Don’t Flee Pain, Make It Your Friend

I stopped writing when my Mom got sick with cancer my last few years of high school. Looking back, I realize that it was one more way I tried to compartmentalize, that I wasn’t prepared to and didn’t want to process the loss, or my failures and selfishness during her illness. This approach, shockingly, did not help me grow anything but an unhealthy anxiety and mild depression as well.

Fast forward two or three years, nothing had really changed, and Andrew and my fledgling marriage hiccups were enough to deal with anyway. While our struggles were very typical for most Christian newlyweds, such as awkwardly transitioning from not having sex and actively trying to avoid anything to do with it, to switching our brains to trying to see it as a freedom and a blessing (gee, thanks, purity culture), to me they were monumental and I felt so alone in them. Money was also tight as we were both babies in our fields, just getting into the swing of this career thing, while paying off student loans. Also we had a cat we couldn’t afford to get fixed that was VIOLENTLY and loudly amorous, which our apartment building neighbours I am SURE loved, and brought me no end of embarrassment and discomfort in my own home. We were living what I didn’t then realize was an enneagram four’s worst possible nightmare: misunderstood, with no one who truly knew what I was going through, with no time or energy for any creative outlet, living surrounded by scads of strangers (some hostile) in a concrete box.

Through this whole period of our first year or two, I had told myself that a) our struggles were private and b) unique and we shouldn’t be failing in these ways, so best to keep up a good front, because no one was going to understand or be able to relate or empathize. Worse, that they would think we just weren’t spiritual or godly enough to handle these hurdles.

It took me eight years and a panic attack in a friend’s garage a few weeks after giving birth to my second child, our son, to have that eureka moment and realize that I hadn’t been lazy, or backsliding, or “adulting” wrong the last ten years. I’d simply been trying to pull myself out from under the weight of the trauma of my Mom dying, a new marriage that I didn’t realize I’d been bringing so much baggage into, and a few other bumps and bruises emotionally and socially along the way ALL WITHOUT realizing that I’d been fighting anxiety and depression and most likely mild PTSD to boot. And trying to do it all alone.

The first steps? Taking it all to Jesus and laying it all out and saying ENOUGH, I can’t manage this all, might you step in? (To which He cracked his knuckles and went to work, but not on my circumstances: on my HEART). I started asking for help. Just with dishes. Or a meal. Or babysitting for free. Allowing people to serve ME without feeling guilty for accepting. Not flinging myself through every emotion as fast as I could and just “getting on with it”. Sitting awhile in mourning, ACTUAL mourning.

I remember distinctly that I barely cried at all at my Mom’s funeral, that I went through the entire day just trying to remember to say the right thing, panicking I wouldn’t remember someone’s name, and actively trying to process everyone’s grief but my own, and making sure to keep it together so no one else felt put out or embarrassed. I was outside myself, exhausting my introvert self to the point of complete breakdown. I was terrified I would show some emotion the people around me wouldn’t be able handle. I loathed creating an awkward situation.

In the following months, I twisted my soul into pretzels trying to be ok for my Dad (who was actively seeking therapy for depression: I decided one of us struggling was enough, and hid my own angst) and for my younger brother, who had his own grief to work through and I figured, was worse off than me. I pushed my own soul away, resisted anything that looked like weakness, just “kept calm and carried on” and meanwhile, my heart was just shrinking.

If this sounds like your story, the most freeing thing I can offer is that you are not even remotely alone, and that it will be less exhausting to find someone to talk to than it will to keep pushing things down and just doing the next most urgent thing on your list. It took me over ten years to realize that I didn’t handle grief well, I didn’t handle it at ALL, didn’t let it in, didn’t let it do its work. Jesus kept sitting down and offering me a hand to come sit down next to him, and I kept running on past Him with the excuse that I had jobs to do and other people to serve. His frustrated sighs must have shaken Heaven.

I’ve learned since to slow down. To have the awkward, emotional conversations. To say no. To say yes. To find how I communicate (hint, it’s not audible conversations, it’s in writing). That when a memory comes, if it feels shameful, to talk about it. To write about it. To take away its power. Confession is freeing. The only one who accuses us of something we’ve dealt with with God already is Satan. And Jesus keeps shutting him down.

There are so many layers to my story and I haven’t hit the end of what it looks like to truly process completely all the events and emotions in my life, but here’s a start. Here’s an honest look not to make myself look good (spoiler: there are many parts that make me look anything but) but to resonate with someone out there reading this that needs to know they aren’t alone. I want you to know relationships are messy and two-sided and grow in fits and starts and there is seldom a clear line between protagonist/antagonist in any story.

The hope I offer is that the Master Weaver is great at untangling threads that are so tightly knotted you can’t tell where on ends and the other begins. Hand him your mess. See what He shows you. “Learn the unforced rhythms of grace”: grace with others, and grace with yourself. Whatever you hand Him, He will never throw back in your face. He’ll transform your face to shine.