Wait, My Health Should be a TRIANGLE?

I am a rock, I am an island.

Simon and Garfunkel are great, but they don't always describe my life accurately. If I were to rewrite the song line to fit my current feelings, it would go something like this:

I am unstable. I am a brick veneer.

And my inner emo is showing. Sorry about that. I've just been thinking about where I am now and where I would like to be. And at the risk of stating the obvious, they aren't exactly the same place. In my high school health classes we learned about the different aspects of health (physical, social, mental/emotional) and how they form a triangle that we need to keep in balance. I don't feel like I currently have a triangle—it's more like a line. Or a point. Yep, unbeknownst to everyone else, as a result of my stay-at-home mommery, I have a point of health. I think this means that I eat, breathe, and sleep just enough to survive.

I've been trying to remedy this. For example, lately I've been trying to do some workouts. It was during this escapade that I discovered that I can no longer do a sit-up. The televised work-out leader had us all put our feet together so that our legs formed a rhombus and told us to sit up. And I couldn't. She said “If you can't come up all the way, that's okay! Just come up as far as you can.” So I stared at my stomach and said “You heard the woman. Just come up as far as you can . . . yep, come up . . . NO, COME UP.” And my shoulders stayed on the ground while my stomach continued schlepping.

See, I used to be out of shape, but now I'm OUT OF SHAPE. But I look fine. So people have been asking me “How do you look so good so soon after having a baby?” I think this is a hypothetical question. Scratch that. I HOPE this is a hypothetical question, because I don't have an answer, except that I seem to come from a great gene pool. I think the real reason my belly looks so “good” after having a baby is because in addition to delivering a baby, I seem to have delivered my abdominal muscles as well. That's why there's nothing there. I don't so much care about how I look as I am about being healthy. I mean, this could end up being a matter of life and death. If someone were to put a gun to my head and say “Do a sit-up, or else!” I'm toast. Gotta make some changes.

I don't even need to tell you about the social side of my triangle. Like many other stay-at-home moms, my main interactions are represented by a few smiles, “goos,” and cries from a three month old. Going anywhere is hard when you have to schedule it around feedings and diaper changes. I get to see a few more people now that I have a couple of piano students and I've befriended the Jehovah's Witnesses, but on the whole, I don't get out much.

Mentally? I feel very little control. The hormones of pregnancy and nursing have left me exhausted and ready to cry at the most ridiculous times. Yesterday, I discovered that Melody, Alex, and I were all wearing items that needed mending because they were coming apart at the seams. Some sort of metaphor for my life right now? Perhaps. You be the judge, but first, let me say that I almost fell apart yesterday when I found out that instead of the expected three hours of church meetings (that I was already wondering if I would make it through) we had six hours of meetings. I got tired from the beginning just thinking of meetings to come.

As pathetic as admitting my physical, social, and emotional weaknesses may make me sound, they are the easiest to confront. It's when I think about my spiritual health that I start to feel the worst. And yet, I gain a little hope because of a promise found in Matthew 10:39. Trying to get myself together by starting at any other point is going to be counterproductive. I have to start with my spiritual health first. If I can get myself where I need to be in relation to my Father in Heaven, the rest of the frustrations I'm experiencing are going to be naturally resolved—or I'll realize they aren't as critical as I once thought. This is much easier realized than remedied, but I'm hoping that admitting that I'm not as strong as I look is a good step toward humbling myself and starting my recovery.

So this is my confession. The transition to being a mom, while worth it, is a little tough at times. I'm not a rock. But I'm not an island, either. And while I may not feel like I'm where I need to be now, I can get there eventually. If I put my Heavenly Father first, He's going to lead me to where I need to be and He'll be with me as I go.

Would you, could you, in a box?

I have a confession to make: when I worked at the institute, I would take things from the office. Don't panic—I had permission. I wasn't stealing; I was bringing home cardboard boxes.

I love boxes.

My first memory of my love of boxes comes when I was just little—probably three or so, I'm not sure. I just know that it was when the general store (“Old Clove's,” to my family) still had some sort of refrigerated shelving like you would have for meats and cheeses on the west wall, and I know for sure it was before my family moved to Moab and back. I turned four in Moab, so . . . I was pretty young.

ANYWAY, I had a small box that my mom had given me. It was small and flat—the kind with the removable lid that jewelry sometimes comes in. For the day that I had it I carried it everywhere with me and made great plans to find the perfect thing to use it for. Sometimes I put stuff in and took it out, but mostly I just carried this empty box with me. Until we went to Clove's and I lost it in the aforementioned shelving. I was devastated. My mom was unsympathetic. I did not recover my treasured box. Perhaps I've spent my entire life looking to replace it.

You never know when you'll need a box. They are incredibly useful when it comes to organizing things. If Alex and I weren't “poor college students,” I would have those fancy organizational boxes. But we're not, so I don't. That's okay. My bathroom shelves are in order thanks to some well-placed ramen noodle boxes. I keep my sheet music in a shoebox that I covered in old music. I use a blender box as a trash can in Melody's room. I load my closets with various boxes labeled to match their contents. It's a good system.

What's not a good system is the series of boxes that contain unsorted items that I'm not sure where to put them. So I put them in boxes and pretend that they are taken care of. Sure, I'll make it around to going through the boxes and sorting them into more boxes and eventually assigning them a permanent place, but in the meantime they merely provide a false sense of organization and a hiding place for my clutter.

I like boxes. Literally and figuratively. After all, isn't it “hip to be square”?

I need a bit of structure. You may have noticed that many, if not all, of my titles are some sort of recycling of other people's words. Cliches are my Achilles' heel (See? I can't even explain my feelings about cliches without using one!). I write “To do” lists and routines, if only to disregard them. I've been seen as a “good little Mormon girl” who has grown up to be a stay-at-home mom (with a blog, no less!) and I've tried to live up to many of the expectations that have come with those titles. The result: I take the traits and qualities that I've developed, re-box them, and give them a label that I find acceptable while discarding the less helpful clutter that comes with stereotypes.

“Boxes” have given me a way to put my thoughts and beliefs in order. And it works for me—as long as I don't use them as a permanent, disorganized catch-all. However, I have tried to keep some boxes that weren't benefiting me. I still have some. The good news is that I usually try to trade out worn boxes or boxes that are the wrong size for more sturdy boxes that better serve my purposes. And sometimes I just have to donate an entire box and its contents to the DI.

It drove Alex crazy right after we had moved to have me bringing home empty paper boxes from work. “Don't you already have boxes? Aren't you getting rid of boxes?” What he didn't understand, no matter how I explained it to him, was that these boxes were everything I wanted in a box. These were going to help me organize more permanently than the boxes I already had, so I was upgrading.

My Great-grandpa Farnsworth gave me some advice the last time I saw him before he passed away. “You don't have to pick up everything you come across, you know?”

Oh, I know. So when I do find something worth keeping, I put it in a nice box and label it.