Scary Things

There's an expression you're probably familiar with-- "do something every day that scares you."

Me, I'm a creature of habit, routine, comfort, and introversion.  I do not want to be scared in any way, especially not by my own doing.  And yet, if you've so much as glanced at the title of this blog post, you probably know by now that I did something scary.  On purpose.

I work very well with goals, but I don't necessarily like to reduce them down to annual resolution sort of things.  I usually pick a certain number of books that I want to read during the calendar year, but as for any other goals, I set them for myself as the need or challenge arises.  2017 was different in that I specifically an actual goal for myself to meet by year's end.  

A strange thing for me, making a New Year's resolution-- a real life, actual goal for which I gave myself a deadline and wrote it down (which makes it official, you know) and everything: finish editing my novel and send it to an agent by December 31.

I figured with three months of maternity leave, I'd have plenty of downtime while the baby was napping to edit here and there, and that 12 months was actually more than enough time to do that and whip up a query letter or two and send it out to multiple agents.  

Yeah, no.  Classic first time mother trap.  I was blessed with a child who hated the mere thought of sleep and considered "nap" to be the dirtiest of curse words.  I feel like I spent 85% of my leave rocking him and begging him to go to sleep, and the other 75% of the time hooked up to the pump.  (I know that's more than 100%.  That's what being a mother feels like.)  If I had any downtime, I couldn't even sleep myself (wonder where my sleep-hating child gets it from...).  I was too exhausted to do anything more than place the ticking time bomb of a lightly sleeping baby in his bed, drag myself to the couch, hook myself up to the pump, and stare into space for the 15 minutes my kiddo decided was long enough for his nap, repeat ad nauseum.

By the time October rolled around (10 months into the year), I realized that I had barely left myself any time to complete my goal.  There were several scenes I needed to fully rewrite to solve a couple of bigger issues, not to mention the smaller problems scattered throughout the novel and my own nitpicky need to revise, revise, revise.  I had to commit myself to letting a lot of things go and accepting that a lot of my revising was futile-- I could revise for the rest of my life.  Sometimes it can be just as scary to finish something as it is to start.

And so I dedicated portions of each evening after the baby was in bed and the dishes were done to editing a chapter per night, no more (as to not burn myself out), no less (as to not fall behind schedule).  I couldn't believe that I was somehow caring for a completely dependent human being (and doing sleep training on top of that), working part time at the office and a few hours at home, caring for my marriage, helping to run our household and all the errands and tasks that come with it, keeping up with my usual reading goal, trying to maintain some semblance of a social life and family commitments, occasionally indulging in some of my other hobbies, and seriously tackling this lifelong passion of mine-- novel writing-- all at the same time.  It felt like madness.  It felt like I should drop it and rededicate that energy back to the other things that all mattered more.  I knew that other people have life laundry lists waaay longer, more serious, and more complicated than mine, and I felt like a loser for my sense of drowning.

Finishing editing and saying that I was DONE was simultaneously amazing, gratifying, and terrifying.  I gave myself a short break before diving into agent research, actively studying and practicing how to write a query letter and a synopsis, and polishing the format of my first few pages for release.  I constantly tried to remind myself that people do this all the time; it was no big deal; just do it, Erica.  Nike this thing.

I finally picked an agent, filled out the query form, and submitted my request.  That sentence looks so simple.  Bing, bang, boom.  And thus, my goal was completed.

In reality, it was terrifying.  Five years of this thing, and it was released into the world.  A stranger was going to see it (or, at least, the first ten pages of it).  I was willingly sending something very, very personal, something that existed solely in my head for so long, to someone who was probably going to tell me it-- I-- wasn't good enough.

Fast forward to six weeks later, and there in my email inbox was a response.

My first novel rejection.

I was 99% prepared for and expecting a form rejection, the remaining percent hopeful for some sort of miraculous good luck-- the feel-good story of an unpublished author getting her very first request magically accepted, winner, winner, chicken dinner.  I knew it was going to get rejected.  But it's funny how much 1% of hope can hurt with smarting disappointment.  Such is life.

In fairness, it's ridiculous to send out a single query-- I should be querying multiple agents at once and aim to send 50 queries.  But sending this one query out was an enormous step for me (and part of what made the goal attainable).  I'll type out my sentence again-- I finally picked an agent, filled out the query form, and submitted my request.  I DID IT!

Someone I didn't know had done to (the first ten pages of) my novel exactly what it was meant for-- SOMEONE READ IT!

For 2018, I will continue querying agents, and I have a secret little deal with myself for November of next year.  Stay tuned, folks!  There is so much more yet to do, but I achieved my goal, and did something that scared me, and the best is yet to come.

How Revelation 21:5 Made Me Feel Like a Mother

Only 7 hours.  Just 7 short hours, starting with my water breaking.  We calmly collected our things and got in the car, and as we sat at a red light, the only ones at the intersection at 10PM, I stared straight ahead and said determinedly, "We're not coming home without a baby."  7 hours, and the uncertainty was over, and I became a mom.

No one warned me about the baby blues, and I spent the first two weeks of motherhood crying my eyes out-- not just crying, but sobbing hysterically as the sun went down, crying so hard I was unable to speak, clutching my new baby in anxiety and panic and helplessness and emotions I had never experienced before.  I watched as his weight dropped-- and dropped some more-- and concern gave way to true fear, and I was so certain that no one in the history of motherhood had ever made more mistakes or gotten more wrong than I already had.

And even after the worst was over and everything leveled out and I finally found that I could breathe again, I still felt wrong.  Instead of feeling like I had gained something incredible, I felt like I had lost something invaluable: my sense of self.  I hadn't felt like myself for the majority of my pregnancy-- constantly sick, barely able to eat, exhausted, etc.-- and towards the end of my pregnancy, I journaled: "I don't look or feel like myself.  Too-short hair, too-big stomach, angry red stretch marks, filled-out face, no rings... I look in the mirror, and I don't see myself.  I wake up, and I don't feel like Erica."

It took a while to understand that I was fighting against something that could not be regained.  That old self could not exist separately from the new self that had been born with my son.  I could not have two separate identities.  I had to let go of what my life used to be and embrace the newness with all its challenges and difficulties-- and joys-- instead of trying to hold onto my old self.  It took me a long time to realize that, and then a while to accept it, but it was a pivotal moment in my understanding of motherhood.  I had to learn that it wasn't a bad thing.  It was a paradigm shift, and it was difficult, but it wasn't bad.

It was a line from a song that we sing on TEC retreats that really turned everything around for me.  The song lyric comes from a Bible verse, Revelation 21:5:  "And the one who was seated on the throne said, 'See, I am making all things new.'"

 I had been singing that song over and over to Benjamin for days, and that line just stuck.  And it finally clicked.  My God was making me brand new in motherhood.  I could not be the same as I was.  Fighting it-- even if I hadn't realized that's what I'd been doing-- was only hurting me.

I understand now that the difference was phenomenal, on an entirely different level than anything I had ever experienced.  Of course it took me some time to get used to it.  I have been transformed in love.  Motherhood had completely broken me, but the miracle is that it has reassembled me in a brand new and better way.  Every so often I feel a sense of mourning for my old life or the way things were, but I wouldn't trade this for that even if I could.  Not a chance.  I never knew I had this immense capacity for love.  I never knew I was capable of this much quiet patience.  I am, I think, an overall better version of myself, even on the hardest days.

I feel like kintsugi: the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold so that it's more beautiful because it has been broken.  I didn't even believe that it was a thing at first.  I thought it was just a pretty photoshopped picture that Facebook liked to pass around, poetic but fake.  But it's real.  Things really can become more beautiful for their brokenness and change.  I, who fear change so desperately, have finally found it beautiful.  Difficult, but beautiful.

It's been like walking slowly in total darkness, sliding one foot in front of the other, scared to bump into something and fall.  At first, I was all but blind.  Then there was a dimness, and I could start to make out blurry edges, and with each passing week, my surroundings grow every brighter.  My sight grows ever clearer.  I keep walking forward in faith that the light will soon illuminate everything fully, and I will finally be able to see again.

Even during the longest nights, when "sleep when the baby sleeps" becomes "cry when the baby cries," I move forward in love.  This is the motherhood that I longed for, even though I didn't know what it really was when I dreamt of it.  How could I?  This new kind of love is outstanding.  I'm amazed by my child's very existence and the blessing and lesson he is in my life.  This is what I waited for and what I will do for the rest of my life, this kind of love.