It was scary because up until that point, I had invited very few people into this space. Four, to be exact. I did not even share it with my own parents. Those four people occasionally asked to share with another person and sometimes I'd get a drifter from Instagram. But that was it.
I was mostly okay with this because I just wanted to write. Anything. I made this space for me. And also, I was terrified. I am terrified. I have lived my whole life afraid of putting myself "out there" in any way that might matter. I have basically made being invisible a vocation.
But my fear was not even something I was aware of. I didn’t always know that choices I was making were a result of a fear that lived deep inside me. Fear of being wrong, of making mistakes, of embarrassment, not being good enough. So many fears controlling me all the time.
When I became a mother, it was so consuming that I didn't have to think about being anything else. It was even kind of a comfort to be so consumed by it. I put on the mantle of Mom and, for a while, forgot that I was even allowed to be anything else. I could be a Mom and I could be good at it and that was good enough for me.
Somewhere along the way I stopped feeling like a person who mattered. I think this is pretty common among mothers. We get caught up in taking care of everyone else and tend to forget about ourselves. So much so that a running joke for the last few years has been that I want to be the poop emoji for Halloween. It's one of those funny-because-it's-true jokes (or maybe it's only funny to me, laughing to keep from crying and all that). That's how I felt on the inside: like a pile of crap with a smile plastered on my face.
I reached a point where I felt completely crushed down. I felt like I was drowning, very slowly sinking, unable to hold my head above water long enough for a full breath. I was holding myself together on the outside, but inside I was dying.
It wasn't just the loss of my sense of self. It was so many other things happening at the same time, so that it seemed like my world was falling apart around me.
"For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me." -Psalm 40:12
The image I carry of myself during this time is of a little girl, crumpled and alone at the very bottom of a black hole, with bits of broken earth around her.
I had to sit down there for a while. I could have run away, I guess. Historically, I'm very good at running away when things get tough. But I had to sit with my pain and my fear and suffering and really get to know them. Because I didn't want to just run away, I wanted to heal.
My old self needed to be torn down, so that God could rebuild me from the ground up. (Cathedral, remember?)
This space is part of that new self. (A very small part - I'd say maybe God is up to my ankles in the rebuilding process, but who really knows. Maybe he will get to my knee caps and have to start all over.)
I have always been a writer, although I never would have been brave enough to call myself that before. Now that I can see my fear more clearly, I'm finding ways to undermine it. I'm making a conscious effort to be courageous. It's pretty scary.
"And he hath put a new song in my mouth..." - Psalm 40:3
