Overwhelm.
1. I would have been about 25 years old, mother to two bambinos, the day I sat on the floor crying in my first build-up of overwhelm, pleading with God to send someone to help me. There was a knock on the door and – actually – no. There was no knock on the door. There was no immediate MaryPoppins-like visitation. But God did hear my cry.
There I was, living what I’d dreamed of – marriage and babies – yet I felt so desperate for reasons I can’t fully explain but which I suspect most other mothers of one-time small children can identify with.
What I was crying out for – but didn’t know was what I needed at the time – was encouragement. About mothering. Wife-ing. Life-ing. The nitty gritty of it. Yet all I had words for was for ‘someone to help me’.
Help came within a couple of months in the form of Elaine McGrath who I met when the church I was then attending advertised a new group for mums of young children to get together regularly. She was some kind of angel I tell you. The group that gathered that first day was small… maybe 10… but it grew over years to 60 or so but those early years were the most special as we didn’t have to share Elaine between quite so many others 🙂 We would arrive at those mornings like parched wanderers in a desert overjoyed to find the oasis wasn’t a mirage, and leave again built up and ready to rock this mothering thing for another fortnight. Through that group I made some amazing ever-after friends, soaked in the encouragement I was parched for, was positioned to find some other resources that firmed up my mothering pathway, never to feel that kind of desperation again – plus gained a faith life mentor in Elaine.
In this patch I saw God heard my heart cry and He answered according to the need I didn’t have adequate words for – and so profoundly – but slowly.
2. The next time I felt that type of desperate overwhelm was several years later, arriving home from hospital with bambino number 4 when the older 3 all came down with gastro. And boy did they come down with it. It went for nearly a fortnight. Age 18 months, 3 and 4 – none terribly proficient at aiming puke into a bowl, mattresses on the floor by the fire, every towel and sheet in use, feeding a newborn while trying to catch spew. I felt robbed and angry that my newborn experience was being so spent, I was exhausted and hormonal, and then one day my mum walked into the fray, asked me how I was right at the moment I knew I was getting it too. She shouldn’t have stayed, but she did. She cleaned and washed and brought food for those now recovering while I puked and blubbered and fed my baby.
In this patch I learned how to roll with the punches and to accept help when I was in one of my grossest most un-put-together times. Coz my mum, is also an angel 🙂
3. The next time that Overwhelm visited, it came in the form of some shattering news of a sexual nature which both tilted my earth axis and felt like the world I knew was made of crackled glass which I could somehow hear cracking, loosening and tinkling down. I can recall driving on Roe Highway one day, heading to a school sports day, when I became so disoriented and confused that for a few km, I did not know where I was or where I was going – but knew that I HAD known and just kept driving while hoping the confusion would clear.
Others I knew who were similarly affected by this bomb blast had just as severe reactions, some of which included the temporary shutdown of their own capacity for intimacy, but in this space I learned how intimacy can be restorative and healing and an experience of beauty which was offset by incredible contrast – to the situation that rocked my daylight senses. It was in this space that God dissolved and quieted the crackling glass, plus set the axis right again – in time.
4. Overwhelm came to call again a few years later with another happening that blasted fallout that still lingers umpteen years on. The day immediately after this grenade, I had in my diary to visit a young friend whose baby wasn’t sleeping and who was overwhelmed herself – in a way I had known and now had some keys to help. Everything in me wanted to cancel. I could barely think or function – how could I possibly sit at her kitchen table and appear normal?! But I went. And I did. And as I closed her gate to leave I saw the unexpected result of my brain fog having lifted by having entered into the world of another in service and could thank God for having set that up as a means to help me in the moment – but also as a lifelong lesson that turning attention to others is ministry to me as well as to them.
5. Another but lighter time happened at the dinner table with I think 5 kids under age 8, or 6 under 10 – not sure now – but Overwhelm came partnered with frustration as all the kids immediate needs/wants piled up – and I popped. It was kinda like how a pressure cooker needs to vent or it will explode so this was thankfully just a vent. The moments had built to the point I wanted to scream, cry or run – and could do none of them – so I grabbed the edge of my roll-neck jumper, yanked it up to cover my entire head sending out a half wail/half screech in a manoeuvre certain offspring still remember and imitate occasionally today. It was so unexpected, to me and to them, that they all fell about laughing their heads off and the tight place I’d been in opened up and entirely changed. Here I learned that the unexpected is sometimes all that’s needed to divert from tricky/potentially disastrous moments.
6. The next time Overwhelm camped for a time was when grandbaby EJ’s 22 day life was lived in the hospital. Again a mother of a nursing baby learning her sleep pattern, overtired and over stressed – I have described that time as being like ONE long long long long day. This was the time in which God taught me to rein in my galloping thoughts, to still the ‘what if’s’, to bring my focus and planning right in to just the next group of hours. Just do the day. Just do the day.
It saved me.
I once tried to explain Overwhelm to my darling then brood of 6 (at that time) who I felt to be the cause. I tried to get them to picture all standing around me in a circle with a ball each, throwing their ball at me randomly, constantly and speedily, expecting me to catch and return in perfect order. I recon they probably thought it sounded pretty fun – knowing me and my ball skills. What a hoot. My illustration didn’t help.
I used to experience periods of time in which I’d say to myself that ‘things are swirling’. These were times of heaviness, busyness, unexpected issues, hurts and flying curveballs. I’d feel like I was tumbling over and over in it all like we, the whole kit and caboodle were tumbling about in some giant clothes dryer. These days those patches still come but it no longer ‘swirls’. He has set me on a solid place where I catch what I can, try to recognise what’s not mine and wait for ‘this too – to pass’. Because it always has, and always will.
Read here for another short post about overwhelm – and one small hint that can have a huge impact.