Gray Matter

"I must confess, the view from where I sit has been rather grey..."

That's one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies. It simply resonates.

I've been working very hard over the last few years to learn how to be happy. Rather, I've been learning to allow happiness to take up residence. The journey is slow but productive, and I have a new challenge. When the gray returns suddenly, cyclically...I fear. I'm anxious. I self-batter. I hide. My most destructive conviction is that I am the only mother of all I know who struggles like this. None of my friends are so (fill in the blank) that they allow the wave of gray to wash over them. So I hull up, and all hell breaks loose in my mind. I'm so angry at myself, that I'm angry in general which does not make for graceful mothering. And that is the exponential factor. Miserable to the infinite power.

Of course when I'm not in the midst of the gray, I can look back on that woman from a week ago and cut her a lot more slack. So my challenge is two-fold: to determine if what I see as gray is really just normal, and I'm not perfect; and to stop beating my heart to a bloody pulp every time I'm not walking on sunshine.

I was talking to a dear friend recently, and she was saying to me the things I was angrily confessing to my husband just last week. I was so fed up with myself that I kept calling him day after day telling him that I'm not doing a lick of good here, and these children do not need to be around me all day everyday. But when my friend was sharing her feelings? It didn't phase me a bit. I felt compassion for her inner struggle and peace in the knowledge that she loves her children and is doing the best she can. And then it dawned on me that 1) I was relieved to not be alone in imperfection and self-doubt, and 2) I could treat myself with the same compassion I readily give my friends.

This morning I was reading the new year's Spurgeon book. He was discussing the newness of life Christ provides to the weary Christian. He told a story of a man approaching him confessing the dullness he felt in his faith. "'But as for you, whenever I hear you, you seem to be alive and full of fresh energy.' 'My dear brother,' (Spurgeon) said, 'that is because you do not know much about me.'" He goes on to discuss the newness we should enjoy everyday because of salvation, so I may be taking this way out of context. But can I take this to mean that even Charles Spurgeon had gray moments?! Maybe I'm not such a loser after all.

Maybe I should just ride the wave, and keep learning along the way. Who knows, but I might find some very useful purpose for the gray. Maybe it's not all defeat and destruction. Maybe it's refinement and remodeling of all the various quadrants of my brain.