A Perfectionist Surrenders (Part 2)

(Continued from this post)

Within the first few weeks of parenting, I found myself completely overwhelmed.  Most parents do, I suppose.  Unfortunately, for me it wasn’t temporary.  I sank into post-partum depression and could barely see through the fog.  It’s difficult to put into words the depth of the despair that I felt.  Being a mom had been my life-long dream.  Armed with a bachelors degree in nursing, I had already decided that I was going to stay at home with my future kids; the degree was simply a back-up plan.  My family was going to be my life.  And somehow, terribly, I now found myself not up to the task.  How could a high-achieving, grab-the-world-by-the-tail girl who had put herself through college, pulled a 4.0 GPA in nursing school, and never failed at anything in her life, possibly not be able to handle a 7-pound little squirt?!

I prayed desperately.  I needed God like I had never needed Him before.  Surely, I thought, God is just teaching me a lesson here.  If I pray long and hard enough, He’ll reach down and pull me out of this ditch where I’m lying completely helpless, and then I can give all the glory to Him.  But that was not God’s plan.  God had no intention of eliminating my helplessness, just my hopelessness.

My inadequacies didn’t end as our baby grew older.  It seemed that every new stage she entered brought challenges with it that I had no idea how to handle.  Oh, I read all the books and I followed their advice, but the baby just never seemed to line up with what the books said would be the result of following their wise counsel.  A perfectionist’s nightmare!  What do you mean, the rules don’t work??!!  Parenting was slow, messy and frustrating, and I felt like a failure every single day.  So, you can imagine my husband’s surprise when, at the 6-month mark, I told him that I wanted to have another baby.

WHAT??!!

“Frankly,” he said, “I’m a little surprised that we’ve survived the first one!  Surely, you don’t want to do that all over again?  I’ve just now stopped pulling up the psychiatric department on speed dial every five minutes!”  Mind you, it wasn’t the baby that threw him for a loop—when it came to fatherhood, he was a natural.  It was the deleterious effects of motherhood upon his wife’s sanity that had him shaking in his boots.

I told him that I knew it was crazy, and that I wasn’t at all sure that I could handle it.  And then I looked into his eyes and willed him to understand something that was happening in my heart—something I couldn’t adequately put into words.  “I don’t want to walk away from having another child because I feel like I can’t handle it.  I don’t want to back away from the cliff just because it terrifies me.  I think God means for me to get in even further over my head.”

It made no sense—not to me, and not to him.  But the Holy Spirit must have been leading the conversation because if what I said was crazy, what my husband said next was ludicrous.  He said, “OK.”

(to be continued here)