Whew. Of course the prompt is deep when I save it for 9:45 PM....
I think this question is difficult because I have faced multiple challenges in life and comparing them would be like apples and oranges because they were in different stages of my life, involved different people, and many different circumstances. As is the case with all of us, right?
There is another reason I hesitate to answer this question. I find it can be harmful to compare our challenges to those of other people. Our struggles are individualized and great or small is not the point-- to overcome any adversity in one's life should be applauded. I'm reading Brene Brown's book, Rising Strong and one of the things I am gleaning from her writing and her interviews is that if anyone dares greatly enough, they will eventually fall. And from that fall they have to learn to rise from it. Rising strong takes honesty, vulnerability, courage, and tenacity.
Brown talks about the need to be attentive to our emotions when we find ourselves facing challenges. She describes this as a curiosity about our emotions. So, if I am to do that now, I would say I also hesitate to answer this question because I am afraid to admit or claim failures or struggles to other people. Because I am a person who desires competency and I do not want anyone to think I am not capable of being an excellent wife, mother, pastor, daughter, friend, fill in the blank here.
Maybe that is the hardest challenge I have had to overcome: my tendency to base my view of personal success on what others think of me; and search for happiness based on the approval and validation of others rather than from within. To learn the difference between the guilt of a bad choice and the shame of being a bad person. A lot of this part of my nature informs the breadth and depth of all the other challenges I have faced. Guess what, I am still in what Brown would call The Rumble!
The choice to consciously check my emotions is difficult when I would rather check out! For example, one morning last week my husband was trying to convey that our son should come into the kitchen and look at what was available and make breakfast selections for himself rather than me listing off a variety of options to him for him to choose. I became irritated and defensive. Why? As I got into the shower I reflected on what had taken place. Why was I upset? Surface Level: I have for a great portion of his life, been the one preparing K's breakfast plate. It is simply part of our morning routine, as M is often already at work. I thought I had it under control. Deeper Level: I felt I was being critiqued by my spouse for the way I handle breakfast and that put my back up. Deeper Level Still: I do not want to be seen as an incompetent mother and--fear factor--I sure as hell don't want to screw up my kid.
Once I got to the root of where my steam was coming from, I was able to calm down. I wanted to revisit and make sure I understood where my spouse was coming from. Instead of tamping it down or brushing it aside, I wanted to be intentional in listening to and respecting my husbands parental perspective. We are supposed to be a team, and I want to work together, rather than contradict one another. All part of the process. Is it perfect, no. Maybe it seemed like I was making it a bigger deal than it was, but, I was pleased in my willingness to wrestle with myself in order to become more self-aware.
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