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?

Oh little girl

{Warning: This post may contain triggers; please read only if you're ready.}

Bare feet on beams. We go to cool off down by the stream. It is 2013, and the memory washes so far over me that I catch my breath, forgetting children laughing under the bridge. I'm no longer here, I'm gone again - into the trap of the secret sin. I am remembering the halcyon days before you ruined my favorite clearing in the woods. I remember the cool of the shade, the feel of the moss under foot, the whispering wind quaking through the aspens, the shafts of sun lighting the world yellow and green. I was at peace there, it's where I went to think. I thought a lot when I was a child. Spaces of silence and solitude were sacred.

And so here it was that you found me. 

Sitting silent under a tree. 

I was amazed... how could it be?

A friend like you for a little girl like me?

You took my hand

and we sat down

No sound escaped

when you laid me on the ground.

Oh little girl,

the things you knew

darkened with her shadow

as you looked up at the blue

sky above

and earth below

dirt beneath your nails

as she mutilated slow.

She said, don't you dare tell.

The world swam

and you fell out of body

into her hands.

Your soul escaped

out through your eyes

you perched on branches

when she took you by surprise.

The precious thing -

you never knew -

she stole it long before

it was precious to you.

Oh little girl,

I wish you'd cried

I wish you'd beat her

every time that she tried

to shame your soul,

tearing at the seams,

she kept your tears

locked up in your dreams.

She knew the cost -

she'd paid it, too,

She knew exactly what

she was doing to you.

That clearing now

only appears

in your nightmares

and in your worst fears.

Where is the peace

she took away

When she crushed

you on that sunny day?

Her eyes looked down

she laughed out loud

glad she had wrecked you

without a sound.

Oh little girl,

where have you gone?

To heal the damage

I need you to come home now.

I finally feel

the missing piece

I finger lightly

because it still stings

Oh little girl,

why can't you cry?

How could someone

make you wish you could die?

Confused and scared

You made the leap

Out of safety

and under her feet

So go reclaim

that holy ground

this time when you scream

won't you make some sound?

Let it come

from deep within

and forgive yourself

for her dirty sin.

Oh little girl,

I'll keep you safe

come learn to weep

go pick your soul out of the heap

of trash she threw

deep in your mind

Oh little girl,

won't you be kind

hold yourself gently

while you're trying to find

the pathway out

from those dark woods

Oh little girl,

I'll take you home

to forgive yourself

now that you're grown.

Now you're grown.

Oh simple faith where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin
~originally sung by Keane~

Life is easier when you can fly

My friend Ann wrote today what she wished the Church knew about mental health. It was salve for wounds worn dry and dirty from the rub of shame, guilt, disgust. I am perhaps even more saddened by the death of Rick Warren's son Matthew than the general Christian public, having so closely walked that dark path he found himself upon just a week ago. Everyone seems to be talking about it - and I'm thankful for that. Part of me also wonders - what about the thousands upon thousands who have silently slipped away without notice? Did anyone hear their earlier cries for help? Did anyone acknowledge and validate their pain and offer to walk with them through the experience?

We - Aaron and I - refer to our time at Valleybrook Church as our time in the spiritual hospital. This church opened it's arms to us with incredible grace when we were most wounded. A pastor opened her door to welcome me into her office once a week just so I could talk about things I had never told anyone. They hosted a network of small group studies based on the Wounded Heart book by Dan Allender. Through this experience our eyes were open to a different kind of church - one where people walked like Jesus as much as they talked about Him, where you could come for sanctuary. Do you know why we call our worship spaces "sanctuaries" today? Because from the 4th to the 17th century, you could run to a church and be safe as long as you stayed within it's walls - safe from lawmakers and their police, anyone wishing to harm you, safety from legal prosecution and even the death penalty. Back then, if someone violated the Right of Sanctuary, hassling or hurting the fugitive in any way, the perpetrator went free, and the punisher took his penalty.

Life - and by extension, faith - is so much easier when you're soaring. Clear blue skies and a sweet summer breeze are what we Northerners think about and long for the better part of the year. But this type of weather rarely comes - and so it may be with the mind, too. For me, it is like the undertow of a river, or trying to carry something heavy through water. I remember that time back in 2011, when I was drowning, and a few who were soaring above noticed and joined me on the water. By the flapping of their wings beside me, I was comforted in the reminder that I, too, have wings, and someday would soar again. Since the healing that came to me last year, I've had long stretches of few symptoms - and yet, here I am in the middle of a relapse of sorts.

What you may not realize, when you see me bleeding all over the church floor, is that I've confessed each sin a thousand times if I've confessed it once. A thousand times I have not felt that relief of release that should accompany confession. My heart and soul were so torn by the break that came with childhood abuse that it still feels black and muddy and shameful. It is the weight of that millstone around my neck that I cannot break free from - yet. The time may be coming, but for now, I'm still bleeding and it's still a mess all over my church's floor, the floors of my home. Dragging around wounds everywhere you go messes life up all over again.

Is someone in your life struggling with mental health issues? Won't you be the one who sits down beside them, or takes them on a walk, or offers them a space in which to heal every now and then? Can your church be a hospital for the wounded? Are you willing to bind up wounds and bear the stink of surgery and the long, slow road to recovery?

When we say YES - personally and corporately as the Body of Christ - then, truly, we are the hands and feet of Jesus' love for His people. In Galatians 6, in a section of the Bible titled by English translators "Bear and Share the Burdens", God says it this way:

...let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

.................................................................
Still counting gifts...
2008 Snuggling my son
2009 A moment of pure joy in a rainstorm with my Aaron
2010 those caring, willing hands of my family
2011 the rescue and release that is confession comes for a moment
2012 a true conversation with my own mama

Back in time

Is it possible to be injected with poison so deep that it takes over 20 years to discover the infected tissue? I'm watching Disney movies with my daughters on a Friday night, alone in the house with the kids. Aaron's on call. A scene comes up that I remember clearly, and suddenly I am 11 and seeing it for the first time.

Most of you know the story: the princess gives away the one thing the prince loved - her voice - in exchange for her rebellious dream. When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child... (I Corinthians 13:11) I'm sure I'm not the only girl who identified herself with the princess in a Disney movie...wasn't that their point?

The problem was, I'd given something precious away. Perhaps given isn't the right word, looking back with the hindsight of 33. In truth, someone had taken it from me. But I felt complicit, especially by age 11. A co-conspirator. The very best child abusers have that affect on their prey: it's the surest way against getting caught, to make the child believe they are just as much to blame as the abuser. I was afraid what I'd given away was the one thing that would satisfy the Prince of Peace.

And so this scene makes me small again. Scared. Heart pounding. I know the ending - the mermaid will lose the bet and become one of those small, unfortunate souls the witch feeds on. I was that afraid of what I'd done...to believe that satan had that power over me. To keep me small and trapped and evil for the rest of my life.

I ride the flashbacks like bad waves on an angry motion, trying to surf them. Trying not to submerge in the ocean of guilt, disgust, shame.

A view of Mama courtesy of Amy's toy camera

I have to write it, say it out loud. I am free. I am forgiven. I am no longer walking in darkness. I wasn't then either. It was just a cloudy day for many years. But I was redeemed. I loved Jesus from the time I could toddle and talk. I got ensnared by a trap when I was 8. But my soul wasn't trapped. Just my feet. 

I remember reading Victor Hugo's poems in high school. "Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings." It took me 20 some years to understand this, although I loved it from the first time I read it. Whatever the circumstances, I can experience Christ's joy - however tenuous my perch seems - and freedom - for He has given my soul wings. That thing I had given away? That wasn't what He wanted. He wanted ME. However flawed, however frail.

Dragons and Knights

I hear it like the drum beat of my own heart throbbing for sins I cannot repay. I feel it like the taboo of words of confession long on my lips but never sufficing. But He interrupts me in my mutterings of confession, and a simple image crushes my confessing lips until they are bruised with anguish. For He has bled, drop by drop, for this sin I cannot forgive myself for. He has shed every tear, sweat blood in Gethsemane, and hung naked on the tree to cleanse this sin from the book of my life.  Erased! Erased! Erased! He calls, as I linger on in self-torment. Does my blood mean nothing to you? Would you shed your own, the sinful river of blood running through human veins that cannot repay, when the perfect Lamb has already been slain for this sin you call unforgivable? Would you spend your days in torment in a prison you've built yourself, when everything I own, I, King of Glory, I would give you freely? Joy unspeakable, cup running over, and you trade it for bitter hyssop and a cup full of vinegar and days full of tears?

And as He whispers, deep in the silent night as I sit on the porch steps and watch the storm clouds rolling in, my house asleep, and my sleep destroyed by nightmares. He whispers something of a princess whose crown was ruined long ago. He whispers He doesn't care; He sings of rescue. Something about a castle where that princess was captive. Something about throwing out curses and drawing lines in the sand, and gathering the stones that would have been hurled my way into piles instead (John 8). Restoring crowns, and redeeming all of us, sinners - scandalous, scorched and scourged - the beautiful broken. He has made us whole.

...reposting an excerpt from this post, humbled by my own words from March 9, 2011

Undone

Venus on the horizon at sunset

Let your boat of life be light, packed only with what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink, for thirst is a dangerous thing. (Jerome Klapka Jerome)

I have a nightmare, excruciating. I am with my husband and two of my children, the eldest and the youngest. We take a sightseeing ride over St. Anthony Main, where the Mississippi burgeons for the first time into her full glory as a major river of the United States. The river is 300 feet below us, huge boulders slicing her flow into streams. Suddenly the car we are in tips haphazardly to the side, nearly spilling us to our death over the rocks. My husband grabs my son's ankle and my daughter grips the rope. Then we huddle together in the bottom of the car, shifting all our weight to the other side, trying to keep it upright. I beg my sleepy husband to hold tight to my son's ankle or I will go mad.

I wake up sweaty, and it is time to get up and get ready for work. I put on my scrubs, my PhD(c) lab coat, my stethoscope. I head back to the ICU to pick up a patient. I face the scorn in the eyes of the coworkers. I try to find the cath lab to drop this patient off for his procedure. I am squeezing the bag that connects to oxygen and the tube through which he breathes while comatose. I can't find the lab through the maze of construction in the hospital, and I am begging, "Lord, if this is a nightmare, please let me wake up." The stress mounts, and I am undone.

I come up another level, this time really to consciousness. At least, I think so. I am drenched, weary, fearful. What if this is just the third nightmare-within-a-nightmare? I have visions of the movie Inception. It is not until 30 minutes later, pulling on my yellow jacket and heading out the door to church, that I am sure I am really awake this time.

This is PTSD. The nightmares and flashbacks bring me continually to my knees, so that I pray even in my sleep. How can I deny that God is moving through the most painful season of my life, when all the traumas of past days come crashing down and I can finally hear the sound of the walls in my heart moaning under the pressure of new stress, collapsing and clouding my mind with their dust and grit.

In Deuteronomy 31, God sings through Moses' mouth these words to Israel:

I would have said, "I will cut them to pieces. I will wipe them from human memory," had I not feared provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries misunderstand, lest they should say, "Our hand is triumphant, it was not the Lord who did all this." See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god beside me: I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver you out of My hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear, "As I live forever, if I sharpen my flashing sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me." Rejoice with me, O heavens, bow down to Him, all gods, for He avenges the blood of His children...and cleanses His people's land. (Deuteronomy 31: 26-27; 38-41; 43)

He wants me undone. He wants me struck open like an overripe melon, spilling my guts and hollowing out a place for Him. He wounds me so that He may bind me, so that I might see the awesome power of His hand in my life. While I am hurting, I sit in the palm of His hand, in His grip. When I am whole, it is He who makes me so. He empties out my life, so that I might simply live. He sweeps away distractions and leaves only that which matters most, so that I might notice the simple joy and the all-consuming love that surrounds, instead of all the cobwebs I've stored up in my spiritual house. It is as if the furniture has been removed, and standing in the echoing room are my husband and children, my family and friends, just people - nothing else. The sun streams in the windows and hits the whitewashed walls, and I am undone again, this time by the incredible beauty of His creation instead of the cardboard crowns I have constructed life long. I can say, this day, that I care nothing for appearances, abandoning them for the absolute, pure glory of God.

Glory to God, the beginning and the end, Who was, and is, and is to come. (Revelation 1:8)

Outside looking in

I look down at my arms, and they are alien arms stitched on my body. I am not that old. I search the sand dunes of memory, sifting for a name, my husband's name. The doctor in my nightmare tells me I've had children. I can't remember this. My mind is a white snowbank of blank, and I am holding cards that should have memories on them instead of hieroglyphs I can't understand.

I fall back into self with a thud, and the only physical sensation I have is that I am much too tall. Is it possible to grow three feet while you're dreaming? I touch my head, and the soft fuzz there feels foreign. Like my brother's summer buzz cut when we were children.

My husband says, "Look at my glasses." So I do, I stare hard, but I still cannot remember marrying him. The buzzing in my ears drowns out the sounds and I see the light in a hard line on the floor as the children crack the bathroom door to see who is crying. It takes a moment to realize that it is me making that low moan.

So I lay back into flannel sheets and down comforter, and try to purge the nightmare from brain cells. I was drowning, falling, broken, bleeding. Others were hurt in my crash. Yet I am trying to walk, trying to look alright. A pastor in a flashy suit asks me if I am okay. Of course I am. Of course I am. I plod along to a river and soak my bloody feet in the dark bracken there.

I wake up still falling, and my husband is a stranger whose name I can't remember.

Oh, for sanity. I pray for sanity.

Floating (and a give-away)

We drive along northern Lake Superior's color tour route, through a canopy of yellow, the birches bowing over us, cathedral arches over a gravel road. Something about the yellow, the smells and the scene, the place and the time of year, plunges me deep into the murky world of memory. Memory so thick and so real that my eyes cannot see truth, cannot see my husband who tries to draw me back to my body. A hallucination of my past, gritty, agonizing, and breathless. We near Heartbreak Hill, and my heart indeed is still broken and my coping skills are swept away like ash in the wind. 

I feel burned out, like an overexposed photo, my soul a cigarette crushed out by abusers and my own consuming sins. God is absent in this memory, a mere onlooker whose hand I cannot reach.

We reach the hill, and the memory subsides. The cool air outside the car brings me back, but I am somehow stuck outside my body, my soul like a firecracker on a string that I drag behind me as we walk.

I put my thumbprint cross in my back pocket. Something to squeeze when the memories squeeze me in their inexorable grip.

Everything still bleeds out of focus. The memories wash over me like waves. A little girl broken. A girl in college breaking others. The weight of my shame descends upon my shoulders again and I am too heavy to walk far. My eyes blur with tears and they are hot, tears of my guilt, the guilt stain that I cannot rub out even though I know it is forever forgotten by the Savior to whom I confessed it long ago.

How do you keep walking when you know others are adrift in pain because of what you have done in your life?

There is no relief. All weekend, even still now on Monday, my soul is still hovering, afraid to rejoin my mind, which houses these acid thoughts. Without soul, the tears stop, the emotion stops, and I am not afraid or sad or ashamed . I move through the days like the walking dead, seeing and hearing but not absorbing, and I can't force that soul back in.

How can I be kind to myself? How can I find comfort? Where is my help among these jagged rocks on the stormy sea, when I split apart and let soul float behind so I can keep on living? I sing with David, praying for relief.

The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all...Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him. (from Psalm 34)

Perhaps it is He who is holding the string to my soul, floating and ready to come home to my body if only I can open these clenched fists and receive His grace.

Gifts, counted, through the fog:

1011 Husband fighting for me through flashbacks

1016 Yellow carpet in the woods

1017 Laughter rippling through the leaves

1019 Carrots cooked with pot roast

1021 Music on the way home

A giveaway:

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What you'll get:

A turquoise Comfort Cross from Calypso Studios, just like mine

Spectator

First, take a little kid. Any age, really, but for me it was at 7 1/2.

Before my mom told me about puberty.

Before I had any grid in which to put sexual acts or information.

So, it happened. Sexual abuse. Seven years later I locked it in a Pandora's box and put it under my bed. Over time it became invisible even to me. I never thought about it and I certainly didn't think I needed to be healed from it. It was just something that happened when I was a kid.

Add to that the sins I entered because of the abuse. I had a lot of trouble with sexual orientation, but I just thought it was because I was a bad person and my bad was leaking through in sexual areas.

Now you've got a Pandora's box of long-standing abuse, wrapped neatly in the grotesque shame and guilt you feel for your own sins since. That is one ugly box you've got there. Even more abhorrent (and hence, invisible) to you than before you wrapped it in shame and guilt.

Then something happens, triggers memories, all those untold memories of evil and all that wrapping paper of guilt and shame you don't know how to dispose of. Maybe it's a smell, like it was for me. Maybe it's an object, a photo, retelling a childhood story, or seeing someone who looks like your abuser. For me, one whiff of a smell sent me swirling downward in a spiral of despair. Spiraling along with me, now glaringly visible, was the box in which I'd stuffed the worst memories of my life.

I was haunted my flashbacks and nightmares of both my childhood abuse and a rape I experienced while in college. I didn't know how to stop them, so I tried to leave this world. It was too painful to go on. The behavioral health professionals who tried to treat me didn't know how to get rid of them, short of keeping me in a constant blurred state using tranquilizers. My family and friends could only tell me how valuable I was to them, how much they loved me, and how much they wanted me to keep fighting and live.

Venus and her moon

Nobody knew what to do about the consequences once the box was opened. A pastor helped me with the guilt and shame, but I was still left with frequent paralyzing flashbacks and nightmares all through the night, so horrendous that I often woke up kicking, yelling, or crying.

And then something magical happened. I talked with another of our pastors, one with a story much like my own. Tears and stories birthed his question for me: Do you have compassion for yourself? My answer was swift and sure, "No." I am a perfectionist of the highest order, so much so that my house is often a mess because I've given up on trying to make it perfect.

What he said to me next turned out to be the key to stop the flashbacks in their tracks. I needed to focus on the child in those flashbacks, not the abuser of whom I was still so scared I hardly breathed during the flashback. I need to have compassion for that child, imagine giving her a hug after it was all over, and telling her how sorry I was that this happened to her, something that should happen to no one and perhaps least of all a pre-pubescent child.

I tried it. It felt awkward. But the emotion was immediate release. Of course I have compassion on that little girl. Of course I'm sorry for what happened to her. And my abuser now lies powerless, buried in a sea of Grace that has stripped her of her weapons and her vengeance. I type these words now, and look for a prayer for that child in the flashback. The Book of Common Prayer Lectionary for June 10th is Psalm 102. A prayer of one afflicted as he pours out his heart before the Lord.

Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you! Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress! Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call! My heart is struck down like grass and has withered; I forget to eat my bread. I lie awake; I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop. All the day my enemies taunt me; those who deride me use my name for a curse. Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height; from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die, that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord, and in Jerusalem his praise, when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the Lord. He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days. “O my God,” I say, “take me not away in the midst of my days—you whose years endure throughout all generations!”...you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you. (exc. Psalm 102 ESV)

I buy an ugly little stained glass panel at Saver's. Because it is what I need to remember today, as I face depression now without the fear of flashbacks, and rebuild what has been torn down in this season of discovery and tragedy. I need now to focus on rebuilding. "All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today."

The next first dance

We were standing as we would at a wedding dance, limbs akimbo.

We sit hunched, inches apart, minds flying in opposite directions. He reels me in with the touch of a hand, the electricity of him + me. We sit in the china blue twilight as the frog song goes from song of the forest, wafting, to near cacophony like the blower from the next farm down running straight through the night, all the while you wondering, huddled. Messy.

The dog slumps and huffs into her place behind us. She plops down like a worn-out sack of flour, and snuffs at us. I stiffen and enter the gridlock, I am stealthy and disassociated and I nod "yes", shake head "no", insert a "good job sweetheart" as the children speak like rushing water one tumbling over the next to describe thier t-ball game. It is hard to untangle at the end of the day. Behind them is a projection screen with an 8mm recording of my abuse, the darkest day in the woods. I shiver, and put my silent smile back on and drown in the water of their voices.

But being too happy in thine happiness,—

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Darkling, I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toil me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

~exc. from Ode to a Nightingale, Keats ~

Crying out to rise again

"For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again." (Prov 24:16a)

The curbside Prophet there yelling at me

Yeah, he's yelling about my tattoos

But we all live with the scars we choose

They might hurt like hell, but they all make us stronger

~ Take Me As I Am, Sugarland ~

The puckered red leather top on our maple syruping table is a parable of my soul. There is something painful about each crack and line, but there is a hidden beauty as well. Something well worn, well loved, still useful.

The nightmares and flashbacks are intense. Sometimes I emerge crying, the vivid pictures of my childhood abuse and scars from college searing my soul right out of sleep. I am afraid to be alone. I am afraid of the dark again, like I was as a child.

I picture myself the chick under the wings of God, the hen who guards the young. The devil swoops in and out, but nothing penetrates that shield. I may be broken and fragile because of these flashbacks, but through the Cross, I will overcome. I will get better. Christ is a giant compared to these light and momentary trials I face. I see opportunity after opportunity stretching as far as the eye can see, once I am better. I remember being 7 years old and wishing I could see God just so I could be wrapped up in a single hug from the Savior I trust. I feel that way again. Wishing for a God-hug. A bear hug. A hug that infuses me with strength to endure.

The storm clouds overhead won't shed

Any rain to quench your thirst

I want to be the One you reach for first

When your faith is stretched so thin

That you can see straight through your soul

And you can't find a nickel to buy a smile

'Cause your pockets all got holes

You want to shut the door and hide

Before the day can get much worse

I want to be the One you reach for first

Fall into me

My arms are open wide

And you don't have to say a word

'Cause I already see

That it's hard and you're scared

And your tired and it hurts

And I want to be the One you reach for first

Before you turn the key

Before you fall asleep

Before you drift away to fight

those demons waiting for you in your dreams

Fall into me.

I want to be the One you reach for first.

~Fall Into Me, Sugarland~