Back on The Couch

 Hey, I'm in counseling.

Again.

Isn't it weird?  That first session?  You're paying for it, right?  So you don't want to waste time.  There's no time for excuses or shame or explanations... you pour out your family history with the same ease you pour out your medical history to your family physician.  I had a good chuckle after my first session over that.  

My baggage just rolls right off my tongue.  Like honey.

When I am in counseling, I almost feel like I'm holding my breath... waiting to be misunderstood or triggered.  It has happened so many times on The Couch.  Maybe I don't explain myself well enough?  Maybe I'm crazy?

I don't really rest on The Couch.  I sit tensely, trying to see myself clearly, trying to get out of my own way.

This counselor and this couch have nothing to do with my marriage.  I need a counselor just FOR ME.  I need to work on the fact that I don't trust myself.  I need to work on my self-worth issues.  

As I sat in my 12-step meeting this afternoon, I took notes.  The people in my group are just really phenomenal, and I write down insights religiously.  As one sister shared, I looked into my little introspection mirror and jotted down a question, "Can I let go of my will for my marriage?"

It is a hard question for me.  That's why I haven't answered it.

I mostly want to scoot the marriage out of the scene for a while, not fuss over where it is or isn't... and just work on daily problems.

Like the shame I feel when I

leave the house in what I'm wearing/drop the kids off late/don't eat healthy/don't clean the porch off/forget something/deny something/sleep too long/breathe too long/exist.

I want to work on trusting me to not let me down.

I feel the need to really root some self-worth down deep in my creature.  My innate has it, but the shells and layers on the outside?  We need help.

I also find that learning to have a list of things to work on is tricky when you struggle with allowing mistakes... or allowing time to take it's vital place in the scheme of things.  Line upon line, all in good time, that's God's latest message to me.  Just take one thing at a time.  TIME.  

My kids were all doing yoga together the other night, and they were getting the poses ALL WRONG.  And it was the cutest thing I'd ever seen.  I loved watching their bums in the air, their crooked little warriors.  They were giggling and jumping and twisting.  

I didn't want them to get it right.  I didn't want them following a flow.  I wanted them to be exactly where they were -exactly, exactly.  They were absolute perfection to me.  Why?  I guess because I EXPECT them to not get it perfect or even right.  

I only expect them to try stuff: new stuff, scary stuff, mundane stuff, tedious stuff, exciting stuff.

Perhaps God feels this way about me, too?

Perhaps He watches me twist and fall and giggle and He smiles down at my PROGRESS.  

It is hard to believe that I can progress while sitting on a proverbial couch, but I can.  My great-great grandpa was a pioneer to this area which meant he was basically a viking man... he settled the high desert with all it's winds and ugliness.  He broke ground, a determined, unwavering man.

And you know what he said was the most productive part of this day?  The part he spent on his couch, thinking about the day and what needed most to be done.

He had a thinking couch.

I can't help but feel a kinship to him -The Pioneer Who Sat Sometimes.  I feel myself breaking ground in my own life, and the most important progress I make is on The Couch.