A little grace

"The Ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well." - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross 

If you've ever been involved in recovery work, you've likely heard of the concept "progress, not perfection".  To me, a recovering Perfectionist, it is hard to let things take their natural course, hard to let go of things I am grabbing so tightly onto, hard to forgive myself and hard to let things just "be".  More recently, progress in my life looks as simple and basic as lowering my two feet down to touch the cold hardwood floor in the morning, telling my husband something on my brain, or crying when I really need to cry, instead of holding it in against all odds to stay put together.  I made progress today with example number three, of all things in front of my darling three year old son, who was alone with me at the time as his daddy had just left for school.  Yes, I cried in front of my son.  The minute I felt the emotion welling up in me like a hot air balloon, I realized it was going to come out whether I wanted it to or not, whether it was appropriate to cry in front of him or not, so I just went with it.  

After spending exactly 365 days on a prescription medication designed to bridge my depression stemming from the grief associated with my mom's death, I'm now medicine free.  This was the pact I made with myself from the beginning when I first debated back and forth with taking it or not taking it.  After trying running and even completing a half-marathon to try and dull the heartache, I realized that this grief stuff was hard work, too hard even for a runner to beat back on her own, so I committed to taking the medicine and promised that I would take it only a year.  That sounded great then, a well-thought out plan with an end date, but I had no idea what I would be setting myself up for at the end of the treatment.  You see, anti-depressants are a class of drugs designed to make the high and low parts of your day disappear like a rabbit in a hat. As the dimmer switch brightened suddenly, the skies were more blue, the flowers were more fragrant, the rain was more wet and the feelings - the feelings and emotions that come during day to day events were all coming back, fast and furious, similar to a roller coaster, if only slightly less terrifying.

And there my son was, in this moment of tears, assuredly and quietly this little voice, “mommy, can I hug you?”.  Just as quick as a paramedic to my aid, there was my little man ready with an embrace.  I took him up on it right away and then he asked me "mommy, are you going to have a happy day or a sad day?". 


This is the big question at our house and it all revolves around our power to choose for ourselves.  Mark has drilled this whole concept of choice into Ryan's very being from a very small age.  And Ryan knows that he can choose for himself - happy, sad, silly, mad, you get the idea.  I told him once if he ever got just this one concept about life, that you can choose how you will respond to something outside of you, that he would really have it made.  And I really believe that, but actually doing it is sometimes another story.  I know all too well that life trips us up, sad things happen and the day can get hard in an instant.  As a reminder, there is a sign that hangs above my kitchen stove that states in black and white, as clear as one could possibly state - "its' never too late to start the day over".

The whole concept of a new day resounds so powerfully with me.  And to have my son of all people, speaking truth in love to his mama, was just the grace I needed today.  It's a wonderful reminder on my daily journey to forget perfection altogether.  I'm not sure where the whole perfect habit came from, but I certainly know its not attainable.  A little bit of grace never healed so much as it did coming from the soul of my little boy.