This is not what I signed up for.

My mom comes over this week, and it comes out that one of our kids has a stomach ache. So, being a retired nurse, she feels around and says she knows what it is. She knows what needs to be done. Kid needs a suppository. Do I want to do it or do I want her to do it? 

This is not what I signed up for.

I hear this refrain a lot these days. I hear it in my head before I go to bed. I hear it from other parents, and non-parents, too. We had some thoughts and feels about how our lives would turn out that have been turned upside down. It’s painful, confusing, sometimes even shame-spiral-y. What’s wrong with me for not being more, I don’t know, hardy?   

Rush and I were naive to think we could skip the “stay-at-home” stage by adopting three girls who were school-aged. I can see that now pre-tty-y clearly. It’s normal to make up our minds about big life things when we are feeling our best: strong, confident, capable. But, these days, I’m curious about the insights that are coming to us when we may be feeling our worst: tiny, exhausted, limited.

Pentecost is coming, and I’ve been “helping” Rush prepare a sermon, by which I mean I’ve been sermonizing to him with some serious eyebrows and undertones that say, “Right? Right.” Pentecost is the liturgical season following Easter in the Christian calendar, and it’s meant to celebrate the presence of God (what we call the Holy Spirit) falling on Jesus’s forlorn followers. 

Life hadn’t turned out exactly how the early Christians expected either. Their God died! But then came back from the dead?!? But then spent a cagey forty days walking around the earth before ascending into the sky! I imagine they might have made different decisions, too, if they had seen their lives all the way through. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus’s ancient words to those ancient people. He tells them it’s better for them that he leaves. They couldn’t handle all the hard truths at once. So, he promises to send them a Holy Friend to hold their hand through the pain and walk them to a more joyful place. Like a woman going into labor, he says, the only way out is through. 

I specifically did not sign-up for labor. Rush and I were childfree for ten years before fostering-to-adopt, in part, to honor our energy limits, our financial limits, and our planet's limits. A lot of people were aghast that we didn’t follow a kind of “if you can, you should” theology. But I think there is something very kind, very human, very holy, to embracing your reality. And then embracing your new reality. 

The only way out is through. It is helping me these days to remember this spiritual truth. It is helping me when I wake up for the third time in four days having dreamed of my dead dog. It is helping me when I go to bed feeling bad for feeling bad about something I felt. It is helping me when I am asked to do a task I feel squarely ill-prepared for.

So, do I want to do it or do I want her to do it? My mom asks about the suppository. Said kid and I look at each other, panicked, and then point to her. “You do it,” I say. “I would feel better that way,” kid says.  

The only way out is through, but we don’t have to go through it alone.  

XO,
Erin

Want more tools for practicing purpose?

This month's Everything Happens book club pick, Permission to Feel, is helping me and my crew expand our feeling vocabulary so that we can go from being emotional judges to emotional scientists. Whatever you're feeling today—gloomy? cozy? jittery?—it's worth feeling. And, if you can, worth sharing. Click here for discussion questions.

For those who know the Enneagram, I recently learned that my native number may not be where I default (Number #5) but where I move in growth (Number #8). So, this week I’ve been trying to channel the Lady 8 energy—confident-feeling, justice-loving, tender-hearted—from my youth. This Chicago-inspired playlist is getting me in the mood. (Note to listeners: Some songs are explicit.)

Speaking of Chicago, I had so much fun binging The Last Dance docuseries on ESPN last week. Michael Jordan is no poster child for honoring our limits but, man, does his life inspire me to remember what I want, to go for it with tongue-hanging-out hunger, and extend myself grace to about-face and begin again. Whoomp, there it is.