Friday afternoon was a rough time in the Benjamin household. When my husband came home from work and I said "I feel like I'm underwater."
I often feel "underwater" as a new Mama of a newborn plus 3 older kids. I'm not drowning. I'm not sinking to the bottom of the pool with anxiety or depression.
I'm in the "uncomfortable" part of new motherhood. I'm a few inches below the water surface of my life, lacking a comfortable pace, missing some important breaths, feeling tired and sore in my mind and my body.
Later that night, I wasn't even praying exactly, but a comforting image came to mind.
My husband often rides over broken glass in the city streets and ends up with a flat tire on his bicycle. The cracks are so small, he can't see them. Jon only knows the cracks must be there because the result on his bicycle wheel.
Jon's got a funny trick to fix a flat tire.
Jon will fill up our kitchen sink with about ten inches of water. Then he places sections of the tire underwater and squeezes. When a tiny stream of bubbles emerge, he marks the place. Then he dries the wheel, takes out his patch kit and glues new rubber onto the broken places.
When I'm living my life "right"--open to life, detaching from the world, working hard at my vocation and I still feel "underwater", I'm tempted to blame God. "I'm doing everything you ask me to do, why don't I feel better while I'm doing it?"
That bicycle metaphor made me feel better.
I'm underwater right now, so that God can put fix the hidden holes of sin that are giving me a flat tire. Submerge, squeeze, patch. Submerge, squeeze, patch.
Submerged in the demands of motherhood, find the hidden bubbles of sin, say an act of contrition.
Submerge, sin, confession.
Easiest way to find the hidden holes on a bicycle tire, or the weak spots in a human soul.
