I've been like Foolish Piglet.

October 11, 2016
Day 31

     Matt and I are reading Winnie-the-Pooh to the kids. It's a lovely book. I'm sorry this is the first time I'm ever reading it. As with most lovely children's books that I read, I'm finding profound truths hidden between the lines. Tonight, I found a profound truth hidden in a story about Piglet and Pooh setting out to catch a Heffalump. Let me break it down:

1. Pooh and Piglet decide to try and catch a Heffalump. (Which doesn't exist.)

2. They dig a hole, and they place "hunny" inside of the hole to try and lure the Heffalump to the hole.

3. They agree to meet the next morning at six to see how many Heffalumps they caught in the hole.

4. Pooh gets hungry in the night, finds that he has no "hunny" about the house, and decides to go to the hole and retrieve the "hunny" intended to catch the Heffalumps for himself.

5. Pooh falls in the hole, and gets his head stuck in the "hunny" pot.
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6. Piglet goes to the hole in the morning, sees Pooh in the hole with the "hunny" pot on his head, assumes it is a horrible Heffalump, and runs away screaming. Piglet gets Christopher Robin to come check it out for him.

7. Christopher Robin checks out the hole, realizes it is Pooh, and starts laughing.

8. Pooh's head pops out of the pot, and...

"Then Piglet saw what a Foolish Piglet he had been, and he was so ashamed of himself that he ran straight off home and went to bed with a headache."

     Today was a challenging day for me. I was dealing with this THING that I couldn't get out of my mind no matter how hard I tried. It just stayed there. Stuck. Eating away at the pleasant things about my day. Casting a shadow upon an otherwise simply beautiful day. It was repeating over and over and over and over. Like a skipping record. Every time I started to feel the load getting lighter, and the day getting easier, anxiety would remind me in a somber tone...what about the thing?

     "The thing," much like a Heffalump, doesn't exist. But much like Piglet, I let it take hold of me. I let it dictate the way I spent my hours and minutes and seconds today. I let it control my thinking. And now, at the end of my day, I'm left feeling foolish and ashamed.

     The thing about anxiety is: it's a daily battle. You cannot ever, for one second, let your guard down. Because the second you do, you're done for. The best way to deal with lies is with truth. And that's all anxiety really is: a bunch of lies.

     Here are my truths: I'm thankful for the blue of the sky today. I'm thankful for the amazing sunset tonight. For real...fall and winter sunsets make me happy to be alive. I'm thankful for Matt. I'm thankful for my babies. And for Higbee. For my family. For Patty who calls to chat, and then we both kind of just go about our business as usual, and after 5 minutes, we realize we're still on the phone with each other. I'm thankful for walks at dusk. I'm thankful for the cold air. I'm thankful for a night of fresh starts. I'm thankful for Pooh, and Piglet, and Christopher Robin. I'm thankful for truth. And I'm thankful for time to be thankful.