Liberating loneliness.

I have a fascination with Myers-Briggs typology, as I’m sure many of you are aware. It’s not a fail-proof system hard-wired into our brains. I use it as the Dewey Decimal for people.  (No author pens the last word in a novel just to have a magical number come floating out of the text. Rather, we create a system in which to organize and assemble the thousands… millions?… of books in every crack and corner of creation.  The Myers-Briggs categories are a manmade invention assisting us as we try to classify and categorize the individualities of billions of people.)

So yes, Myers-Briggs = DDS for people.  Mankind oversimplified. It is especially helpful for the more reserved cerebrals like me who struggle to relate to 98% of the human beings in their surrounding environment. If I can study up on a person, I can prayerfully find a way to interact with them in a way that is meaningful to them.

The problem is, it’s a venture with little ROI.

My category is INTJ. That’s “Introverted, Intuiting, Thinking, Judging.” My personality type is represented in 0.8% of the female population. Can I tell you how difficult that makes life in the social arena?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m blessed with a lot of friends, or people who show a general, occasional interest in the happenings in my life. I even have a couple “Feeling” best friends who have labored hard at bringing out the sliver of humanity in me that hides behind a less sympathetic exterior.  (Actually, let me amend that. They help me remember to show compassion on the outside when in my core I am largely calloused, unconcerned, even antipathetic toward others. ) But no amount of bodies and faces and beating hearts (or, if I’m talking to a believing crowd, community) around me can soothe the loneliness that pervades existence as an INTJ.

It’s only this summer that I’ve begun to see the absence of like minds and like hearts as an untethered life.  Lonely, but untethered.

You can be tied down to so many things and not even realize it. For example, I’ve never been one to be tied to stuff.  My husband would be the first to testify to my disdain for material possessions. I go shopping only when I have a need and I don’t create fanciful or fun Christmas or birthday lists.  A love for objects, the accumulation of objects, doesn’t even fit in with my interpretive system.

There is nothing sinful or wrong about enjoying and finding pleasure in possessions that God has gifted me with. The danger is in the insatiable hunger for more.  More of anything. More recognition. More admiration. More shoes. More cylinders. More knowledge. More influence. More titles. More opportunities.

And for me, the most dangerous want of all is the want for more people like me. Women in particular, as that is where the bulk of my friendly social activity must revolve as a married woman. Women who will talk about abstract ideas, theories and possibilities. Women whose every thought and conversation doesn’t have to revolve around other people and relationships in their lives.  Women who find true enjoyment in sharing a conversation with another woman on theology, philosophy, science and current events and drawing conclusions, making meaningful interpretations.  Women who read more than self-help books with Christian labels, and then want to really dig into a text, analyze it, discuss it.

It’s this particular want for a world where more women filter life the way I do that puts me in a deep spiritual trench time and time again.  I begin to avoid answering the phone, keeping conversations brief and task-oriented.  The seed in my heart that clings to what I want more than it clings to Jesus begins to grow, and little creeping tendrils of bitterness suddenly penetrate every aspect of my life: marriage, motherhood, fellowship with my Christian brothers and sisters, evangelism, family relationships, friendships.  Suddenly, I am my own world, the only world that matters.  Everyone else is an accessory.

So what is so liberating about this loneliness?  It’s the mechanism by which God drives me so deeply into the sickness in my own heart that I can’t help but confront it and deal with it. He gets me back to the place where I can remember and say with conviction, “No. I don’t need more of anything but Jesus.”

The moment I stop needing people to be what I need is the moment I find myself truly beginning to love them exactly as they are.

Life untethered. When you love something just as much as you should, just as it is, and stop manipulating it to fit comfortably into your little universe.

Gage at 5 months.

What a joy it is to raise this little weirdo. He makes me laugh every day. Full update coming at 6 months!

The rebrand.

Saul became Paul. What’s not to love about a name change? A flavor change?

In all seriousness, it was time. The more of “me” I put out there, the less of me I want readily available. My readership from around the web has been creeping up. For the sake of privacy for my family, and in light of a recent decision to pursue writing as a side-project to motherhood and discipleship, I’m entering a blog chrysalis.

But only in 15 minute spurts. Too many dirty diapers. I’m reading the gospel of Mark and Timothy Keller’s tome, Center Church, while nursing my child and scrubbing countertops.

So, if you were wondering where the new name came from, I guess I couldn’t have come up with a better description for the world inside my head. 

More flash fiction, creative non-fiction and essays, in addition to life “stuff”, are on the horizon.

 

The trouble with sleep.

I can’t tell you how often Eric and I hear praises sung by strangers and friends alike about Gage.

Undoubtedly, he is one of the most easy-going, interesting babies I have ever known. (To be fair, I haven’t known that many.) The other morning we went out for breakfast at Shari’s.  The waitress – a maternal, middle-aged sort of woman – saw him sitting in his high chair and asked him in her best “baby” voice how he was doing that morning. Immediately, he squealed with delight and his face lit up for her.  “Well that just made my day!” she remarked jovially. “You are such a good baby!”

And that’s the norm. Whether we’re out and about or home spending time together as a family, he is, far more often than not, a content baby.

But that’s not why I’m writing this post.

I left Facebook because I got tired. Everyone’s babies are cute and happy, every family has the time and money to do all sorts of fun outings together, siblings get along, husbands and wives have picturesque marriages. Nothing felt genuine anymore.

Because here is our genuine truth: the longest stretch of sleep I will get each night, on average, is three hours. The longest stretch I have slept since our son was born is 4.5 hours. This, however, is not the story of our battle, but God’s victory.

I mentioned in my last post that I struggled with comparing Gage to other babies. I don’t anymore. I’m so happy with who he is and I’m very content to wake a couple times a night to make sure he is fed and has the support he needs from me as his mommy. He is not a demanding baby. He is simply not a baby in love with sleep.

I want to be very real with you. At about 3.5 months, we began the 4 month sleep regression. It was a kick-back to the newborn days, and I’m not going to let my pride get in the way of me confessing that there were multiple nights we were up 7 or more times with Gage. He had recently learned how to roll, grasp objects with his hands, and put things in his mouth. And at about 4 am, during this almost month-long stretch, he would be found doing just these things.

Thanks to my friend Katie, this was no surprise. She’d experienced the regression with both her three-year-old daugther and her son, who is exactly one month older than Gage. I was mentally prepared for this. However, I was completely caught off guard by the subsequent growth spurt. “They” tell you that you can expect growth spurts at 3 months and 6 months of age. “They” had the formula, it seemed, but real life often presents with unforeseen variables. I was nursing Gage as many as five times a night to keep him satisfied. At the time, I was going crazy thinking he was so dependent on nursing for sleep after his regression that this was a new normal. And I panicked. And then, as if things couldn’t get anymore exhausting, Gage caught a cold.

So we had a sleepless baby who wouldn’t go back to sleep without me because he needed to nurse, but who was also so congested that it was actually frustrating to try to eat and breathe, and we had to suction his little nose multiple times at night. This always ended in screaming, and the screaming would only end with nursing.

There we go. That’s as real as motherhood gets, right there.

But there’s a light in the darkness: Jesus listens. Jesus cares about the littlest details of our lives. Eric and I stepped out in faith and began to pray like crazy for direction in helping Gage sleep at night. After the cold and the growth spurt and the regression were all over, our little boy looked like he had been through some severe physical and emotional trauma. He was exhausted. It was no longer about our sleep; Gage was miserable because of the extended stretch of sleep deprivation. We knew that this would affect his mood, his development, our overall well-being as a family.

We agreed to do the thing we had said from the beginning was only a last resort: “cry-it-out” sleep training.

Prior to the regression, every gentle method we’d tried to get him to sleep had failed miserably. One gentle approach says very gradually, over a period of weeks, shorten your soothing down bit by bit until he is set in awake. If he cries, immediately pick him up until he is settled down and then set him back in and try again. The problem with this is that, ironically, picking him up only makes him scream more. Eric and I have never been able to calm Gage down by simply holding him, cuddling him, or offering gentle, reassuring words.  Contrarily, he saw this as a signal that he was going to go to sleep, and he fought it tooth and nail.

The introduction of a routine for naps and bedtime, while it seemed to ease his transition and make him more readily accept sleep, did not keep me from having to walk him around the room until he was asleep. On his bad days, he still needed to nurse to go to sleep, and would scream until he nursed.

The worst part: if set down in his crib awake to put himself to sleep, particularly at nap time, this resulted in 10, 20, 30 minutes of playtime.  He didn’t cry or scream because he was alone or thought he was going to bed. He simply decided to play instead, and would not fall asleep no matter how long he was given the opportunity to try.

We were so stuck. This is where parenting becomes the impossible task that it is. We found ourselves begging God for wisdom so that our unhappy child could once more wake up rested and refreshed each morning. And when we decided to try the by-the-book Ferber method for sleep at bedtime on Sunday, we prayed the entire day leading up to it. We had friends praying with us for a miracle for our son.

I am thrilled to report to you that God answered powerfully with a yes for Gage’s rest.

I put him through his usual routine before bed (bath, boob, Bible, bed) and prayed with him for a great night’s sleep, but instead of walking him down to sleep, I turned off the light and gently set him in on his back. I gave him a kiss and told him, “I love you so much, sweet boy. Don’t you forget that. I’m here and I love you.” And then I turned my back and walked out of the room.

When I walked out, Eric had the monitor turned on and, shaking, bracing myself for the worst, I grabbed him and we held each other and prayed for our son.

I’m not sure you’ll believe this, because I couldn’t. Gage did not make a sound. He didn’t cry, he didn’t fuss, he didn’t so much as whimper. From what we can tell over the monitor, he simply rolled over and went to sleep.

And he did it again for his first feed at 12:30 am and his second at 3 am. And he woke happy at 6:40 am.

We were in complete shock the next morning, praising God for the massive answer to prayer for our first night, but prepared for a different story the next.

And then he did the exact same thing last night. Set in awake, barely an audible coo over the monitor, then sound asleep. Woke for two feeds, after which he was set into his crib wide awake, and then slept until 6 am.

This was the absolute last thing we expected, believe me. Every past experience resulted in playtime or, if he was already upset, screaming. While I know that babies are constantly changing and their abilities or experiences vary as they hit growth spurts, developmental milestones or teething, I want to acknowledge out loud what Jesus did for our family through prayer. Ferber, yeah, we may have to revisit you at some point. But our sleep victory this week came by prayer.

Parents, pray for your children. Don’t fall prey to Satan’s attacks on your faith. Don’t believe it depends on earthly wisdom, how many books you have read, the latest research or theories. Seek Jesus when you hit the roadblocks, believe He will meet your every need, and ask with peaceful confidence.

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