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.

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Walking away with dignity

In the dark bedroom lit by the moon, husband slumbering deep, I am awake. There is a scissors on the dresser and I am thinking of thick scarlet blood running. I worked at a job for 11 weeks, and I am still acclimated to working through the night. The noose tightens again, my throat constricted, thoughts impulsive and sin filled. One of the hardest lesson you have to learn as a caregiver is that people live and die without you. There was a time when I was a new nurse when I didn't understand this. Realizing you are not God is difficult, especially when you're young. God granted me special talents with my hands - the ability to find arteries hiding, to slide plastic IVs into tender, ropy veins, a sixth sense when danger was near. I had to learn that other nurses had the same talents. That I was just one in a vast army of people with the same gifts. That I was not the only person who could do what I did.

Facing the fact that you are not as unique as you think is difficult when you also know that God created you an individual totally distinct from every other human since or before. Yet all these people I've cared for, I've left at the end of the shift, however long. And their stories progressed on without me. I have to believe that God wanted me there on that unit for just 11 weeks, and that He doesn't need me there any longer. I was blessed to participate in saving two lives while I was there. Maybe that's just what He needed from this time. Maybe He just wanted to confirm for me that I haven't lost my touch. That I can still look deep into the eyes surrounded by the white of panic and see the person deep inside, connect with them, comfort them in those last moments of consciousness.

Adjusting to this - that I am no longer necessary there - while maintaining a sense of purpose for my existence is a difficult tightrope to walk. Those synapses that harness me to my own worth are tenuous and faulty, a suspension bridge with planks missing, planks that fell into the river of doubt deep below while I convalesced from the deepest and darkest season of depression and pain I've known.

I held his pink cheeks while his body was wracked with coughing fits today during naptime. I fall in love all over again with the blond spike, the dark chocolate eyes, the pearly row of baby teeth, the flush of sick little cheeks. It is my moment of worship, this day, holding this beautiful soul in my arms, the ache in my chest dissipating and the dreams of death diminishing. It is Christmastime, and I can't help but think of the Savior babe, the one Mary clung to, the miraculous birth that she trusted though she must have had premonitions that her Son was born not just for her pleasure but for the rescue of a fallen world. What must she have felt when she knelt beneath the cross, finally realizing that even Christ had to leave His place in our world? Never was a person so necessary. But sometimes it is through the sacrifice of all we hold dear, the bending to sovereign will much more important than our own, that is the greatest act of care a person could ever make. Walking quietly the path that is laid before us with the dignity of a soul that grasps Grace and forgives the calloused and sightless persecutor is, indeed, the most Christlike beauty.

Sunday's ray of hope

Amy is doing better today after 18 hours on IV antibiotics. She is less sleepy and more talkative. The doctors just rounded and told us to expect to be in until Tuesday morning unless something changes for better or worse in her condition.

I wake up from nightmares wandering through hospital ICU's looking for my baby. I hold her realistic baby doll like a sack of potatoes from my arms and get glares from the nurses as I walk the halls. Finally, I find her. She is in horrible shape and her eyes have gone completely dead, no spark when she sees me. I am forced to go back to work and leave her there, listening to her screams echo the halls as I walk away. I sit up with a start and for a moment it all seems real. Then the hotel surroundings seep in and I realize I am left with only the remnants of visceral fear a nightmare leaves as memory and a pounding headache testament to late hours and way too much stress.

Ironically, the very verses I wrestle with during the "day to day" of our family's trials are the ones I cling to, repeating over and over throughout these hardest days. I will not give you more than you can bear. (I Corinthians 10:13)

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23)

I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me. (Philippians 4:13)

I will offer up my life

In spirit and truth,

Pouring out the oil of love

As my worship to You

In surrender I must give my every part;

Lord, receive the sacrifice

Of a broken heart

Jesus, what can I give, what can I bring

To so faithful a friend, to so loving a King?

Savior, what can be said, what can be sung

As a praise of Your name

For the things You have done?

Oh my words could not tell, not even in part

Of the debt of love that is owed

By this thankful heart

You deserve my every breath

For You've paid the great cost;

Giving up Your life to death,

Even death on a cross

You took all my shame away,

There defeated my sin

Opened up the gates of heaven

And have beckoned me in

~I Will Offer Up My Life, Matt Redman~

Calculated risk

They clamber up the apple tree, my four and six year olds, all the way to the top where the ripe apples drip like ruby gems from the bowed branches. I catch glimpses of faces through foliage and try to avoid sounding too nervous as I ask them to come down a bit lower in the tree. Rosy is the monkey, clinging and swinging, branch to branch and apples rain down in her wake.

Finally the feed bucket is full - half green and half ripe apples for a corral full of horses eager for a bite. The kids get braver, holding hands flat to offer apples to the hungry mouths, only to be grossed out by horse spit on their fingers. And she, the quiet beauty I held moments after birth, 16 now and silent. She knows the sorrow in my soul but instead of talking about it, we dance through the dreamy moments of peace in the horse corral, as she tends my kids and lets me take pictures. How could I disappoint her so, to end my life??

It is pure love, children and horses. While healthy fear keeps them guarded, there are moments like these, when horse and child melt together in embrace and solace that can only be found in the pulsing warm bodies of people and pets. The amazing synergy to touch between beast and man.

The gentle spirit in the glistening eyes, the gleam of the sun off curried backs, the thrill of the bareback ride around the yard. It is a love affair, just blossoming.

Their love affair with me predates horses, all the way back to birth, strengthening with every moment at the breast when they were babes, every smile from mother to baby, and even now from the broken and bruised mama to the broken and bruised child. The youngest, my favorite boy in the whole world, clambers down the hay mow stairs, and I watch from above while Katy watches from below. No railings. Another scary moment for a mom of klutzy kids.

I saw it there, on the hay mow floor. The only thing rougher than aged barn wood is the rasp of a sturdy rope. It hangs in a loop and you could swing out the door on it. I feel it for a second, the thorny grip of the rope on neck, the leap out, the swing, the fall, the last crack of life shut out like the sliver of light as a door closes.

But I have finally, desperately, clung to life. When I think of suicide, I read about myths of suicide and the urge passes. I "turn my mind", a coping skill used in modern cognitive behavioral therapy, words so similar to the definition of "repentance", the Hebrew word  שׁוּבָה transliterated "shubah", meaning a return or a turning away from.

I return to my children, and I turn away from the ropes and the knives and all the other everyday things that could be my end. My end is already written in His book. As depression wavers in the onslaught of medication, I begin to dream of more horse-child love, the future. To daydream, not about how I'll hurt myself next, but how I'll build for the future.

God is doing great things.

Laying it down

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

So here I am, embarking on a weekend to tend to those friends needing healing and help, embarking on a weekend full of work to prepare for dissertation proposal defense, and I am thinking about these big things. The obvious, yes - laying down the dissertation proposal for the sake of these friends who need us today. The less obvious - going silent on Twitter and Facebook so I am not the one throwing logs on the fire of conflict.

Pets. Children. They hustle around your legs just for the contact. They grip your hand just for surety. They pull at your arms to dissuade you from the task at hand. And for what purpose? Love. And what greater love can one have, but to lay down one's life for friends? Not like I'm on a suicide mission for friends. But I am on a sacrificial mission for friends. If I need to stop tweeting, I will. If Facebook grows quiet of me, so be it. If I squeeze proposal defense between the margins of caring for friends who need us deeply, sign me up, Jesus. But I will not let go healing. I have shaken off the dust, and I am moving into a healthier place. There is no turning back, no "reconciliation" that brings me back to a place of shame and dispute. God is drawing me out of there and sweetly, sweetly, into new surrender and new hope.

Hope you have a great weekend filled with love, sacrifice, and hope as well, my friends!

Looking up

I am very, very tired. I feel oddly alone. Last night I spent the night struggling for breath, exhausting my home remedies. Probably pneumonia, just guessing. I head for the doctor this afternoon once I have a sitter and a ride. Too tired to go myself with all the kids, or pack them up to get them elsewhere.

A friend of a friend recently went through a crisis that set me thinking again about all God has carried me through in the last 12 years. Got me thinking that, no matter how dirty life around me is today, no matter how frazzled, or worn, or frustrated, the view always improves when I look up.

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.

You know my sitting down and my rising up;

You understand my thought afar off.

You comprehend my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word on my tongue,

but behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.

You have hedged me behind and before,

and laid Your hand upon me.

~ Psalm 139:1-4 ~

The photos are from one of my favorite places on earth. Taken from the ground, looking straight up into some perfectly ordinary and not even particularly antique grain silos at the York horse farm. My focus today is on keeping my body as still as possible so as not to disturb whatever has settled in my lungs; and looking up instead of down. The vista is bound to be infinitely more beautiful up there! There is a beautiful turquoise sky in Wisconsin today, and a Savior bent to listen. Wherever you are today, note the color of the sky and make sure you direct some words to the Christ who today knelt in Gethsemane and sweat blood in His fear and dislike for the task before Him. My tasks today are so much less gruesome. I am thankful His verdict was, "Lord, if thou be willing, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done." (Luke 22:42) May that be on my lips today as well.