What Would Jesus Do?

  Recently I finished unpacking after moving  into my apartment three and a half years ago.  Why the delay?  I simply didn’t care enough to discover where the dessert bowls were.  Caring requires a crucial combination of both time and energy that I haven’t had since my daughter came home from the hospital.

After a month of being abandoned every night in the NICU, she arrived home with severe separation anxiety. I have not had a full night’s in over three years.  In the initial tortuous months, I was able to care about ten things:

1. Feed baby.

2. Clean baby.

3. Make sure baby sleeps.

4. Try to sleep while baby does.

5. Feed myself.

6. Provide age appropriate stimulation for the baby.

7. Get dressed and take baby for a walk.

8. Acknowledge my husband’s presence.

9. Brush my teeth.

10. Take a shower.

For the first seven months, I consistently managed numbers 1 through 8.  Then I went back to work, showering moved up among my priorities, and preparing classes got added to the list.  Unpacking the DVDs, staying up on current events, making intelligent conversation were not things I cared about at all.  Caring takes energy and with so little sleep, my energy became a commodity more precious than clean water in Sao Paulo.  It was awful.  It was also the most liberating experience of my life.

A nice outfit.  A good hair day.  Makeup.   Staples of my leaving-the-house routine.  I stopped caring about them all.  My routine was reduced to shower, brush teeth, brush hair, use deodorant (I remembered it most days), a comfortable shirt, jeans, and flat shoes.  I had enough energy to be clean, dressed, and present wherever I was required.  Nothing more.

Then it dawned on me who’s routine I had adopted: my husband’s.

With my new routine, I was living life like a man.  No makeup. No blowdryers or straighteners or curling irons.  No time spent over earrings, necklaces, and bracelets.  Only flat shoes that make stairs merely good exercise and not treacherous.  Holy crap!!!  This is how men go through the world.  No wonder they still run everything.  They’re wearing shoes that actually allow them to run.

My husband goes out in the world with visible bags under eyes when he doesn’t sleep and he is still wildly successful with many people who want to work with him.  He doesn’t dye his hair and he still has friends.  He regularly puts his t-shirts on backwards and his family still loves him.

Why the hell can’t I have it so easy?

Turns out I can.  It was during this time when I regularly forgot to brush my teeth until after lunch, that I met and made my three best friends in Vitoria.  I had great relationships with my boss and colleagues and earned more responsibility at work.  My husband didn’t leave me when I kept my hair in a ponytail for three months straight.  My new friends didn’t stop calling when I went six months without putting in a pair of earrings.  My fellow teachers didn’t ignore me because I recycled the same five tops every week.

I hope with all of my heart that I can teach these lessons to my daughter.  If she is honest, respectful, hard working, and fair, she will be successful personally and professionally.  That’s all she needs. High school might be a bitch, but her life will be a success.

I believe the best way I can teach her these lessons is to apply them to myself.  Now when staring in the bathroom mirror, I ask myself a question I haven’t since trying to fit in at my public high school in Georgia.  What would Jesus do?

As a man, would Jesus arrive five minutes late because he had to pluck his eyebrows?  Would Jesus wear the super cute shoes even though they’ll give him a blister on the walk to daycare?  Would Jesus wear eyeliner to a pool party?

I wish I could say I’ve been hardcore enough to ask if Jesus would shave his pits but I haven’t and don’t plan to.  I admit I apply my new philosophy somewhat selectively.  I guess I’m not perfect.  But I don’t have the energy to care.