These past few weeks

When my doctor first told me I’d be off work for at least four weeks, I was devastated, and it wasn’t just the thought of not having a paycheck for a month. It was all the other stuff I wasn’t going to be able to do. Things like driving or helping with housework. I briefly had visions of dedicating this time to writing but the reality of healing and recovering from surgery was more intense than I expected.

I have not been able to put together words like I had hoped. Sitting down to write something, anything has felt like too much work, even when I’ve had the smallest of desires.

These past few weeks have not been a waste, though. I’m slowly starting to see that. Aside from the physical healing of my body, these weeks have shown me some things about myself. 

Like, how far I’ve come. And how far I still have to go.

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Two years ago, I sat on a couch in our friends’ living room celebrating Thanksgiving by sobbing. The source of my sorrow was the prospect of getting a job. At that time, it had been 10 years since I’d done anything outside of the house, and I was afraid of all I would lose by giving up hours a day to something else even with the promise that those hours would come with a regular paycheck.

These past few weeks I have felt (heard?) the echoes of those days before I stepped out of what was comfortable into something that was ultimately better than I could have imagined. I have both embraced and resisted the hours stretching before me with nothing scheduled. In the first few days, those hours were spent in bed, reading, watching Netflix, listening to the world that is my household go on without me. I rested and slept, took medicine every few hours.

I cried. A lot.

My perceived helplessness and the effect it had on my family saddened me. I felt guilty for being so incapable of even the smallest of chores. I had small measures of hope that every day would get better, that my body would return to its normal, but fear lurked in the shadows. What if it was always going to be like this?

I reached a low point as I wandered around the house for the umpteenth day wearing pajama pants with nothing on the agenda except the choice between a Netflix binge, reading, and a jigsaw puzzle. On this day, it was easiest to choose the Netflix binge because it meant I didn’t have to move much from the couch. And while we were overwhelmed with food from caring friends, almost everyone brought dessert with the meal which meant there were a lot of sweets in the house and me, unsupervised.

I think I’ve gained 10 pounds since I’ve been home recovering, partly because of the desserts and partly because taking a walk has been a scary prospect. I haven’t begun to think about what returning to running will look like.

The pajama pants, the inactivity, the too-many-sweets. These are the echoes of my former life, and in the last two years, I’ve worked hard to reverse what were for me some negative habits. A month at home recovering from surgery has felt like the largest of setbacks.

But the experience of those two years is what keeps me from total despair.

I know how my life can be different.

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Two years ago, I had lost myself. Or maybe I was hidden from myself. The past two years have been a gradual act of discovery, of becoming a person I didn’t even know could exist in my body. I sensed the change. Others could see it. The past two years have been some of the most fulfilling and purposeful of my entire life.

And these past few weeks, I’ve worried that I’m losing myself again. It is too easy to slide into old habits and patterns when there is little to no structure to my days. To force myself out of the house, off the couch with no outside force acting on me.

But this is not the same thing, I tell myself. This is not a season without end. I might have to start over, in some ways, but I haven’t lost everything I gained in the last two years. The me that I’m becoming is still there, even if she’s slumbering for a bit.

All is not lost.

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And yet I wonder: What do I have to show for all this time off?

I joked about trying to write a novel for National Novel Writing Month since I had an unexpected month of “free” time, but I knew early on that wasn’t going to happen. What I’ve learned about myself in the past few years is an unstructured day is not conducive to writing for me. I get more writing done when I have to squeeze it into smaller chunks of my day. At least, that’s how it works for now, while I’m still learning and developing my skills.

What these past few weeks have taught me is I’m addicted to productivity. My worth is equal to what I can or cannot do instead of in who I am as a person. I’ve felt like a burden as my husband and kids go to work and school and then come home to take care of me and the house. I have felt needy and vulnerable–because I am–as friends have dropped off meals and stepped in to help with transportation and care for the kids. I had no idea how independent and self-sufficient I had become until I had to be utterly dependent on others.

I measure my days by what I accomplish, so when I look at these past few weeks and wonder what I have to show for it, I try to list the things I’ve done: the books I’ve read, the Netflix shows I’ve watched, the crossword puzzles completed, the progress on learning Spanish via Duolingo, the minimal amounts of housework I’ve been able to do.

What do I have to show for this time?

A healed (healing?) body.

It is enough.

I am enough.

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One of the books I finished these past few weeks is Glorious Weakness: Discovering God in All We Lack by Alia Joy. I had started it before my surgery and found it an appropriate companion on my healing journey.

These thoughts, in particular, are the ones I can’t let go of:

“I am a whole version of me even when I am broken or weak or sick.” (p. 172)

And,

“The world expects you to grow forward, march down a line. Do more, be more, have more. Then you will see the hand of God and his blessings. … But God is not about upward mobility so much as inward expansion.” (p. 220-221)

I am confronting my need to do all the things. These past few weeks, when I’ve been unable to do much more than live, breathe, eat and heal, the world has spun on without me. My kids have done housework. Or housework has gone undone. My husband has shared the load. I have asked for help and not been rejected. I have not “produced” and I am still a valuable part of my world.

So.

What does this mean when things go back to “normal”? I’m still a week away from what I hope will be my return to work, and I can already sense the pressure to do, do, do.

The only antidote I can think of is to be, be, be.

This, I believe, will be my focus in the year to come. When I choose a word to guide my year, it will have less to do with achievement and more to do with the inner work of becoming.

The pressure to produce will be hard to resist. I know it will be a struggle.

—

I did not ask for these past few weeks. In all honesty, I did not want them. I wanted life to go on as it had. (Don’t I always?)

Rarely do I recognize this kind of thing as a gift from the start, but it has been a gift, even when it’s been hard.

Life will return to some sort of normal soon. My hope is that I won’t forget all that I’ve learned these past few weeks.

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