Yesterday was supposed to be our first relaxing family day since before my surgery. Then we realized we had to lead worship at church, then we realized I had to work, then I found a table on Facebook Marketplace I had to have, then I got caught up cleaning the house like some kind of possessed lunatic obsessed with getting rid of clutter.
By the time I climbed into bed, everything hurt, and I was exhausted. So much for our stress free relaxing day. I’m tired, and life’s pressures keep pressing. It’s not that it’s bad things. It’s mostly all things we want to do, but it’s exhausting nonetheless.
Last week I was asked, “How does it feel to be in your body?” I rattled off a bunch of nonsense about how my day was going, but that wasn’t the answer to the question. In that moment, I genuinely didn’t know the answer to that because I was so busy in my mind that I hadn’t taken the time to ask myself that question since before my surgery.
Recovery from surgery was much worse than I was expecting. I was in a lot of pain for a lot longer than I anticipated. Plus, to top it off, I got extremely sick and was violently throwing up day three of recovery when they removed the drain. I couldn’t hold my son or lift anything for two weeks which was emotionally trying for both of us.
I don’t sit around. I like accomplishing things, and I hate when my house is a mess. This entire time, my house was a mess, and there wasn’t much I could do about it except look at it and think about it. I couldn’t even get out of the house because I couldn’t carry Eli. Eli had stepped on goldfish on the carpet and the dogs had tracked in dirt, but I couldn’t carry our vacuum cleaner down the stairs to vacuum it up. Everything fell on poor Erik, and I was going crazy and was frustrated with my body.
When my body doesn’t cooperate, I tend to shut down to it. When I was in pain with my Lyme Disease, I used to not even realize it a majority of the time until at night after I had fallen asleep. I’d sometimes wake up in pain, and other times, I was told I cried in my sleep and complained of being in pain. I had no memory of it in the morning.
When unpleasant things are happening, I have a tendency to just turn it off. After the surgery, I couldn’t handle dealing with the drain. It freaked me out, and I didn’t want to look at it or touch it. That’s also how I was with my scar. Erik had to help me clean it and put the scar cream on it because it freaked me out.
I went to see my chiropractor a week ago today. She was the one who asked me how it felt to be in my body. She also encouraged me to touch my scar, to rub it, and move it around. She said this was going to help the scar tissue heal right.
On my drive home that day, I decided to get over my mental block, and I gently touched my scar for the first time. I instantly felt this sigh of relief and rush in my body. It was that feeling you get when you come home after being away for a long time, or the feeling you get when you finally hug that loved one that you haven’t seen in while. I came home to my body.
How often are we disassociating from ourselves? Yesterday, like many other days, in all the busyness, I disassociated from my body and plowed through to get everything done. Today, I carved out some time to sit down with a Kombucha and dark chocolate, and I asked myself how I was feeling inside my body. I am clearly not perfect at this, but I came home to myself a lot sooner than I have been.
Breathe, friends. Your world won’t stop if you can’t get the house spotless or accomplish all the things.
You need you more than you need perfection. Go home to yourself today; whatever that means to you.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. (Psalm 23:1-3).
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