I Go Cavewoman

“If everyone in the world was like me we would still be living in a caveman society.” This is what I told Jason as we were driving the other day. He’s not surprised when I say random things like that because I am perpetually random, but he wanted to know what I meant. Here’s what I meant.

We had been in Seattle, coming back from dinner at Purple Café and Wine Bar, incidentally my new favorite, and we were winding through the streets of downtown. I was noticing the complicated bridge structures and in the blip of just like two seconds it hit me that I would be too overwhelmed and too completely lazy to actually think up, and never mind build, this sort of road system. I don’t even think I could have come up making a long straight road over the course of my lifetime. I’m really serious.

I’m smiling right now just thinking about this button in my brain. It’s the “I’m too tired to think about this” button and I hit it like five times a day and when I do my brain just shuts off. I might still be listening to you but I’m gazing right through you and getting a crunched eyebrow look. I might still be reading that book but really my eyes are running down the page without computing one word. When something gets too hard for me to think about I can feel that limit, literally, and I can either decide that I care enough to go through it or I push the button. I really like that button, by the way. I’m kind of glad it’s there but I feel like I need a nurse to tell me I have a limit on it, like when I had a morphine drip on hospital bed rest.

The times I choose not to push the button are usually people oriented. That’s good for all of you reading who might feel slighted by my button pushing. Yes, it’s true, I usually actually hate the button when it comes to thinking about our hearts. I want to get to the bottom of what is going on in you and me and sally smith. Recently me and two gals were talking and one of them was trying to figure out what to do with an obstacle in her life. And even with one of us in the room being an actual counselor by profession, it was difficult to get to the root of what was going on so that she could walk in freedom. This sort of thinking gets me really excited and sometimes it’s nice because you can use other people’s brains to sort of lily pad jump through ideas and it may take you to some thoughts or conclusions you may not have come to without sort of a group think mentality. Without the lily pads, I might have pushed the button, masked by a “I’ll pray for you” sort of thing.

I always tease Jason about being smarter than me. “Okay, Northwestern,” I say if he gets something that I don’t. Whenever the girls do something really brilliant I tell him they have his brain. I actually really like that his brain works better than mine. I don’t know what it would be like the other way around – having a spouse like me, but he seems to like the way I think and what I say…so I think we’re good. He’s just so good at figuring things out. I think it’s a temptation though for me to get lazy because our married life has access to his brain and so I rely on him to get things done that make my head hurt. Like a little thing – we have two kids’ gates downstairs so the girls have to stay in the living room/kitchen area with me. A bunch of times people (mostly other kids) have plowed through the gate accidentally and it falls down. My response is like – Jason will fix it. But if Jason wasn’t around, I might actually have to figure it out. Is anyone relating?? Other button pushing moments: using the grill, handling our budget and bills, fixing issues w/ the computer (big one!), anything involving something called a “tool,” setting up TIVO (but I overcame that one and now I record my own shows – ha ha!), hanging pictures, etc. You get the picture. I go cavewoman.

The issue though is that I check out when life gets hard for me. The heat comes and I wither and push my button instead of being that tree planted by streams of water that Isaiah and Psalms talks about. I think this whole thing was brought home most to me when I got pregnant. Literally brought home. Terribly ill twelve weeks and on bedrest another twelve. It was the first time, in such an obvious everyday kind of way, that I felt like I couldn’t push the button. If my body was getting in the way and I wanted to escape it, I couldn’t. If it was hard to understand nutrition because I had always just eaten what I wanted, I couldn’t avoid it because with a twin pregnancy I needed double the good stuff. If I wanted to go do something for myself during weeks 22-34, even just run an errand, I had to push through the temptation and keep flat on the couch. And when all the crazy anxious thoughts came about what might happen if the girls came at 27 weeks and how their lungs might not work and my body might have an impossible time recovering because it had been stretched to the limits…I couldn’t check out. It wasn’t enough. I had to pray and take captive those thoughts to Christ. The Lord wouldn’t let me go cavewoman. The button didn’t work.

So now the button kind of works again. Granted Kanah and Grace keep the button hidden from me most of the time, those little mama-mouchers ;). Being a mama means dealing with life the moment it is there. So that has been good for me. But there are times when I see an opportunity to check out…and I take it a lot of the time because when it comes down to it…I do what I want to do. We all do. We take only what we have to take and deal with what we have to deal with and we let a lot slide otherwise. At least that is what I do.

I’ve gone cavewoman like four times since starting this entry early today. That is really hilarious! At some point when I was writing this I was like – it’s just not making sense or coming together. I think I might just shorten it or not figure out what the full circle is. Too much thinking. And then the Lord kept me tuned in long enough to reveal how he put children into my life to deal with this cavewoman side of me. To show me that sometimes I need to work it out with him instead of escaping. And that in other times it is okay to just be really grateful for my smart, helpful husband Jason and all my lily pad partners when it comes to working through things in my life.

Now that I am seeing all that though, my “witching hour” (Jason’s term) is approaching. 10:00 is sixteen minutes away. And about this time of day when all my responsibilities are done, the girls are in bed and life isn’t throwing anything my way, it is finally appropriate to go crawl into my cave. Goodnight everyone.