I was sitting at the table minding my own business in the pre-dawn hours of today when I saw a small shadowy creature dart along the wall I was facing.
I cursed, a lament, because it’s been almost two years since we’ve had an uninvited rodent in our home. (To be clear, we don’t invite them, either.)
My husband was at the gym and the kids hadn’t wakened yet, and we did not have work or school because of a teacher collaboration day, so there was no rush to get the day started. But this was not how I wanted to start the day. The creature’s presence in our home was the final bit of convincing I needed to go for a run, something I haven’t done in weeks, and as soon as my husband came home, I told him the mouse news (I’d already informed the children) and went out for my run.
As the morning progressed, I thought less and less of the mouse, even as I nagged my husband to set out the traps to resolve this disturbance to my peace. The kids and I did errands and came home to empty traps and went about our afternoon as if nothing was amiss.
If none of this sounds groundbreaking or earth-shattering, then you’ve probably not read any of my mouse-capades in the past. (Here’s another one.) I’ll be here when you get back if you want to read up on that.
See, in the past, I would have let the presence of a mouse in my house paralyze me. I would curl up in bed to avoid any chance of a rodent sighting. Or I’d demand we stay out of the house until the thing was caught. I would tiptoe through the kitchen or avoid the area where I’d last seen the mouse because surely it was hiding just waiting to run across my path.
This afternoon, I realized that it would come out when it was good and ready, and I could go about my day. (Also, as my son sits in the living room playing notes on his baritone this evening, I wonder why this mouse even wants to live in this house in the first place. It is noisy and busy. Find some other place to live!)
See, I decided that I wasn’t going to let a little mouse run my life.
—
This is how I’ve changed these past two years. Where I would avoid the things that overwhelm me, now I face them. (Not every time and certainly not perfectly.)
Take this anxiety journey I’m on. It’s only been a couple of weeks since I had a wake-up call and was given medication to help me through it, but right now, today, I’ve realized that I’m not going to let anxiety run my life. I’ll take the medicine when I need to, and I’ll take other appropriate measures when they’re necessary to manage my body’s responses to my circumstances. But anxiety’s not going to call the shots anymore.
Same with fear, shame, and the past.
Living with any of those things is no picnic, and each of them limits the decisions I make in my present life.
I know they aren’t going to disappear. (Except the mouse; it is going to wherever mice go when they die, as soon as it finds one of the traps.) I may never completely rid my life of anxiety, fear or shame, and I can’t undo the past, but they don’t have to be the starters on the field.
They can sit on the sidelines and watch me live a full life.
—
Will this always work out perfectly? Not a chance.
But knowing it’s possible because I’ve experienced it is all the hope I need when the anxiety, fear or shame start to whisper their lies.
They’re not the boss of me.
And they’re not the boss of you, either.
I refuse to be held captive by something I can’t see, whether it’s a mouse scurrying in the shadows or something more sinister like shame casting a shadow on my days. There’s too much good work to do and too few days to do it, too many memories to make and too many ordinary days to live.
I hope you can hear the hope in this. It’s not meant to heap further shame. It’s meant to lead you into freedom. The kind that says, “There is something in the shadows but it’s not going to have control over me.”
Take your meds, sit with your fears, acknowledge your shame.
In other words, set the mousetraps.
AND
Live the life you mean to live.
