Fumes

I’m writing on fumes this morning.

It’s 6 a.m. on the day after my son’s last day of second grade.

I was his teacher here at home all year. Oh, how I cherish my time with him while he is young! But, oh, how I counted down the days until this school year ended!

It had to end for the sake of his education and our relationship!

I put most of my “thinking and writing energy” this week into an important and urgent fundraising appeal for the nonprofit I lead. Like all small nonprofits that live hand to mouth, we need money and we need it now. I did my best to write an appeal that would get people who need their own money now to give some of it to us.

I also wrote a column for our church bulletin.

I’m writing on fumes this morning.

Why am I telling you this?

It’s a trick. A writer who has “writer’s block” knows he has to start writing to clear the blockage.

Just start writing.

Since you’re still reading (Hi, Mom), I’m still writing. See? A post that started with “I’m writing on fumes” is already at about 200 words (and you read all of them to get here).

I’m also telling you that I’m writing on fumes because my therapist told me to do that. No, she didn’t tell me to tell you that I have writer’s block.

She did tell me to be more open about my feelings.

Oh boy.

She knows that when I write, I am always keeping you in mind. I’m asking myself if what I’m writing is doing you any good, if I’m giving you my best.

When we had our weekly phone call on Tuesday, she told me to try writing for me once in awhile. Give my own feelings a chance to come out. Give myself room to cry and growl and laugh and shout for my own good.

Maybe she’s right. I really don’t know. I used to “emote” a lot in my teens and twenties. I didn’t have a wife and son then. At work, I carried out the decisions that people above me made. Looking back, I feel like I treated church like my own free therapy group. I could afford to be irresponsible with my feelings because I didn’t feel responsible for anyone else.

Now, I feel like I’m responsible for setting the example and the tone for everyone at church, in my community, at home, and at work. They need me to be calm, cool, and together. They need me to have a Plan.

“Nuclear sub commander” is a line I repeat to myself when circumstances are swirling out of control and everyone around me is feeling out loud. I imagine a nuclear sub commander must be all business, ice cold, without a trace of emotion. He is his crew’s compass and rudder.

I don’t know if a nuclear sub commander is a man without feelings or if he is just a professional feelings-represser at the top of his game.

In my teens and twenties, I went around with my feelings on full volume. I was like that car that rolls through your neighborhood at 9:30 p.m., it’s bass cranked up and its windows down.

When I met and married my wife in my early thirties, I started to see how my feelings affected someone else. I started to understand that letting myself burn hot could suck the oxygen out of the room and make it harder for the people around me to breathe.

When my son was born, I started confining my feelings to some private place where I could close myself in. I often prayed while driving alone, which was not safe because my tears impaired my vision.

The pandemic put an end to “praying (feeling) while driving” because I didn’t need to go anywhere that often. The pandemic put an end to the privacy where I could feel what I feel without imposing on the people in my life.

It used to be that I had plenty of alone time to be “off,” but pandemic life made it so that I had to be “on” all the time.

It’s no wonder my therapist and I wrestle with the same question every week: How can I be a loving and responsible dad, husband, leader, preacher, and public figure while also being a human–being me with feelings–at the same time?

I don’t know how to do this.

I think the best thing to come from therapy so far is that I am now aware that I’m in a bind and that I don’t know how to get out of it.

Well, speaking of binds, look at that! From writer’s block at 6 a.m. to 785 words and counting at 7 a.m.

And you’re still here, too.

I hope you got something out of it (I really do), but I guess my therapist would say that as long as I’m happy with what I wrote…that’s what matters.

I am happy with it.

Grace and peace.