I recurrently have tension living inside of me. I hold two extremes in either hand and feel caught between them. There’s a big part of me that wants to share everything I’ve walked through the last several months and at the same time, I don’t want to shed light on even a single detail of my year. It’s the choice of being authentic about my experience and withholding what is still unfinished within me.

It’s the tension of loving my life or wishing it looked like something else. The contradiction of longing for my kids to get just a little older; to gain just a little more independence and at the same time being overcome with Peter Pan syndrome, wanting to freeze time with them. The longing to have a full-time career and the blessing it is to have flexibility as I work from home. There’s the battle between wanting to let the Lord refine every part of me and struggling to release all of the ugly sides of me I fight to control, what I desperately try to keep hidden.

Ultimately, what all of my striving has led me to was my doctor’s office. Last October, after months of headaches, loss of appetite, blurry vision, spontaneous body tremors that kept me being able to drive my car confidently, and feeling like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders at all times, I went to see my doctor. And while I didn’t walk out with a script, what I was diagnosed with was work burnout and mom guilt. My relationship with food had shifted, beginning in June. Not out of intention, but the stress I had built up caused my body to not be interested. I’d make food for my family and go pour myself a bowl of Cheerios after several failed attempts to find something that sounded good. The joy in food was lost, although I knew I had to keep eating if I wanted the tremors to stop.

What was clear through my doctor’s compassionate eyes was that I needed to talk to someone. For the last several years of my life, I wished I could talk to a licensed professional, but never thought I had enough going on to merit the need. Humility came knocking when I realized my doctor was right, and I actually had real issues that needed the space to be worked through. That was all of the permission I needed to start therapy.

For the last 4 months, I’ve seen a therapist every week thanks to tele-counseling. I’m seeing so many of the ways I take on stress through my responsibilities as a coach’s wife, a mom, and a remote employee. It’s revealed years of mental and emotional strain that snowballed from pressure in my life. And just like much of the tension I hold, I’m trying to learn how to have healthy ambition in my job and have contentment in the fact that I don’t work full-time right now. There’s so much I need to pay attention to when it comes to listening my husband’s needs and then being able to share mine with him without keeping score of who’s outdoing the other in love. I’m flawed in so many ways, but I’m gaining insight into how my value exceeds my human condition because of the 33 years Jesus spent on Earth.

Being a mom to two boys under the age of three has produced some of the most testing moments of my life. The smallest occurrence at home can reveal both the state of my heart and the fragility of my mind. If you could’ve seen my undoing at a library book ripping in several directions due to a brotherly battle for my attention one Friday morning, you would be embarrassed for me. There’s a guilt that comes from raising littles and having your own identity and responsibilities outside of motherhood. And so many days, I’m desperate for my kids to understand I’m doing my best. But they’re only kids and I take on the guilt of putting the pressure I’m trying to relieve within myself on them.

I’ve grown self-conscious around others about how much stress I carry, especially when it’s the same stress that just repeats itself in all of my efforts to release it for good. A bell will go off in my brain after I share with someone about how taxing it is to work from home with small kids, to not share about that again for an adequate amount of time. I tell myself to try not to talk about how stressful finances feel to me. I’ve made an idol out of them too often — I know this. Still, it causes me to worry when I don’t need to and panic in the uncertainty of my hourly pay that depends heavily on me needing to take care of my kids first. There’s not a day that I don’t battle envy. Yes, with materialism, but primarily with believing everyone is more content with their lives than I am. That they have something inside of them that I just don’t have. I’m working through the shame of my complexity while working towards a spirit of gratitude and wholeness.

I’m learning how to live in the tension of so many things that are both within and out of my control. So often, I wish I could articulate all of the frustrations, the stress, and the weight I profoundly feel to the people in my life in a way I could be assured they understand me. That’s a gift I seldom experience and an expectation too high to put on people I love. But I’m grateful for Jesus. I’m wrecked by His empathy. I’ll never get over the fact that I’m not too much for Him. That the stress I find myself both carrying and creating for myself is not out of reach for His compassion. That He’s a refuge in the countless times I’m troubled.

I am a walking contradiction living with the tension of being bought at a price by Jesus’s ultimate sacrifice of love, and not yet being Home in heaven just yet. Therapy has provided me the space to work through the broken things within me and still see the good He’s redeeming every day. To still see that I hold value, even when my work feels like I don’t contribute to anything that can be measured and seen as a success. That I’m worth investing in myself even as I feel guilty about spending my time away from my work or my family. It’s a marathon and not a sprint. I feel as thought I’ve just begun establishing a training regimen and I’m a long way from arriving at the finish line, but there’s something sanctifying about the refinement process.

Not long ago, I was questioning why God designed me the way that he did, with so many feelings and strong emotions. What I was really after was finding an answer for the meaning of it all. My life. My purpose. Why I wrestle with so many things other people don’t. Or appear not to, at surface level. There was a moment of pivot, when my mind shifted to a different question. What if God wants to work all of the mess going on within my heart, the chaos of my mind, the stress of home here on Earth so that I can serve a greater purpose in eternity?

What if I get to heaven some day and all of the refinement that I allowed Him to do through me and all of the rubble I sat in before being ready to rebuild was for a heavenly purpose? What if Heaven is richer because I’ve known stress and I’ve lived through tension? What if my ability to communicate through what I feel contributes to grander worship to Him and deeper joy for His presence? Is this what it means to store up for ourselves treasures in Heaven? Is there eternal value in giving Jesus agency to refine every part, every hidden side of me?

I have to believe in the yes of all of this. One day, when I stand before Jesus, I’d like to think that in his perfect timing, He will reveal all of the details of my life to me I’m desperate to know now. Until then, I’m grateful for what He’s teaching me between the now and the not yet. How to hold the tension well and give space for processing it. The headaches still come on every time there’s a hint of stress. My loss of appetite is still something I deal with from time to time. None of this can be microwaved into a success story. But I trust that the process of giving my life over to Him will continue to bring on the reward of knowing Him better and the joy of being fully known and understood by Him.

Praying you experience that where you’re at, too.

Take care & take heart,