Two Truths.

So the thought of writing out this stuff has been pestering me for awhile. I feel a bit nervous about expressing this, but....

Here goes.

I work out. At the gym. I weight lift. I've mentioned it online a few times just recently, but I've been weight lifting since April 7, 2014. For the first time ever, in the recap of last week my workout app told me (above) that I got a great workout (dark blue) on every part of my body. Mostly I get some grey or light blue. I got very, very excited about this.

And uncomfortable.

I haven't mentioned my working out until recently because I feel awkward about it. Part of me is embarrassed that I weight lift. And not just that. I weight lift 6 days a week. Sometimes I do HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). But not too much because I've been converted to the weight lifting method.
Lift Heavy.
Minimize Cardio.
Most days I do yoga during the boys nap. I eat a LOT for someone who is dieting, but I eat a specific number of calories every day and I weigh all my food. I don't eat cheat meals. I don't eat cheat foods. I eat chicken and broccoli and quinoa. Baby carrots are starting to look vindictive to me, but I eat them anyway. I eat in macros: a specific balance of carbs, proteins and fats every day. I think about "gains," as in muscle gains. I take supplements.
BCAA's
Acetyl L Carnitine
Fish Oils
Daily Vitamin
Creatine
Tonalin CLA,
Whey Protein Isolate
Casein Protein
I know what each supplement does. I weigh the spinach that I eat. I carb cycle. (Rotating my calories and carb macros to be higher and lower on different days) I drink a gallon of water a day. I go to bed between 8 and 9pm so that I can get up by 5 to go work out.

Recently I have felt a bit insane. Who does that? How did this happen? Who am I?

Well.
Truth.
Last year in February I had my sweet little Graham and postpartum depression kicked in. Exercise has always helped me get through rough emotional times. The endorphins get me through the day. In the past I've done mostly cardio based exercise along with yoga. This time I needed something new and different. I felt burned out of the exercise stuff I'd done before. So Evan recommended weight lifting.

On April 7th with my new weight lifting app in hand I went to the gym on my own and began a workout plan for beginners. I felt so uncomfortable in the gym and agonizingly unsure of anything I did. I prayed that no one was looking at me or my post pregnancy body. I would love to say that I wasn't self-conscious of my baby belly, but I'll be honest, in the wee hours of the gym world, you pretty much only see really in shape people.
And me.

I'd stick in my earbuds, ignore everyone, and lift (semi)heavy stuff. Luckily the app I found was very thorough, I'd watch videos of each lift the night before to make sure I knew the right technique, or what the heck they were talking about at all. I just followed the program that I picked and it told me what to do everyday. I didn't see much progress. But I felt a difference. A huge difference. The days I worked out, I got through the day. I played with my kids. I was more awake. I saw clearer and I felt more alive.

And then the rest of 2014 happened. Rough times.

When I started weight lifting in April I went 3 to 4 days a week and skipped when I felt like it. By the end of 2014, I needed more. I never missed a workout. Snow, freezing temperatures, no sleep. It didn't matter. I went to the gym and it kept me sane. But I wasn't seeing results. I got stronger slowly, but I wasn't pushing too hard, so it was Slooooow. I think I lost 7 pounds in 9 months of consistent effort.
S.L.O.W.

In January I got an email from my workout app that told me about a body transformation competition worth $80k if you win. It was free to enter, so I decided to go all in. What do I have to lose? I needed a big goal, something crazy to pull me out of myself and give me something to focus on. So I committed. To win. To do whatever it took to win. It started on January 11th and it ends April 5th.

I started doing research and asking questions to the killer in shape people at my gym. I picked a harder workout program and have been pushing myself to lift heavier and eat cleaner.
I grunt and make faces.
I lift to failure.
I learned about macros and nutrition.
I use MyFitnessPal every day.
I've discovered some really delicious healthy food, but I've eaten a lot of broccoli and lean turkey deli meat just cause it fit in my macros. I actually do the things that killer in shape people do. And it is hard! H.A.R.D.

And I am 100% beyond shocked at what has happened. I am getting into shape. Part of me feels dishonest about it. Who am I to be in shape? I feel embarrassed to talk to people about working out and I feel half ashamed if they notice that I am getting in better shape. At the same time, I want to talk about it because I'm excited about my results.
Excited like Graham eating his first brownie ever.
Surprised like 4th of July fireworks in February.
I catch a glance of myself in the mirror and I stop and stare, bewildered at the person looking back at me. A couple weeks ago I rested my head in my hand and I jumped and started touching my jawline...I have one now. Progress has happened so fast I haven't had a chance to get used to it.

Before I got married I did cardio and cut out all sugar and got fairly thin, but I have never before felt so strong. Strong and flexible. It is blowing my mind how awesome I feel in my skin. Like severe culture shock, but inside my own body. I am starting to see the hints of muscles in my back. I can see my biceps for the first time in my life.

The weirdest thing is that my self image is starting to change. I am beginning to think of myself as a fit person. Quite honestly, it scares me a little.

I have a new goal that is uncomfortable for me to admit. I am going to see my abs. Whether or not I ever win anything, I am going to keep working until I can see my abs, because for me, that is the impossible. It is a goal so far out of reach that when I reach it I will know that I can do almost anything. I know it's crazy, but I actually believe I'm going to get there.

I don't know if super fitness is just a phase for me or if it will be the new norm.
No clue.

The truth that I will take away from this experience is that every single daily choice matters and I am in charge. I can't control what happens to me, but I choose who I am.
Each choice I make creates something.
The more knowledge I gain, the more intentional I am in my choices, the more I will get exactly what I want.
The faster and more consistently I make those choices, the quicker I get what I want.
It may seem like a cheesy kind of truth, and I've sorta known it my whole life. But now, I actually know it.
I can see it.
I can touch it.
I can hardly recognize myself because of it.

The other truth I absolutely know, is that the day I see my abs I am going to find the biggest, juiciest burger in town, and I am going to eat it along with a whole plateful of fatty fries. I'm going to buy a pint of the richest ice cream I can get and cuddle on the couch with my incredibly supportive husband while I eat every last bite.
Because let's face it, a little bit, food really is love.
I'm Shiraki at heart and you will never convince me otherwise.

My Song

It is almost 4:00…in the a.m. I’ve likely been awake since just after 3, I don’t really know because time seems the hardest to gauge in the wee hours of the morning when I am trying to fall asleep. It’s been a few weeks now that I wake up every night in the earliest hours of the new day. Cause: pregnancy bladder and aching joints. . . and some kind of inexplicable aching, burning feeling originating from the center of my chest. 

At 38.5 weeks pregnant I am discovering that I am either going insane, becoming depressed, or there is something I have to “get off my chest,” or I am going to implode into something quite desperate and unrecognizable. Possibly this will all sound totally incomprehensible and a bit dramatic. But I have come to accept in my life that once or twice a year I reach a point where it feels like I can’t sleep or rest or—or, or continue to breath because life is just winding itself ever tighter around my chest. I discovered some years ago that the only remedy is writing. So I have scraps of notebooks or scribbles in journals from past years that completely account for whatever sanity I currently have.

In any case, today, February 4, 2014 is one of those times. 

I am due (guess date) to have my second son in 10 days. I have unaccountably been crying for days over...I can never figure out exactly what. I know, I know but the first person who even hints at pregnancy hormones may find themselves with a black eye or my undying oath to never speak to them again. 

The other day I suddenly needed to hear a specific song. My mother deemed it ‘my song’ years ago. Along with many other people I’m sure, I feel a very deep resonance with this song. Currently it has been burning itself into my psyche and seems to be tied somehow to the unknown cause of my recent irrational tears. The song is Homeward Bound—not the Simon and Garfunkel song.

Okay, I’m back. I know no one will have noticed that I was gone, but I had to excuse myself for a moment to shed a few of those ridiculous tears I’ve been talking about. 

My dear husband, Evan, has been rather more than worried about me of late, and I have been completely inept at coming up with reasons for my tears. The other day when he asked why I was so sad I responded that I didn’t know, and then (showing one of the many differences between those who have a Y chromosome and those who don’t) he asked, “How can you be sad if you don’t know the reason?” 

Yes, I know it doesn’t make any sense. It is utterly irrational and I will stand by that. Whether something is irrational or not has no bearing on that something being true, especially where emotions are concerned.

“In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing
And the sky is clear and red,
When the summer's ceased its gleaming
When the corn is past its prime,
When adventure's lost its meaning -
I'll be homeward bound in time”

Adventure. Vagabond. Gypsy. Mountain. Ancient. Wending. Persia. Horizon. Voyage. Elusive, Unknown, Chronicle, Peak, Nomad, Pirate, The David, folk music, monument, breakthrough, sea, capture, pulse, island, elephant stranger alley lost rebel revolution poetrycrimsonshipwindepicdangerescape

Egypt.

Thailand.

Japan.

Italy.

Austria.

India.

Sometimes I catch the fleeting sound of one of these words and—I find it very difficult to describe what happens. I will attempt, please excuse any triteness or dramatic flair. I warned you at the beginning that this was for me, not for you.
There are words that sound the depths of whoever it is that I am. They echo and boom through the caverns inside. They prickle and race under my skin and call out to the parts of me that usually rest in contentment and the occasional guilty pleasure. They sear through me and make me burn.

“Burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…”

There was a time, several years ago, when I sought adventure. I had some tattered red suitcases (a wheel came off one suitcase on the trip back from Italy, and a hole developed in another when I ran, dragging it down a rather inexcusably dirty street in Taiwan, to catch a bus). I had intentions and partial applications filled out for Japan and Italy. I was also thinking of going on a mission. And I received a priesthood blessing from my father indicating that I was in the right place and I should stay there. . . the right place being Buena Vista. I chose then, as I hope I always choose, to listen to the guidance of my Heavenly Father. It was a turning point in my life.

I went on my first date with Evan Byrd about 3 months later.
I am now due with my second child…who kicks rather uncomfortably at 3 in the morning. I am realizing with increasing clarity that the next decades of my life hold a lot of things in store for me.
Diapers, Dishes, Laundry, Wyoming, budgeting, saving, cooking, insomnia, spilled milk, patiencestrollerswaitingcrockpotssacrifice

“Bind me not to the pasture
Chain me not to the plow”

Am I making any sense yet? For the tears?

I had a nightmare a few days ago that I had lost my memory and I was screaming at my sister Brianne (who was oddly blond and very tall) because she wouldn’t tell me who I had been. She wouldn’t tell me who I was and I couldn’t remember.

Sorry, I’m back again, this time the tears required tissue and raspberry leaf tea with probably way too much honey.

I am happy, I am so ridiculously blessed, and so far beyond in love with my husband Evan, and my son Malachi. These words are true deeper than anything else inside of me, farther into eternity and larger than I ever knew I could feel.
I am learning though, that there is still some undying part of me that occasionally rises up and flaunts the ‘might have beens’ somewhat unmercifully in front of me. There is an ingrained part of me that longs, that will always long, for the unfettered freedom to incessantly chase the wind towards increasingly foreign customs and exotic places.

“If you find it's me you're missing
If you're hoping I'll return,
To your thoughts I'll soon be listening,
And in the road I'll stop and turn
Then the wind will set me racing
As my journey nears its end
And the path I'll be retracing
When I'm homeward bound again
Bind me not to the pasture
Chain me not to the plow
Set me free to find my calling
And I'll return to you somehow”

For all the color and excitement, the allure of the gypsy life, I know. I know. I KNOW, that I am so overwhelmingly grateful for my life. Sure, sometimes I burn, and I long for a wider adventure somewhere.
Life can be a bit narrow for a stay-at-home mom. However, I read somewhere recently that every person in every job the whole world over, no matter how much money they are making or how brilliant they are, is replaceable. Someone else could get paid to do what you do and the world would go on. The one and only job in this life where you are irreplaceable, where worlds and lives would fall apart if you did not do your job is that of being a parent.
I know I balk at doing monotonous chores and repeating myself a thousand times a day and being extremely awkward, uncomfortable, and huge at the end of pregnancy. I wonder at times if I am still a person or just a cook/maid. I have worried about losing who I am.
After writing all of this, I feel at peace for the first time in weeks. I just needed to get that out.
This is a big life change, one child to two. Any new child coming into the world is an utterly life changing thing.

It just came to me.
It’s not a fear of losing who I am.
I think after all, my real fear, the deepest core at the source of my tears actually stems from the incredible life I chose for myself. Oh heavens, here come the tears.

Am I enough?

What have I done in my life that qualifies me to raise children to become people of worth? Can I possibly succeed in my efforts to overcome weakness and selfishness so that I can be what they need? Am I capable of protecting my children from the evil, corrupt, and negative influences in the world long enough to teach them how to maneuver and fight against them with faith, hope, and charity? Do I have the capacity, insight, and wisdom necessary to instill virtue, strength of character, empathy, and the love of honest labor into my children?

Oh my heart and soul.

Will I be a good mom?

“In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing
I'll be homeward bound again.”

Home.

I’m grateful for the adventures I’ve had in my life.

I’m so much more grateful to be home.

I’m ever so eternally grateful that after a lifetime of effort and sacrifice and love and joy, if I give everything, all that I am, I know I can return to a greater home on high, where I can be with my family forever.