Mental Energy

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things… And the God of peace will be with you.” – Philippians 4:8-9

I’ve realized that since staying at home with the baby all day, I have a lot of undissipated mental energy. I’m like a periodic quadraplegic. I spend much of my day nursing, or carrying her around because she won’t be calm any other way, without any real freedom of movement. Depending on which side I’m feeding her on, I can’t even reach over to get a tissue from the shelf near the rocking chair where I nurse; she’s been finicky during feeds lately and will latch off if I move too much. I’ve figured out this way to maneuver the remote control for the heater with my toes. Soon I’ll learn to paint holding a brush in my teeth like Joni Eareckson.

So I just sit around, or pace around, all day while my mind runs along ahead. It took me awhile to realize that my mind needs to occupy itself; that in a vacuum it will start to fill itself with all sorts of things. I stew. I get down about myself, or what my life is coming to. I worry about my next rotation, which I never used to do—I was one of those people who never knew if they were on call until the night before. Now I dread returning on a whole new level. When I’m feeling yucky at six a.m. after a bad night, I now think that in a month I’ll be getting dressed for work at this time, instead of just wondering when she’ll go back down so I can get in a morning nap.

I start to escape into imaginings, sometimes scary things, sometimes scenes from novels I replay over and over (I believe I have memorized entire passages of dialogue from certain books). I sit there feeding and rocking and enacting whole epics in my head. I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. A promise!!

In all this stewing, it’s surprising how often I forget that there is any higher power in life. I have to kick myself into remembering. D says it’s because I live such a unidimensional life, and it’s true. Your mind becomes what you feed it, and when you don’t feed it anything, it runs around like a naked banshee on a deserted island. You lose touch with reality, particularly spiritual reality, pretty quickly.

I feel often like I’m searching for the holy grail of the balanced life. I’m either always working or now always with the baby, never normal. I keep waiting for life to get normal. It’s not normal to always be in scrubs, just as it’s not normal to always be in pajamas. D says you have to make your balance. As best you can anyway. This means I need to feed my mind something true, something good. I need to get dressed, to get out, to reach out to the friends who for some unknown reason still stick with me. I should think upon God for some time each day, even if it’s only praying for E as she feeds and wondering how God made her with such tiny fingernails. I think I can start there.