Backing away from the edge

Thank you all for the wonderful comments on my last post. I was in a place where I just needed to get it out there, because once Thursday rolls around and the official holiday season is under way, I didn't want to have this painful post clouding my brain. I want to, and plan to, enjoy the next month--celebrating all the good in my life with all the wonderful people in my life. But I refuse to do that without acknowledging the hurt and sadness that also lives in me.

If I learned nothing else from nearly a year of marriage counseling, another year with my own counselor, and then now another few months back in counseling, I learned that I MUST OWN how I feel and how I feel cannot own me. I have a right to feel anyway I want, but unless I am open to those emotions and let them play their way out, I will only fill up higher and higher until I bust. It's like a tea kettle...if you don't hear the whistle and pay attention to it by moving the kettle from the hot burner, it will boil over. And that, trust me I know, can be a big mess.

I have been that mess before. I spent so long living inside that tea kettle, with my insides boiling up and getting hotter and hotter. Despite the slow, low whistle that I heard in my gut I didn't hear how close to the edge I was. And then it all just boiled over. It has taken YEARS to process what I had done to myself emotionally up to that point in my life. The biggest piece of that was that I had not allowed myself to work my feelings as they came and they just filled me up. Looking back, I think I had boiled over many times before--but just enough that the level would go down and leave room for me to fill up again. I recognize today that I had several go-arounds with depression as a teen and young adult, but until I really worked it through in counseling and with some medication, I didn't completely come out to the other side.

I was worried that I would sink very low at some point in this family-building journey. I actually surprised myself that I didn't--and that I was stronger than I thought I could be. I realize that that is actually a product of all the hard work I have done on myself, that my husband and I have done on our relationship. And a product of my faith and my belief deep in my soul that we will have a family one day.

Yesterday's post was simply about being honest with myself. I know that I could go so much deeper--into despair, into heartache, into grief. I wouldn't be wrong if I did. But allowing myself to just acknowledge that that would be okay is actually enough for now. I'm being good to myself by just giving it it's proper place.

So on to the season of Thanks and the season of Giving. Because one day soon, it will be my season of Getting!