I just spent the better part of a week in bed. Treatment #3 knocked me flat on my butt. My husband took the week off of work and has been corralling the kids, cooking the meals, giving the baths and cleaning up the messes. That left me in bed with no ability but to watch TV, browse social media and try to distract myself since my body wouldn’t let me sleep the entire day.

The entire week all I could think of was that I had to get out of this bed. I was being worthless; I wasn’t accomplishing anything. I hadn’t cooked anything in a week, I hadn’t run a vacuum, I hadn’t washed a dish….I needed to get up and DO! Perusing the countless pins on Pinterest of the newest amazing meal that some Mom had created, the posts on Facebook of the women listing all they accomplished that day left me feeling rather depressed. My summer has flashed before my eyes, and I haven’t really accomplished one single thing that was on my pre-summer activity and to do list. Someone else had taken my kids school supply shopping, someone else had taken my kids to the pool for the summer, someone else had been tucking them in at night in bed. I was missing it!

I’ve been in this place before as far as realizing that I can’t be the perfect social-media wife and mother (which we all know this isn’t real at all), and released myself from the expectation that I had to be so…for about a week. Then somehow it all creeps back, the to do lists, the nagging tape recorder in my head that I need to use those weights that I bought to work out with, I need to organize that basement and get those things on consignment, I need to start planning fall and Christmas (yes already).

But this time is different.

Probably because I can’t. Even if I wanted to. And laying in bed fully engaged in my own personal pity party, I realized….who is making me feel this way? At first I could say, “TV! Pinterest! Facebook!” But no, it was ME. Somehow I had allowed myself to be entered into a contest where I would never win and the judges were never fair. How did I get here?

I think I had good intentions. We always do…we try to be better, faster, thinner, more efficient, better wives, better moms. We set ourselves up with these huge expectations and fail every time and spend way too much time beating ourselves up about it. But then we are gluttons for punishment and get pulled back in the very next comparing opportunity we have.

I don’t wish cancer on anyone. But I would wish the opportunity to experience what I am experiencing. Realizing that choosing rest over motion actually can be better. For it’s always in those quiet times that God speaks to me, not  while I am trying to chop some weird vegetable I’ve never heard of while feeding the cat and trying to schedule next week’s appointments.

I think life gives us all opportunities to learn this lesson, some are more eye-opening than others. It’s hard to not compare, not to try to be an version of myself that is superhuman. I think the human drive is a great thing, without it mankind wouldn’t have accomplished what he has. But there is a point when it becomes damaging.

Put the scale down, put the mirror down, put the computer or phone down and log off Facebook and Pinterest. Close the daytimer. Go to bed early. Sit on the front porch swing. At first it might be weird….for me I’m like…I’m sitting here doing nothing. This is weird, it doesn’t make sense. Keep doing it. You’ll figure it out soon enough.

Cancer stopped my merry-go-round. I am getting off. And when it starts back up, I think I’m just going to sit on the bench and watch (and probably enjoy nibbling on a high-calorie, high-fat snack while I do). 🙂