Who Am I?

No...this isn't a post on my existential crisis.  Existentialism is for college students who wear black, smoke, and think deep thoughts.  More importantly, it is barren, empty, hopeless, and too angst ridden even for me.  No, I ask who I am because lately I have been wondering.  Has it ever happened to you that you go to bed secure in the knowledge that you are (for me, at least) a Catholic, homeschooling housewife who writes on the side, but whose main job is to secure heaven for her four children, but wake up the next morning, look in the mirror, and have trouble remembering much if any of that? You move through the day on autopilot, doing the things that you must do to keep your home in working order.  You teach your children, get the meals, say your prayers, meet your writing deadlines, etc., but all of a sudden, it doesn't feel like you.

It's not that you don't love your children.  Or your husband.  Never that.  It's more that it feels like you've been dropped in an episode of Wife Swap, and you're living someone else's life temporarily - that you'll wake up the next morning and feel like yourself again.  That instead of going through the motions, it will feel as if you are fully embracing your vocation the way you used to.  Has that ever happened to you? Or is it just me?

This is where I wonder what nihilists, existentialists, atheists, and all of the other "ists" do when this feeling comes upon them.  What is there to do but either turn to despair, acceptance, or rebellion.  None of these paths will bring back the life that fit you like a second skin so recently.  In fact, they tend to guarantee that you will likely not see this life again.  The greatest comfort in a time like this, sometimes the *only* comfort is prayer.  You don't have to feel it working.  You don't even have to believe wholeheartedly that it will.  God doesn't work like that.  Faith doesn't work like that.  You may turn to prayer because you know that it has comforted you in the past, and you trust in the power of precedent.  As a political scientist, I'm a big believer in precedent.  The one virtue you have to practice diligently, though, is perseverance.

I would never compare this feeling of alienation from one's "real life" to a dark night of the soul, but when you desperately want to feel like yourself, I'll confess that the metaphor comes to mind.  As with the dark night of the soul, though, God is never absent.  It bears constant repeating that God does not turn from us; we turn from him.  I'm a big fan of "fake it 'til you make it." Do the things you've always done.  Pray like you've always prayed.  Have faith that the feeling will pass.  Realize that the Devil would love nothing better than to see your family torn asunder, and if the heart of the family can suddenly no longer find her footing, and surrenders to that feeling, he has made a start.  If you are an "ist" instead of an "ian", my heart goes out to you, and rest assured that I'll pray for you, because I do believe that this feeling comes to all eventually, and that prayer is the shortest, most direct, and best way through it.