Amputations

I warned her long before, that I can't just let life take it's course at the end of relationships. That my track record is a pretty unblemished path of destruction. I tried to tell her all of it, but damned if my brain didn't hogtie my tongue. What came out wasn't a clear enough description. Once again, someone I loved and trusted, someone who trusted me, I broke it all to pieces and here I am with the sledgehammer in my hand and dust still settling and I'm crying because it's all broken. I broke it. I can't stand it being broken. Where is the middle path? 

In that moment, the waking up moment when your rage and fear subside and you look around and you see what you have done, that is the most sickening sensation I've ever known. When your sickness leaches out and suddenly you are someone else, someone you can't control or predict, understand or desire to be - when all you can do is try to hold the reins as tightly as possible so you are still in one piece when the ride is over - the crash at the end is as much a surprise to you as it is to anyone else.

I didn't see it coming. I can't hear the train of my own crazy leaving the station. I don't even know it's moving until I'm trying to hold everyone in as the wind threatens to tear the cars to pieces.

Much of what I say to the sky these days is unintelligible. The person I'm most angry at is myself. I hate that I haven't grown up or learned or progressed. How is it possible to regress in an instant to the social function of a small child? Who is going to fix me if I hurt anyone who comes close? How do I quit hurting people?

More questions. Fewer answers. More desperate for help, less help available.
No matter how hard you fight the current, we're all just circling the drain.

Bouncing back

In the darkness of the soul, only the shadows of shame, grief, hopelessness are visible. Profiles of black against an unattainable light. The future appears as shrouded as the moment you are in now.

Time and again, I've sighed, resigned myself, and stepped back into the light. The living light. Grace is holding me by the hand, and mercy the tug of life's current around my ankles. You are never alone, He whispers. Each day is sprinkled more and more heavily with happiness. Laughter with my therapist. Sharing a joke with my kids. Yelling and screaming at my daughter's softball game, totally abandoned to the moment. A card full of encouragement from a friend of few words.

Each dark time is shorter. It's a massive amount of work, moving the mountain of those inhibited and unhealthy ways of coping and building a new mountain worthy of the foundation of Jesus' sacrifice. The old mountain spews it's shame and lies across the landscape of my life as the dynamite of hope blasts holes in it's edifice. It's as if she's saying, I won't go down without a fight. And who is it that speaks from that dark mountain of self-neglect, self-loathing, stubborness and sin? Evil is what speaks from there. The explosion of the dynamite of hope is God's thunderous answer to my own self-doubt. SHE IS MINE, He screams at the stubborn rocks. 

I am a woman of words. I carry my books in a bag that says, "I am God's idea. Please be nice." A talismen against those who would cruelly crush me again. Even the new letters etched on my shoulder are a forever tribute to this time of ultimate trust and testing: "Fear not. Only believe, and she shall be safe." (Luke 8:50) I finger the Latin - noli timere crede tantum et salva erit - remembrance of the pain of the tattoo gun piercing flesh a good analogy of the pain of the past 3 years.

Each time the sky grows black, I see the light at the end of the tunnel quicker - as the night grows deeper, the light grows, too. A light that is faint in full sun is brightest in the darkest hours of the night. He leans down and tilts my chin upward, reminding me that I am His daughter and protected and beloved even when it doesn't feel so. The light is blinding. Beautiful. Bewitching.

What am I building this new mountain of hope out of? I have a list of all the skills I've been taught using dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). Skills like these:

• Turn your mind (repentance)
• Teflon mind (refusing to listen to evil)
• Half-smile (a cheerful heart doeth good like a medicine)
• Accumulating positives (count your blessings)
• Coping ahead (stewardship)
• Mindfulness (do not worry about tomorrow)
• Wise mind (seek wisdom)
• Accepting reality (trusting an all-knowing God)

DBT has quite literally been used by God to save my life. If you are struggling with relentless self-doubt, depression, PTSD, or other mental health issues, you can find a trained counselor here. DBT was developed by a psychologist who spent most of her teens and 20s in mental institutions without any relief. She developed the skills herself and then began sharing them with the world. You can read Marsha Linehan's story here. DBT is one of the most proven therapy techniques available today, rigorously tested for multiple conditions using randomized controlled studies. For an introduction to what DBT is, read here. If you are interested in DBT, but wonder whether the skills taught are Biblical, please contact me and I will send you a list of Bible references demonstrating the Christian foundation for these skills.

There, but for the grace of God...

They say she was radiant, her love boundless, her hospitality second nature and unmatched. In photos, you can tell how fiercely she loved her children, how proud she was of her husband. She was a remarkable woman married into a remarkable family. There's not a photo remaining that shows the pain deep in her eyes. Yet, one day not long after Mother's Day, she took the raspy rope and threaded it around her neck and hung herself from the rafters of her barn. In all the confusion that ensued, not one person could come up with a reason for why she took her own life. Was it her impending divorce, striking at the core of her beliefs as a Catholic? Was it the separation from her children brought on by the grid of a visitation schedule? Was it depression? Mental illness?

Profound grief rakes my heart as I read about all of this. There, but for the grace of God, go I. John Bradford, an English preacher burned at the stake in 1510, penned those words after watching a group of Christians walk to their execution. A few years later, he did follow in those martyrs footsteps. In his quote is an echo of the words of James, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit’; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’(4:13-15 NKJV)

I know the depths of depression that lead you to the rope and the beam. I know the grief and shame over your failures that extinguishes hope. I know the stubborn root planted by an evil wind in your soul that is ever so difficult to uproot. I know that the only hope for those, like me, who walk down that tangled path is the Word that cuts off tenacious roots of self-doubt, self-hatred, and despondency. Immedicabile vulnus...a wound that can never be healed, a poison in the veins she nourishes, to be consumed by the hidden fire.

Looking back on the darkest days of my life, my song is Psalm 124:

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us:

Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:

Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream would had gone over our soul:

Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.

Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: 

the snare is broken, and we are escaped.

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

How different the song might have been, had I fallen prey to their teeth. Had the waters swirled over my head. Had I been completely overwhelmed. The hands of friends reached down into the dark waters and pulled me up from the deeps. The love of my husband was a life raft of hope, not hope of mine, but the hope in his eyes that I could adopt and buoy myself upon. The prayers of the saints who would not let me martyr myself on a pyre of selfish insufficiency. The parents who prayed, helped, loved unconditionally.

I pray for Mary Kennedy's family. Pray that her children are rescued from the darkness that has fallen like a shroud over their little family. Ages 10 to 17, they face their adolescence without their mother - their life forever without her.

There, but for the grace of God, go mine.

Take this cup

He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. (Luke 22:41-44)

Just days before, Jesus was teaching the twelve, knowing this time was coming. He spoke of death, trials, great suffering. ...unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life shall lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say, 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour: 'Father, glorify your name.' (John 12: 24, 25, 27, 28)

He willingly took the cup His Father had chosen for Him. He knew it was imperative that He obey. Yet His "spirit was troubled", and He pleaded that the death that loomed before Him would not come to pass. If ever a human being had eternal perspective, it was Christ. If ever a human being held their life loosely, willing to see the grave instead of old age, it was Jesus. But this did not stop Him from praying earnestly, from sweating blood. He knew the purpose of His death, yet He sincerely wished it did not have to be.

So I feel as cancer scans approach. I know they are necessary, but I am undone regardless. I know their purpose, and still pray that I might not have to receive the iodine again. I pray in the spirit of willingness, I do not demand my own will be done. But, oh, how I wish it!

Willfulness is a part of my character that I have not yet rooted out. With it's roots in my childhood, when I would take any double-dog dare, even eating worm sandwiches and drinking from a bucket with a dead mouse floating in it, willfulness has been part of my story for a long time. In college, it took on a different shape: I fought doctors for freedom, I battled through nursing curriculum that maxed out my energy. Lately, I have fought this urge again as I face self-harm temptation and depression that is immobilizing.

I pray God conquers this unwilling spirit that possesses me sometimes. I pray that I can really mean it when I say, "Not my will but thine be done." Willfulness sprouts where fear and hopelessness abound. I pray with the Psalmist, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me." (51:12)


Approach this any way you like. Write about how you're feeling today. Write about different theories of human emotion - some people use a list of 12 or 20 basic emotions. How many do you think there are? How many do you feel at once?


Blog about it, tweet your thoughts, or write a new status. Make sure to come back here, grab the button code and link up so we can read each other's stories! 

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The fallen sisters

I could talk about self-control, rightly so. I could talk about doing the right thing and what my conservative opinions of a Christian life should look like. I may even get a lot of encouragement from other well-meaning do-gooders. We could have our own club, totally separate from ‘the world’ and draw the shades to our heart while we enjoy how Christian we are. Meanwhile, we suffocate a fallen sister because our lives don’t offer hope, they offer moral standards. You know you’re sending the wrong message if one of your members leaves the group when they make a moral mistake. God set up grace so that He would never lose anyone. Set your life up that way, too. ~from the incomparable Serena Woods at Grace is for Sinners

I've known a thousand of them, women struggling. Women losing babies. Women saying goodbye to their dead children. Women struggling through pregnancy, or grief, loss, limitation. Women wounded deeply, ignoring their wounds and living in a twisted world. Women at odds with their families. Women deep in depression and plagued by anxiety.

Last week, in the hospital, I met so many fallen sisters, sisters who saw no reasonable excuse to continue their sad lives. Sisters who had overdosed, wounded their own bodies, carving out flesh for sins past, sins present, sins they dreamed their future filled with. I walked with them, as one of them.

How do we, the church, respond to fallen sisters? How to carry them through their grief, loss, pain, and dependence? How to help them see sunlight again? To feel the small and large joys that await each of us on this long walk we call life. How to let them know that life is not hopeless, nor are fallen sisters powerless or voiceless.

Like the glimmer of the yellow crocus petal, I feel myself in the world of fallen sisters, but rising for beauty. Beauty for ashes. Gladness for mourning. Praise instead of a faint spirit. (Isaiah 61:3)

Lord, help me walk back into the sunshine.