It was a decade or so ago and I was in desperate need of help.
In search for tangible and lasting help that brought healing and not more pain I kept trying to find some one or some thing to help. It's all a blur, unless I slow down and think about it, the stream of people I looked to for comfort and ministration and found that their capacity to simply hear my story was so small. The few who could hear some parts of it and remain my friend and not turn me into a dreaded sympathy project were those who themselves were so wounded. We gathered together at all night restaurants and talked till dawn. Just friends talking, no projects allowed.
After a time, and so many hours drinking sweet tea, coffee and cappuccino and splitting hash browns at three in the morning, the gatherings eventually had more reasonable hours and we met at my house for popcorn, hot chocolate with butter schnapps, white zinfandel and talking and board games. We felt like normal people, with friends.
Our conversations were different than any other gathering of friends or church people I'd ever experienced. We spoke of cutting; head banging; sleeping the darkness away; the need to check on a friend who might be suicidal, again; and abuse, all kinds. We spoke of God and Bible verses that helped, but mostly we were the hands of Jesus to each other because everyone else hurt us more.
I'd like to say that I was strong and a source of comfort and was full of empathy for these dear ladies. In reality we were all barely functioning and from day to day what kept us together was the knowledge that we were all we had. We were all in different churches, and each of our churches were actively "helping" in our lives in some way. We needed each other.
Showing posts with label #community. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #community. Show all posts
Monday, February 23, 2015
Thursday, September 18, 2014
How God is Becoming More Real to Me
How is God real to me? It sounds like an odd question to ask, maybe *gasp* like something a seeker friendly church would have a little pamphlet on. I can't help any similarities there may be. I must remind myself that God cares and look for those ways He shows himself to be real, not just a far off God who doesn't hear. I can't reconcile my pleading prayers when I was being abused and His apparent deafness, to the teaching that God is present and hears our prayers and loves us. When I try to think through both things I get trapped in a loop of flashbacks. It's not a good place to be.
What I can do is to look for God's hands in my life today and then in the more recent past. If I go back too much farther; I run into problems, big ones like: does God love me, did he love me back then, what about protection, is God really good, how sovereign is he anyway, and God was present but did nothing. The way I can skip over those type of questions is for me to look at all the evil in the world being done to people of all ages and then remind myself that I'm nothing special to rate some divine protection. There are Christians being murdered and abused for their faith. I had it pretty easy in comparison. Somehow I'm not sure this is the way to handle it. It ends up with me viewing God as a distant and uncaring God who is big into consequences. So then I'm back to completely ignoring my own past, beyond the last few years, and disregarding today's present persecution of Christians unless I put it into a "suffering for Christ" category.
Today I look for God's caring in my life. I see it in the meals brought to us by families in our church; in the freshly mowed grass because all of our mowers are broken and my husband now works out of town; in the concern being shown to us as one of our children is suffering from head trauma; texts, phone calls, getting together to just talk; in so many kindnesses big and small; and the fact that I can't disappear from church or blend into the background because I have become a part of this body. All this and so much more are evidences to me that God cares. I see it through the tangible touch and actions of Christians who are God's arms around me in difficult times, in times of change and in the mundane of everyday life.
Another aspect of God that I see is that of Him working in me to change in a myriad of ways. Something is said repeatedly over a long period of time in many different ways and places until one day I hear it again but now it is accompanied by that uneasy feeling of guilt. It's a different sort of guilt than the one that goes along with being abused. It's one that causes you to realize this is talking about me and this is my sin. To avoid dealing with this sin guilt is not a good thing. Slowly my eyes and ears are being opened. I'm sure this is God at work showing me what needs to be confessed and repented of. Easier said than done, though.
God is becoming more real to me through His church, specifically and mainly the church I'm a member of. I'm thankful for mp3 players, blogs, facebook posts, email, texting, and twitter. All this tech provides more ways for me to hear again what God is trying to tell me. It doesn't sink in the first time around I hear it in a worship service or in counseling. God is patient with me and I've seen His gentleness towards me in the last two years. I can be in church now and rarely dissociate anymore, and the triggers are seldom a problem. A lot has changed in the last six months from what my church experiences were two years ago or one year ago. May God continue His work.
What I can do is to look for God's hands in my life today and then in the more recent past. If I go back too much farther; I run into problems, big ones like: does God love me, did he love me back then, what about protection, is God really good, how sovereign is he anyway, and God was present but did nothing. The way I can skip over those type of questions is for me to look at all the evil in the world being done to people of all ages and then remind myself that I'm nothing special to rate some divine protection. There are Christians being murdered and abused for their faith. I had it pretty easy in comparison. Somehow I'm not sure this is the way to handle it. It ends up with me viewing God as a distant and uncaring God who is big into consequences. So then I'm back to completely ignoring my own past, beyond the last few years, and disregarding today's present persecution of Christians unless I put it into a "suffering for Christ" category.
Today I look for God's caring in my life. I see it in the meals brought to us by families in our church; in the freshly mowed grass because all of our mowers are broken and my husband now works out of town; in the concern being shown to us as one of our children is suffering from head trauma; texts, phone calls, getting together to just talk; in so many kindnesses big and small; and the fact that I can't disappear from church or blend into the background because I have become a part of this body. All this and so much more are evidences to me that God cares. I see it through the tangible touch and actions of Christians who are God's arms around me in difficult times, in times of change and in the mundane of everyday life.
Another aspect of God that I see is that of Him working in me to change in a myriad of ways. Something is said repeatedly over a long period of time in many different ways and places until one day I hear it again but now it is accompanied by that uneasy feeling of guilt. It's a different sort of guilt than the one that goes along with being abused. It's one that causes you to realize this is talking about me and this is my sin. To avoid dealing with this sin guilt is not a good thing. Slowly my eyes and ears are being opened. I'm sure this is God at work showing me what needs to be confessed and repented of. Easier said than done, though.
God is becoming more real to me through His church, specifically and mainly the church I'm a member of. I'm thankful for mp3 players, blogs, facebook posts, email, texting, and twitter. All this tech provides more ways for me to hear again what God is trying to tell me. It doesn't sink in the first time around I hear it in a worship service or in counseling. God is patient with me and I've seen His gentleness towards me in the last two years. I can be in church now and rarely dissociate anymore, and the triggers are seldom a problem. A lot has changed in the last six months from what my church experiences were two years ago or one year ago. May God continue His work.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Writing In Order To Do Battle
I can't find the answer to this, but I've been wondering about it for the last several days. Wondering to the point of almost panicly worrying. Does PTSD come and go? For me that has been my experience, but I can't find anyone else saying the same thing. I've wondered about this for years now, ever since a doctor gave me a word for what was happening to me. I'm a bit funny with the way I describe things not realizing its something "real" and enough other people have had the same thing going on that they gave it a name. Just this past year I discovered the word dissociate and what it was, and lo and behold it's what I've been calling "zoning", "being gone somewhere" or "losing time". I have a great fear of re-entering the battle and once again ending up in those dark places where I lose my way. I stopped writing when I got to a comfortable place. God is held at arms length, but I can catch glimpses of Him in church on Sunday and through the overwhelming kindness of my church family. It's a safe place in my journey, but I'm being nudged along to go farther.
I haven't been writing, anywhere, and that concerns me a bit, in the sense that it should concern me, but it doesn't--not really. I write when I'm actively dealing with things and I haven't written in months. I've been asked to make a list of fears and concerns to work through in counselling.
I would say "challenged", but that just sounds too baptist to me. Of course to me it's not just a list, it's the contents of the boxes I've been dragging around all these years. In some ways its the monsters in my closets that have come so close to destroying me in the past. I use the word past in a way that includes not only my personal ancient past, but my recent past too. Just yesterday I read two bloggers who posted on the topic of writing either directly or indirectly. One of them sounds like he is fairly close to where I am in my own journey while the other one is in a place that often seems unattainable to me. Both of them are writers that speak to me in the deep places of my soul. http://redemptionpictures.com/2014/09/12/when-writing-is-an-act-of-hope/
http://messytheology.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/when-there-are-no-words/
Writing for me has always been cathartic. I started my first little diary in third grade. I still had it, up until almost four years ago when our house burned down. As an adult, reading that first diary I ever kept, brought back memories, good and bad. Almost all the good things in there involved going to my grandma's house, the food she made, the stories she told and helping her hang out laundry, pick apples and watch her work in her garden. When I was old enough to not pull plants instead of weeds, I was actually allowed to go in the garden. Other events I wrote about I remember writing carefully in case my diary was ever stolen and read. My careful writing at age 9 wasn't careful enough and I got in trouble for what I wrote. I didn't keep a diary again until 5th grade. I learned my lesson and wrote carefully and left out the most ugly parts. Yet years later reading my diary from elementary I again saw those events I so carefully edited in my writing, and the memories invoked were not edited.
The power of the written word is incredible. And those were just my own childish writings, yet they held the key to my memory, to my own story.
By 7th grade I was writing furiously and unedited, except for the terrible secret I carried that I couldn't write about even in my own journal. The raw anger flowed from my pen and filled spiral notebooks. Anger, hurt, and betrayal, along with the pettiness of junior high drama, were my themes. I wrote for me and only me. I wrote to keep my sanity and a place to siphon off the anger and rage that threatened to tear me apart. My anger grew as my understanding of what had happened to me grew. I never gave it a word until 2003. I couldn't name it. I was too afraid. The anger was too powerful and I barely kept it in check through my writing. By 9th grade I was learning to control the anger through other means and harness it. I made good use of it and the abuse at home finally stopped, for me. Still I wrote. My survival depended upon it.
I wrote all through high school and into college at Bob Jones University, where I again looked for help and thought I found it. I would have been better off to have kept writing and skipped the counselling. The times I stopped writing were the times I was being successful at locking down all my boxes and shutting off emotions. But of course anger was a main component of all the boxes and anger can only be contained for so long. Thus the cycle of writing while depressed, angry and trying to close back the boxes that another counseling attempt had opened began. I haven't written anywhere for a few months. It's been different this time though. At least one of my monsters has been destroyed and not all emotion has been cut off. I think I've been experiencing life the way that other people do, to a point. Real emotions have still been in play. I've cried and didn't shut it off with anger. I can't remember doing that before. It's been incredible to smile and cry and not have to do my usual routine in order to "be normal". I like it. The problem is that this is only a plateau and there is a long journey still ahead. I've been content here for long enough. It was a nice break from the battle, but it's time to re-engage. Once again, I write.
I haven't been writing, anywhere, and that concerns me a bit, in the sense that it should concern me, but it doesn't--not really. I write when I'm actively dealing with things and I haven't written in months. I've been asked to make a list of fears and concerns to work through in counselling.
I would say "challenged", but that just sounds too baptist to me. Of course to me it's not just a list, it's the contents of the boxes I've been dragging around all these years. In some ways its the monsters in my closets that have come so close to destroying me in the past. I use the word past in a way that includes not only my personal ancient past, but my recent past too. Just yesterday I read two bloggers who posted on the topic of writing either directly or indirectly. One of them sounds like he is fairly close to where I am in my own journey while the other one is in a place that often seems unattainable to me. Both of them are writers that speak to me in the deep places of my soul. http://redemptionpictures.com/2014/09/12/when-writing-is-an-act-of-hope/
http://messytheology.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/when-there-are-no-words/
Writing for me has always been cathartic. I started my first little diary in third grade. I still had it, up until almost four years ago when our house burned down. As an adult, reading that first diary I ever kept, brought back memories, good and bad. Almost all the good things in there involved going to my grandma's house, the food she made, the stories she told and helping her hang out laundry, pick apples and watch her work in her garden. When I was old enough to not pull plants instead of weeds, I was actually allowed to go in the garden. Other events I wrote about I remember writing carefully in case my diary was ever stolen and read. My careful writing at age 9 wasn't careful enough and I got in trouble for what I wrote. I didn't keep a diary again until 5th grade. I learned my lesson and wrote carefully and left out the most ugly parts. Yet years later reading my diary from elementary I again saw those events I so carefully edited in my writing, and the memories invoked were not edited.
The power of the written word is incredible. And those were just my own childish writings, yet they held the key to my memory, to my own story.
By 7th grade I was writing furiously and unedited, except for the terrible secret I carried that I couldn't write about even in my own journal. The raw anger flowed from my pen and filled spiral notebooks. Anger, hurt, and betrayal, along with the pettiness of junior high drama, were my themes. I wrote for me and only me. I wrote to keep my sanity and a place to siphon off the anger and rage that threatened to tear me apart. My anger grew as my understanding of what had happened to me grew. I never gave it a word until 2003. I couldn't name it. I was too afraid. The anger was too powerful and I barely kept it in check through my writing. By 9th grade I was learning to control the anger through other means and harness it. I made good use of it and the abuse at home finally stopped, for me. Still I wrote. My survival depended upon it.
I wrote all through high school and into college at Bob Jones University, where I again looked for help and thought I found it. I would have been better off to have kept writing and skipped the counselling. The times I stopped writing were the times I was being successful at locking down all my boxes and shutting off emotions. But of course anger was a main component of all the boxes and anger can only be contained for so long. Thus the cycle of writing while depressed, angry and trying to close back the boxes that another counseling attempt had opened began. I haven't written anywhere for a few months. It's been different this time though. At least one of my monsters has been destroyed and not all emotion has been cut off. I think I've been experiencing life the way that other people do, to a point. Real emotions have still been in play. I've cried and didn't shut it off with anger. I can't remember doing that before. It's been incredible to smile and cry and not have to do my usual routine in order to "be normal". I like it. The problem is that this is only a plateau and there is a long journey still ahead. I've been content here for long enough. It was a nice break from the battle, but it's time to re-engage. Once again, I write.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Mondays Irritating Question
Sundays question is, "How are you doing?" For most people I give some version of normal like: "Fine", "Doing all right.", "Been busy" or list some activity we did or might think about doing. Then along comes Monday and the question changes to, "So, how was your weekend?" Really? What is with the small talk? I hate small talk. I don't even like the phrase "small talk". Why does the fact that I am trapped in a chiropractors office mean that I have any desire to have the same conversation starter that I don't want to start, started over and over. This chiropractor has several therapies going on in series so I endured this question more than normal in a short span of time. By the time I was at the massage therapists station I was so done dancing around the question of my weekend.
We somehow ended up having a real conversation. I steered it by commenting on why my neck and shoulders were so tense and knotted up. I simply said I've been really stressed for the last couple of weeks. In turn she asked about why or what has been the stress. We ended up with a genuine conversation about Bob Jones University and the GRACE investigation and also another Christian college she was much more familiar with. I think she was a bit more free than she planned on being and seemed worried that I would be offended; and stressed that I did ask and it was only her opinion. Hopefully I put her at ease on that point, but I doubt it. I did enjoy a real conversation not based on polite small talk. I didn't say much; it only took a decent comment on my part and she was off and running. After the massage station I only had to endure one more person asking me about my weekend. :D
In case you were wondering, but certainly wouldn't dare to ask me now; my weekend was a mixed bag. Friday was a major trigger type day. I thought I could read a Psalm without ill effects. NOPE, crash and burn. Friday night was a big church get together at somebodies house. That was good, but still triggering and I stayed more on the outer edges of things. I love a good party and the wine was great and quite helpful. Saturday we had a picnic and walked around downtown and enjoyed the day. We hit all the little shops that we never stop in, and I found two Louis L'Amour books I haven't read yet. Sunday at church was mildly difficult on my scale. I was able to stay here even when triggered, and only had a few flashbacks. In the afternoon I went out for dessert with a friend for my birthday, and I enjoyed it. So that was my weekend.
Writing it out doesn't sound so bad, but when I was asked about my weekend the only things I could remember were the intense triggers on Friday because I read a Psalm and the triggers and flashbacks on Sunday that stayed in the manageable range. I only needed to use a handful of methods to keep me here and didn't have to use them the whole time. I wish my first thoughts were of the nice picnic and the shops and going out with my friend. I didn't think of any of those things the whole time I was at the chiropractors office being asked constantly about my weekend. I don't know why
We somehow ended up having a real conversation. I steered it by commenting on why my neck and shoulders were so tense and knotted up. I simply said I've been really stressed for the last couple of weeks. In turn she asked about why or what has been the stress. We ended up with a genuine conversation about Bob Jones University and the GRACE investigation and also another Christian college she was much more familiar with. I think she was a bit more free than she planned on being and seemed worried that I would be offended; and stressed that I did ask and it was only her opinion. Hopefully I put her at ease on that point, but I doubt it. I did enjoy a real conversation not based on polite small talk. I didn't say much; it only took a decent comment on my part and she was off and running. After the massage station I only had to endure one more person asking me about my weekend. :D
In case you were wondering, but certainly wouldn't dare to ask me now; my weekend was a mixed bag. Friday was a major trigger type day. I thought I could read a Psalm without ill effects. NOPE, crash and burn. Friday night was a big church get together at somebodies house. That was good, but still triggering and I stayed more on the outer edges of things. I love a good party and the wine was great and quite helpful. Saturday we had a picnic and walked around downtown and enjoyed the day. We hit all the little shops that we never stop in, and I found two Louis L'Amour books I haven't read yet. Sunday at church was mildly difficult on my scale. I was able to stay here even when triggered, and only had a few flashbacks. In the afternoon I went out for dessert with a friend for my birthday, and I enjoyed it. So that was my weekend.
Writing it out doesn't sound so bad, but when I was asked about my weekend the only things I could remember were the intense triggers on Friday because I read a Psalm and the triggers and flashbacks on Sunday that stayed in the manageable range. I only needed to use a handful of methods to keep me here and didn't have to use them the whole time. I wish my first thoughts were of the nice picnic and the shops and going out with my friend. I didn't think of any of those things the whole time I was at the chiropractors office being asked constantly about my weekend. I don't know why
Sunday, February 23, 2014
S is for Suicidal in September
Between October and now almost to the end of February I have had no postings. Well in September I had a several days run of extreme depression. I couldn't sleep for well over 60 hours. I was, to put it quite bluntly, extremely suicidal. I went as far as making a plan and taking steps to ensure I would be able to carry it out. Once everything was in place I was so happy and lighthearted, and just felt such relief as though a great burden had been lifted. I hadn't felt so good and free since high school, which was also the last time I actually tried to kill myself. I drove around town for a little while reveling in how relaxed and happy I felt. I wondered if this was how normal people felt sometimes. I didn't want to wait for a better time. NOW was feeling so wonderful, I was ready to be done with hurting; with curling up trying to hang on and riding the next wave of depression so deep that it hurt to just, be. I drove around thinking about things and feeling good and truly alive.
Eventually I thought about my children and especially what my little guy had just recently started saying to me when I came home, "I missed you, Mommy." He was so little, how could he voice that? I heard his little voice in my mind and I couldn't die, but I wanted to so badly. The pain was so intense for so long I couldn't bear to give up this relief and joy I felt. I found myself driving to someone I trusted and giving them a note and a bottle of sleeping pills for them to keep. I couldn't throw them out the window or drop them in the trash and once at their house I resisted their efforts to dispose of the pills. I think I needed to feel I still had an out. I'm not sure, it's strange to think it out loud like this. For me depression is like the ebb and flow of the tides. It always returns. Sometimes I get hit with a tsunami, same waves, but totally out of control.
Eventually I thought about my children and especially what my little guy had just recently started saying to me when I came home, "I missed you, Mommy." He was so little, how could he voice that? I heard his little voice in my mind and I couldn't die, but I wanted to so badly. The pain was so intense for so long I couldn't bear to give up this relief and joy I felt. I found myself driving to someone I trusted and giving them a note and a bottle of sleeping pills for them to keep. I couldn't throw them out the window or drop them in the trash and once at their house I resisted their efforts to dispose of the pills. I think I needed to feel I still had an out. I'm not sure, it's strange to think it out loud like this. For me depression is like the ebb and flow of the tides. It always returns. Sometimes I get hit with a tsunami, same waves, but totally out of control.
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