Category: vulnerablity

You’d be amazed

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

You’d be amazed to know what happens when you sit down, shut up, and pay attention.

You notice things.  You finish writing a confessional blog about sitting with your grief, walk a few steps to your bed, lie down, open the book you have been reading on and off for over six months, and the very next words that you read are these:

Maybe grieving over plans changed is part of the plan to change us.*

Then, after sleeping for just a few hours, you hop in your car and turn on a podcast** to hear two women discussing shame and vulnerability.  You’re stunned because as they share their failures,  you feel somehow drawn into the discussion like you’re a member of the sisterhood of the fallen.

As the podcast finishes, you arrive at a restaurant to meet a  woman for lunch — someone you’ve never met before — she offhandedly mentions her struggle with autoimmune disease,  and before you know it, you’re choking out something like, “It’s so frustrating because I like to be a positive fun person, but right now, I don’t feel like that person.”

Then, a couple hours later, in a session with your therapist, you hear yourself recounting the most mortifying moments of your week when your child brought her friend to your house ahead of schedule to ‘surprise you’ and you made them leave so that you could finish cleaning and you weren’t joking. When the therapist says, “so we’re going to work on your need to be in control and your ability to be kind to yourself,” you sit in stunned amazement that 1) you actually confessed the story out loud and, 2) she gets you and this is only the second time you’ve spoken to her.

You leave your session, drive through Starbucks to buy a tall lemonade before picking up your four-year-old great nephew and taking him home for dinner.  After dinner you chat about serious things like whether or not a four-year-old can actually run faster than a race car, then hear your nephew, the four-year-old’s daddy, say “you are such a blessing to us” as he walks you to your car.

You drive home, wiping tears off your cheeks because you are overwhelmed at the richness of the day, walk into your house, plop down on a chair next to your husband, and try to give him some snippets that can somehow convey the way God spoke to you all day long, but you are so exhausted from the last twenty-four hours that you can barely make coherent sentences.

After a total knock-out sleep, you wake up and eat a bowl of oatmeal on the way to your physical therapy appointment. Then, the angel who is your therapist places her hands directly on the exact spots that have been screaming for attention.  She just barely touches you, but the warmth and intention radiating from her hands moves from your skin through your joints and directly into your heart.

It’s several hours later, after you have baked banana bread, prepared chicken curry, drank tea with a friend, choked up at the opening chapel service on your school’s campus, talked with three out of four of your children, made major financial decisions with your husband, cried over a minor miracle, started crocheting a new afghan, and laughed at the Weekend Update, when you realize that for the last two days God has been placing His hands directly on the exact spots that have been screaming for attention.  He has just barely touched them, but the warmth and intention radiating from His hands has moved directly into your heart.

That’s what happens when you sit down, shut up, and pay attention.

I think I might try sitting with this a little longer.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Matthew 5:4

*Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way.

** Jen Hatmaker’s For the Love, “Episode 2: Brenae Brown”

Sitting with it, Re-visit

~ Kristin ~ 8 Comments
Click here for audio, or read on.

This week and last, I have shared posts that tell the story of my journey with autoimmunity. I have said in my posts that I am thankful for this journey. This post gets at the heart of why. Written in August of 2017, it conveys a critical part in my healing — the time I have spent sitting and considering the previous chapter of my life. Everyone doesn’t benefit from illness, but my physical illness has made way for a much deeper healing.

I literally have to sit here with it.

I would rather run, but I don’t have that option any more. I have to sit with it.

In my soldiering years, I was continually in motion. Dawn ’til dark. I was picking up, dropping off, buying, cooking, cleaning, planning, teaching, grading, and when I could squeeze it in, I was literally running. Though I was acutely aware that I had four other humans living in the house with me (who else was I picking up, dropping off, buying, cooking, and cleaning for?), I rarely sat still very long to actually look at them, listen to them, watch them, hear them.

I have to sit with that now. I’d much rather be running.

When one got migraines, went off to school, and then developed an eating disorder, I didn’t stop what I was doing. No. I drove to emergency rooms, packed boxes, drove miles, dropped off, made appointments, picked up, and kept moving.

When another joined the military and started jumping out of planes, I didn’t sit down and think about what that meant. No. I bought supplies, cooked farewell dinners, drove to a bus, dropped off, and kept moving. I can’t even remember if I wrote letters.

When another was brutally assaulted, I was so busy moving I didn’t even realize it had happened. For almost two years. And when I finally found out, still, I didn’t stop what I was doing, sit down, and grieve. No. I grabbed broken pieces, dropped them in the passenger seat of the car, and drove them to someone who I thought could put them back together again. And I kept on moving.

I have to sit with that now.

I didn’t choose this.

No. Even when disease started crawling into my joints, I tried to keep moving. I trudged through long days trying to manage responsibilities and ended up collapsing at home at the end of each day. All my good hours were spent in hot pursuit while my hours at home, with the ones who needed me most, were spent in a daze of pain and fatigue.

It’s been over three years since I admitted the need for change. In those three years I have tried again and again to return to my former ways, but I can not. This disease is literally slowing me, sitting me down, and forcing me to face the things that I have not wanted to face. It’s forcing me to learn new ways. And, still, I resist.

I try, futilely, to keep busy. I have crocheted a hundred scarves, hats, afghans. I have put together a million puzzle pieces. I have read thousands of pages of print.

But, without fail, fatigue comes, and I must stop the busy-ness and turn to stillness. And even when I am exhausted, as I am right now, it’s as though I fight against rest.

The past several nights I have limped to my room lugging heated packs that I drape on my neck, hips, back after I’ve awkwardly lowered myself into bed. Then begins the battle of shifting and moaning and repositioning that sometimes lasts several minutes but tonight lasted much longer, and I couldn’t turn off the images that kept playing out over and over on the HD screen that is my imagination. Finally I groaned myself out of bed.

Come on, Kristin. Sit with it. Admit that you missed so much. Acknowledge that the ones you love have hurts that you haven’t wanted to see. Grieve that. Cry.

Acknowledge that you couldn’t do it all. You couldn’t soothe all the hurts. You sometimes didn’t even try.

And the hurts keep coming. The car needs servicing. The dog is aging and ill. A laptop isn’t working. Can’t a girl get relief from some of this pain?

And then comes the realization that the physical pain is a symbol. A tool.

 A gift.

Man, I hate to admit that it’s a gift, but without it, I would still be running. I would still be accumulating regret.

The illness hasn’t solved my problems, but it has allowed me to see them.

And as I see them, I am finally taking the time to sit with them and cry. The tears keep coming as though they just have been waiting for the opportunity.

I’m trying, really trying, to sit with that. I believe the healing will come in the grieving. So, I’m going to take some time to grieve. Soldiering me wants to schedule the grieving for Mondays at 10am for the next three weeks and be done with it. 

Sitting still me isn’t in a rush.

I’m learning to sit with that, too.

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.

Don’t wait for Christmas, a Revisit

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

Back in December 2014 when I first wrote this post, I was just starting to recognize how hard the holidays can be — how isolating, how anxiety-producing, how uncomfortable. I’ve always loved Christmas, but I’ve had a taste of how celebration can feel during a season of grief. I’ve begun to understand how difficult it can be to be with family and friends — even when you love them. And I’ve been learning a new way.

We spend a lot of time and money getting ready for the holidays. Over the last month many of us have attended parties, dinners, and gift exchanges with family, friends, and coworkers. We have cooked special foods, decorated our homes, and dressed in finery in order to celebrate.

We celebrate the love of family. We celebrate that we get time off from work. We celebrate our friendships. We celebrate the birth of a Savior.

We celebrate by eating, drinking, laughing, and sharing. We celebrate by giving and receiving gifts, by sending Christmas cards, by calling those we love, and by worshipping with our church families.

But there are many among us who just can’t celebrate. And they probably aren’t telling you about it. They may decline invitations, bow out early, or just refuse to answer your calls. It’s not that they don’t want to be there. They really do want to be there. They just can’t. 

It would be easy if they had a contagious disease, were recovering from surgery, or had a compromised immune system that prohibited them from joining in the festivities. Then you would understand. “Oh, too bad Bobby can’t be here, you know he just had that surgery, and he’s recovering in the hospital.” Everybody gets that. In fact, many of us would load up our gifts and drive over to the hospital to bring the celebration to Bobby because we love him and don’t want him to be left out.

But some people can’t celebrate and it’s because of something that you can’t see — something you may not understand.

Kay Warren, wife of well-known pastor, Rick Warren, who lost a son to suicide in 2013, recently posted on Facebook and then wrote in Christianity Today about the pain she has endured over the last two Christmases as well-meaning friends and acquaintances have sent Christmas cards filled with photos of smiling families and newsletters proclaiming all the good stuff that has happened for them over the year. She received these celebratory cards and letters and got angry. She couldn’t possibly celebrate. How could she, knowing that her son had taken his own life? Even if she believed that Jesus was born in a manger to save the world from their sins, even if she trusted Him and believed that He held her in the palm of His hand, she couldn’t possibly smile, or laugh, or rejoice.

She’s not alone, guys. While we deck the halls and kiss under the mistletoe, many around us can’t fathom the “oh what fun it is”. Not today. Not yesterday. Not Christmas Day.

They’ve lost a child. They are in the middle of a divorce. A loved one has cancer. They just lost their job and can’t pay the mortgage. Their father is on life-support. They have experienced pain that they can’t even talk about. And the idea of joining you or me in our merriment, knowing the pain that they know, is unconscionable. It just can’t be. 

So they stay home, miserably wishing they could be there, wishing they could celebrate, wishing they could be part of the joy. Angry that you can be. 

Moving forward, I’m going to spend less time and money getting ready for the holidays. I’m going to try to shift my focus to the here and now — to little moments that I can be with those I love —  in their tears,  in their laughter,  in their anger. And if we get glimpses of celebration, we will seize them — we won’t wait for Christmas.

And, if they happen to come at Christmas, well then, we’ll be all the merrier.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Matthew 5:4