The Committee In My Head

Relentlessly negative and accusational. It wears me down.

Reaching for that first rich, dark cup of morning coffee... you drink too much coffee. All that caffeine aggravates your fibrocystic breast lumps. You should cut back, you know. Drink more water.

Changing from pajamas to clothes... You are fat. When are you going to do something about that? You know that muscles don't come out of thin air. Goodness. Your legs are getting even more flaccid- your thighs are starting to fall into folds around your knees. How mortifying. And what happened to your stomach?! It's starting to look like bread dough gone bad...

Walking past my sewing room....what if you don't start craving your sewing machine soon? You know you've got a ton of great fabric in there that people have entrusted to you. It's not just yours, you know.

Going to the bathroom... gosh, this place is disgusting. You really have to train your children better. they should be doing some of their own laundry by now, picking up after themselves a whole lot better, and... when is the last time this floor got properly cleaned?!

And that's just a sampling. Keep in mind that I'm presenting a thin slice of life inside my head, and that is certainly not adequately representative. There's a lot of joy and laughter in there. A lot of zeal, a lot of good ideas, a lot of happy. But that committee sure gets in the way of switching up Guilt for Gratitude.

This morning I started a new form of exercise. When I sat on the can and took in all the nasty laundry and grimy sink, I challenged myself to find the gratitude in it. That was easy. I'm so grateful for my children. For what they are learning. I'm grateful that we've managed for six years on one bathroom instead of two. With almost no fighting.

Sipping on my coffee; I decided to google caffeine and fibrocystic lumps. According to the research, I'm not increasing my risk of breast cancer. I love my coffee. I'm grateful that Brian is just as passionate about good coffee as I am. It's a simple, deeply satisfying, daily ritual.

The sewing room and the way my committee rants about my body? Well, those aren't nearly as simple for me. The best I can do these days is to tell myself that it could be worse. The committee is pretty relentless in these areas. Pretty critical. Very judgemental.

There's another "G" word that I'd like to throw into the equation.

Grace.

Take those committee members captive, and trade up their voices of guilt for ones of grace and gratitude. Maybe we'll all undergo some sort of transformation by the renewing of our members.
Maybe that will help to give the crabby commmittee a little less air time and a whole lot of perspective. They've been around for a long time, and I've gotten pretty used to them, so there's little value in thinking that I'll topple this government overnight.

But I'll give myself the grace to try.