Moving Forward: Altering Expectations

I've taken a bit of a hiatus from this little series, mainly on account of honestly...not feeling like I'm really moving forward for a while. I hit one of those plateaus, where I just headed right back into survival mode with the kids and Mark and all that for quite some time, and I'm coming out on the other side of it slowly, and starting to find my bearings again. I started this particular post quite some time ago, so now with the gift of another quiet period of reflection, I guess I've got a bit to add to it.

One of the biggest hurdles I've had to overcome in this whole moving forward process has been processing a change in reality versus expectations. We all go into life with some sort of expectations, even if they are undefined: Even if they are negative.

If you have grown up with harsh circumstances, you might have more jaded expectations that this will continue throughout your life. If you grew up with idyllic circumstances, you might believe that life will always be easy. Working hard at a job or at a relationship or marriage or parenting might come across as though something is wrong because it isn't so easy, if that's how life was growing up. As a parent, it's difficult to manage the balance between the two: Teaching my kids that bad things happen, but that good things do as well, and we can accept both and embrace both, and keep on moving. I'd be the first to admit that I struggle with this personally.

I mentioned before that while Mark and I were going through the first decade of our marriage, in which things were really, really, really good, I struggled to believe that something really horrible wasn't just on the horizon. Now that I've been delving further into my past and childhood in therapy and my own research, I realize that a lot of that stems from growing up in a home where we didn't have a lot, and things just weren't easy. So heading into a marriage where things were easy, not a struggle, emotionally and financially stable and peaceful just felt very different than where I had come from. After observing what I thought was a good, healthy marriage growing up, this just felt...excessive in its goodness.

Coming from a family with 6 kids, it wasn't often that I got to choose what we did or had to eat or where we went: Really, it was seldom ever. We had one TV for most of those years, too, so I didn't even get to choose what I watched on TV. I remember one particular evening where I wanted to watch Full House (back when there were new episodes coming out and we didn't have DVR or Netflix), and my brothers refused to let me watch it, and I had a full on meltdown. It was life. It taught me to adapt to circumstances, sure, but it also taught me that it wouldn't ever matter if I went to the trouble to voice my opinions or form my own preferences. My parents seldom if ever attended my volleyball or basketball or soccer or softball games (which, considering they had so many places to be at once, I get it). I never had a showing of support or a cheering section for my high jump or 100/200/400 meter dashes or shotput throws. I often was the last one picked up after practices, making the coach wait. All of these things, my entire life, I've just accepted as normal. But truthfully, it WASN'T "normal", whatever that is. I knew my parents loved me, but raising 6 kids, which I now understand a little better, having 4 of my own, it's easy to allow the meek, quiet ones who don't rock the boat to just continue on as it is. ESPECIALLY when you have little toddlers and preschoolers who are still learning about self-control and are having temper tantrums all the time. (I had 3 younger siblings, so yeah...)

As I was growing up, my Mom carried the full burden of us kids as well as all the housework, and what I saw was a marriage where they both worked hard (her at home, Dad at work), and they seldom had peace or calm, and while my Dad took the time to rest and relax in the evening, my Mom was completely spent from spending all day with 6 kids and trying to keep up with housework and meals and passed out as soon as we were in bed. (After which, we'd wake up and hang out with my Dad in the living room and watch TV lol) I'm sure she really tried to get us kids engaged to help her, but most of the time, she just took it on herself and by the time I could remember, she never asked for help anymore. She just stayed saddled under all that housework.

Going from that vision of what it's like to grow up and what marriage looks like to then having a husband who helped with everything from making meals to cleaning them up, taking it upon himself to do laundry, make beds, clean, and when kids came around, to spend 1:1 time with them and give me a break...it all just felt unreal. He was attentive not only to the kids and household, but to me as well, and he invested in us all.

I know from numerous conversations with her as I got older that this was NOT how she envisioned her life. Before she got married and started having kids, she had gone to college and gotten her Masters degree in Education. She had been a 4th-5th grade teacher for many years, and she had been fairly self-sufficient before they got married in their late 20s. She had money to get her hair and her nails done, and buy fashionable clothing and makeup. She had her life in order. As a Mom of 6 kids with a husband who didn't really make a ton of money, and who had to go on WIC and free or reduced lunches, those were things that she had to sacrifice, only to resumed decades later, after raising us all.

Having kids of my own now, I get it. I get the exhaustion and pressure of trying to keep things running and trying to engage the kids to help and do their parts and having them balk and whine and complain about having to put their socks in the laundry basket or ::gasp:: put their dirty dishes in the sink or dishwasher. I get it. And, to be honest, I expected things to be hard about having kids. It was never quite exactly how I had envisioned it, but overall, it has been. My expectation for these childbearing and rearing years really isn't drastically different than I envisioned them to be, considering I grew up in a home with a lot of kids. However, there is, of course, the massive exception that I no longer have a husband to help support me: THAT part I didn't count on. You'd think I would be more prepared, right?

Of course, now that the really horrible part has arrived, it's as if it's a validation that I was right to feel that way. I certainly FULLY embraced life as it was, and I was beyond grateful for how great life was, but I just always sorta expected for something bad to happen, even if I didn't have any idea what that might be.

It's interesting how the tides have turned now, as while I continue to function and muddle through this current, pained existance, I have people remind me so often that "good things are ahead". They remind me that "God has good in store for you". I know in my head that I believe that, too, but I still find myself in this place where I don't really expect the hard, awful things to go away. While I know much of that stems from looking back at my childhood, I know much of it also stems from my faith in God, and his very clear warnings that walking in faith comes with hardship. Romans 8:18 tells us, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." John 16:33 comes flat out and says in the second half of the vers, "...In the world you will have tribulation...” I mean, have you even read the book of Job? What about James 1?

In a way, it's easier to just expect to be disappointed. I still don't really expect for good things to happen, or if they do, that they will continue to remain good. I expect people to be rude or hateful to me. I expect them to disappoint me, which makes me struggle with trusting: Trusting that they'll follow through or that if they do, there aren't strings attached. I assume people don't like me or are gossipping about me. I assume that I have let everyone down, even when I have no reason to feel that way. I assume people blame me for Mark being sick somehow. I have an extremely difficult time believing that people think good things about me or that I am loved or could be loved. It's not that I wouldn't be accepting of the good things, or that I'm actually very pessmistic, it's just that I sorta plan on things not going well, and then when they do, I truly enjoy them.

My expectations, when Mark and I got married, were fairly positive. I was excited for our future, and while I was always struggling to comprehend what our next 5 years might look like, where we might be, if we might have kids, or more kids, where we might live, etc., I never in a million years would have thought that he might not be here. As the first five years passed, and we had done our traveling and decided it was finally time to start a family, I spent nine months "expecting" our little one, and wondered what he might look like, or what he might sound like. I wondered what his little face would look like when he cried or smiled or giggled. I had dreampt up this little idea about what labor and delivery would look like, I spent so much time wondering what our future would be like with kids, and then...then we went on the hospital tour. It was the first time that I realized that my dreams and plans and expectations were probably not realistic.

It isn't that the hospital wasn't nice, but rather that it didn't look like this gorgeous birthing suite like I had envisioned. It looked...sterile. I think when you're just observing it from a non-pregnant Mama's perspective, you see the wall decor and the seating and the TV on the wall and all that stuff. From a Mama about to give birth for the first time, sure, you see the pictures on the wall, but there were also monitors, and I was going to have to wear these straps, and the bed wasn't a bed, but more like a gurnee. It just...it wasn't what I thought it would be, and I had to take a few days, maybe even weeks to really process what I had seen.

Having been in that room (or one similar) for the birth of four children now, it's not something I think about often, but at the time, it felt like my whole world had been rocked. And then we started looking into childcare options, and realized everything was completely full. We had no options, and we had only 4 months to go before this baby would be here. And when we finally found one, it just...it wasn't what we expected. Walking in and seeing all these kids being loud and running around, and realizing that my sweet, helpless little baby was going to be in the midst of it all, that was hard. In all of this, I cried so many tears, wondering what on earth we had done!

It felt like we went from being these carefree people out having fun and a plan for every scenario, with our ducks in a row, everything lined up, and in those moments, it felt like we were just taking blow after blow after blow. Pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting have been NOTHING like I expected. But I tell ya what - parenting, although being nothing like I expected, has been one of the greatest and simultaneously worst things in my life. (I mean, until you have literally caught vomit in your hands, or washed it out of your hair, or dealt with a massive poopsplosion, have you really parented?)

I spent the first handful of years as a parent just trying to process all the changes: To try to reconcile who I had become as a mother against who I had been before being a Mom. It was as though I was classifying things as good or bad; it was all black and white. I HAD been fun and I had a flatter stomach, and I DID stay up later and I wasn't so cranky, and I DID sleep through the night, and I DIDN'T have to be making all these parenting choices. Life pre-kids became this ideal life that I made up in my fantasies. Truthfully, though, parenting has been the BEST part of my life. It's full of constant changes, for sure, but as I've learned to alter my expectations to be a little more fluid, it's become extremely enjoyable, at least some of the time.

They call the first year after diagnosis with FTD the "hair on fire" year for a reason. Not only are you battling the emotional aftermath of a terminal diagnosis, you're then instructed to "get your affairs in order", which means a RIDICULOUS amount of paperwork, meetings with lawyers, and transfers of ownership and drawing up POA documents and Living Wills and Healthcare Directives and setting up trusts and annuities and just SO MUCH. You're applying for disability and hoping and praying that it isn't rejected, and trying to figure out how to best plan for your financial future. It's trying to be realistic about how long you'll have to afford things like assisted living expenses, and how to provide for your family without the double income you once had. It's being flung into a world where you suddenly have to fit appointments into your already tight schedule for therapists for yourself AND your older kids. It's suddenly having all eyes on you and everyone watching the decisions you make and judging one way or another. The list goes on and on. It's insane.

But then...the dust settles, and it's this stark realization that life is not the same, nor will it ever be. The part that takes a tremendous amount of time and work is coming to the realization that it's okay that life is never going to be the same.

Altering your expectations isn't really possible until you resign yourself to the fact that life simply won't be the same again. The question is: What do you do when you've reached the point of acceptance? HOW do you reach the point of acceptance?

I would suggest that the "HOW" is found by really, truly allowing yourself to grieve. None of this fluff, none of the hiding, but fully embracing the pain and sitting with it. It means ugly crying until you have no tears left and your mascara is running down your face. It means yelling, maybe throwing things (super soft things with soft edges that won't break the things), screaming at and being blatantly honest with God. Act like a freaking toddler, for crying out loud. If that means you lay on the floor kicking and screaming, then dangit - that's great! But if you don't, then, I mean, you do you. Go shoot some crap (in a safe environment and not just anything that moves, please!) or punch some freaking pillows. Get to the gym and wear your body down so that it isn't on guard and defensive. The point is, when you reject your emotions and try to pawn them off as irrelevant, you're not going to be able to reach that point of acceptance. You'll grow hardened and bitter and hateful and angsty, and let me tell you what: Love can't live in that space. It can't grow there.

As far as the "What do you do" part, the beauty is that you get to decide on that part.

A shift in expectations is really all in your mindset. If you go into it feeling angsty and angry and frustrated and with a really crappy attitude, you're probably not going to enjoy these changes. However, if you go into it optimistically and try to focus on what you want next, you may just find yourself in a better place.

A friend of mine once told me, "You can't have it all, Amy", and it left me thinking for a few days about it. The truth is, "all" is relative, and until you define what "all" means in your life, then how on earth can you say that you can't have it? When you actually have no idea what you want, or if you want something you can't have and refuse to give that up, then you're setting yourself up for failure. You have to stop letting your life live you and pause long enough to figure out how you want to actually live your life.

Ideally, I think when we go through the loss of a loved one, the initial thing we want is to have them back. But, being completely truthful with yourself, how long do you think it would be before you realized that after all that you've been through and all that has transpired in the wake of this "almost" loss, that just having them back isn't enough? We're all sinful, faulty human beings with an expiration date, and if we're clinging to the hope that they'll never leave us, then we're going to be disappointed, because they WILL, and humans DO. We ALL die.

See, I think the thing we don't tend to grasp until it's too late is that when we strip away the fluff, "having it all" really isn't nearly as hard as we thought maybe it was. It's just that sometimes the things that we're focusing on are the wrong things.

Let me say that again, in case you missed it:

Sometimes the things that we're focusing on are the wrong things.

Some of the things that used to be on my list of "all" included getting a bigger house or one with a better layout in the country with space and privacy. "All" was once to travel all over Europe, to get that boat finally, to have a huge garage to store it in, along with 4-wheelers and new vehicles and just...all the things that once seemed shiny and exciting. It's easier to focus on those types of things when all the other areas of your life are in place.

My "all" list has inevitably changed throughout the years. "All" includes us being healthy. "All" includes being able to better hold our lives in the palm of my hand and let the Lord work. "All" includes being capable mentally and physically to adapt to changes that come our way. "All" includes being able to hold the ones I love close. It includes having enough food to feed my family, and to embrace people who love us and want us to do well. "All" includes finding my village and embracing them. "All" includes having time to spend with my family, and to reach a place where we all enjoy it. "All" includes the recognition of joy in the midst of sorrow. "All" includes internal peace. "All" includes only allowing people into our lives who will lift burdens and not put more burdens on us.

Altering our expectations is hard: It is a process that takes many years, and is a continual cycle throughout our lives. I can only hope that through these difficult times, I can teach my children endurance, and how to adapt to change, but to do it well. I want to teach them that just because you may not have the life you expected, that you can still make it beautiful. I want them to know that they can either focus on the hard things and let them eat them alive, or they can process the hard things, allow them to remain in a healthy capacity, and then look for peace and joy.

I want them to know that they matter and that they are important, and that even though there are things they cannot have in life for whatever the reason, they can shift their focus and move forward. I want them to know that there is purpose in their life, and that they need to choose to embrace that, no matter how it changes or shifts. I want them to know that they aren't going to get it right, and that they're going to make mistakes, but that what matters is what they do after the fact. I want them to know that neither God nor I expect perfection. I want them to focus on knowing God, and on building their character full of the important things in life.

I also want them to know that they don't have to be a statistic, which is something I'm trying to continually learn myself. I want them to know when to rest, and when to allow that rest to restore their spirit and their energy and their focus on new things. I want them to know when their bodies and minds need that rest, and I want them to learn to take that time to be restored.

I'm trying to teach my kids that we don't always get what we want, and things won't always go how we want them to, and that that's okay. I want them to recognize that life not going how they expected it to doesn't mean that they have to throw the towel in and live in despair. It's a life skill to learn to take the lemons we're given and figure out what kind of tasty treat we can come up with next.

To be sure, lemons get a really bad rep. Someone views being thrown lemons as if it's a bad thing, whereas in reality, it's just a shift. You were planning on making chocolate cake? Well guess what - now you can make lemon bars or lemon meringue pie. Lemon makes fish taste more amazing. Lemon is great for helping to clean stuff. Have you ever tried a sugar cookie that has fresh lemon zest in it? The problem is, we're so accustomed to viewing our circumstances as good or bad, and when we see them as bad, sometimes we get this mental block, believing that the alternative path is a bad one. I'm working hard to shift my own view of expectations versus reality to be more of a choose your adventure type thing. Just because something hard or bad or devastating has happened, it doesn't mean life is over. Rather, it means that I have to sit back and figure out what to do next. AND THERE IS NO RUSH!!

The danger in leaving that mindset unchecked, however, is that we don't always give ourselves time to process the change, which is also very important. If we don't deal with disappointment and hurt and grief, it leaves us broken inside with walls and barriers put up, and we don't have a strong core from which to pull the energy to move forward. We're left with this fragility that makes it easy to break us again. In order to move forward when your expectations aren't met, or are even shattered, you have to process that what you wanted or what you thought would happen is no longer an option through the means you thought it would be. Does that mean you have to give up on your dreams entirely? Maybe. If those dreams include a child or a spouse or a parent who has died or is dying, then it's going to be impossible for dreams of spending your life with them to ever come true this side of heaven. However if those dreams include traveling or creating a charity or camping or moving up in your career or whatever it might be, there are likely other means to be able to accomplish what you want to, even if you suffered a major setback that threw you into a tailspin.

To be sure, some of the most amazing people I've met in my life are people who have suffered tremendous loss. If I had met them immediately after the trauma, however, most wouldn't probably label them as "amazing". It takes much inner work to recover from something horrendous, and until that inner work is done, or at least in process, it's hard to truly shine.