New years, and new years resolutions. After you make one, what usually comes next?

Reality!! Plus resistance!!

Not to mention how hard it is to break previous patterns, or not react to people that live with or around you!

How many times have you made a goal to start exercising and you get sick for a week and a half?

Or you decide to quit eating “the thing” and your neighbor drops it by as a thoughtful gift!! And it looks and smells amazing!

As I sat down to write and update today, I think that it is important to point out the resistance and blessed gifts! Please bare with me at the beginning of this post! The first story isn’t pretty, but is what is going on in our household this week.

First, the Tumble

My husband Curtis went skiing with our oldest son on Saturday. The mountains are blanketed with fresh snow, here in Northern Utah! They both invested in ski gear this year so they headed to the mountains! I expected to see them back at home around 7:30 p.m.

I never checked my phone, but I heard them both walk in the door around 2:00 p.m. They woke me up from an afternoon nap, that I had been taking on the couch while Mae watched a movie, and I was so confused! What were they doing home?

Curtis had an accident, his ski had cut him in the shin and he had already been to the nearest InstaCare and gotten stitches.

Later as we were talking about his accident, and about how he had been composed enough to make decisions for his care the whole day, then drove and hour and a half home, we were complimenting the body’s ability to adapt!

After the accident he had clipped back into his skis and finished skiing down the mountain.

He was able to get help at the ski resort, then drove himself to InstaCare.

I think this is common in accidents, but he didn’t feel any pain until four hours after. In high stress situations like this, the body secretes a beautiful cocktail of endorphins and adrenaline that carry the body through a stressful event!

Curtis is on the mend, and it may take some time to get full movement back, but he’s walking around.

It is always interesting to observe when he has something that takes him down how he responds. He has watched me, in my process, mending from my chronic illness for years now. It has changed how we both respond to each other and to the crashes that are sent our way!

When resistance comes our way, like it did this weekend, a common response that I often have is “What am I supposed to learn from this?”

It’s a question that I’ve been asking for years!

Today, I would like to take a minute to honor the body, and it’s ability to adapt!

And honor the body on its ability to send signals.

Signals say: “Hey, we need support! Maybe a little help over here!”

In order to honor both of these, I would like to share one simple, but hard thing that I am trying to do as I have started the NEW YEAR!

Here’s a basic example of how a healthy body manages stress: Heart rate typically elevates, the body may want to move to help eliminate what might be coming at it, and then after it feels (or hears) that the stressor has passed, the heart rate will regulate again.

This same process happens with the major players in our nervous systems! When stressful situations happen, the nerves in our body send signals in response, actually telling our heart to increase the pace—we need more blood to escape this threat. They also send signals to the body to move away from what is stressing it out!!

With this explanation, let me share my daily goal.

Eat a meal without getting up from the table.

Pretty simple right?

But, eating my meals without interruption, haven’t been a priority for me. I’m usually feeding the kids first, then grabbing a bowl of food as I’m leaving the house.

The other day my son was watching the all too popular movie, The Christmas Story and the narrator for Ralphie says “My mother hadn’t eaten a hot meal in 15 years.” As his mom is serving everyone’s food!
(Can any of you young mother’s relate?)

It seems like there is always something important to someone, at the time that I am trying to sit down to eat.

Why is sitting down to eat so important?

Each time that we stand, and then sit the nerves that are the major players in regulation have to adjust. That similar cycle described earlier has to take place in the nervous system, the up cycle and then back to regulation. Guess what the nick name for regulation is?

Rest and Digest!!!

The body’s ability to adapt is very amazing, but if me—as a mother, if I am constantly up and down, cleaning up milk and fixing the family’s problems or driving a kid to baseball as I’m having my meal, my body’s ability to adapt can’t keep up!

And while on this wild ride I never reach “rest and digest” —and then my digestion suffers.

Examples:

1. Blender on
2. Packing a school lunch
3. Asking one of my children to get out of the shower
4. Cleaning up spilled cereal
5. Driving a child to school

So it takes conscious choice to sit and allow the body to digest.

The Resistance

So here’s my goal to sit down while I eat a whole meal. I’ve known for a while that I need to keep to this goal and put off all fire drills to while I’m eating—and guess what, they keep happening!

This is literally what happened this week, and I need to share the real behind the scenes to illustrate the resistance:)

It seems so simple, my goal!! So…this week I made my lunch plate. I made sure that everything was on it. I had a fork in hand and I sat down to eat.

Mae ate before me, so she was moving her step stool around the kitchen looking at what was on the counter. She wanted to bake with me and she was already pulling utensils out of the drawers and then she yells, “Oh no…I need to pee!!!” (We’ve been potty training for three weeks.)

She pees on the floor. And my inner dialog says, “Finish you meal! You owe this to yourself!”

I told Mae, “You need to wait, I’ll help you in a minute.”

And then I hear—jump, splash, jump, splash.

Great! She was jumping in it! Treating it like a puddle and she was splashing it around the base of my kitchen cupboards!

Yep—it took me a half of a second to abort the lunch plan to get out of my seat to carry her to the bath.

The next morning

I’m eating breakfast. I looked behind me, over at Mae and she is crunching with her hands, a 500 piece puzzle that Weston (my son) and I had been working on together. (It had been a bonding project.) She had already shredded it up the day before, and we had put it back together.

I asked her to stop. She kept smashing it with her hands. The more I insisted the more she pulled at the puzzle. Instead of leaving my meal, walking over and moving her I yelled, “Stop Mae”!

In my seat or out of my seat, I didn’t eat breakfast in a “rest or digest” state that day.

Oh well,
I’ll keep trying.

So what do I need to learn from this?

I know it wasn’t that big of a deal.

And later I folded up the card table that the puzzle had been sitting on and put it up high so Mae could no longer reach it.

But why is it so Stressful?

Partially, it’s because I have been on the stressed out roller coaster for too long.

And I also believe that things will ebb and flow, change and heal. So I don’t want to quit my goal! But in real life, resistance comes. In the last two stories the resistance is coming from my response to Mae. She’s two and that will change, but I hope my body’s ability to regulate more quickly will change too so I don’t have to feel like I’m always being moved up and down on the scale of regulation.

As I sign off, I’m curious…

how have you showed gratitude to your body’s ability to adapt to the situations you’ve found yourself in this week?

A service that I offer on this blog is to provide links to the EXPERTS in the fields to help you, as the reader, broaden your understanding about these topics. One of the directories that I offer is:

If you are a parent what buttons or “triggers” have your kids found? If you are seeking help, please share some of your story with me, and check out the resource page offered here on my blog.

May you build the awareness that you need to help you through what you are currently facing! Sending you LOVE!