The Chase
Questioning the pursuit and how to endure.
I am pregnant, my belly swollen in front of me with a full term baby while my husband and the whole labor and delivery team linger on my periphery, anxious for action. “When is the baby coming?” they ask in anticipation. The pressure increases between my legs and I, too, am confused as to why the baby has not emerged. I know what it feels like when it’s time to push, and this is not it.
“Soon,” I say, swatting them away with one hand and cradling my belly with the other. “Soon.”
The harpsichord chimes of my alarm vibrate, and in a sleepy haze I awake from a dream of pregnancy that has nothing to do with a baby. I swing my feet onto the plush carpet of my bedroom floor and know instinctively: it’s about my book.
I have been pregnant for some time now with my memoir about running across America by myself and creating MS Run the US, growing the pages and my platform as steadily as I have all three of my children. I desire nothing more than for the story to be on bound pages within the hands of readers. And yet, the pathway to get there has many options and no clear rule book to follow.
Like my children’s birthdays, I tack on another tally to the number of years it is taking me to publish the work and wonder about how many there will be.
Potential stalks me like a ravenous lion and I cannot seem to pull myself from the savanna into the simplicity of mediocrity that rides at my side like a safe, comfortable land cruiser, tempting me to escape the unknown of when this chase will end. What if I just stopped my toiling and got in? What if what I’ve created so far is good enough? What if I just managed what I have?
Here are my troubles – I want it all…within a reasonable amount of time…specifically three to six months from the start of the goal…without disrupting my sleep, family time, workout routine and nourishment. With a cherry on top. Please and thank you.
At times, I feel agile and strong, making ground between myself and the lion, and this assures me that I am on the right path – that I am made for this. Other times, I am tired. Hot and parched. More interested in sleep over productivity, humans over my writing, and experiences over a mound in my bank account. These are the times that I am stuck evaluating how I spend my time and what exactly I need to do to achieve the mammoth dreams I lay upon my life – published author, charismatic keynote speaker, sturdy leader, present mother, loving partner.
Would I be happier if one of these things were laid to rest?
I ask myself these questions. It’s the invariable squiggle atop a dot that grips many of my days. I wrestle with everything laid before me, and among it all, I claw for peace, and satisfaction, and purpose, and joy…guilt-free joy. Am I doing this right? Would I ask these things if I was? Would I ask these things if I wasn’t?
I’m exhausted, I think to myself, loading the dishwasher at the end of another full day, wondering if I could have done one more thing while knowing full well that I couldn’t have. The day is swollen, weighing me down, prompting me to wash my face and crawl between the sheets.
Rest. The day pushes me to rest. Where my body stops, my mind does its sorting, and I dream. Here, I am restored in a space that feels anything but productive (because what am I doing except just laying there?), yet somehow it is. I am reminded that I am not all-powerful, much to my dismay. But also, that I am not alone, both spiritually and personally – a knowing that brings me to tears and forces me outside of myself. In the morning, everything is possible again. A light twinkles, ideas fall like rain, people cross my mind, connections form. Like a pendulum swinging, I am filled, enough for this day, ready to continue the chase.