My Bursting Heart MUST find vent at my Pen: Part II

Late nights, long hours
Questions are drawn like a thin red line
No comfort left over
No safe harbor in sight-Sara Groves

I am fighting all the firsts. The very earliest of word and examples I was taught. I am relearning. And I am weary.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve linked up with Five Minute Friday. It’s been some time since I’ve written regularly. You see, my words are not there. They are stuck inside. Somewhere fighting to find a voice, but feeling so small, so invaluable, so useless.

I am fighting my firsts. I am fighting all the things that were first told to me about how little I matter. I am fighting beliefs about who I was told I was. In some ways I can so clearly see God’s hand freeing me this past year. And in so many ways I also feel so intensely trapped inside, fighting, alone. More alone than I’ve ever known.

diggin in the dirt till it hurts
won’t come up for air don’t care
how long it takes me
I get tired want to just get by can’t I get by
but I can’t cuz there’s a
fire in my bones, fire in my bones
burnin in my bones -Sara Groves

I have joy. I am sure in my core I have much hope too. That’s the thing, my life looks very different than how I feel. And maybe that’s one of the marks of a disciple… that even though inside I feel confused, mixed up, alone, and very weary.. I am weak. I am tired. I long for an end in ways I am not sure any I know can relate to. But on the outside, I am striving. I am living. I am living so fully, vibrantly even. And it’s real. It is not a persona. Inside I can’t sense hope, but I know my life lives hope. Hope show’s up. Words of truth come out from my core, the core that’s been fighting to survive, to live, to grow for so long. It’s the fight of flesh.

oh I’m gonna find the truth
even if it kills me
oh I gotta get a new view
the only way I know to
oh I gotta keep my eyes wide open
keep my eyes wide open– Sara Groves

I have seen His hand provide. And I am waiting on that again. The wait is long. It is hard. And there are so many firsts that keep pulling me down. I am crying for relief some days, for a way to voice, an avenue to cry out to, a God with skin on. I know God will be faithful again. And I wait, for the words to come again.

Really we don’t need much 

Just strength to believe
There’s honey in the rock,
There’s more than we see
In these patches of joy
These stretches of sorrow
There’s enough for today
There will be enough tomorrow-Sara Groves

On healing and normalcy

“You can’t patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.” ― Michael Connelly

Over the summer, my housemates and I took many trips to the coastal New England beaches. New England is not known for many areas of intense waves or dangerous waters, except for the occasional beaches where sharks are known (which we just don’t venture to). There’s something about having a rough week or day and then sitting out on the beach, feeling the sand, smelling the ocean, and seeing the vastness that reminds me about how big the world is, especially when my world feels small and lonely.

One particular weekend, the waves were the biggest I have ever seen in Massachusetts. We grabbed our boogie boards and run right in. After taking hit after hit of waves, I walked out within 5 minutes with a bruised and bleeding leg. I couldn’t withstand the pressure. I wanted so bad to enjoy the waves, knowing this was a rarity in Massachusetts, but I couldn’t.

“PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.” ― Susan Pease Banitt

Our bodies are made so magnificently and intricately. They are not designed to take hits, wave after wave. Eventually our bodies will go numb. That’s the thing about PTSD as well, our bodies are not made to withstand the events of trauma continually nor the heightened affects of it indefinitely.

“Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin.”

Atrocities refuse to be buried. The desire of the mind to deny the atrocities are just as forceful. In this subconscious war, the body takes wave after wave of blows, suffering in the areas of digestion, autoimmunity, and within the nervous system.

The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.

Often in my journey to heal from trauma and PTSD I am tempted to plunge in, to take on far more than I am capable of handling and processing alone. There’s been pressure from the outside to move through it quicker, to understand more, to go to more classes, more therapy, more support. There’s pressure from within me, demanding I “get back to” normal life, look like everyone else, find a way to understand the world in order to fit into the world.

Because I don’t feel normal. I don’t understand things typically. I feel lost much of the time. And it’s a lonely walk.

The pressure gets to me often, as if I could only attain “normalcy” and then I would be all set, I’d fit in the social club of life. Only, so often normalcy and healing get confused.

For the sake of “normalcy” I try to find support groups, more therapy, a job. I want to exercise more, lead bible studies, be a pursuer through engaging others relationally. I want to be involved in committees and on non profit boards. I want to have a 9-5 career, a house, a newer car.

“Some people’s lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. You can’t process it because it doesn’t fit with what came before or what comes afterwards.”

But for the sake of “healing” I see a therapist. I take a couple of slow walks around the neighborhood a week. I stepped down from a local non-profit board. I go to a bible study and allow myself to be a member. I stay committed to the few people I feel responsible to and for, and I focus on loving them well. I coach a sport team, which allows me to have a tiny pay check, but also is a good use of my giftedness in supporting others to grow in a unique way. For the sake of “healing” I say “no” to a lot.

And for the sake of “healing” I scrapbook. I watch loads of netflix. I make dinner for my housemates. I visit friends out of the city at least monthly. I stay in bed when the physical illnesses I have are too intense. I ride the waves of PTSD and trauma when they arise, but I do not go seeking it. I do not jump in head first and hope to conquer it. I know that type of attitude is not only futile, but dangerous.

Because the waves are strong and are sometimes meant to be understood of their beauty from afar, not from a futile battle within.

Write 31 Days

It’s hard to look at others who have directly caused suffering and affliction through their actions and find a reason to honor them.

As a young teenager, I was on my own. I lived mostly normal-went to high school, work, sports, after school activities-only I wasn’t “normal” at all. My life was chaotic and often uncertain. The 8AM to 3PM block of time was the only consistent schedule I had. My “home” life was a wreck and then it got to the point where there wasn’t a physical home for a while. And then I became a social orphan having to navigate money, shelter, and food.. and everything in between.

Life had not always been that challenging. There’s a very brief time when I was very young, before parental mental illness surfaced. Things were calm. I remember a few traditions. A tiny bit of warmth still comes over me when I think of it, the faintest feelings of nostalgia I think. A time when I not only loved the people who then called themselves my parents, but I respected them.

My mother was fair, honest. My father was hardworking, sacrificial. They were respected in our community, courteous. There was much integrity in their actions and the ways they cared for others. I suppose I received some of those qualities from them. And to be fair, they still have some of these qualities, but perhaps not in the same ways.

The idea of honoring my mother and father has not been clear to me. I’ve wrestled with how to honor someone I don’t agree with, someone I don’t always respect, someone I can not always support. How do I honor others when I am hurt? When I am hurting? When I’ve been hurt by the same people whom I am asked to honor?

And I have come to realize that though I do not always respect or support their choices, though I may struggle with hurt, honoring someone is less about what they are to another, less about what they’ve done and more about who they can be at their very best. We all want people to believe the best in us, to see the best in us even when we are at our ugliest.

Those early glimpses of  my parents before the hardness and suffering of mental illness and grief and generational sin struck and took root, that’s who they are at their core, their  best selves. It’s the image of God they hold and it’s that image I can honor. I can honor who I see they can be in Christ and hold that hope until they can see it for themselves.

It’s hard to honor those who have hurt and offended, belittled and slighted us. It’s hard to look at others who have directly caused suffering and affliction through their actions and find a reason to honor them. But maybe honoring a parent is less about their role in “parenting” and more about seeing them as humans, fellow bearers of sin and suffering, but also Image bearers of God, wholly and dearly loved in the same way I am. And the ground is level, for all of us to commune with God and one another.

31 Days: HONOR

The power of being WITH someone can alter a life.

Love is a hurricane in a blue sky
I didn’t see it coming, never knew why
All the laughter and the dreams
All the memories in between
Washed away in a steady stream

I always thought home was just a far dream; some wonderful concept that no one really lived up to. But I dreamed. And dreamed. And dreamed. Most nights, as a youth, I’d lay in bed and wonder what it was like to be cared about. I would imagine someone sitting by my bed at night holding me, hugging me. I would imagine what the words, “I love you” meant coming from someone who loved me. I’d imagine I was warm and cozy and that my blankets smelled of fabric softener. Anything that would allow me to escape my living nightmare for just a few hours of sweet sleep and peace in my dream world. And as I became a young adult, I stopped dreaming. I stopped hoping.

Love is a hunger, a famine in your soul
I thought I planted beauty but it would never grow
Now I’m on my hands and knees
Trying to gather up my dreams
Trying to hold on to anything

As a young adult, this world, this hollow pain and sadness grew. I mustered all the Christian perseverance in me that I could. I became good at smiling in public and weeping in private. I felt a difference in me, in my life. I looked at the Church and felt something about me was different then most others. I carried a sadness, an ache, a deep need and longing. And I pleaded for years for God to help fill this. Slowly, my ministry, my relationships, the little nook of the world I had created started to unravel. I was grasping for hope and I didn’t know it.

We could shake our fists
In times like this
When we don’t understand
Or we could just hold hands

You and me, me and you
Where you go, I’ll go too
I’m with you, I’m with you
‘Til your heart finds a home
I won’t let you feel alone
I’m with you, I’m with you

I sought help. A dear woman came along side me. For the first time in my life, someone stood near me and wouldn’t leave. She was there to see it through. You see, she’s one of the mightiest people I know. She loves fiercely and often gently. She sees. She hopes. Oh and she prays. On some of the hardest nights of my struggling to find words, to fight the terror that came with memories, the emotional strongholds, the physical flash backs, she sat next to me, she held my hand, she held my heart. She was my Ruth. She was not giving up on me. She wouldn’t let me go.

You do your best to build a higher wall
To keep love safe from every wrecking ball
When the dust is cleared we will
See the house that love rebuilt
Guarding beauty that lives here still

And I fought her at times, I fought her will. I fought her love. I doubted and questioned. I pushed her away, or at least I tried. My walls were high. The cost of letting another in was even higher. But she stayed. She slowly did the work of loving me, of taking bricks down gently, one at a time. She encouraged me in ways I would never have dreamed of, in ways that someone who really KNOWS you is able to. This was not easy for either of us and it was costly. It took sacrifice. It took bravery. It took love. I never knew such a love existed.

Some nights we’d lay in bed and just hold hands because life was painful. She wept for the pain that this life can hold and do to another. She expressed anger. She gave my a right to feel, to feel whatever I did, without a need to keep a wall, no matter how seemingly “ungodly” my feels appeared. She stayed by my side. Dinners, outings, holidays, birthdays, family days, everyday things, church events. She stood near me, often literally. The power of being WITH someone can alter a life. It did mine.

Who can say I’m left with nothing?
When I have all of you, all of you, yeah
In the way you’ve always loved me
I remember He does too

About a year ago, I drove by her old house. She had moved a couple weeks prior out of state. And I missed her terribly. I missed her whole family, a part of my family. It was a place I drew chalk pictures on the sidewalk with her kids. A home I spent countless dinners, lunches, and weekend afternoons at. I discovered new foods in her home. I discovered a new way of life. Her home was small, but it was warm. And I went back that day, just because I missed her.

I crept up the stairs to her old home and looked around her yard, for any reminder that she used to live there, for something to grasp, some memory that it all happened, that it mattered. As if this location held some power.

I looked in the window and saw everything empty. Nothing. I gasped, a little shocked. Shocked that this was just a house. And I learned that day, home isn’t so much about a location, a physical house. Home is a people. A people who get you, who know you and still want you. Home is the place you’re welcomed back into without needing a welcome. Home is a people that hold your heart when you’ve forgotten it somewhere along the pain of life. Home is a people who fill a house.

She gave everything she had to me. What was once used to harm me, doesn’t harm me anymore. Love covered that, revealed it, and is healing it. The love of God through her sacrifices, through her love. I know what it means to have a home. To be loved.

She gave me shelter for my wounds and she stood and held me many times when I was too weak, to shattered to hold my own heart.

Even though Jesus had the 99 sheep, He still would go back to find the one that was struggling. That one is worth much. Each one is worth much. Sometimes the cost of bringing one back is heavy. Oh but people are worth it. So worth it.

Love is rebuilding a home in me. What was once used to hurt, is now being used to heal. She saw beauty in me and called it out. Now I know what a home is.

31 Days of Writing: Home

You cannot have that

To the Thief,

If we were to list what you stole from us, we would write forever.

We’ve heard other survivors say that their childhood was stolen. That’s close to being true for us. What you stole was the child within us. We were ancient ruins before we were 10.

When we look back at pictures of us from that time, they look like us…almost. It’s as though they are very realistic masks of the girls we used to be. But blank. Like a light went out. We turned the corners of our mouths up for the camera, because we were obedient girls and knew that’s what was expected—but there was no joy. We were guessing at normal.

We looked tired. We were tired. All the time. You stole our belief that we were safe in the world. Even in our little worlds. When someone who is supposed to love you, supposed to protect you, violates your trust and desecrates your body, you feel as though danger lurks everywhere. If you aren’t safe in the cocoon of your own family, you understand that you will never be safe anywhere.

You taught us to hate our bodies. We still have not entirely unlearned that lesson, even more than three decades later.

We know that if our focus is on the wounds of the past, we will miss out on the blessings of the future, and we are unwilling to allow that. In order to cast out that darkness, in order to banish that hatred, what we finally realize is that we need to forgive you.

We don’t want to carry these heavy things anymore. Without forgiveness, there is no freedom from this. From you. And we want to travel light.

We are going to do our best to let you go. To have this be one thing that happened, a long time ago. Not the defining thing. Not the totality of who we are. Just a chapter in the book of our lives—perhaps never completely closed, but a section we hope to revisit less and less. There is too much happiness ahead of us, too much goodness and grace in the world, to spend time reliving such pain.

We refuse to continue to be your host. We will not feed you anymore. You own a great deal of our past, but we will give you none of our future.

You cannot have that.

It’s time to sit in the sun.

Goodbye.

BostonMAG

The bravest thing I ever did was continue my life when I wanted to die.

In this house, we’re all about growth and celebrating.

My housemates and I were out to dinner one evening celebrating one of their birthdays, a housemate who just moved in the week prior. This new housemate was sort of blown away by how much care we took in celebrating her, someone we didn’t know, who hadn’t given us anything or done anything for us. She was new.. new to our home, new to the neighborhood, new to the city, even new to this part of the country. She didn’t know another soul around, except for the newly developed friendships in our house.

A current housemate shared with her that in this house, we’re all about growth and celebrating. And that, friends, made me feel much warmth inside. You see, for most of my life I’ve lived a certain way in order to meet a standard that I felt my community demanded of me. I felt unsafe in my household as a young person, with my relatives, and within my church community.  Living in such bonds and fear is crippling. Living in that during foundational years of your life, suffocating. There’s little growth when your trying to survive. Few, if any, saw me enough to celebrate me. I thought I wasn’t worth celebrating.

Over and over again I was told how brave I was in church, for living in what I did, for experiencing what I had. But no one actually knew what my life was really like. There were many well meaning assumptions made, but so very few, if even one, actually asked. I didn’t feel brave. I felt like a coward, living so terrified of life. I just had to suppress my real emotions to make everyone else comfortable, to make myself fit in, to make it. Shame. So much shame.

The bravest thing I ever did was continue my life when I wanted to die.

And I hit a point where I didn’t want to live. I’ve hit it many times if I am going to be honest here. The days when life feels bare and joy seems ripped out from beneath me and I’m clawing it back with everything that’s left. And I’m healing.

But I kept clawing. And fighting. And asking the Lord to break me all up and heal me. I’ve never been afraid of that, of the breaking. That’s the easy part for me. It’s the healing I don’t understand. It’s unconditional love I’ve never known. It’s sometimes the warmth that comes out of me at the most unexpected times, the tenderness, the weepiness, the empathy. It’s the healing part that’s hard, painful. That’s bravery. Surviving didn’t make me brave. Continuing to heal when I’ve wanted to die, that’s brave.

To tell you my purpose is to tell of Him

So here I am, serving the Lord with many tears and trials. Living in a home in which it is common places to celebrate small things, like Froyo Friday-just because we made it through another week, or celebrating a tough appointment or meeting or hard conversation with someone. So we go out, we order in, we bake some cupcakes, and we celebrate and record these small feats of growth as we serve the Lord with many tears and trials and claw our way towards hope and joy. And as we mend, we move from needing help to giving help, without even thinking of it. The process is not a waste of time if we’ve learned something. Because in this house we’re all about growth and celebrating and you can’t have one without the other (at least in our home).

FMF:Celebrate

Dear Nurses

Dear friends,

It’s been four years post-op for me. Four years since I had much of my intestines removed. Four years since a surgery that saved my life. Four years of learning to adjust to this new way of living.

Some things I’ve learned in the last 4 years:

1. I don’t miss the hospital (but I never thought I would).
2. It’s such a privilege to get to eat fruits and vegetables and not be confined to tuna, rice, applesauce, and tomato soup everyday. I don’t take that privilege lightly.
3. I can do more physically then I ever imagined possible. I am limited, but I didn’t know I was capable of so much. Just yesterday as I was coaching a high school soccer team, I did a dozen penalty kicks on the goalie. I hardly knew I could still do that. It’s like all my pre-sickness skills are still there, in hiding (12 years later).
4. I used to bleed and hemorrhage constantly. Often 5-10 minutes after eating or drinking anything. That limited my traveling and how far I could go. It also limited how traveling looked. If I was to travel, I would need special medicine and I could not eat for 15 hours beforehand and not eat until after I had arrived where I was going.
5. Not everyone keeps spare underwear and pants in their purse. I did not even think this was weird until I was at an event recently. Someone spilled juice on themselves and said, “Wouldn’t it be so great if we all just kept spare pants and underwear in our purse.” I said I did. She looked at me like I was crazy. You see, incidents happen to me weekly, if not multiple times a week with a colostomy bag. Mostly no one ever knows they happen. I have many stories..funny, funny stories.
6. I’ve learned to laugh at things that happen to me because of my colostomy bag. Some others are not comfortable with “potty” talk, and that’s ok, but it’s a legitimate and substantial part of my life. There’s just some things that are plain funny. I often forget most people aren’t aware I even have it.
7. Some people know me by the water bottle I carry around. I like water, but I used to hate it. I only drink so much because I have to 🙂 I will still need to receive IV liquids twice each summer. With very little intestines I can’t absorb water, so during the warmer months, I need some help getting all the water in.
8. Lastly, and more importantly, I’ve learned to value nurses. For 8 years I was in and out of the hospital often. For several of those years I had to go in at least every 3 months for 5-10 days just to stay alive, along with weekly day-long infusion/nutrient treatments, blood transfusions, and other appointments. I can’t recall one not nice nurse. I can recall many doctors though…  Now that I am out of much of the immediate”emergency” situations of my health life, now that I’ve been rarely having to visit the hospital and stay over night, I have such an appreciation for nurses.

You see, I appreciate you nurses. I was a lonely 17 year old. I had a friend or two and a young married couple that would visit me in the hospital as a young person. There was so much pain that no one saw. I had no words for the loneliness and isolation I felt being so alone in life. I was lonely and I was scared and I didn’t know what to do in the hospital. If I was cold, or thirsty, or needed the bathroom. I didn’t know I had a right to not be in pain, to ask for more blankets, or to have my hair washed. One nurse even painted my toes. I never had anyone paint my toes at that point. Another nurse brushed my hair and would french braid it every day. And I wasn’t even in the pediatric unit!

You, nurses, told me it was okay when I hemorrhaged and bled all over my sheets. I expected to be yelled at, but you just had compassion and said it was totally fine. One time you even brought me in a chocolate because you said I deserved a special treat for the types of pain I had to endure as a young person. Once, you said I was brave and you didn’t know how I did it all, how I held it all together. You encouraged me when I had so little of it in my life. The truth is, I don’t know either. But I do know that you nurses helped. You made the hospital a safe place and as comfortable as a hospital bed/room can be.

If a day would go by without a visitor (a day is a long, long time in a hospital), you nurses often sat at the end of my bed and talked with me, asked me questions, played games with me late at night. You listened as I read you parts of what I was learning in my bible. You sometimes shared with me some of what was going on in your life. You let me pray for you out loud. You told me about your families. You told me when you were leaving and when you’d be back.

Dear nurses, you guys are so important, you are so valued. You are so much more than the medical things that you do. You are much more valuable than you get credit for.

Dear nurses, you took an area that I was ashamed and terrified of, my heath, and you breathed dignity into it through your care and compassion, through the small acts of kindness and gentleness you showed to a stranger. Nurses, you made that young, scared, famililess teenager feel brave. You made me feel normal, regular, typical, special in a world in which I have often been an outcast and “different”.

Four years later and I am even more thankful for what you’ve done for me. Thank you nurses, for what you do. You offer healthcare, but you offer so much more too.

Gratefully,

A long-standing, former hospital room occupier.

6 Things I learned in July

The What We Learned posts are hosted by Emily Freeman as a “monthly community link-up to share the fascinating, ridiculous, sacred, or small.”  Today is my second time joining with

6 Things I Learned in July:

1. Brightly Painted Toes: I just love them. I sort of refuse to go anywhere with sand without painted toe nails. It’s one of the founding marks of summer for me… bright toe nails peeking through the sand. And this summer it is my goal to make it to sandy beach places as much as possible. I just love the expanse and the smell of the ocean.

2. Carpentry: I have a roommate getting married. We’ve been fixing up some furniture for her. You know, the old stuff thats a bit wobbly, has some character, and is mostly missing ALL it’s nails and screws. So we’ve been hammering and painting away and surprisingly, we are an awesome carpentry pair.

3. Driving: I’ve learned that I am now terrified of driving. Over a year ago I became unable to drive much or often. In July I started to drive more often and I have been terrified of it. Terrified I’d have a pseudo seizure, head tremors, or vertigo.. terrified I’d injure someone. The anticipation of it is the worst. I literally nearly lose my breath from the fear of driving. But I am trying. Slowly.

4. Lemon Drops: There’s this plant called a Lemon Drop. I didn’t know it existed. It’s huge and grows like a spider plant with small yellow and white “drop” looking flowers. I’m sort of loving it right now! It looks beautiful on my porch.

5. Loving: Loving people is hard. I’ve always known that, but never have I felt so unheard and undervalued in relationships as I do now. And the choice to retaliate in anger is one I am consciously objecting. I am choosing to give more unreserved love, to keep my walls and defenses down, to choose love, to pursue peace, even when the cost is high. I didn’t know it could cost so much or be so challenging to fight this war inside me, but I am doing this, because Jesus asked me to. And He’s giving me grace in those moments to keep going.

6. Trafficking: I care a lot about human trafficking. It’s so personal to my heart. One day I hope to work as a mentor to young women who have been trafficked. That, along with being a foster parent, are my deepest desires.

 

 

I didn’t choose this, dear friend.

Dear friends,

I know you know this, but I love you dearly. I know you love me too, but I forget often. I’m filled with thoughts of how unloveable I am, how much of a mess I am, how unkempt and unpretty my life can seem. Many days I feel worthless, so I don’t always believe you love me. Somedays I believe depression.

Do not confuse my bad days as a sign of weakness, those are actually the days I am fighting my hardest

Depression has a nasty snarl around my life. I know you prefer the sunny days, the brighter ones, free from anxiety, free from worry, filled with wonder and exploration. I know you prefer these for me, and for us. Oh friend, how I prefer those days too. I wish I could have these days every day because depression terrifies me. It literally prevents me from life, from the brightness and joy I know Jesus has created me to be. Oh but friend, I try. I try, and I try, and I have not given up. I hope you see the fight in me, that on my hardest of days, I have not given up, in fact, I am holding on with more strength than I knew possible. Please see how strong I am.

Behind my smile is a hurting heart, behind my laugh I’m falling apart, look closely at me and you will see, the girl I am… it isn’t me.

I wish I could have more days where I am more free, more present with you, more able to engage you. But I can’t. I can sense the heaviness come over me, clouding my eyes, heavying my chest, weighing on me from top to bottom. I try to push out of it, to throw it off, but friend the only way out is through.

Often the people with the strongest hearts carry the heaviest ones.

The journey through terrifies me. It feels like I’m losing control and losing my mind. Please, if you notice it happening before I am able to say it, please grab my hand and say you’re with me and you love me. If you ask me if I am ok, I will likely say yes. If you ask me how I am, I will likely say good/fine/okay. Please notice my pain and I am not able to articulate it. Please meet me there. Please help me to understand you are not scared of me or these feelings of mine.

I’m so broken that I can feel it. I mean, physically feel it. This is so much more than being sad now. This is affecting my whole body.

I know I seem to overreact at times. I know it’s confusing. I know sometimes you feel like your trying is never good enough or what I need. I know you sometimes receive anger from me when it’s not justified. I know you understand why it happens. And I know it’s hard for you nonetheless. Depression makes me angry and I can’t think well when I am angry. I am so sorry for this. It’s not an emotion I’ve felt often enough or seen handled well enough to know what to do with, so I feel more distant and disconnected.

Friend, when you notice I seem disconnected, please reach a hand out and connect with me. Tell me you love me and you are FOR me. Rub my back, hug me, sit with me. Remind me you are for me, not against me. Remind me you are on my side, that you know I will make it through, that you aren’t leaving me. Remind me that you can see how hard I try. Believe things alive, right into my very heart.

People think depression is sadness.People think depression is crying. People think depression is dressing in black. But people are wrong. Depression is the constant feeling of being numb. Being numb to emotions, being numb to lie. You wake up in the morning just to go back to bed again. Days aren’t really days; they are just annoying obstacles that need to be faced. And how do you face them? Through medication, through drinking, through smoking, through drugs, through cutting. When you’re depressed, you grasp on to anything that can get through the day. That’s what depression is, not sadness or tears, it’s the overwhelming sense of numbness and the desire for anything that can help you make it from one day to the next.

It can be hard to understand depression when you have not experienced it. I get that. I was like that too. Please always know that I respect you most when you ask me questions, because too often I am not able to just say what I would like to.

There’s many times when I feel like you are better off without me, that I have ruined you, ruined me, ruined others. I feel like you deserve better than me and I can’t ever be enough, no matter how much I try, I will always struggle, and sometimes I wonder if you are better off without me. I rarely will tell you. I fear you’re already too tired to hear from me. Sometimes I may not think it for weeks, other times I fight those thoughts every moment for months. Please watch out for me. Please tell me you see me. Please tell me I am worth it, worth this fight, to you and know that I won’t believe it on the dark days, ever. But don’t hesitate to tell me. I need it. Those are never wasted words, ever. I do remember. And they do fill me. Please hold hope for me.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad

I feel like there’s a silence that I keep, one that has me balancing feeling “too” much for you and also not enough for you, one that teeters on wanting to look normal, but feeling so isolated and crazy. Depression is ugly. Most days it takes so much courage for me to get out of bed. No one knows. No one sees that. I force myself to eat sometimes, because I know it’s good for me. I shower and wish I didn’t have to. I make it through. There’s a silence I have to keep. Help me to break the silence. Please know I try, am trying, to find healing in Jesus.

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds

Please know I am being healed. I want you to be a part of this, dear friend. A part of the healing. Please stay with me and fight this alongside me. You know who I am. You’ve seen me love fiercely, give lavishly, extend mercifully. You know many of the parts of who I am in Jesus that are fighting for healing, for greater strength. Don’t hesitate to remind me of those things, to remind me of who I am, of how good I am, of how good God has made me.

Please be with me. And know I am trying and I am fighting, for me, for us, for healing, for the Kingdom. But mostly, know I don’t want to be here and I didn’t choose this. And know I love you, deeply.

FMF: TRY

 

Because Life is pretty mixed

I always notice when the kids around me turn 10. I notice how different my life was than theirs and I remember what it felt like for me. Too often I wonder what it could have been like, what it could have felt like if God had rescued me, if He would have protected me more viscerally. No birthday is more pungent than my 10th.

It was my first sunrise, the first time I watched it that is. At this point in my life, my 10th birthday, I had seen many dawns (you know that point where the darkness breaks into the light). But I had never seen the sun actually rise.

It wasn’t glamorous. But it was beautiful, meaningful. Meaning is one of the most beautiful things to me. It leaves purpose, reminders, a marker as a way of processing and reframing difficulty with joy. That sun rise has stayed imprinted to my memory my entire life. I have not seen another since that day, that really difficult day.

I don’t recall my birthdays being special or well celebrated, but my mother tried. If anything, she tried hard with what she had and I am grateful to her for that. Each birthday she’d take me to get a cappuccino from the local gas station. She loved coffee, and of course, I admired her.

As a kid, it felt special to drink this sugary caffeinated beverage. IT. WAS. THE. BEST. And my mom would sit and drink it with me, just the two of us, on my birthday. Perhaps it was only 10 minutes, but for a shy, quiet, chronically sick child who felt like the center of every financial and marital problem, 10 minutes of time focused on me was a luxury. And I looked forward to it. It was the best gift.

It had been a hard night that eve of my 10th birthday. Our house became unsafe again. My mother gathered myself and one of my younger sisters into the car frantically. It was the dead of winter in New England, a snow storm. We didn’t have shoes on, not even pants. And our car had been the undesired benefactor of my mother’s husband’s anger: another smashed windshield and caved in roof.

But she drove us in that car anyways, frantic to get us somewhere safe. We slept on the side of the road. My mom, too afraid to draw attention to where we were, needed to keep the car off, and therefore the heat off. My little sister, 6 yrs old at the time whimpered in pain from the cold. We interlocked arms and I held her, trying to keep one another warm. I pulled her in under my big night shirt and we stayed like that, both unable to sleep in our pant-less, shoeless, painfully cold skins.

And as the light broke into the darkness that morning, I watched the sun rise from our smashed in car roof above my head, the bright pink and purple bursting through a light snow fall. I watched the dawn of my 10th birthday. And I made a mental note to never forget it. To never forget what it felt like. The bitterness and the beauty. The mixed.

As I sat up, I breathed in the terribly cold air as it stung my lungs, felt the snow that had slowly accumulated around us, the tender pain of freezing limbs, and I thought, “this is God’s gift to me. This is so beautiful.”

You see, I didn’t grow up being taught much about God or Jesus. Mostly they were only cuss words. But I hoped that there was a God and that He would save me, and help me, and cry for me.

And when my mother woke and brought us somewhere safe and warm, I could see it in her eyes that she forgot it was my birthday or perhaps it was too painful for her to acknowledge. There was a coldness in her, too, as if the winter night had seeped through her soul.

There were no cappuccinos that day, no gifts, no cake. No birthday.

My 10th year of life was one of the most challenging I can recall. But all these years I’ve held onto that sunrise, the only one I’ve ever seen, as one of the most beautiful pictures in my head. I felt as if it was God’s gift to me, a reminder to hold tight, He was coming. He would rescue me. The people around me hardly knew I existed, but God did.

As my ten year old self sat watching this sunrise, I had never been so excited for light in my life, so excited to see another day. warmth. hope. All of it. And I decided then that I refused to inflict the same pain I received on others. I wanted to be like the sunrise, not the cold, bitter, winter night.

My tenth birthday was a day I won’t forget. And I hope that someday I can watch the sunrise again and experience that hope and beauty once more, with someone in solidarity to share the meaningfulness of it with me.

We don’t always get the things we want and need in this life. We make it. We survive. We learn to thrive and get by at times. But then there are moments amidst the pain, shock, confusion, betrayal, whatever at may be, that God sends us reminders that He’s coming, that there’s hope, and that joy really will come in the morning. Sometimes we just have to hold tight and wait through the winter for it. Unfairly, unjustly so. Because life is pretty mixed. It’s both bitter and beautiful, empty and full, painful and passion filled. And I wanted to hold the meaning, this gift of imperfect beauty, in my mind forever.

FMF:TEN