What a night it has been.

It’s one of those nights where my eyes sting and I am certain a truck has to have run me over. I feel wrecked. Tonight started last night and just kept on giving through this evening. If I am being completely honest with myself, this has been brewing for the last few years.

Three and a half years ago, my world turned upside down at the loss of one of the greatest men I have ever known, my father in law, Ed. As a family, we jokingly said that he would talk so much that he would give us “Edaches”. What I would give for one of those long talks tonight. He would have said something sage and let out a belly chuckle at one of his own jokes. And it would have been perfectly imperfect. He would have filled the air and my heart with undeserved grace.

When he passed, I went into triage mode, caring for the hearts of my wonderful mother in law, husband, and children. Just a few months later, she moved in with us. All that I knew of normal in July, was gone in late August. Fast forward to May 2018, my twin daughters graduated from high school. One left for the Navy and one left to begin adulthood. What normalcy I thought I had found by May, was gone by mid June.

I stopped fully functioning. I stopped cooking, cleaning, caring about day to day things, in the same capacity I did previously. Worse still, I stopped parenting my youngest two, the way that I had before my whole world flipped upside down. They are teens themselves, so I guess I assumed that they could handle themselves. I am not sure exactly what I thought. Its embarrassing to even write those words. Sure, I did mom things, but not like I did before. It was like I was set on some battery saving mode, using as little energy as possible. I struggled to figure out what to cook for dinner. I struggled to find the energy to do basic cleaning. I feared making any commitments to others, even those as simple as a phone date with a best friend.

Last night, the scab was ripped off, and all of the undone life I had been living came to the surface and completely wrecked me. I didn’t choose to live life like this and I didn’t choose to deal with it yet. It woke me up from this place I have been in for too long, and wouldn’t allow me to get to the other side until I had wrestled with and conquered it.

I have a very long road ahead of me. I have a lot of very intentional work to do. I don’t want normal. Normal was just a figment of my imagination anyway. I want to be a better mom than I have been in the past, and have grace for the mom I have been recently. I want to be a more whole me. Piece by piece, I want to put myself back together again, and with God’s help, I will.