In a Funk

I've been in a bit of a funk this past week.  The house is much more cluttery than I like it, and it's weighing me down, but I do not have the desire to clean it up.  Usually once I start tidying, cleaning, washing, my mood improves.  Right now, however, I can't seem to make myself do that.  As soon as I start straightening up one area, the kids are either clinging to me like needy little leeches (even if they were playing happily the moment before) or they move to a room just out of my sight and silently get into everything they can get their hands on, as well as a lot of things I thought they couldn't.  I know I need to eat but I don't feel like cooking at all.  Somehow I've managed to pull it together for breakfasts and dinners.  But if anyone gets hungry in the middle of the day, they're out of luck.  I feel spiritually cold too.  Prayer seems burdensome, as if there were so many other things I would rather be doing.  Such as spending a useless, unfocused hour on the internet, after which I feel like I've wasted my time.  Even nursing, which I love, is a chore at the moment.  The other night, I cried when Chickadee woke up the first time and I knew my night of regular nursing was about to start.


I am not sure what brought this on. I am sad that I haven't seen my little nephew yet.  Maybe I am wanting another little babe in my own arms.  But I'm not sure it's that.  I found out yesterday that one of my dearest friends had a recurrence of brain cancer, and has a very short time to live.  I cried last night.  And prayed, trying to power through the spiritual barrier I'm feeling.  But that phone call didn't bring this funk on.  And it is definitely not depression, in the clinical sense of the word. I think it is about identity.  My role in life right now as a wife, while my husband is the one at work everyday, with an active life outside our home. He is different.  Wonderfully different. But before I was the one with the career, the one who made big decisions, the one who dealt with things. This role, that I prayed for so fervently, is still so new.  And I think it is also my human fear of the present, my unwillingness to give in to living in the moment.  To accept that this moment, this now, is the only time I have to be with God in my heart, as Fr. Meletios so beautiful elucidates in one of my favorite books.  I think I have an inability to accept God as my boss, to think that He is the one I want to please, to not have an earthly "goal" to achieve.  You know, one of those Specific, Actionable, Realistic and Timebound goals that we're trained to set for ourselves, or accept from our bosses.  I know what to do with those.  LIke a dog with a bone, I can set about busily digging a hole and burying my wealth.  Salvation?  That's a goal that I can't "achieve".  It isn't "realistic". It's specific all right.  And timebound too, only I am not privy to that timeline.  And that goal can only be achieved by Grace.  Why am I so reluctant to accept that Grace?  Why do we say to God "no thanks, I like to do things myself?"  I wish I knew.  Right now, I am going to make my "goal" to trust that the funk, the laziness, the spiritual coldness, those are all just emotions, and not actually anything really in between me and God.  That I can just be here, offer my abilities to God and let him put action into them wherever he will.


In the spirit of blogging honesty, I post this  :-)