The Windmills of My Mind

Growing up, I would say I was a cry-baby.  I would cry when my feelings got hurt, cry over movies or songs, cry when I was happy, etc.  In high school, I cried a lot over a boy and I finally decided around my Junior year that my tears wouldn’t do me any good.  After that day I managed to hold a pretty stiff upper lip.  In my early twenties, there were a few experiences that ended in tears, even sobs, but it didn’t seem to do me any good and even acted as a sign of weakness, so I continued my mission to never cry.

Now I hardly ever cry because I can rationalize my way out of tears - that crying does not help the situation, that I am a stronger person if I don’t cry, etc.  During the last semester of my master’s program, when I was working on my master’s project, I was a brand new mother, and I was teaching a brand new grade-level that I had to familiarize myself with, I only cried once.  I threw myself on my bed, cried for about ten minutes, then got up, wiped away the tears, and got right back to work writing my paper.

Today I really wanted to cry, but couldn’t - either because I’ve rationalized the tears out of my tear ducts, or I’ve physically forgotten how.  If I had $200 to waste, I would schedule an appointment with a therapist.  I would walk in and sit down, cry for the entire 30 minutes without talking or without her talking to me, and then I would stand up, say thank you, and walk out.  She can do all the rationalizing for me after I leave.

One of the greatest things for me about being a parent is getting a little bit more of an understanding of God’s love for me because of the love that I have for my own child.  I try to use that analogy a lot in my parenting – how would God deal with this situation?  One of my biggest challenges of late has been bedtime.  My daughter is 2 years and 4 months old and in her lifetime, I am happy to say that we’ve been pretty successful with her sleeping habits.  I had her on a sleeping schedule fairly early.  She slept in her own crib in her own room from day one, and she was sleeping through the night at 5 months old.  Sure, there were times here and there when she was going through a change and putting her down was more of a challenge, but we got over those hurdles usually in a matter of a couple of weeks and back on a regular routine.  Until recently…

She has had a few major changes – I am now on summer vacation, so she stays with me all day instead of going to my mom’s while I’m at work.  My husband’s been out of town on a trip for a few weeks, so it’s just been her and I, and we’ve been doing lots of fun, stimulating play dates.  It is taking me forever to get her down now.  She keeps getting up for very authentic reasons for a two-year-old – She has to go potty, she can’t find her favorite stuffed animal that always sleeps with her, she needs a tissue for her nose, etc.  I hate reprimanding her for any of those reasons, because quite frankly – from her point of view, they’re good reasons for getting back up.

So this brings me back to God and parenting.  By the end of the day, I am ready for her to go to bed.  I need a couple of hours to myself to breathe, get things done, etc.  It has been very trying on my patience to have this precious time taken away from me – not to mention she needs her sleep.  So here are the different things I’ve tried, trying to search God’s heart for his parenting perspective:

1.)    Remaining ever patient, each time escorting her back to bed with a hug and a kiss.  I don’t want to punish her because her heart is in a good place.  I don’t want to stay in bed with her because I want her to learn how to fall asleep on her own.

2.)    Staying in bed with her until she falls asleep – providing peace and comfort.  This actually goes much faster than step one, but she’s not learning how to fall asleep on her own.

3.)    Punishing her with a swat to the bottom.  This results in the fastest desired result as she wears herself out from crying herself to sleep, but it hurts me to hurt her.

4.)    Using time intervals – setting the timer and going in every couple of minutes to reward her with a hug and a kiss for remaining faithful in her efforts to fall asleep.  This worked great at the beginning, but eventually stopped working as she began having more of a mind of her own.

5.)    Giving up completely and turning in for the night, taking her to bed with me.  She could stay up as long as she wanted and I would zonk out – (okay, I don’t really see God in this one at all, but it doesn’t hurt to try).

I have prayed often for wisdom – which method is best?  What methods haven’t I tried?  “God, just please tell me what to do here!”  – (No answer.)

I feel like God is smiling/smirking, lovingly saying “See what I go through with my people?”  I appreciate the lesson, but I still would like to know what He would do with my daughter if he were in my shoes.

I remember that during my first class at Cal Poly - some liberal studies class - I had to get together with a group to survey random people on campus to ask them what made a person happy and then we had to report on the results we found.  I think it was just a survey we handed them with pre-typed choices that they circled and then we rated.  I remember that it was choices like health, family, wealth, religion, success, etc.  I don’t remember what choice came in first, but I do remember being very opinionated about happiness at the time.  I thought that happiness occurred when you were surrounded with friends and family.  Although it wasn’t part of the survey, I also had opinions about happiness and love.  I thought that your mate and your relationship should be… well, flawless.  One where you love each other with an undying love, your eyes sparkle, your hearts flare with passion, and you never utter an unkind word to each other.

I also remember a time before my husband and I were married that we had a bit of a rocky patch and had been distant for awhile.  I remember someone asking me, “Does he make you happy” and my gut reaction was “no.”  That really bothered me at the time because I felt my obvious answer should have been yes and since it wasn’t, why was I still with him?

Something else I used to think about happiness/relationships in my 20-year-old mind set was that if you truly loved someone, your relationship should come very easily, with very little work involved.

If someone would have asked me if I was happy during my first marriage, I would have said yes without hesitation.  It also took very little work - we got along great and hardly argued about anything.  Oddly enough, that marriage ended after 2 years (I assure you that the fault lay with me). 

My current relationship of eight years to my husband  (4 years pre-wedding and 4 years married) has been WORK.  I took my wedding vows very, very seriously since it was my second time around and I knew my faults a little more intimately.  I won’t go into why it was work, but it was worth it to me because I love him so much.  Again, if someone were to ask me along the way if I was happy, I would probably have said no.  Quite honestly, I was tired and angry a lot because of all of the effort I was putting in.  Once we had our daughter, my answer would have changed to “yes,” but mostly because of the joy she brought me.

“Where is she going with this post?” you might be wondering?  Dear reader, if you will allow me to continue a little further, I will pull this all together.

About a year ago, my husband I were discussing how things change once a person is married.  He is the adventurous, independent, rugged type, but he was reflecting on how now that he’s a husband and a father, his responsilities lie at home and he can’t exactly go off and explore the world.  I assured him that he still could.  I would hate for him to not follow a dream because of me and to realize twenty years from now that he had become embittered toward me because of it.  So, we planned on him leaving for a very long trip this summer.  This doesn’t bother me at all because I also have an independent spirit and completely understand his heart’s desire.  I do not have a problem taking care of the house and our child while he is away.

As his departure was coming closer, we started treating each other differently.  There was an unspoken agreement between us to hold hands more, bicker less, give in to passion more frequently, and to drink in the silent moments together.  As we said our teary farewell and a lump rose in my throat, I realized… I am very happy.

Here is my point - it has taken eight years of hard work to get to the point of a very happy marriage.  I think people expect fairy tale relationships and give up easily when the going gets tough.  I think some people have these unrealistic, ill-conceived notions of what makes a successful relationship and they set themselves up for failure.  Why are we happy now?  I think it’s maturity - both individually and together.  And also realistic expectations of each other, open communication, and a trust that we truly do love each other.  I hope that all of you couples out there don’t give up.  But don’t settle for the state you’re in either if it’s stale or unhappy.  Love the person you are with - give them freedom to be themselves and don’t make them conform to your expectations.  You will see their love for you multiplied and reflected in their eyes when you do.

From Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult:

     “What’s God like?”

     “Math,” Shay said.  “An equation.  Except when you take everything away, you get infinity, instead of zero.”

My brother Joshua has admirably and courageously began a blog on sex.  The idea behind his posts is that sex is not discussed openly and healthily and instead, we often are left on our own to figure it out.  He recently posted a blog about the topic of masturbation.  In order to support his efforts, I responded on his site.  He gave readers the option of responding anonymously.  After my finger hovered over the “Submit” button, I finally chose to click with my actual name and email in tact.  Why do we, (wise, articulate, sexually experienced) adults feel like the topic is still so taboo?  It is more disgusting to me to discuss the latest celebrity divorce than to discuss what it feels like to touch myself.

This post brings us to the end of my idea to only write about my interactions with others as a leader.  That idea was much too constraining as I didn’t blog about many things because they didn’t fit under that category.  So tonight I break away to tell you about an author I was very impressed by.  I had heard great reviews about the movie The Reader with Kate Winslet, who I am a big fan of.  Before seeing the movie, I decided to read the book by Bernhard Schlink and I am so happy I did.  He doesn’t waste his time with long flowery descriptions or slowly developing story lines, which I find can be laborious to get to the end of.  Instead, he gets right to the point with sharp, cutting thoughts that flow from his main character, Michael. 

He very poignantly brings to life our sinful nature as he thinks about his affair with an older woman: ”I don’t know where I found the courage to go back to Frau Schmitz.  Did my moral upbringing somehow turn against itself?  If looking at someone with desire was as bad as satisfying the desire, if having an active fantasy was as bad as the act you were fantasizing - then why not the satisfaction and the act itself?… It was more dangerous not to go; I was running the risk of becoming trapped in my own fantasies.  So I was doing the right thing by going… That is how I rationalized it back then, making my desire an entry in a strange moral accounting, and silencing my bad conscience.”

The author on perceived happiness:  “Why does it make me so sad when I think back to that time?  Is it yearning for past happiness - for I was happy…Is it the knowledge of what came later, and that what came out afterwards had been there all along?  Why?  Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?  Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years?  Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy?  But we were happy!.. Is this what sadness is all about?  Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept?”

I just made the best right vs. right decision.  It is a Sunday afternoon and I have several hours of work to do to be ready for tomorrow at work.  It happens to be a beautiful, sunny day in January and even though it’s winter, the earth around me thinks it’s fall and all of the leaves have fallen off of our trees recently.  I just spent the last 45 minutes playing outside with my daughter in the leaves.  We raked them, jumped in them, played “Ring Around the Rosie” in them, adorned the dogs’ fur with them, and threw them up in the air and watched them shower down.  Need I say more?

The last class I took was on leadership and the required textbook was Caring Enough to Lead by Leonard Pellicer.  After each chapter, there was space in the book to write reflections.  One chapter was all about how as a leader, you often have to make “right vs. right” decisions.  (Ruling in favor of one idea over another, budgetary issues, etc.)  For the reflections at the end of the chapter, he asked the reader to record a time they had to make a right vs. right decision.  At the time, I couldn’t think of what to write.  I was sure that I had made decisions like that in the past, but nothing came to mind and I left that reflection blank.  Two months later, I could write a book just with my reflections.

I was asked in December to start something new at my job site, which I agreed to and have dived in head/heart first.  My job is to help struggling students to read and so far has meant me working with several students in several grade levels for a half an hour a day.  Now I am taking on two classes of students and I am much more invested in them now that they are “my own” instead of being “borrowed” from their regular teachers.  This has all come about very last minute, without a lot of time to prepare.  I am very invested in their future as readers and as struggling students in an education system that most likely will not meet their needs as they continue through school.  The problem with being so invested is that it takes a lot of time and energy to teach them to the very best of my ability.

Now I am making right vs. right decisions several times a day.  Is it better for me to stay late after work to prepare a stellar lesson that will hopefully meet these students, or is it better after a long day, to pick up my daughter and invest in my relationship with her?  Is it better to put my foot down to get the desks and books I need NOW to help these students, or is it better to ask sweetly and allow the powers that be to take their time?  Is it better to take the time to stop in the hallway to ask my co-worker how her daughter is to show I care or is it better to use that time to get my copies made so I can stay true to my promise to my mom to pick up my daughter on time?

My mental mantra has been “balance…balance…”  (it has also been, “Breathe Sarah, Breathe.)  Ultimately it comes down to two of my greatest treasures in life: my daughter, and my relationship with God.  While I desperately want to be in my daughter’s life as much as I possibly can, I also want to raise her to see that not everyone in the world is as lucky as she is and that we have the opportunity to make a difference to those less fortunate than ourselves.  I also believe that God has given me gifts to serve others and I want to be that servant.  I just don’t want to break myself in the process because of standing so firm to my ethics/morals/beliefs.  If I burn myself out, what will I have left to give to next year’s students?  If I don’t do the best I possibly can for these students now, who will?

I have quickly found the most difficult part about being a leader, and it actually did not come about from my leadership role at all.  It has come about through my relationships with others.  There have been three different situations already this year where people on either side of an argument have confided in me.  Not wanting to betray any confidences, I tried to give each side a sympathetic ear and to simply respond in a way that would comfort the individual, but would not speak ill of the other party.  Even though I’ve tried to keep from idle gossip, just the fact that I’m privy to it makes me worried that my name will be tossed loosely into their arguments.  I would hate for one person to think I had been in league with the other.  I am realizing that I desperately want to maintain credibility for being a fair, trustworthy confidante - although I do not want the burden of being a confidante.  I think that my credibility is extremely fragile because while I can try my best to maintain it, others could easily tear it down through misunderstanding.  Luckily, all I’ve had to do is listen - I’m not in a position where I have to make decisions on behalf of either party.

The title of my blog is the title of my favorite song.  One day I will upload it successfully so you can hear it.  It is a piano version of a song from a movie.  I don’t even know the words, I just know the title and the tune.  It can comfort me and put me at peace, however, and has earned itself the title, “My favorite song,” because of its ability to do so.

I have been thinking about blogging ever since my brother started one.  I have always been intrigued by the idea, but never felt I had anything worthwhile to say - well, it’s worthwhile to me of course, but not enough for others to spend their time reading.  I am at a point in my life where I choose to surround myself with people, movies, books, etc.  that will enlighten and/or uplift me.  I would like my blog to do the same for you.

After deliberating the theme of topics, I turned down the idea of blogging about being a mom - too cliche.  I’ve also turned down the idea of blogging about my classroom teaching experiences - after a while, they would become mundane and rote.  Instead, I am going to blog about my interactions with human adults from a leadership standpoint.  Ultimately, I hope to explore the nature of human interactions and I hope to find out more about myself in the process.

I have found myself at a new juncture in my life.  A place that I could have imagined, but did not predict would happen so soon.  Oddly, it’s happened all at once and at quite a large volume.  The new season in my life, which started about a month ago, is one of leadership.  I have always considered myself to hold leadership qualities, but I have not found myself in many leadership positions.  All of the sudden I am: in a leadership position at work as “learning specialist,” I am taking a leadership class, I am speaking to a group of about thirty women at a Christian conference, and I will be presenting to thirty-to-forty educational professionals at a conference on reading strategies.  All of the sudden I find myself very overwhelmed, but strangely and appropriately at peace.

I have already learned so much that I look forward to sharing.  But for now, I will leave you with this quote: “Remember, when you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given a responsibility to bring out the best in others.” - Welch, 2005