Forced Relaxation

This is a bonus post because I missed a few weeks during our move-related internet fast.

One of my best friends from high school recently posted the following on her facebook wall:

"Hey all of my easy going, laid back friends....please, teach me your ways. I'm so tired of being a nervous, worry wart, who needs control. How do you learn to just go with the flow? I wonder if you are born and stuck with that portion of your personality or if you can change it."

It made me wonder how I would answer her. Now, I will be the first to admit that I am often nervous and a worry wart. I'm a mom. It comes with the territory. There are a million and one bad things that could happen to a child. As a mom, it's my job to imagine all of them so they don't happen (that's defaulting to a childhood theory I had where I realized that if I imagined something a certain way, like what my aunt's new boyfriend looked like, he would pretty much never look the way I expected him to).

In high school, I was an uptight, busy busy busy person. During my senior year, I was editor of the school newspaper (which also meant that I was the majority of the school newspaper because our staff was very small with only a few reliable people), a captain on the debate team, on the National Honor Society Council, in the Key Club Presidency, on the student government TEAM, on a team for the We the People Constitution Competition, and representing my school in Utah's Sterling Scholar competition.

I'll go ahead and say it.

I was a nerd to the nerdiest degree of nerdy (minus the science fiction angle of nerdiness--I just never got into science or Star Wars).

My freshman year at college was a total surprise. For the first time in three years, I wasn't busy or involved in something. I quickly found things to be involved in, but none of them were as stressful as the things I did in high school. I started to realize that my high school experience was one huge competition.  I think it was just the nature of the kids in our graduating class. We were extremely academic and extremely bound and determined to become famous (or at least do something cool with our lives). I felt like we were all vying for leadership positions--just to see who could have the most titles on our college resumes. We were all trying to be the very best, and it turned us all into tightly-strung people who have a hard time feeling like we are achieving anything unless we are doing something "big" in the world. Many of these friends of mine are doing things like graduating from law school or getting multiple masters degrees/working on PhDs or saving lives as nurses while studying to become Nurse Practitioners.

You know, that sort of thing.

This background of mine could potentially have ruined me. How am I supposed to be content with "just" being a stay-at-home mom when other friends have both kids and careers? Why is it that I can be fully content with my life now when I'm not in any sort of running for any award, rarely find time to write (and time to revise? dream on), turned down several opportunities to go to graduate school, have the FEWEST domestic skills of any of my relatives (that includes the Burningham side, too, Mom), and spend the majority of my day crawling around on the living room floor growling like a lioness just to make my baby girl laugh?

I took myself out of the running.

When the diabetes and hypothyroidism that I was diagnosed with almost four years ago now forced me to take a three-month leave of absence from my religious service in Texas, I realized that I needed to slow down. Not just as a missionary, but as a person. I was always trying to do and be too much, and the effort was unnecessary. Those three months helped me come to terms with the fact that I couldn't keep up the pace I'd been trying to keep up with since I was 14. Slowly, over the next few years, I learned to listen to what my body could handle. And because I have a disease that so often messes with my emotions (when I get mad and my patience is in short supply, my husband very often finds me something sugary to eat and fixes the problem), I've learned to listen to both my body's physical, mental, and emotional limits. I no longer felt guilty for saying no to things, or turning down opportunities I knew I didn't have time for. I learned to focus on the things that matter most to me--and of all of the things I value in life, people, my family and friends, come first. I learned that I didn't need a full-time job or some sort of title to be a valuable person (I doubt I could even handle a full-time job and stay healthy). And although the title I answer to most these days is "Dada" because Kevin can't figure out that dang "ma" syllable, I am at peace knowing that I am doing the thing I have most wanted to do in my whole life.

So now I've entered the "Mommy" race, which is a huge competition in and of itself (ha, have you ever been on Pinterest?). But that is a different post altogether.

I remember my mom coming home from a parent teacher conference in high school. She told me that my favorite teacher, Mr. Rigby (my newspaper advisor, We the People advisor, and teacher of my AP government class) had told her that he had a certain number of students that were on his "10 Year" list and I was one of them. These were students that he wanted to look up in ten years and see where they ended up. My big brother is also on this list. This spring marks 10 years for him. What has he done? Oh, you know, learned a language, served a mission, played college football, served as student body president of his university, got married, served as an assistant football coach after graduation, is at the top of his class at the George Washington University law school (we don't have time for me to go into the many accomplishments he's had at GW--and those are only the ones his wife has told us about, because he would never say anything).  I used to be in a competition with him too. I'm glad I finally grew up and realized that we are different people with different roles to play in life, because now all I feel is pride for him and the many things he is accomplishing.

This spring marks 8 years for me being on this list. Oh, I've done a few things--served a mission, graduated summa cum laude with two Bachelors degrees--but all that really amounts to nothing compared to the other students that are probably on Mr. Rigby's list (my big brother is a prime example). Sometimes I think of this list and feel bad that I don't have much to show for myself. If I were working toward something, like a master's degree or publishing a book, that might be something. But right now all I'm working toward is teaching my daughter how to walk and speak and eat by herself.

But guess what? That is something.

I can't really say that I am a laid back person. Easy-going, content, happy, yes. I haven't always been a content person. Now that I've had time to settle into my life and figure out what it is I really want to do, I've found that number one is raise a family and everything comes second and third and fourth to that.

So, I guess the only answer I have for you, friend, is ask God to smite you with diabetes and hypothyroidism and slow you down enough to realize what you really want to get out of life. It might not work for everybody.

But it sure worked out for me.