That September morning I wanted to cover my head and pretend that the new day had been delayed. It was an “it-can’t-possibly-be-morning-yet” kind of awakening. What I was feeling wasn’t depression. Believe me, I’ve been depressed. It was waking up and realizing that I had a bad case of the “don’ts”.
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Jackie Zimmerer is a wife and mother of four sons. She attends St. John's Catholic Church in the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas.
What did I not want to do that morning? Pretty much everything. The adult thing seemed pretty hard to deal with. I was tired of being the Mommy. I was tired of being responsible and tired of being held accountable. I wanted someone to come and “fix” all my problems for me. That morning, I didn’t want to be a grown up any more.
It was one of those foot-stomping moments. Why did I feel so unworthy? Especially since I loudly protested that I'd spent the last few years working diligently to sort through my “issues”. Why wasn't I “fixed” yet?
Funny, but until I penned my first essay last September, I'd never put it all together. Somehow it's tied into how sidetracked I sometimes get. At those times, it’s only with great difficulty that I finish even the shortest task. That morning as I journaled about my feelings, I realized that, in many of my recent choices, I’d been sabotaging myself, consciously choosing not do to things that I knew made my life run smoothly.
Aka the “don'ts”.
In another epiphany, I realized that indulging myself in the “don’t’s” quickly turns into a pity-party. Somehow the sabotage-center-of-my-being realizes that finishing a task, any task, is progress. And that part of me wants to wallow in misery.
That day, as I continued to write about it, the Lord revealed part of the answer. It's due to years of stored and catalogued hurt, pain, distrust, fear and distress in a dark closet of emotion still lurking deep inside me.
The Good Book tells me I must decrease so He can increase. I now recognize that the “don'ts” are when I choose not to ask for, or accept His Help with my decluttering efforts. Then I find that instead of cleaning out that dank, emotional cesspool through prayer, Eucharist and Confession, I start to retreat into it.
Why does it seem to surprise me so much when it happens?
Even though my internal dungeon of despair is much smaller than ever before it's still a very dangerous place for me to be.
The book of Revelation tells me that He will refine me as gold. I used to find this image so beautiful. Then I took a jewelry class where I actually saw the process. Gold and silver have to be heated to the melting point at extremely high temperatures. Then the impurities are skimmed off, and it's poured out to cool. Sometimes this process needs to be repeated in order to get a more pure product. To obtain an end result, the precious metal is heated again and poured into a mold of some kind. After the casting process is complete, if the pour was a good one, there's still lots of buffing, grinding and shining that takes place.
Yup. That about describes the way I feel at those times of my life. It's also the reason that I try not to indulge myself in the “don'ts”. It's much easier to cooperate as the Great Jewelry Maker Himself continues to refine me.
I'm quite sure that the results will be worth it.
