. “It's the in between that drives us mad. It's the life in between, the days of walking lifeless, the years calloused and simply going through hollow motions, the self-protecting by self-distracting, the body never waking, that's lost all capacity to fully feel - this is the life in between that makes us the wild walking dead.” She is describing life as she knew it until she woke one morning from a nightmare about receiving a cancer diagnosis. Her nightmare was my reality, and just as Ann woke that morning desperate to live, I too was in dire need of rescue from the hollow motions. No more self-loathing because I couldn't accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish in a day. It was time to stop, look around and appreciate that I have this beautiful life to wake up and live each day. Eucharisteo!

{This picture is from a sunrise that I shared with my "sisters" during which I realized how cancer rescued me from being the "wild walking dead".}