Cloudy Days

I haven't blogged in a long time, because I haven't felt like I've really had anything worthwhile to write about.  But now I do, and that is why I am back!  And.....once I get sucked into blogging again, it usually sucks me in for a while, so I'll probably spit out a few "NOT worthwhile" posts after this...after all, I AM pregnant again, and since I blogged throughout all of my pregnancy with Gunnar, I wouldn't want this baby to feel cheated, right?

Ok...on to my Very Worthwhile Post. If you are a person who struggles with worry/fear/anxiety, maybe this post will be helpful to you.  If you don't struggle with that, you'll be completely bored with this, I can guarantee it, so save yourself the time, and go do something else : )

As a lot of you know, I struggle QUITE a bit with worry and anxiety.  Specifically (ok, actually TOTALLY) worry/anxiety centered around something bad happening to Nason or Gunnar.  I've dealt with this my ENTIRE life.  When I was little, I was obsessively afraid of something bad happening to my parents.  Then, I got married, and the obsession shifted onto Nason (lucky him).  Then, Gunnar came along, and he was the new unlucky recipient (good for Nason, as he was now off the hook, bad for Gunnar).  My anxiety goes far beyond the normal concern that most mothers occasionally have for their children.  I can turn a runny nose into cancer, faster than I can go get a kleenex to wipe it up.  No, I'm serious....I've actually done that before.  Some of my stories are really comical in hindsight, and are the source of many inside jokes amongst Nason and I, and our friends (the tale of the dry skin on Nason's nipple, that I was convinced was Male Breast Cancer, the time I was convinced Nason's heart was beating harder than it should be, which landed him wearing a heart monitor around town for a day, only to determine there was NOTHING wrong with his heart whatsoever..just something seriously screwed up with my head, the time I was so convinced that one side of Nason's head looked swollen, that I had our friend Joey exam it for me.  Joey's diagnosis?  Nason's head looked fine, but I needed to get on Lexapro or Xanax, ASAP)  Since Gunnar has been born, I've been convinced that he has had every kind of terminal illness under the sun, thrown in with some autism, and a little bit of good 'ole Tourette's Syndrome.

It's funny when it's over....when for whatever reason, I've concluded he does NOT have whatever ailment I suspected him of having.  In the moment (and sometimes the "moment" stretches out over months)...it's not funny.  It's excruciating.  It's depressing.  It's miserable.  It's all-consuming.  It's stomach-ache producing.  It's draining on me, and on Nason.  It's awful.

This issue has consumed a LOT of me, for a LOT of my life now.  When I found out I was pregnant with Baby #2 in December, I prayed this exact prayer, "God, fear and anxiety has been such a HUMONGOUS part of every relationship I've had so far in my life...with my parents, with Nason, and with Gunnar.  I am BEGGING you to not let fear have anything to do with my relationship with this baby, starting now, and for it's entire life".

Well guys...be careful what you pray for.  I just went through (and in some ways, am still going through) an experience that I believe was a direct answer to that prayer, but not in the way that I WANTED when I prayed it.  I wanted God to free me of this horribly consuming fear and anxiety that I deal with....but I wanted Him to do it by just magically taking it away.   I did NOT want him to do it by allowing me to go through a fearful experience, and then growing me a TON, and teaching me some really crucial things I needed to learn, through it.  That's what happened though!

Super quick summary of The Fearful Experience:

- Gunnar started complaining of leg pain one day last month...no injury that we knew of, to blame
- Next day, was completely unable to walk....crawled around the house on his hands and knees for two days
- Took him to doctor, doctor ordered bloodwork and xrays
- Bloodwork came back good, xrays showed some sort of "mass" in his knee
- Lots of (non-scary) POSSIBLE explanations were provided, BUT to confirm that it wasn't a "scary" explanation...ok let's just say it..."tumor", an MRI was ordered, which we had to wait a week for, AND which then got postponed for almost ANOTHER week.
- For a girl who can go into a tizzy over a runny nose....this was one of the scariest, maybe THE scariest, experience I've ever had.
- MRI finally was performed, no mass of any kind was found.  Some swelling was found near his ligament, which the doctor(s) theorized was what the "mass" was, and possible explanations FOR the swelling included: toxic synovitis (no big deal, look it up if you're curious), a torn or injured ligament,a Baker's Cyst that had ruptured, or POSSIBLE juvenile arthritis, which would be difficult to diagnose at this point.
- I was/am relieved that no mass was found, but still feel "unsettled" (which is a more favorable way to say "anxious") that we never seemed to get a definite diagnosis.

Ok...enough about that.  I REALLY don't want to talk about The Experience anymore, or the anxiety it caused/is causing. Like really...I don't want to talk about it anymore, so don't even ask me about it...unless it's to say, "Oh!  My kid had that exact same thing, and they're totally fine!" :)  I'm SO tired of saying the words "knee" "mass" "MRI" "etc". What I DO want to talk about are the 6, incredible, life-changing Big Lessons God has taught/is teaching me, through The Experience.

I've always thought, "if only I could have some guarantees, that nothing really bad was ever going to happen to Nason or Gunnar, THEN I could just chill out and be completely happy."  The distress came into play, when time and time again, I was reminded that I was NEVER going to get that guarantee.  It seemed like, if I can't ever get that guarantee, then I guess I need to just resign myself to living with anxiety.  The big breakthrough I've had in the last year or so, has been this: "it's TRUE that I'll never get that guarantee that I'm looking for, BUT....it's FALSE that I have to resign myself to living with anxiety about it."  So that is what the Six Incredible Life-Changing Lessons all center around.

Ok....

Lesson #1
I was on Facebook one day, right in the very peak of this particular bout with anxiety, and someone had posted the following quote (by Joel Osteen, no less).  I'm not usually a huge Joel Osteen fan, BUT this quote really stuck out to me:

"If you are currently in a storm, God is saying 'Rise above it.  Quit fighting.  Quit trying to change things that only I can change.  Trust in me".

A lot of times, for me, when I am worrying about something, not only does the actual feeling of the worry itself really suck, BUT the feeling of "I don't want to be feeling worried.  I don't want to be dealing with this incident. It's not fair I have to have an unpleasant situation occuring right now.   It's not fair I'm having to think about this/stress about this/worry about this/try to figure this out, when everyone else around me seems to just be breezing through their life".  As if my life is supposed to be completely perfect and problem-free at all times.  This quote reminded me that whatever situation I'm in, God knows I'm in it, and could choose to get me OUT of it at any given moment.  If He's letting me continue to go through it, then it must be ok.  I may not LIKE it, I may not get WHY it's "ok", but it is.  So I need to quit fighting it, and just roll with it.

Lesson #2
"Faith is not a feeling, it is a choice, and an action"
I put that whole thing in bold print, because I literally feel like God almost AUDIBLY spoke those words to me one night...that's how clear it was...and it seems like God's audible words should be written in bold. :)

I've always known that "faith" and "trust" in God are important.  So each time I find myself in a situation where I'm feeling anxious (including this most recent time) I always tell myself that..."you just need to trust God"..."you just need to have faith"...and then I sit there and wait for the feeling of anxiety to go away...poof!  It never does.  Then not only do I still feel anxious, but I also feel frustrated...why don't I FEEL a warm, fuzzy faith "feeling" come over me??  This time, for the first time ever, God helped me understand that it's not SUPPOSED to be a feeling...it's a decision.  "I'm going to CHOOSE to believe that God is good".  "I'm going to CHOOSE to believe that God is in control of this situation".  "I'm going to operate under the assumption that God can be trusted with the outcome of this, NO MATTER how I feel", etc etc etc.  Sometimes feelings would follow...I'd feel a bit calmer, a bit more reassured, etc.  Sometimes feelings wouldn't follow though, and that was ok, too.  I believe that as I continue to "exercise" the practice of TRULY trusting in God, the feelings/emotions WILL eventually follow.

Lesson #3
Trusting in the Character of God

One night, during the week we were waiting for Gunnar to have his MRI done, Nason took me out for a date night, to try to distract me for a few hours.  We went and saw a movie ("The Call" with Halle Berry...don't see it, by the way).  About 20 minutes into the movie, I saw a person out of the corner of my eye, come walking into the theater.  They ended up sitting down right behind us, and proceeded to be disruptive/semi-sketchy acting for the next half hour of the movie.  I whispered to Nason, "the person behind us is acting kind of creepy...don't turn around and look at them, though, because they'll know you're looking at them".  He said, "I'll get up and check it out".  So he gets up, under the guise of going to the bathroom, so that he can take a peek at them....and then actually goes to the bathroom.  My first thought was, "I can't believe he just left me in here alone with a creepy person!!" There was only like one other person in the theater, then me...and the creepy person!  Thanks a lot!  However, my very next thought was, "Ok....obviously the person is NOT creepy.  Nason would never evaluate the person, determine them to be creepy, and then leave me alone in here with them".  Sure enough, Nason came back a few minutes later, and reported that my "creepy" person was just an old lady munching on popcorn.  There is a point to this story, I promise.  The point is this:  The reason I knew with total confidence that I didn't need to fret about being left alone in the theater with the "mystery person" was that I DID know Nason...I still had no idea who the person behind me was, what they were up to, etc...and I certainly wasn't going to turn around and look now that I was left alone in there with them..but I did know that Nason loves me, that he always looks out for me, that he would never leave me alone in a situation that he knew was going to be bad for me, and that since he'd left me still sitting in that theater, it must be because he knew I was going to be fine. Basically, I know Nason, and I know his character. Which then got me thinking about the situation at hand with Gunnar...at that point, I still didn't know what the "mystery" diagnosis was going to be, but I DID know God...who He is, what He is like, that He has my best interests in mind, that He has Gunnar's best interests in mind, that He is good ALL the time, and that He can be trusted.  If He determined that it was "ok" for me (and Gunnar) to be in the situation that we were currently in, then I could trust that it was, in fact, ok.

Ok.....there are actually three more lessons, but I just realized that this post is getting really long, and probably losing some interest, so the rest will be continued in a "Part 2".