Seeking to See the Gift
Written by Mandy Knapp
“Everything is gift.” The theme of last year’s Well-Read Mom conference for the Year of the Giver seemed perfect. The idea sounds so beautiful. I contemplate that idea as I sit on my writing couch. It is where I spend my days reading books to my kids and writing essays to support my kids. I do all my best stuff here. Sometimes, I look around at my life. It feels hard to believe that after years of struggling with infertility, anxiety, and depression and after reducing my professional life by about ten years, I am actually here where I am now. As the Orphan Annie would say, somebody pinch me, please.
It is all so breathtakingly beautiful. And yet still, I sometimes wonder, is everything a gift? To say I have been unable to see the beauty in this life would be an understatement. I have had moments of acute realization over the past couple of months about how blessed I am, yet to be completely honest, I wasn’t usually seeing gift. Instead, I was seeing obligation. I was not feeling like my loves were gifts that I was given. Instead, I saw love taken from me while I scrambled to stay afloat. I was feeling ragged, and the most apt analogy to describe this state was one of flailing to keep my head above water.
In contrast, others push me down to buoy themselves up. Unfortunately, I have learned that when we are not filled up, it becomes impossible to give, and every gift we give can end up feeling like a debt we are owed. That is no way to live and certainly no way to thrive.
The only times I have been overnight without children since the night my oldest daughter was born were the nights when I was in labor with her younger sisters. I’ve spent nights away from home, but they have always been with at least some of my kids, volunteering for some activity or another, usually doing something foolhardy and absurd like sleeping in a cave in the middle of Wisconsin in the winter. The Well-Read Mom conference was the first night in almost a decade and a half that I spent away from all my children and all my responsibilities, and it was quite an emotional experience.
When I resumed life again immediately after the Well-Read Mom conference, I noticed I was anxious. I’m no stranger to anxiety, but the anxiety was definitely more acute than it had been in quite a while. I could not figure out what it was. I spoke about this with a friend who told me that the first time she traveled and spent days away from her kids put her into a unique mental state, too. Being suddenly off duty from being up close and on alert with her children caused her to have a kind of agitation.
As moms, we become so engrossed in the physicality of our lives that it becomes hard to imagine ourselves outside of our lives. It becomes hard to imagine any reality besides that of the modern American, always on the go path to parenting and life that many of us find ourselves on.
Before I had kids, I was a college English professor. I was very busy working as an adjunct at multiple colleges all over the Chicago area. I had no free time. Most of my time was spent thinking about the needs of my students. Yet, my thoughts were my own. My time was my own. I was working because it was my passion and bI wanted a career. I was working as an adjunct because I liked the freedom of it. I loved traveling all over, and as such… I did.
Now, I look back on how insanely busy I was at that time, and I laugh. Little did childless, 25-year-old me really understand what “busy” was. Sure, maybe I had just as little free time back then as I do now, but my responsibilities were to myself, and my thoughts were my own and about myself. Moms do not have that luxury of freedom of thought, nor do I know if we would even desire it should it ever be presented as an option. When we bring life into this world and choose to nurture it, we choose to live outside of ourselves. We choose to donate our lives to the betterment of another. We choose to love someone so deeply that our happiness is almost inextricable from them.
Because motherhood, whether we have one child or ten, is so all-encompassing, we lose sight of what actual life is. In a day, I may write some essays, read a book for work, drive an almost absurd number of hours for carpool, watch a softball game, and make (i.e. order out) some meals. I think I am a thoughtful person. I spend my free time contemplating. Like all the other well-read mamas out there, I read good books. I spend some of my meager free time discussing these books. I try to have conversations of depth rather than triviality.
But then I went to the conference for the weekend. I spent almost 72 hours without a single person needing me. Not a single person asked me for a snickerdoodle during conversations. I drank a glass of wine and, later, a few beers, because I could let my guard down a little: no one would need me to be actively, intimately, and emotionally present to them.
And to be honest, I came home after that feeling very lonely. I was not expecting this at all. I was not expecting the panic or the pain I felt. While I was away, my body could not relax. My mind knew I did not need to do anything, but a body constantly in motion cannot just stop. My fingers shook for 3 days in the frozen north of Minnesota, and then they shook for three days more back here in Chicago.
Being away showed me the blessings I missed while I was away. It showed me that to be me without the obligations of my family was not really being me at all. I am more than my thoughts and my feelings. I am also love to those who need me. But being away also showed me what I needed to improve at home. When I was away, I had the opportunity to spend three days with dear friends, having real conversations in person. I had the opportunity to listen to speakers who filled me up. I had the chance to be around people who value a life of literature, which is, of necessity, a life about something more than what is right in front of us.
Everything is gift. I did not realize the extent of the gift of the Well-Read Mom weekend until today as I was driving home from my daughter’s school. I thought about everyone I had seen over the past few days. I realized that whether they be family, close confidants, or mere acquaintances, they all make up the fabric of my life. They give it meaning. They make it whole. They are the people of my everyday.
I’ve realized more and more lately just how hardened my heart has become. I used to be a Type A person, but I am not anymore. That lifestyle came at the price of too many anxiety prescriptions. What I have come to learn throughout my adulthood is that the only thing that really matters in life is people. I do not mean that in a trite manner. I mean that on a deep, visceral, ultimate reality level. As Catholics, we know that we were put here to know, love, and serve God in this life and to be with him forever and the next. God is a person. Catholicism is a person. What will ultimately lead us to that final union with God is people and the sacrifices we make for them to show them Him.
Lately, I have realized how very hardened I have become. Despite prizing people so greatly, I have been seeing them as chores. And I’m not just talking about my children. I’m talking about groups I’m a part of, friendships I want to maintain, and people I offer to help. I like to give, and almost all jobs and volunteer opportunities I have had have been, in some part, about other people. And yet, all I could see lately was a burden, which made me angry, and anger was threatening to make me bitter.
I can’t say that it was the act of being away and having time to myself this weekend that helped me understand the beauty of all I have. Instead, the act of re-entering the chaos and overwhelm that so often threatened to overtake me made me realize how much of a blessing all of this is. Every cup to be filled, every ride to be given, every hug to dole out, and every nightmare to soothe asks something of me. I do not have to give in that moment. I have that choice. However, the greater choice I have to make in those moments is how I will approach those tasks. Will I give of myself willingly out of a desire to love as Christ loves, or will I give reluctantly, allowing gifts to be taken from me rather than giving myself freely?
We spend the first decades preparing to live a particular life. I fear that for many of us, once we finally get here, we get lost in it and lose its beauty. It’s like being too close to the walls of a cathedral and not being able to see the beauty of the whole, or it’s like being too close to a Seurat and only seeing the tiny dots and not the beauty of the Grande Jatte. The frenetic pace of this life threatens to take from us all that we are prepared for and will someday miss. It can seep us into the details while obscuring the meaning of it all.
Everything is gift. Yes, I see that more clearly now. I also see more clearly how the gifts we are given are not always the ones we ask for but are always the ones we need. As my friend explained her first experience away from her kids, it messed with my head. Luckily, when God allows our heads to be messed with, if we are patient enough, He will put them back together better than they ever were, to begin with.
The calm that overcame me at times during the Well-Read Mom conference made me more acutely aware of the tension and anger I hold in my everyday life. Because I became more aware of the anger, I was able to look at all of this that felt like obligation and realize that with every obligation comes an even more excellent gift. After all, as John Paul II said, love is both a gift and a task.
Amanda Knapp
Amanda Knapp is a wife, mother, reader, and writer who lives in the greater Chicagoland area. She has a Master’s degree in English from Northern Illinois University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Advertising from Marquette University. She spends her time freelancing, writing literature study guides, reading incessantly, knitting, and badgering her four daughters to talk to her about the books they are reading.
About Well-Read Mom
In Well-Read Mom, women read more and read well. Our hope is to deepen the awareness of meaning hidden in each woman’s daily life, elevate the cultural conversation, and revitalize reading literature from books. If you would like to have us help you select worthy reading material, we invite you to join and read along with us. We are better together! For information on how to start or join a Well-Read Mom group visit our website wellreadmom.com
