Memories of nightmares

My mama always sighs when the sunshine beams out from all around a cloud. Tonight it was a cool lemon yellow, the shadows all lavender and gray. I was bone tired, lazily listening to the children's chatter about their day, their art projects, watching the fields go by: corn 5 feet tall in the low ones, then a rusty sun burnt patch of soybeans, more corn, but this only up to my knee. The wind bounced off the mustardy corn tassels, almost like thousands of invisible fairies running across them. We were belting out "Jesse's Girl" to the classic rock station, and it was the fourth song I remembered. In a row. My thoughts caught a ride on that memory, how old I'm getting when my kids relate better to pop songs than I do, and all my favorites are on the oldies station. Then the mind swings and hooks on to the lyrics again. I am suddenly back in reality with a jolt, still singing along with all the rest. Except somehow I don't feel old any more; I feel like I'm sixteen.

.............................................................

I am awake with the stars, my loves all heavy with black velvet slumber, as if the night sky had descended and covered them in the dark. I'm running through memories that won't stop coming. Trying to fly and float simultaneously, for I could feel the undertow of the funneling brain dragging down into the darkness. I remember floating down rivers in gangs of high school and college kids, and going through the whitewater sections, we all would lift our arms and legs out of the water, pointing our toes, clutching tubes so that we wouldn't be caught by a sudden drop or a deadfall's rotting branches.

As each thought spins and catches the next, springs that and the next, and so on - one memory latches on to another. I am sixteen and singing with my best friend and driving way too fast. Then I remember doing my penance on the way home, trying to somehow defeat what fun or happiness I'd experienced. Emotions churned unnamed, almost unnoticed, the steel of my mind's resolution to contain emotion slowly descending like ice through my veins. Numb, I remember putting my hand to my face slowly, and I thought, this is what they mean when they say "her eyes glinted". My other hand slowly grips the steering wheel harder, I set my jaw, I swerve to the left into the oncoming lane, go over a hill almost flying. Then squeal back into my lane after playing chicken with the first car. That sudden, visceral mixture of extreme pain and extreme pleasure that burns up intensely and quickly, then suddenly is receding from your core. Sixteen has been gone eighteen long years and still the memory brings back all that sensation - WHAM! Just like that.

You ride out the adrenaline and rush of the memory of sixteen, fastforwarding lackadaisically through your life. You hit on twenty-one, when you graduated and moved to Minneapolis and bought your first house. You remember the numbing effect of work on all those vagrant thoughts and sensations, the more you could throw yourself into technical details, the quieter were the longings and the broken heart. And there the memories finally stop flowing. You pause, catching your breath. Yes, they're gone.

..............................................................

I wish I could sleep, shut off, rest. The hours creep by and the panic builds..."How can I live on 4 hours of sleep..." "oh, now we're down to 3 hours! Hurry up and go to sleeeep!" Often these days the gray dawn begins to creep into the bedroom, and I haven't yet slept. So I sigh deep and aching, shuffle out to the kitchen, have a cup of coffee with you. Some kind of mania or hyper-awareness comes occasionally. Almost as if my wires are too finely tuned and respond to the slightest signal. Vascillate rapidly between almost-awake and almost-asleep. Funny, I've always thought it odd to wish someone "golden slumber"; I crave complete blackness, unconsciousness, completely isolated from my mind and body, suspended in some netherworld of sometime dreams or nightmares and long periods of silence when the brain waves slow and the deep whir swelling from their revolutions lulls you into spellbound, still and staring.

Is it wrong to be looking for a shut-off switch for memories and ruminations? Could I dull myself to passive somehow, be less complicated? There is no manual for one's own deconstruction. 

How I learned to surf

I surfed once, in California in my early 20s. I only managed to get on top of 4 waves, but I will never forget the incredible feeling of falling and flying simultaneously. Since then, I've only been on a bodyboard. A doctor, John Kabat-Zinn, uses surfing as an analogy for emotions: "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf them." A surfer named "Buzzy" characterized surfing in a way that relates to all of life: "Waves are not measured in feet and inches, they are measured in increments of fear."

I am intimately acquainted with fear. It is the monster inside that roars at the slightest provocation, sometimes even convincing my terrorized brain that old threats long gone are nipping at my heels. Life feels not only radical as I step into a new reality, a new person, a new way of seeing - it is terrifying. Change of any kind is not a welcome guest in my life, and to change the very structure of my self is breathtakingly scary and uncertain.

Long ago, as a child, I built four sturdy walls in my soul and put a lid on top. It was my Pandora's box, my underground bunker where I could stuff all the bad things in life, all the tears, all the emotions I was too terrified to feel. I remember going into my room once at 10, clenching every muscle in my body and screaming silently. I was afraid that if I let my emotions out, they would destroy everything. As it turns out, avoiding them has nearly done just that.

Every Monday, in land-locked Wisconsin, I have a surfing lesson for one hour. It takes place in an office, not a beach, and the waves I'm surfing are the huge Mavericks - the biggest waves of all time - that come flooding out of that bunker when I take off the lid. Large waves can literally throw a surfer to the bottom of the ocean, turn him in so many somersaults that he can't tell which way is up, scrape his flesh on the coral, and either send him to Davy Jones' locker or toss him up like a fish gasping on the beach. How do you surf those emotions? The biggest ones of your life?

This is how I learned to surf the big ones:

1. Don't go it alone. You need a spotter when you're letting a tsunami out of your soul.
2. Don't rein it in. Realize it's just an emotion, and it will soon be over. Submit to the fact that you can't change the past and you can't change this giant wave of emotion. You can only ride out to safety.
3. Do be well prepared. If you're letting emotions out, sorting through old memories, often it's intentional. It's our human way of processing the good and the bad that happens to us. Make sure you've had good rest, good food, and a good mood most of the day before you purposefully open your Pandora's box.
4. Do let yourself be free to express the emotion. You may need to cry, scream, rant, rave, or curl up in a ball. Be somewhere safe for this.
5. Do rate your emotional pain. Before you start a session of internal or conversational processing of trauma in your life, rate how painful the memory is at the beginning, on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being low intensity and 10 being high intensity. After you've allowed yourself to surf the wave of emotion that comes with the memory, rate it again. You may find the memory is much less intense once you've allowed yourself to experience the emotions that went with it.
6. Do nothing but surf. A real surfer isn't dropping in on a wave thinking about his grocery list. In fact, surfers report that riding a wave is a blissful, meditative experience that fully captures their mind, body and soul. When you're surfing emotional waves, do so at a time you can concentrate fully on the sensations and feelings. Don't do it at work, or on your drive home, or when you have to do something later in the day. Do it when you have plenty of time and brainspace.
7. Do remember that emotions never last forever and they generally don't kill you. Emotional waves are always temporary. And they have little power over you once you accept them and let them flow. 

One last thought: when you're new to something, it's always good to have a few lessons. Especially when the stakes are as high as they are out on the ocean of emotion. Surfing isn't learned in a day, and there are many, many wipeouts along the way. A therapist, friend, or lay counselor you can trust may give you some tips on surfing that I cannot. I hope you find that, once you're out there among the waves, it is actually an good experience. And once you've ridden the biggest wave of your life, every other wave will seem tiny and totally rideable.

Surf's up - who's with me?

You must go through it

The wild cherries shiver with anticipation of summer in the cold spring wind, their blossoms a white shock above their dark trunks. Bluebirds fly back and forth between the wild long grass in the field and the sanctuary of the blossoming trees. Their song drifts up to my porch swing, and I smile, closing my eyes and tilting face to receive the warmth of the sun.

There is no perfect day, just like there's no perfect life. Clouds roll in and the cherries falter in the darkness of the coming storm. The mist touches the hills on the other side of the valley, and I am suddenly too cold on the porch, a shiver running down my spine. Anticipation or dread? When storms roll in, I feel their coming like clammy hands touching my soul. I shrink back, for who likes to weather storms? Internal or external. I think of the quote I wanted to like on Pinterest, "I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my own ship." (Aeschylus)

This sailing metaphor stuck with me. For what sailor likes to be caught in the warm and sunny doldrums of a windless, perfect glassy sea? A little storm brings fast winds into the sails and a little excitement to the decks.

The thing about adventure is that it gets old after a while. Days on end of that anticipation/dread sensation leave one longing for a day of doldrums. When the storms are thoughts, though, there is no more escaping them than you could a hurricane at sea. They come out of nowhere and there is no outrunning them. You simply must learn to weather them. This, too, shall pass.

The clouds lift, and the white trunks of the birches glisten in the sun, dripping wet with heavy leaves as their crown. The heavy leaves turn their dark green backs toward the wind and quake, flashing their chartruese tops every now and then in a wave of brilliance. That one white trunk marks my son's grave. I remember that storm, weathered now and just a memory. With the memory comes hope. Every storm I've weathered is a trophy in my case, reminding me that, with Him, all things are possible.

Our whole group, writing on "the View"

That darn rollercoaster again

The ocean is full of swells, whitecapped, surf blown off their creamy turquoise crests like whipped cream. Joy descends pell-mell into crushing sorrow. Sorrow billows up and out and beyond and there is joy again, waiting.

The choices seems to be diminishing before me as the doors in a long hall as you walk down it, paths untaken disappearing behind your footsteps. Would He - could He - be the funnel that drives me down to this narrow opening? Has He orchestrated so closely? Or am I falling prey to the mind games of anxiety, the whispers of the enemy hissing hesitation into my soul?

Oh, for rest, for rest. Oh for breath, for breath. My mouth is full of seawater. I need strength to keep swimming.

O Lord, I think I'm falling

To my disbelief

I'm cursing like a sailor and lying like a thief

It's hard to heed the calling from the better side of me

When I'm blaming everybody else and no one's coming clean

O Lord, can you see my thick skin wearing thin

And the demons of a lesser me are beckoning me in

Those who gathered 'round me - I'm watching them all leave

Cause I am my own ragged company

You can take a trip to China or take a boat to Spain

take a blue canoe around the world and never come back again

But traveling don't change a thing, it only makes it worse

Unless the trip you take is in to change your cruel course

'Cause every town's got a mirror and every mirror still shows me

That I am my own ragged company

O Lord it's lonely, Lord it's mighty cold

And I don't want to live this way

Afraid of growing old

It's hard to heed the warning when you cannot see the crime

The only way to remember is to forget in a rhyme

And I'm scared to tread the red road that leads to Galilee

Cause I am my own ragged company

~(I Am My Own) Ragged Company, Grace Potter~

What if we're doing it wrong?

A pastor stood with rope in his hands at our wedding. "A cord of three strands," he repeated from Ecclesiastes, "is not quickly broken." In his words I felt the birth of two covenants. Our marriage, and our relationship with this church.

.........................................

The problem is we're doing it all wrong, and it's killing people. Matthew 18 seems so flawless you can just recite it out in monotone and it works. This kicking people to the curb. This cutting off of the bad branches, the pruning, the training. But everyone who reads it that way seems to be forgetting a key phrase at the very end of the passage: "and if he refuses to listen to the church, treat him as a Gentile or a tax-collector."

Oh, hush! Do you hear it in the stillness? This is not the death knell to relationships or the final toll of the church discipline bell! This is a quiet, sure, Jesus love-song. It's a freedom song! Read it again, that last verse, verse 20, slowly. Pause between each word. and. if. he. refuses. to. listen. to. the. church...treat. him. as. a. Gentile. or. a. tax. collector.

You mean a Gentile, like Paul? The murderer, the hopelessly cruel Saul? Paul, to whom Jesus said, "I have picked him as my personal representative..."

A tax-collector like Zacchaeus? To whom Jesus Himself commended salvation, saying He had come to seek and to save the lost??

.................................................

And so I have a good day, a distracting day, a day for me to go through the motions in my element. A day in which I laughed without forcing myself to laugh. Yet I get to the end of the full day, and in the vacuum of the emptiness crowd the same familiar ghosts. The ropes swing. Thoughts clang around when they shouldn't and I'm surfing on a sea of emotions, looking for dry land.

This is what you reduce a person to when you go for blood.

So I was lost, go count the cost,

Before you go to the holland road,

With your heart like a stone you spared no time in lashing out,

And I knew your pain and the effect of my shame, but you cut me down, you cut me down,

And I will not tell the thoughts of hell

That carried me home from the Holland road

With my heart like a stone and I put up no fight

To your callous mind, and from your corner you rose to cut me down, you cut me down,

So I hit my low, but little did I know that would not be the end,

From the holland road well I rose and I rose, and I paid less time,

To your callous mind, and I wished you well as you cut me down, you cut me down,

But I'll still believe though there's cracks you'll see,

When I'm on my knees I'll still believe,

And when I've hit the ground, neither lost nor found,

If you'll believe in me I'll still believe

~Holland Road, Mumford and Sons~

Revisiting confessions

Guilt, shame, despair, grief. Emotions entangle and threaten to drown out hope. Haven't I been here before? Haven't I confessed these sins?

Yes, I have. And He says they're forgotten and washed white as snow. Why, then, does my heart still bleed dark red sin, spewing a history, a litany of unforgivable details onto the fresh snow of today's vista?

But are you living with guilt that doesn't belong to you? You say, "Look at what I did! I deserve to feel guilty. I knew better, but I did it anyway." So you pound yourself with guilt and condemnation. It may be guilt for recent sins or for sins of the past. What does God say about this guilt? Romans 8:1 makes a simple declaration—“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” So why the confusion? Christians live with guilt that doesn't belong to them? We live by our feelings instead of God's truth. When we feel the flood of guilt, we assume God agrees with our feelings. "I deserve to carry this guilt. Look at what I did! How terrible!" Once we have confessed our sin, God will no longer use guilt or condemnation to remind us of our past. He wants us to enter His freedom, His peace-completely free of condemnation. The familiar and much loved promise of John 3:16 is followed by this powerful declaration. Jesus said, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned." (John 3:17-18a NIV) True guilt is designed to lead us to repentance which leads us to God's peace in our hearts. So why do I Still Feel Guilty? The enemy-Satan-wants to rob you of God's peace and joy. He comes with false guilt, which feels exactly the same as true guilt from God. So how can I know if I'm feeling true guilt from God or false guilt? How do I know if I'm living with guilt that doesn't belong to me? You must use God's truth to evaluate your feelings of guilt. You must examine your heart and ask, "Have I truly repented of my sins?" You may want to write down the specific memory that is flooding you with guilt. Then put it to the truth test. Have I already confessed this sin? When did I confess it? Was I truly sincere? Have I been completely honest with God? If the answer to all these is "yes," then you can stand on the promises of 1 John 1:9 and John 8:36. If you confess your sins, He promises to forgive and cleanse you-not 2 months from now-immediately. If you have any doubt about the sincerity of your previous confession-confess it again and then instantly claim God's peace and forgiveness. (from Living Free)
 

Living by my feelings instead of the Truth. Wow. Does that describe the month I've had, or what! Feelings, feelings, feelings. Truth feels like an amorphous fog in a dark room. I can't grasp it. Can't ground myself with it.

I read these...John 3:16, Romans 8:1, John 8:36; I John 1:9. There is one thing I haven't done, though I've wanted to for over a year. There is one person I harmed that I could not say "I'm sorry" to. Regardless of this, I have to grip the TRUTH that I have been forgiven. I acknowledge the guilt, the shame, the despair - but I will not walk as though they rule my world. They don't. He does. And HE has set me free.

So walk free...
I can put one foot in front of the other...
Someday, I'll truly walk into His freedom.
Today, all I can say is that I'm walking down that path.

I have failed you, I have failed you

I have lost my way, lost my nerve

I’ve failed you

 

But I love you, how I love you

I have turned my back, left you last

but I love you

 

O setting sun don’t sink before I’ve found my heart

Heart don’t give up now while there’s still time

Time don’t beat your old retreat stay a little while with me

til I’ve looked the whole thing in the eye

 

I have waited, I have waited

for the big reveal, the even keel

I have waited

 

But there’s no one who makes it all come true

Just altars gathering dust while we bow to them

O night bring all your shadows and your silence

Silence make a hostage of my mind

Mind bring on your trickery

Black dogs nip on at my heels

til i’ve looked the whole thing in the eye

 

Swing low, sail high

 

All my days will rearrange to say I love you

O setting sun don’t weep for all the things you lose

morning comes as sure as it must die

dying is such mystery

yet I wonder will it be

when I’ve looked the whole thing in the eye

~Swing Low, Sail High, The Wailin' Jennys~
 

Switching strokes

She smiled, but there was sadness in her smile; even now she felt forebodings of the coming pain, the air she breathed was heavy with the storm that was about to burst. (Honoré de Balzac, Le Père Goriot, 1835)

The keys of the piano are heavy, and my heart thrills at the tension between unplayed and played notes and all the richness of resonance and volume and cascade the old brown piano holds hidden inside herself. I run fingers through the chords flowing from my memory, chords to a song of lament. Putting music to the emotion calms me, and there is even a smile hedging it's way into the corners of my mouth.

The front room is dark, the bitter cold grayness of January's sunset casting the children's window decorations in relief. I am the frozen observer, and the only activity about my body is trapped inside the mind.

I had a false hope that the ocean of pain held in my story would eventually soak into the ground, disappear into the bedrock under my feet. As with all false hopes, the destruction of this idea undid me. Six months I've walked on water, with joy insurmountable. Someone suggested I turn my mind from the ocean, forget it's there. For just a second I looked down at the ocean, contemplating. Could I leave this behind? Instead, the hems of my pants were suddenly wet as I felt myself sinking back in. Escape from pain? Possible for some. Impossible for many.

My counselor's voice is a soothing melody over the phone lines. She tells me to swim through it. There's no ignoring the ocean. Now you must swim.

I do, stroke after stroke, those moments coming every now and then when I breathe in a wave of water and panic that I can't make this swim. Oxygen-starved brain cells create a firestorm of anxiety. But instead of trucking on with my poor stroke and my mouth filled with water, I will flip on my back and float for a while. I feel every teardrop that made up this ocean of pain. Still beneath me. But I'm looking up at the sky, and the deeps aren't so terrifying.

Maybe this is how you escape madness: to switch strokes in the middle of the swim, and stare at the clouds moving across the azure. I'm no less sodden, no less in the middle of the ocean. But at least I'm looking up. And up there is the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation nor shadow of turning. (James 1:17)

*Photos from Amelia's play camera

The many roads it took to get here

One day long ago I dreamed of being a travel nurse. We were just wed, two nurses, we had adoption paperwork in process and we dreamed of apartments in far away cities; burn and trauma units, children laying in beds under those city lights waiting for our hands, our hearts.

I was up in a deer stand in Minnesota when I felt the Spirit's nudge. I prayed for our first child, whoever he or she was, prayed a long list of dreams and hopes and fears. Six weeks later, I stared down at a miraculously positive pregnancy test. It was the second I'd seen this in 3 months, me with the undeveloped eggs and the atrophied Fallopian tubes and the low hormone levels. I, the infertile myrtle. My husband with the similar diagnosis. How could we conceive twice in 3 months of marriage? Would this baby disappear into the dark shadows of the ultrasound screen like the first had? I turned around to face the toilet, and vomited bile.

We chose the spot, we dug the hole

We laid the maples in the ground to have and hold

As Autumn falls to Winters sleep

We pray that somehow in the Spring

The roots grow deep

And many years from now

Long after we are gone

These trees will spread their branches out

And bless the dawn

~from Planting Trees, Andrew Peterson~

There was no disappearing, and my first baby emerged from my body 2 weeks late and shocking in her awareness and hunger. She pushed up on her tiny fists while lying on her father's chest that first night, her eyes wide and black, as if she were memorizing every detail of his features. In that instant, every dream I'd ever had disappeared into the hormonal mist and this babe became the entirety of my world.

A brief 18 months later, she was toddling and captivating everyone with her adult vocabulary, starting almost all her sentences with "Actually..." And on a cold and bright March afternoon, her sister arrived black-haired and rosy-lipped. I would look at them, sleeping together in the afternoon, their heads sweaty and covered in curls, and they were at once totally foreign and wholly familiar. 

The third and fourth came just as quickly. We had grown used to the fact that the doctors were wrong, and we would produce children by the grace of God, and our world revolved around them, the diapers, the nursing, the bonds like iron bands holding the barrel of our family tighter than any dreams could have.

But I still dreamed. The microscopic visions of motherhood burned my eyes by then, and I squeezed them shut and imagined telescopes into the universe and periscopes up from the underwater grave of home. 

I could hear the highway song

I dreamed that I was

A world traveler

Set me loose to find my way

Just get me out on the road someday

With my sails unfurled

So many mysteries

I wanted to unravel

If I could travel the world

~World Traveler, Andrew Peterson~

I was on two roads, one part of me home with my children and the other on a highway of longing for grand adventure. The distant cities still glittered in my imagination. The mystery was this tether in my heart, the tangle of four of the "least of these" planted right in the very fibers of my being.

Night is falling on a foreign sky

And distant cities are breathing out 

The lights, tangled on a long thin line

Like diamonds shattered on the ground

And the lights call out from distant cities

You come alive, like a melody

And you shine you shine, brighter than a new day

And I sing along, into the mystery

As the lights call out from distant cities

The tears, filling up my empty eyes

Pour like shadows on the ground

What found me here spreads across a million miles

Breaks the gallows, lifts the shroud

As the lights call out

~Bebo Norman~

I was looking for emotional reasons to link me to the life God had given me. But what lay before me was choices, a million tiny decisions. I learned, in that season struggling to stay home,while forcing myself, teeth gritted tight, to keep my focus square on the life God had blessed me with, was the call-and-response of living for Jesus. He calls, yes - but that call is not always an explosion of brilliance that triggers a tidal wave of love from my heart to His. Sometimes it was just a tiny whisper behind me, "This is the way. Walk in it." My response was not often a heart on fire, but simply a soul willing to put the next footstep down on the path He'd laid before me.

As I kept walking forward on what seemed like a dimly lit, poorly marked path, the emotions followed. The heart follows the mind sometimes. The tidal wave of love I heard about in worship songs and testimonies wasn't my experience. It was a soft turning, a quiet and gentle creeping up in the throat. 

Now the world turns again, and dreams and duties co-exist. I am no longer on a divided highway, pulled between east and west. As surely as I kept stepping forward, He bridged the gap between the desires of my heart and the portion of my life.

If you'll step inside this great glass elevator

It'll take us up above the city lights

To where the planet curves away to the equator

I want to show you something fine

You can see the roads that we all traveled just to get here

A million minuscule decisions in a line

Why they brought us to this moment isn't clear

Could it be that the many roads

You took to get here

Were just for me to tell this story

And for you to hear this song

And your many hopes

And your many fears

Were meant to bring you here all along

How I love to watch you listen to the music

'Cause you sing to me a music of your own

As I cast out all these lines, so afraid that I will find

I am alone, all alone

Could it be that the many roads

I took to get here

Were just for you to tell that story

And for me to hear that song

And my many hopes

And my many fears

Were meant to bring me here all along

We were meant to be right here all along

~Many Roads, Andrew Peterson~

Is there a disconnect between your dreams and your reality? Do you struggle to hear and respond to God's call in your life? Have courage, and take the next step. Someday, like me, you will step into the clearing and that crooked path behind you will be but a memory, for a time.


Photos today from the irrepressible Amelia.

I need Your romance

Somewhere in the haze of girlhood I lost my sense of whimsy. All the symbols girls adore grew stale, cliché - no more doodled hearts and rainbows dancing in swirls across lined sheets of notebook paper. I stuck between the lines, wrote in Roman alphabet, and taught myself calligraphy instead of doodling.

It's what happens when your heart breaks too soon in life, I suppose. You give up on romance and turn to logic because it's ever so much safer. Predictable, calm, precise and controlled. Just like you wish your life and heart would be. Just like you've trained your emotions. Just like the iron fist you've wrapped around your tear ducts, the roiling in your belly that threatens to spill vomit whenever your thoughts drift away from math homework or history books and into the dark crevices of memory.

I didn't get romance back even for my wedding day. Joy, yes. My smile was wide and free, and I threw my arms around my new husband's neck with abandon. I let him carry me off to our honeymoon, but I wasn't going to write a poem about the sunset, even then. Babies were born, and I let myself be carried away to heaven and back simply on the indescribable scent of their hair. Still no romance.

It started to seep back in slowly, the romance of life.

Songs penned.

Photographs taken.

A tiny pad of postcard sized watercolor paper and a single brush and two tubes of paint.

A space on the internet for a blog that started out simply to relay a few facts about cancer, but suddenly burgeoned with the overflow of the soul as the dam nearly broke in the wake of emotions that couldn't be contained any longer.

In the days that followed the surgery that changed my life forever, one symbol crept back in. Not a rainbow, a heart, or a peace sign. A butterfly. Your thyroid gland sits just below your voicebox, in the shape of a butterfly with wings outstreched, ready to take the next breeze heavenward. It is a thing of beauty, tucked in secret deep within your throat. A piece of poetry straight from the Maker to you, a little love gift right where songs are created by your own unique voice, right where you speak and whisper words of love, right where your laugh is formed.

When I lost my butterfly in the throat, the colorful creatures floating on the summer winds became precious to me. Whenever I see them, I smile and tears well, all in the same moment. I am remembering the beauty He gifted me with, the beauty that was taken away by thieves in childhood's night, and the beauty that was reborn out of cancer grief - the eyes that see again beauty everywhere, romance everywhere, the whimsy and lilt and lovesong of life. If I'd never lost my thyroid to cancer, I'd never have noticed the butterflies all around me. I'd never be a doodler or a dreamer again.

He has sent me to provide for those who grieve - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. (Isaiah 61:1 & 3 exc.)

Stress: Emotions on Tuesdays

In the red-tomato-afternoon, my back aches from sitting in one position so long. My hands are curved in the shape of the keyboard with it's beckoning letters. I am only pausing a moment to cook this dinner, I think, the sweat on my brow as the unseasonably warm sun bakes through the screen door.

But I lied to the heart that sits heavy in my chest like a stone. I lied to the cold sweat of anticipation mixed with fear. I lied to the blood rushing to the head through blood vessels tight with waiting. I lied to my project.

I wasn't stopping just a moment to cook dinner. I was pausing to breathe - breathe red tomato scent, drink in the visual feast of the glistening in the sun. Feel the potted bowl from my mother between my palms.

I was pausing to be blessed.

I was pausing to slow down.

I was pausing to be.

The dissertation still being crafted calls to me at every waking moment. I haven't felt stress like this, ever before. It's running deep in my veins, and pulsing with my heartbeat. It's squeezing me and molding me.

I allow God to use it, to build me and my character. But I'm pushing back against the stress... dreaming of an April in South Carolina with my mama, and a May day when I am finally finished!


This is our Emotions on Tuesdays link up. Link up to a post, old or new, about your emotions. Have you written about stress lately? Tuck the graphic at the bottom of your post, and come back to share your story with all of us!

{a href="http://turquoisegates.com"}{img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7001/6673789417_a8ea1226fa.jpg"}



Linked up to Write It Girl
Linked up to Joy's life:unmasked

The memory of pearls: Emotions on Tuesdays

The world wears a halo of white in the snowy forests, morning mist magical as the cold earth collides with the sun-kissed spring air. Later in the day, the air is crystal clear, the mist burned away. The contrails of passing jets crisscross high in the pale blue sky, puffs of cloudy creatures floating up across the sun who wears a skirt of crystal haze she gathers from the earth's melting. Even the beetles are beautiful in the afternoon sun. The constant song of the returning robins lilts across the breeze. The children gather the loam of the field bracken into buckets, and plant a garden of dreams in their playhouse. Black earth in the furrows of the vegetable rows calls out to toes twitching with excitement in the summery warmth. We mamas hold tight to shovel handles and wait for the real spring, not this illusive week of March that has us dreaming of all kinds of summer wonder.

A burst of spring cleaning fervor threatens to shipwreck my dissertation dreams, but I am planted here behind keyboard, nailed down by a dream and a prayer for a May graduation. It is time for the last big push, a flurry of writing and editing that consumes every free minute not slotted for other chores. I delight in an editing phone call with my favorite person at the Writing Center for Excellence, and I tell her about my remission and her hearty, "Thank the good LAWD!" in the comforting Southern drawl is like honey dripping from the phone. It makes me stop, and remember. Remember all that happened, how my soul was shaped, how my heart was broken, how the scales were falling off my eyes in sheets and shattering around my stock-still shocked feet.

The way of mercy
Takes me to the least
Down the road of suffering
To the wedding feast

For I know that You are faithful
As we walk these fields of white
To the weary and the hurting
let Your Kingdom comes
~Faithful, David Ruis

Prayers are always answered. I woke to the worst day, and found it was a glorious day, a string of pearls - pearls plucked from the odiferous waves of gray of the oyster's shell - unfolding before my very eyes as I opened gift after gift streaming straight from the hands of the Father into my bruised heart. Just when I thought I was at the end of the necklace, another bead glistened in the warm, Indian summer sun. The morning began with waiting...but not for the radioactive treatment, rather the glorious arrival of my newest niece or nephew! Megan was admitted to the hospital Sunday night, and I couldn't believe God was granting my prayer that I be able to hold their little one before I was quarantined! I called early in the morning to see about delaying my treatment, and was told I could come anytime before 4:30 p.m. Another pearl: a beautiful, sunlit day to treasure my children, share life with them, breathe in their sights, and sounds, and smells. Fill my cup up to overflowing so I can spill some drops of joy into my barren lap on a darker day in the November that will surely come.

We went to music class and delighted together in the cacophony and chaos that is kids and music and dancing in a high-ceiling art gallery lit with eastern windows and glistening pine floors. We gloried in Kosher salt at a local deli and beautiful, crumbly goat cheese that a low-iodine Mama can feast upon. We napped together in the lazy, beetle-buzzing afternoon in the unexpected bliss of open windows and the sound of corn husks rustling in the warm, summer-like breeze. I packed my car slowly, savoring every quiet moment of the house God has given us, listening to the children sleep and staving off sorrows that threatened at every moment. Still waiting for the call announcing the birth of that beautiful babe...

Late afternoon came, and no baby. Confounding! The day was a gift just for me...brought about by the "impending birth", which didn't happen. A glorious, free day that I wasn't expecting. A drive back into the reality of the city with the children bursting at the seams from our joyous, momentous, and totally ordinary afternoon. Hugs, hugs, more hugs, holding tears in with iron bands of will as I smiled and hugged some more. Swallowing the largest lump my throat has ever known...swallowing it a hundred times, tasting it's salty bitterness, and thanking God for my afternoon of pearls. One hundred times easier to swallow the large blue horse-pill of radioactive iodine. Primed with grief and disbelief, my throat found that an easy job. Sitting in a sterile little room with my husband beside me, I stared down into a little lead canister, took out the glass vial, unscrewed the cap and tipped it back to accept this cure that threatens to be worse than the disease that now invisibly ails me. The ache of forgetting a good-bye kiss before the poison passed my lips. Walking away carefully observing the "3 foot rule".

Feeling the world open up like a chasm before me. That longed-for freedom...that abyss of unlimited choice...the silence as the "fetters" of motherhood and wifery dropped from my ankles and wrists and shattered around my feet. How shall I now live? Adrift once again in a sea of strangers. Floating along in the tide and whim of self. What moors me? What steers me? Underneath, there He is. His heart beat still propels me. My joy is still in Him. What a pearl to discover, that after all this time, and all these externally imposed guides and rigorous boundaries, I have continued to internalize the lessons He is teaching, to integrate them as part of my self and what propels me and gives me meaning. I am not adrift. My ways and means have shifted, and my purpose is the same. In this, as in all else, I am here for His glory. I exist for His service. I pray for His guiding hand. I long for His touch.

Waking next morning, the world is tasteless and odorless. The world is magically sterile, and glitters with new sparkle through my eyes, swollen and skewed from the localized effects of the radiation. There is a philosophical lack of focus, an attendant lack of agenda and timeframe; and a physical reality, an inability to perceive the visual all around me. Words and worlds are as hazy as time and duty are. Pearls of sleep, and friendship, and deep, uninterrupted drinking at the Well of meaning and Truth. I curl up by the Well for a good long rest after five years of many thirsty moments. That is what it's like to leave your life, your home, your job; everything behind you, it feels. Everything in front of you different and intimidating and wonderful all at once. For me that has been 24 hours of radioactive cancer treatment. Now, only 456 hours to go...

The bulk of this post reposted from another Tuesday, one much darker than today. All week, I'm looking back at the worst of cancer. Radiation and separation from my family for 3 long weeks. I hope you'll enjoy the trip down memory lane.


This is our Emotions on Tuesdays link up. Link up to a post, old or new, about your emotions. Tuck the graphic at the bottom of your post, and come back to share your story with all of us!

{a href="http://turquoisegates.com"}{img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7001/6673789417_a8ea1226fa.jpg"}

Fear or premonition?

I haven't ever acknowledged fear, not since I was a child. Because all emotions are confusing to me, I have little faith in my own instincts. I hesitate to trust when I feel premonition or trepidation. I assume I'm just being too anxious, and push through it.

For the past few days, I've known I needed to return to Mayo Clinic in Rochester to have an injection of steroids into my inner ear, a needle piercing the eardrum to fill the inner ear with medication that could restore my hearing suddenly lost in one ear two weeks ago. I felt an immense amount of fear about this procedure. It just doesn't seem "natural". But after two decades of callousing myself to the ways of Western medicine in order to become a nurse supportive of cares I find barbaric, I just pushed the fear aside. It seems pretty normal to feel afraid of having something injected into your ear drum. I assumed I was just afraid of the pain.

Yesterday, I had a hearing test that confirmed I had lost another 20-40% of my hearing in my bad ear. I am lucky enough to have the chief of the ear/nose/throat department as my physician. He strongly recommended the injection. And so I climbed into the chair, obligingly tilted my head and held still while he made three injections of dexamethasone into my inner ear. The pain was as intense as I imagined, and I was immediately dizzy and nauseous. The medication was ice cold, and the reflex to pull away was almost unbearable. He and the nurse assured me the symptoms would subside once the medication was in my ear. So, I lay still, following the instructions: do not swallow, do not talk, do not move your jaw to pop your ear, and keep your head tilted so the medication can dwell in the inner ear for 30 minutes. The pain did not go away. By 25 minutes, I couldn't stand it any longer. He returned to suction the excess medication out of my ear, and the nurse gave me a glass of ice water to ease the burning and stinging that made me feel like I might pee my pants.

I was ushered out to the waiting room to return home, assured again and again that the pain would go away. But three hours later, it was still a 10 out of 10. The worst pain I had ever endured. Worse than labor, because it was constant instead of washing over me in waves like contractions. Worse than my ectopic pregnancy when my Fallopian tube burst inside of me (that's supposed to be the most painful event in a woman's life, worse than broken bones, burns, or traumatic injury). I called my team of physicians back at home, telling them we were on our way home from an intratympanic injection and I needed to be seen for this crippling pain. They panicked and sent me back to Mayo to go to the ER there. I called my Mayo doctor back, and he said no one ever has this persistent or severe of pain following the injection. He had no idea what had gone wrong. He's injected tens of thousands of people. And I am the one who gets the worst pain. He prescribed strong painkillers and directed me to try them first before heading to the ER.

I took the painkillers, plugged my ears with swimmer's ear plugs to prevent air from entering the ear, and found some relief in the next hour. The pain decreased to about a 6, and we finally headed home at 7 p.m.

In hindsight, I wonder if that fear I felt was a premonition. Did I know somehow that something would go wrong? Should I have listened to my instincts instead of the experienced physician who reassured me that my fears were not factual?

How about you? How do you react when you have intense fear and a sense that something isn't a good idea? Are you able to trust your instincts? Or do you buckle, assuming your fear is irrational?

This is our Emotions on Tuesdays link up. Link up to a post, old or new, about your emotions. Tuck the graphic at the bottom of your post, and come back to share your story with all of us!

{a href="http://turquoisegates.com"}{img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7001/6673789417_a8ea1226fa.jpg"}

Penance

The key that fits the lock is always discovered in the least expected moment. I sat on the therapist's couch, sitting on my hands, huddled in my jacket, unable to name what I had been feeling last week. I knew it was a feeling, in the visceral way you recognize the rhythms of your soul, but I couldn't understand where it came from. It was the fist closing around my throat, the lump in my chest, the sweat beading up on my forehead. I felt my eyes widen, but I couldn't say why.

It was fear. Admitting fear is so difficult for me. The recognition of that fear, especially when it is someone else who sees it in me, threatens to undo all the work I've done to hide my fear so that no one will know that something is wrong with me. And deep within, I am horribly afraid that there is something wrong with me. As my therapist has continued to hone in on certain sensitive moments of my childhood, has asked questions about my siblings, my parents, I have harbored a secret fear that she will find something in my family of origin that will point to my current problems - disassociating, blunting my emotions, turning to self-harm. I desperately did not want my family to be at blame. And so I have run from that fear, stuffed it down into that tight lump in my chest, and gingerly regarded it as something very dangerous to my way of life, my beliefs, my way of thinking.

Today, I found an answer. And it isn't how my parents raised me, or what kind of discipline I was brought up with, or my own reprehensible original sin. I've struggled for years to find an answer, because I couldn't imagine how I got to where I am now with what I started with at age seven. You know yourself, the deeps that lie hidden to all the world, and yes, it is blacker to you than to anyone. But you also know when that hidden river of sinful thought has not buoyed you along in your wrong ways of thinking. 

Somewhere along the line, I picked up the idea that by suffering abuse in secret, I was protecting my family, not just physically, but socially - the family persona or image that might be destroyed if word got out. In a very human and childish way, I developed my own system of penance to purge out the ugliness that I attached to myself, blaming myself in small ways for big things. In this way, I could get rid of the big things by doing something in my own control - hurting my body and torturing my own mind. This developed into a knee-jerk reaction, and as an adult, I faced a similar catastrophic situation when I was blamed for the circumstances that led to my entire family vaunting from a church. Just like I did when I was seven, I meted out my penance in private: a slit to the skin, letting my personality disappear into the gray nothingness with each drop of blood shed. 

Again, this winter and fall, as my therapist edged ever closer to the epicenter of my pain, and I saw it was not the actions of my abuser, but rather something to do with my family...I wielded weapon against self to get rid of the haunting fear that, if I let it get out, even in the privacy of the counselor's office, I would be hurting my family. What I didn't realize is that by trying to protect my family's image, I was entering a vicious cycle. 

The light turns on as quick as you flip the switch, turning on your lamp. The light dawns into the dark corners of my mind, and the word penance comes up, and I feel shame. Penance to me means pride, thinking that something I can do, something I can control, can wash away my sin. It hurts the very Jesus who died on the cross, telling him I regard his sacrifice as incomplete, not worthy to pay for my sin. As if the darkness of that sin somehow negates the overwhelming, overflowing love and grace of the cross.

Katy helps lead Tally to surgery at the vet yesterday.

I know why my eight-year-old's pain sears my very soul. Because I am afraid for her. I am afraid she will think she has to protect her family. I am afraid she shoulders burdens too heavy for her frame...because of me, my inadequacy as a mother and a person. I have fought tooth and nail against the inherent fear of imperfection that fuels perfectionism. It is why it took years for me to come to my peace with my messy house, our messy lives.

I have to constantly remind myself that this heavy mother-guilt is much heavier than I was ever intended to bear. Mothers with depression, after all, have probably been happening since the beginning of time. Learning to cook a simple breakfast and helping put away laundry are normal tasks to ask of an eight-year-old.

One of the simplest verses of the New Testament has proven very difficult for me throughout my lifetime: Cast all your cares upon Him, for He careth for you. (I Peter 5:7) I humbly go to Christ, who did offer himself for me, for my whole family, generations upon generations of sinners, and ask Him to help me learn this simple thing. Help me shake loose from fear (for isn't that the whole story of the Bible? That love is greater than fear?) and break the shackles of guilt and live free as He intended.

{a href="http://turquoisegates.com"}{img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7001/6673789417_a8ea1226fa.jpg"}

Love > Fear

I sat still, my legs drawn up under me, against the purple wall in my mother's living room. I remember heaviness coiled tense in my chest, up through my neck and aching behind my eyes. In my limbs, a happy buzzy sensation, like I feel when I'm deeply thankful. My niece and son came running over and clambered up, my husband busy taking photos, with the white of the flash bouncing off the glittery ceiling. My lips pulled back tight over my teeth, my eyes slowly trying to take in the chaotic scene of family and gift opening frenzy, a heavy compote of Christmas scents from the buffet filling the air.

Perhaps it is the many years of training and practice that makes me think of emotions as a linear thing. After all, the FACES scale for pain, the one we use in children, runs a spectrum from joy to extreme sadness, as if the two never coexist in our chests, in our hearts, behind our eyes.

What if half of your face can say something, and the other half another? I scan through a list of emotion words, trying to capture those feelings of the cool, coiled snake in my chest and the sweet joy of those children on my lap. Happiness and satisfaction. Words that describe love. Nervousness and apprehension. Words that describe fear.

Does that explain the lineless half smile, pulled tight over my lips, the widened eyes, the stilled forehead?

I have a sticker on my van that says "Love > Fear". The two emotions I felt most intensely throughout the holiday celebrations with family this year. Perhaps what kept me going through the holidays is this very principle, which stands out so clearly from The Message:

God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love. (I John 4:17-18 The Message)

Opposite action

My camera sits gathering dust on the dresser, a talent set aside in a busy season of new work. Meanwhile, the world gathers snowflakes and dresses herself in snowy down for the long winter. This beauty called to me, but I turned a deaf ear in favor of more sleep.

The manual of skills I took home with me from the psych unit gathers dust, too. A treasure trove of ideas for fighting depression set aside as depression mounts in the dark cold night. I skipped the entire section on emotions, because I don't have emotions. When something hits close to the wounded heart, I simply feel a pervading ickiness that defies description with words like "anger", "sadness" or "hopelessness". I scrounge for a mindless distraction until that burning in my chest recedes and I can put my happy face back on again.

All of this detracts from holiday spirit, and for the first time, I don't want a Christmas tree. I loathe shopping for Christmas presents, a task that seems insurmountable, out of reach of our budget. I am overwhelmed with the mere thought of baking.

I drag my cold and dormant body out to the tree farm with reluctance. The beauty there washes over my cold soul like waves of wonder, and there is a spark of Christmas cheer lit somewhere deep inside. We shake off the perfect tree and bring it home to decorate.

The kids are sick with the requisite early winter head cold, crabby and uncouth, snotty and snide. Aaron home on an unexpected vacation and I newly emancipated from my job, we try to parent pleasant, but the words are often angry and the temper fuses short.

All this is undone by the wonder in one tiny snowflake, caught on the drift and showing it's fingerling crystals in the snappish December air.

Undone by the beauty of a loved ones smile, the cuddles on the hay wagon, the peacefulness of the warm shed and hot cider on a quiet Monday at the tree farm.

And as the snowflakes fall in a beautiful cascade, covering caps and eyelashes of these beautiful souls we are blessed to parent, we are reminded though our sins be as scarlet, He will wash them white as snow.

It is a slow repentance, turning of the mind under the blinking lights of the Christmas tree heavy with ornaments. He brings me back to Deuteronomy 30 in my therapist's words on a bleak Thursday evening. Opposite action: identifying my emotion, naming that consuming ick that is slippery and hard to label, and choosing something I don't want to do - something I fear will make it all worse - throwing myself into it body, mind and soul until I realize that I am stronger than I think, better mother than I imagine, perhaps even a wife worthy of husband's pursuit.

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?" But the Word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and length of days... (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, 19-20a)

Today, I want to hibernate under my down comforter, under the streaming sin, watching the nightmares and pleasant dreams play across the projector behind my eyelids. Instead, a Christmas craft - with paint! - throwing myself wholeheartedly into this mothering I so often neglect and children I often disappoint. Today I choose to be the mother I wish I was all the time. Today I choose the opposite action, so that fear and shame may dwindle and Christmas be merry and bright once again.

Joining Bonnie over at {in}courage today for "Can Christmas Really Change Your Story?"