Here is a photo of a bowl of strawberries that my 1.5 year old dropped on the floor.
5/10/22
I was walking on water and flying on the wings of an eagle.
Then I got sick for over a month. And so did my family, which included two little girls under the age of three. It was a string of sinus infection, possible Covid, and then flu ending in debilitating depression after finally hyperventilating for fifteen minutes one morning.
My spirit was crushed. I felt it could never be revived. I couldn’t function for a week and a half. It was more than just physical exhaustion. It was also my soul. My soul felt “wrecked” and “shredded” were the two words that kept coming to mind effortlessly. It was the only thing that was effortless.
Why does this happen to people like me? Our spirits are weak. They are weak because we overwork them with extreme sensitivity and empathy. I know many other people like me. We are wonderful. We can feel the depth of another person’s soul more deeply, it seems, than they themselves can sometimes. But if we’re not careful, we can really hurt ourselves doing it.
As a mother and a person with this type of personality, it is important for me to focus most, if not all, of this “skill” on them. If I don’t, I literally find myself suffocating.
I had never hyperventilated in my life. Then one night I read a positive pregnancy test for the first time. My husband arrived home that night to find me on the floor of the kitchen, unable to breath and equally unable to resolve the situation. I don’t know what would have happened if he didn’t come home when he did.
I have now hyperventilated four other times since then. Each time, I believe, the dominating thought in my mind was how I’m not a good enough mother.
- - -
I often see dependent relationships inside the metaphor of the safety instructions at the beginning of an airplane flight. Passengers are instructed to put the breathing mask on themselves before they put it on children. This always sounds so selfish but it also makes complete sense.
It’s harder to see the moments in parenthood where the “selfishness” makes sense. But if I was better at seeing it, maybe I wouldn’t hyperventilate anymore. I’ll have to keep an eye out for those moments.
- - -
I have figured out something, though. And I’m writing it now so I don’t forget.
Last week, a friend and I reflected on how I need to put the oxygen mask on myself first.
Since that conversation, I’ve been asking myself lots of questions.
“But what if I can’t figure out how to put it on?”
“What if I take too long to put it on?”
“What if I don’t put it on in time?”
But I wasn’t asking “but what will I breathe?”
That’s because in the metaphor, the answer is obvious. When you put on an oxygen mask, then you breathe oxygen.
- - -
After a week and half of debilitating depression, I didn’t believe the oxygen mask was working. All I could do was sit, an empty shell with no emotion or care to give my children. I had been physically “resting” but it wasn’t doing anything. I was praying and praying for God to help me, but I was trapped in this frozen state of subtle pain. I could feel myself squeezing all of my veins inside of me. How? I don’t know. I suppose this is what we mean when we say we’re “putting too much pressure on ourselves.”
- - -
Then one afternoon, I received some Bach music in the mail. I had ordered it a week prior. My soul was so desolate, when my mind suggested playing music, the idea sounded foreign. I think Bach and my mind knew that playing music would be good. But my heart couldn’t believe that anyone would even suggest such a notion. It was almost insulting, if I could feel insults, which at this point, I could not.
- - -
That night, my children went to bed early and my husband needed to work. I was alone. But it was too early to go to sleep. I lay in my bed as my heart continued to slowly grow heavier and heavier. I prayed “should I go play my flute?” But before I even started the prayer, a loud resounding “YES” came into my mind as more of a foundation to the question than as a response.
I reluctantly uncrumpled out of bed and moved into the other room with my flute and music in hand. I didn’t really know how I was going to play, since up until this point, I believed that my heart was the gasoline that fueled my music, and if I was running on empty, how could I spare anything for my flute?
I began to play. I had never played most of these tunes before. But I had heard them my whole life. And many of them were the reasons I chose to pursue flute playing twenty years earlier.
I was not only able to play. I played, possibly the most beautifully I’ve ever played.
This was my oxygen mask.
I didn’t need physical rest. I needed spiritual rest. Of course I did. I’m only just putting that together now as I type. I knew that what I was experiencing wasn’t a physical exhaustion. That was the one thing I knew. That my soul was “wrecked’ and “shredded” right? So the “oxygen” that I needed was not physical rest. It was spiritual rest. And I find spiritual rest in music. I always have. I think everyone does.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Thank you Bach.
Soli Deo gloria indeed, my friend. Soli Deo gloria indeed.
Thank you God.