I poured myself a hot cup of tea cuddled up in a pile of blankets on the living room couch with a box of tissues beside me. Everything around me was a typical, sick day scene with one quirk—it was sunny and eighty degrees just outside the window. The birds were chirping, the dog was chasing a squirrel, a lawn mower was whirring in the background, and the giggles of neighborhood kids running through a sprinkler were right outside.
Being sick in the summer feels disorienting. While I’m craving a warm drink the rest of the world moves on to pool days with the smell of chlorine and sticky feeling of drippy ice cream cones.
In a lot of ways I felt like this was the perfect picture of new motherhood. It felt like the entire world was embracing a totally different season of life while my life had just come clamoring to an abrupt stop by constant diaper changes and a religious nap schedule.
My internal world has felt like this disorienting feeling a lot lately.
The people around me feel like they’re moving at a totally different pace than me. There is this rush of ambition, dreams, and desires that I don’t feel in the way I used to. Part of me thought it would return with time. Maybe, after my hormones balanced out or after the nap schedule allowed for more free time. Maybe then, I would return to feeling in step with the fast moving pace around me.
In a typical small talk setting I started to feel lost when people asked me questions. The questions didn’t feel like things I even had answers to. A lot of the questions centered around goals and dreams that just didn’t resonate with my season of life. I felt a sense of guilt for not feeling this drive of ambition in the way many of the people around me did.
Later, I confided in my husband about this feeling. I almost felt shame—like something was wrong with me—for not feeling this pull to chase after something. I told my husband that I am feeling more and more drawn to a quiet, faithful life. Something not a lot of people talk about in Nashville where the focus is often on building brands, platforms, and celebrity culture even among Christians.
He listened as I described this disorienting feeling of feeling like my pace of life was too slow. I told him about the things I used to find so compelling and how there has been an internal shift for me recently. He simply said, “I guess a near death experience will reorder your priorities.”
Sometimes I hate thinking of my birth trauma as that serious. But I guess it was. It definitely changed my life, the way I view the world, and the way I live.
Before I had my son, I had planned to return to work at least partially in January. It’s June and I still haven’t made any decisions. Often, I feel like I see other moms settling easily into a life that seems easy. At times I feel like I’m the only one who it doesn’t come naturally to. I miss parts of myself that I may never get back and I’m mourning that while also embracing the gift of new motherhood and the giggles of a little boy who is at my side each day.
I feel terrified when I think of the future. As an enneagram seven this is confusing because the future used to by my mental place of retreat—full of dreams, hope, and promise. Now I feel like I’m walking into a fog that gets thicker with each step. I began praying asking God about my shifting dreams, my blurry vision of the future, my disorienting pace of life. What did he have to say about it all?
I started to see turtles everywhere. Maybe it was just an increase in turtle movement in Tennessee but to me it felt like a sign.
Turtles were constantly in the middle of the road when I left the house. I’d wait and watch them move from one side to the other. Slow, decided, and constant movements. As I sat in my car patiently watching a turtle cross the road I felt God remind me of the story of The Tortoise and the Hare. I just felt this overwhelming sense that God was wanting me to shift my view to this children’s story moral of slow, steady motion paying off in the long run.
I often feel like I can’t keep up with the pace of other people around me. Especially in this season of healing.
It feels like everyone around me is moving so fast and I’m like this turtle crossing the road.
I struggle to put into words what I’m experiencing in the small talk settings because I can’t dump on any random person I encounter that I feel like a turtle crossing the street or like I’m sick in the summer all the time now because I have dreams that take persistence but I also am on a healing journey that takes patience.
One of my poetry professors in college always told us to not work too hard for the metaphor. Just let the metaphor present itself. So I researched turtles a bit. Why are they so stinking slow?
It’s actually really simple. They don’t have to run from predators (they have a shell to protect them) or chase down their food since their herbivores. There’s no need for them to rush because the plants will always be there for them to eat when they’re hungry. Their shells are also really heavy. So heavy, they move slow because that is what it takes to carry a protective covering around all the time that is up to 40% of their total body weight.
The thing that saves them also slows them down.
In the animal world, it seems like a fast animal would do well—chasing down its food and going after what it needs. Turtles just have a different approach to survival and it seems to be working pretty well for them.
Maybe there is a metaphor in there somewhere.
I get a sense that what I’m after in life—a life full of meaning, purpose, fulfilling relationships, the joy and the beauty of God—isn’t running from me. It might be worth taking a note from my new turtle friends and getting comfortable with being slow and steady and embracing this new pace.
Great post. Thanks for sharing. Sorry for the challenges in your journey, but I think when we do face life/death challenges it can not but change us. I'm a recent cancer survivor - I've found the same changes in me and around me. I'll have to reread that story since it has been years. If I remember correctly, the nice thing about the tortoise and the hare story is that the tortoise wins the race. Fast isn't always successful. Stay well!