*Just* a 34-year-old Having a MarioKart Tantrum

So this whole blog-thing started with me thinking the worst was over. And, in certain terms, it... is... (*Insert questioning tone* ) My plan was to get you “up to speed” on what happened the last two years, so I could continue with the “What I Know Now” -thing. But that isn’t working this week, and I’ll have Holy-Spirit writer’s block if I don’t skip getting you up to speed on yesterday, to just be real about TODAY.

TODAY? I’M NOT SO REFLECTIVELY SEEING GOD IN MY CIRCUMSTANCES.

So, there it is.

Life is just, so, much. Finances and marriage and children and sports and church and things and cleaning and parenting and finding-fun-in-everyday-ing: I’m not excelling. Last night, after a double header for Josh’s traveling baseball team (which is five nights a week. Or more. Sometimes multiple games a day. Sometimes when Max is yelling and Ellie is crying, and all the fans are looking) I declared to my husband that I JUST, NEED, TO, FEEL, like I’m GOOD AT SOMETHING. For real. I needed something NOT about struggles. I needed affirmation, and validation, that I’m not a complete and utter failure at having it together.

Enter, God and my devotionals. HAAA, no they didn't enter then. You guys, if only I was that person. Sometimes, I am, but sometimes my brain is fried and none of that reading or processing stuff can happen. What I needed instead?

Mario Kart on Nintendo 64.

(Quick context here: in college, I per-FECTED my MarioKart skills. I can do all the shortcuts, the power-slide, the banana-peel whistle, the turbo-start, the leap frog: you cannot beat me. CAN, NOT. I’m not talking about general wins with more points, I’m talking GOLD CUP, everytime, and I lapped you back there. Like that. Apparently I need to ask for a Christian mulligan, because not everything I'm about revolves around truly deep and meaningful elements. Obviously.)

I’m a super game-loving person, and driving Peach around on her pink Kart, while saying “Peach has got it!” everytime I hit something is a totally free, fool-proof way for me to feel awesome when life has overwhelmed. Not only that, I can shoot my husband while still being a nice person. I can jump on his head. And, mostly importantly, [none of this would matter without the fact that] MY HUSBAND HAS NEVER BEATEN ME. He makes more money, he gets more glory, he’s more calm, and he’s more “I don’t care what people think” -ish. But he can’t beat me at a little car-themed videogame. And I LIKE THAT. A. LOT. Yes, yes I do.

So we moved our couch to face the TV straight on (I don’t care about Interior Design when there’s MarioKart) - and pulled the 64 out of the basement. (Wii’s MarioKart isn’t 64’s. Just saying.)

By one race in it was the same old: ME: perfect. Mitch: zero points. Great. My inadequacy-feeling was down from a boil to a simmer. Okay, good.Then?

(Warning: you guys, if you genuinely ask God to turn your life around for the good, to fix your broken and show you the Ugly, He'll get up in your everything. He’ll find the things you didn’t know you didn’t want to deal with. He’ll mess up stuff because He wants ALL OF YOU.)

I am not kidding when I say NOTHING went well after that. Nothing. I was ganged-up on by computer players that suddenly had skills no one had invented for 64. There were glitches, all in my husbands’s favor. Green shells suddenly had red-shell homing qualities, and question marks would disappear when I passed before them. My husbands roads were paved with gold (pretty much) and computer players would commit Kart-suicide if they passed him. They’d jump right off cliffs, with an arsenal of ammo, unused. At one point I looked at the system, wondering if it was a all a joke and he had cleverly tricked me to teach me a lesson. MARIOKART IS MY THING, NOT MY HUSBAND’S. How was this happening?! One race would’ve been bad enough, but you guys, I didn’t win ONE SINGLE RACE THE WHOLE TIME.

The vulnerable-blog, not-going-to-fake-perfect, I’m-pathetic-sometimes, part?? I was NOT having fun at all by race four (there’s sixteen total). I was BURNING inside, silently wondering: CAN I NOT JUST HAVE ONE THING?!?! Just ONE that I’m good at right now?!? This week was awful. Does this have to be a failure too?!? After thinking that, I seriously prayed that I would start winning again. Oh my gosh you guys - yeah, yep, I did that. Prayed about a videogame. I’m 34.

What is wrong with me?!?

Well, I'll tell you. We are in a waiting/patience-required -type stage in life right now about huge things. Job things, finance-things, life-choices-things. Big things we’ve been praying about for a long time NEED to come together soon for our sanity, in the least. And my part in bringing them to pass is dragging in my perception. I feel useless and helpless. I’m doing my best, hard, and it just doesn’t feel GOOD ENOUGH.

And this dumb game was summarizing it for me. I could be talented and practiced up. I could know everything about everything, and? It wont matter Annie. Failure, hello.

I quit, threw down my controller (right before Rainbow Road) like a five year old kid throwing an “it’s not fair” tantrum. I declared to my husband, all full of snark: “well, apparently I suck at EVERYTHING right now.” There were gestures here. Dramatic pony-tail snaps. You know. 34-year-old things.

(Please don’t think I’m this lame all the time. I promise I just needed to be honest here and post so I can get back to more impressive attitudes.)

I’d like to say that I was aware of what an incredible person I was being right away, and realized it was a bigger issue, sooner (it always is). But I’m more of a hindsight person. Truth was, I was running on fumes. I just needed someone to say to me... “Annie... you’re doing okay. It’s okay. Things are going to work out... you’ve done all you can... trust God...” And maybe a charity hug or whatever. I’d been beating myself up with the negative self-talk all week already: “you can’t do anything right. No wonder life is hard. You think you’re going to get better, you think you’re stronger... you’re not. It’s all going to fail...” And then watching Peach spin-out one too many times without a banana in sight had actually been the last straw, causing (seemingly single-handedly) a life crisis I couldn’t graciously handle. More shame then, cause that’s weird, and for the ridiculousness of it all, because it's *just* MarioKart. Suck it up and pretend it’s not bothering you, pretend you’re a NORMAL PERSON. Pretend you’re awesome at losing today and, then, being awesome at losing tomorrow will just COME.

But you guys, it wasn’t *just* MarioKart. And I’ve come too far in this whole vulnerable-life thing to pretend. It isn’t *just* anything, EVER. If it looks like a secret volcano erupting, there’s something underneath that’s powerfully real. Something VALID. And God wasn’t going to let a perfect game of MarioKart numb that and sweep it under the Kart until life’s next overwhelm. God likes to get rid of it, once and for all.

After I finish this post, my husband and I are going to play MarioKart again. It’s going to remain my go-to, when I'm brain-dead, stress-reliever for as long as my 64 is ticking. But last night, I wanted to play to numb myself to everything I’m failing at. Dumb, harmless? Sure. But God's not on board with that anyway. Sometimes the smallest things are the red-flags pointing to the bigger ones. Sometimes I don’t even know I’m getting my value from stupid things (cause, you know, I’m waaaaaaay too educated to feel validation from a videogame) until it gets pulled away. My need to be the best, poisons what I’m really after: being loved without any BEST coming out of me, even if that's allll week long. Mattering without an impressive life: THAT should be my thing. That's where my deepest fears and pain lives. Without the finances, the jobs, the situations... without all of that. I need to know I still matter then.

Anything we put before God to give us value, is something the rest of the World will use to trick us into never feeling good enough. Every, time.

************

All that from a stupid game. Ugh. God is all up in my stuff. And no, my snarky response about MarioKart despair did not flow into lovely heartfelt God-loves-you statements from my husband. As my companion, he didn’t give me the speech I had in my head that he clearly should've known I needed (*insert tones there too*). That speech came after I sat down and asked God why I was feeling the way I was. And He was really nice and told me I was okay, and that I'd be okay, even though I didn’t believe him for a while.

#PeachForLife