Mama's Hips

I've been struggling with Half Pigeon pose in my yoga practice all summer. I've probably struggled with tight hips long before June, but I didn't notice it so much until I began yoga with the fabulous Beth Williams. She is building her new yoga business, Geneva Yoga, and I was lucky enough to join a free weekly class. Beth explains how to get into the various poses really well, and now that I'm setting up Half Pigeon correctly, I'm discovering a lot of tension that I didn't know I had. I find that as I lay over my left leg, trying to sink into my right hip, each breath brings a spasm to the muscle. This isn't my chakra vibration manifesting; rather, I think it's my hip fighting to keep holding the emotion it's been storing there for years.

Photo from nancynelsonyoga.com

Our bodies reveal a lot of what is going on in our hearts and minds. I haven't studied body language in depth, but I've learned that emotions and burdens show up in our muscles and how we carry ourselves. Like many moms, I carry my world on my shoulders, and my muscles become tense in response. Sometimes my shoulders sag under the weight, and then I'll remember to straighten up and bear it with strength. My shoulder blades will take on some of that burden, which eventually settles in the hips. Our hips are where we carry our emotional junk. It is the body's way of trying to protect us, by holding those emotions for us. (If body language fascinates you, you might enjoy this blog post about muscle tension and this one about tight hips.)

"Woman Carrying the World on Her Shoulder" by John Labbe
www.gettyimages.ae

For the first decade of motherhood, I carried my five babies on my hip. Yoga is revealing that, at least emotionally, I haven't put those children down on their own two feet. 

Four years ago, we began teaching our children about managing money. We dropped the bomb on them that they are expected to move out by September 1 after they turn 18. The 16-year-old in the family always finds this prospect  exciting! From inside the walls of our home--where they don't have to think about bills, and groceries magically fill the shelves each week--they envision their own stylish apartment where the chore list and curfew are nonexistent. Subconsciously, they also correctly understand that we, Mom and Dad, trust our children to be smart and to make good decisions. We want them to know that the wide, unknown world is theirs to explore and conquer.

As the high school years fall away, however, the realities of adulting rush in. Two years ago, Kassidy chose a somewhat easy transition, as her path went on to college paid by scholarship and subsidized honors student housing. Madelyn has taken a more difficult, but still admirable, start to adulthood. Her choice is to work full-time until she can serve an LDS mission. The jobs that are available for her young age and lack of experience don't pay a lot, so even when her budget is managed wisely, it will be stretched to its limits. Add the complication of finding affordable housing in a town with two universities and lots of competition for good housing, and you may understand why I worry over her. That worry sits heavy on my maternal hips.

My head knows that moving into their own place is a necessary step in my children's adult journey. Yet, as I push them out of our nest, my heart empathizes with their struggles. I doubt there has ever been a baby bird that thanked its parents as it fell toward the ground, trying to spread its wings. Instead, parents often become the receiving end of complaint and blame for being the source of their children's struggle. As I watch my babies in that unresolved space falling toward earth, hoping and praying that they fly rather than splat, my instinct is to swoop in and carry them to safety. With that internal conflict, my hips come to the rescue, trying to support and protect me from the pain and uncertainty of being a parent.

My prayers of late have earnestly asked that Madelyn will find a good living situation for the next 12 months. I prayed that she finds a clean apartment she can afford so the rent doesn't break her. I prayed that she finds a place with roommates close to her own age who will be supportive friends. I add in that maybe they could also be poor so they don't encourage her to blow her budget. And perhaps her new place could have a pool or a gym so she can stick with her workout goals. Most importantly, I prayed that she could stay on track with her goals to save and prepare for her mission.

One morning as I offered up these requests, I got an answer.

"I've got this."

And I remembered: her Heavenly Father knows her better and loves her...even more than I do. He's watched over billions of His children, helping them to progress. He's watching over her, too. He knows better than I which people and experiences will best help her continue to grow.

So my prayers in recent days have changed. I simply ask that she will know the right place to live when she finds it. I add in hope that she will recognize God's hand in the process. For myself, I ask that I will have courage to refrain from giving her all the answers. My role is to stop searching online housing listings for her. I don't need to go to every apartment tour with her. She's seen me ask about rental deposits and application processes. Now I need to pull back and trust that she can ask the right questions for herself.

In this morning's yoga practice, as I rested my forehead on the ground, seeking to open my hips, I found myself silently crying. Beth guided us to thank our hips for working so hard to care for us. As we breathed deeply into the pose, she encouraged us to give our hips permission to let go of the burdens they were carrying. For the first time in months, my hips stopped shaking and I melted toward Mother Earth, tears of gratitude and relief washing through me and carrying those emotions away.

Photo from www.melissawest.com

Just as years ago I had to set down my baby to let her learn to toddle...just as I am watching her take her first steps into adulthood now, her Heavenly Parents--and mine--are watching all of us walk through this life. They support and guide us, Their children, along our difficult paths. They know when to carry us and when to let us toddle along, because those steps we are taking are for our growth.

But Who's Counting?

Two weeks ago, Kent and I began the X3 12-Week Program. The program is centered around a relatively new type of resistance-training equipment known as the X3 Bar. Each week comes with a set of videos that teach us to improve our form on eight basic exercises plus one thing to improve about our nutrition habits each week. Kent has done so much research about sugar, supplementing, fasting, etc., that we've so far learned nothing new about the eating side of the program. Because we already have pretty good habits in place there, we're hoping to see some serious gains in muscle weight over the next few months. The workout itself is surprisingly difficult. It takes about ten minutes each day, and I finish with exhausted and shaky muscles! (If you're in the market for a quick strength-training system that takes very little storage space, feel free to come try ours out.)

Because X3 is confident in its customers getting into great shape when they follow the prescribed routines, I decided to track my progress. Each week, I measure my weight and waist size. I'm already pretty happy with the way my body looks, so I'm mostly interested to see weight gain as a representation of building muscle. Last week, my scale said I weighed 132 lbs. That was a little lighter than I usually see, but I was measuring after a day of fasting and before eating breakfast. I figured it was probably right. Today, the scale said 142 lbs. What? Ten pounds gained in a week? Even accounting for my normal weight range, that's six to eight pounds of gain. That has to be impossible, right? I called #3 in to check her weight. She has been participating in a research study at the local university, so I could sort of compare our scale to theirs. It put her only one pound off from the university's measure. I weighed myself again: 142. When I came past the bathroom a few hours later, I weighed myself again again: 142. This was freaky! Was this even possible?! If I had put on ten pounds of muscle, where was it all hiding?!?!

I love Jim Gaffigan's bit about whales. Poor whales. 

"It's mostly water weight."

When Kent returned from work, I told him what had happened and asked him to weigh himself. He doesn't use the scale weekly like I do, but for the past decades his weight is fairly consistent. Before his enlightenment about sugar, he used to measure dramatic weight changes with his trips to Mexico. It was always entertaining to see him put on seven pounds of tacos and soda in a week, and then lose half of that in his first week home as he stopped drinking sugar and retaining water. By the next trip, he would be back to his regular weight and ready to watch it swing again. Today, the scale showed within a couple pounds of his norm. He started telling me what I already believed: eight pounds of muscle gain in a week is physically impossible. He assured me that I must be retaining a lot of water and grilled me on what I'd been eating lately. Two days ago was my 24-hour fast day, and I'd had no sugar or highly salted foods for several days...though Kent's insistence that this couldn't be muscle gain was pushing me toward some chocolate in that moment. He then wanted to know whether my clothes were fitting tightly, as proof that it must be water weight. I had treated myself to my annual clothes shopping over the weekend, so the clothes were new and I had no way to compare on that basis. (Budget and sanity tip: I like to wear my new clothes right away so I can see them in natural light and determine whether I still like them outside the store. This little test resulted in a top and a skirt being placed in my return bag and $30 coming back to my bank account.)

We both were dumbfounded about my weight gain, so I stepped on the scale again: 120 lbs. As impossible as a ten-pound increase in a week sounded, we both knew losing 22 lbs. in half a day was truly ridiculous. After 21 years of use, our spring scale has finally lost its ability to weigh and measure.

You may think it odd that I know how old this scale is. Even if it were still under warranty, I wouldn't know where to return it because we received it as a wedding gift, and today also happens to be our 21-year wedding anniversary.

Despite it being our anniversary, I wasn't feeling particularly happy about the day. I woke before my alarm--my writer's brain likes to do that often--so I was somewhat short on sleep and temper. When Kent woke a couple hours later, one of our first exchanges brought me to the verge of tears. Granted, I asked him a question as he was headed downstairs in the middle of his morning supplement routine. But still, he cut me off and gave a terse answer before hearing my question out. This was on the heels of a frustrating marriage meeting (our weekly couple council) last night, which had also brought me to the brink of tears. When Kent saw that his quick response this morning had hurt me, he asked, "Are you going to cry?" I nodded and he offered a short, defeated apology followed by a hasty explanation. I believed he hadn't meant to hurt me, so I referenced our running joke, "Well at least you met your daily quota for making me cry early on, and now we're done for the day." While I felt frustrated that he had once again interrupted and plugged in advice without hearing me out, I'm sure he was likewise discouraged that I had once again chosen to interrupt his flow to subject him to a conversation that turned out to be high stakes. Both of us felt disheartened that the years of work we have put into communicating better don't seem to make a difference.

Before he left for the day, we both wished each other a happy anniversary, signaling that we were willing to forgive, and trying to not let hopelessness settle in for the day. To put him at ease, I added that I had no expectations for celebrating the day. Kent's improv class meets on Tuesdays, so I had made other plans for the evening, which still stood after he learned yesterday that class was canceled for the holiday. We've both grown less interested in gift giving on holidays and birthdays, so I figured our anniversary would be no different and wanted him to know he was off the hook. A decade ago, I still wished that each anniversary would come with a romantic date and a bouquet of roses. Two decades in, we've run out of romantic surprises. As we made plans this year, we just agreed to do something this weekend, which probably means we will simply go to a nicer restaurant than usual. And that will be fine. I'm happier to have a good marriage overall than to be upset if one day per year to celebrate our marriage fails to meet expectations.

I thought all day about our 21 years. How we've each changed as individuals, and we still like each other better than when we fell in love. How there has been a lot of joy on the flip side of the hurts. I thought about our adventure in parenting and the time we'll have to watch our family grow into generations. About the fun we have dating and traveling and supporting each other. About the growth, and discoveries that await us. I decided that ebbs and flows in our relationship are good. They ensure that our marriage doesn't go stagnant. We are each still committed to coming back to kindness and love, again and again.

I spent half an hour writing these sentiments in a card for Kent. When I returned late at night, I found a card waiting for me too, holding a poem. Over the two-plus decades that he has been writing them, Kent's somewhat infrequent poems have become my favorite gifts.

Perhaps our broken scale is the perfect anniversary gift, too. In our 21 years of marriage, we have learned that measuring each other and keeping a tally are great ways to feed bitterness and chase away love. When I seek a fair balance by keeping score of my contributions and subductions in comparison to his, we find that each person's requisite 50% plus the other's 50% never makes a whole. It always goes negative and we end up with hurt.

And so, we work to not keep score. We each pull our weight in the marriage, and practice patience and forgiveness when the other person has less to give. We are not perfect in loving this way, but practice does make progress. When there is nothing to be weighed in the balance, the love flows more easily and we truly do have happiness in our eternal enterprise of marriage.