Uncomfortable? Lessons Learned from a Sinking Pregnant Lady

Not many years into our parenting journey, I was given a piece of advice that has been clung to ever since. “Figure out what three things need to happen in order for you to be a healthy, happy mom, share them with your husband, and guard them with your life!”

This self-discovery exercise looks different for each of us. Some may only have one or two needs, others four or five. That works!

Sharing those needs with your spouse or other loved one gives you another defender of your health. I know my husband needs regular time on a horse. Daily, we both need to talk and to be understood by the other. For decades I have been getting up hours before the rest of the household in order for personal scripture study and exercise to happen.

But life is often busy, loud, and fast-paced. Personal needs may be dropped during pressing circumstances, which, over time, can land us in unexpected places.

Permit me to illustrate this concept with a silly life experience.

The standing-height computer desk in our room has two hydraulic stools adorning its sides. One afternoon, I sat on one of those stools to quickly compete a couple of tasks. Two sentences into said tasks, the chair dropped four inches in height.

“Rats,” I thought, “I sat on the wrong stool.”

You see, one stool is sturdy and dependable. The other stool has been used as a toy so much (what child can resist a padded seat that spins and moves up and down?) that those blessed to be more than 130 pounds will find themselves sinking to floor level without pushing the lever. Sometimes they descend abruptly, sometimes in short spurts, sometimes gradually, but descending is inevitable.

As I was nearly finished with task number one, I chose to just keep typing.

“Maybe it will hold up long enough for me to complete this,” I reasoned.

Now, please keep in mind that I was eight months pregnant at the time and way over 130 pounds.

One typed paragraph later, I “came to myself” with the startling realization that my seat had sunk so slowly that I hadn’t notice it shrinking and so low that my fingers were typing at the level of my forehead! The problem could no longer be ignored because I could no longer function well enough to finish the task at hand.

Everyone drops their personal needs here and there. That’s life.

That’s parenting life in particular.

But when personal needs are consistently unmet over an extended period of time, we become unbalanced and consequently, unhealthy. In the words of Elder David A. Bednar, “…we know better than this, but we do not always act in accordance with what we know.”

A little slip in one area or two may momentarily draw our attention, like the first four inch drop in my dysfunctional hydraulic stool. At that point, we can choose to fix the problem, or, like Suzanne, just keep plowing forward, justifying the action with, “I’ll get to it in just a minute.”

But unfixed, the sinking will continue until one day you just can’t function well. Then what?

Repentance.

I fear that word can have negative vibes attached to it, but really, repentance is just “a change of mind and heart that gives us a fresh view about God, about ourselves, and about the world”. It’s joyful! It’s turning to your Savior for help to get back where you need to be in whatever area you’ve slipped in.

It’s choosing to get off the dysfunctional stool and landing yourself on the sturdy, dependable stool that’s not going to let you sink down below functioning level.

And it works.