On Finding Peace Again

The past two years.

The past two years have taken me to the end of myself.

How do I find words to begin? Are there words that describe the darkness that can be eating you alive on the inside when from the outside you're still putting on your smile and using every ounce of strength you have just to function? When people who see you think you're fine, tell you that you seem to be doing well, but from behind the glass of your eyes you're dying even as you say you're ok?

Someday I will share the specifics of our story. Someday. But for now, for reference, two years ago we discovered allegations that my father is a sexual predator who has been preying on young and vulnerable children and teens for my whole life. Based on our own experiences and the turmoil we had been in privately for years without speaking out, we believed wholeheartedly what we learned. Every single detail added up and resonated with our own horrifying experiences. We carried so many secrets... so many heavy, isolating secrets. Learning that he was capable of what we believed him to be was strangely a relief. Now I knew I wasn't crazy, I had been right to protect my children from him. And the feelings and bizarre situations that had plagued me my whole life had an explanation. But the explosion that errupted within my family as we exposed the truth has been and continues to be absolutely devastating. When you are a child you believe that your parents are your protectors. The reality that neither of my parents were my protectors, and that one of them was actually the perpetrator of unspeakable evil has shaken me. To my core. It has triggered every vulnerable place in my heart... rejection, abandonment, feeling as though I was orphaned. It's a special kind of pain when the place your life came from not only turns on you and rejects you but purposely slanders your character. We had everything to lose by exposing what we did.. we have lost so much by speaking out. But my children are safe from him. And I hope yours will be too.

It's so hard and vulnerable to share the depths of how bad it's been. But how can I celebrate the victory without acknowledging the battle?

There have been ups and there have been downs over the past 755 days. Days when I felt strong, and full of fight and passion and purpose, days when I stood wholeheartedly on the strength of Jesus and felt the warmth of the light.

But then there were other days. Sometimes weeks. When I was afraid I was being swallowed alive and felt like the earth was closing over me. Days when the tears wouldn't stop... when I couldn't find my way out. Days I felt like the weight of the burden I was carrying on top of mothering and now working might crush me. In those moments of feeling alone under the weight of it all the spotlight turned even more onto the absence of my mom as a support in it all. The first summer there were days when Shaun would come home from work and I would be laying on the sofa, trying with all my might to find the strength to get up and make dinner. There were grocery shopping trips where I would come home and carry everything inside and just begin crying because I didn't think I had it in me to put it all away. It was like the force of gravity in those moments had tripled. Every movement and effort required three times the strength. It is like trying to function at the very bottom of the ocean. It's absolutely paralyzing at times. Like the breath and very life were being sucked out of me. How long can you go on like that, feeling like you're scraping the bottom of the barrel of your will power to find just a scrap of strength to muster up and push through with?

The couple of weeks leading up to Christmas this year were the worst it's ever been. It was already bad feeling overwhelmed by all that Christmas requires of you and having a house to stage and trying to mother my kids well. Then tragedy rocked my best friend's family too, right at the end of November. I could feel my anxiety becoming out of control. I felt like my heart might explode my chest hurt so bad. The smallest things broke me. One afternoon, with a long to-do list ahead of me I went to quickly open the curtains in our living room and a curtain rod bracket pulled out of the wall as I opened them. Havilah slid the step stool over to me so I could climb up and hold it in place to keep the other bracket from being pulled out of the wall too. I sent Jaden to find the tiny tool I needed to loosen the rod from the bracket that was still in the wall. Bless his little heart, it took him probably 15 minutes and multiple trips up and down the stairs to find the right tool. And as I stood up on the step stool holding up the curtain rod and feeling completely helpless and so, so exhausted, hot tears were streaming down my face and I was saying curse words in my mind I'm so not proud of. My chest was aching with electric anxiety and I was doing my best not to just scream and let it all fall and collapse on the floor in my pain. A curtain rod completely un-did me. But it wasn't the curtain rod at all. It was the out of control, helpless, unpredictable mess of life. Holding the rod together felt as difficult in that moment as trying to hold my life together. And my weakness was so painfully evident and in my face...

If my kids got too loud- even if it was happy loudness- it was like too many circuits to my brain were being fired and bombarded between the noise and my thoughts and all the effort it took just to accomplish ONE small task. I would be trying to put makeup on to go somewhere and fighting to keep the tears from falling from my eyes just so I could get make up on without it being undone before it was even complete. By the time I made it to my car I'd shut down. Shut it all off. Detach from my feelings and become robotic. It was the only way I could survive, kind of like floating. And for me, when my capacity to feel is such a part of my identity, detaching from my feelings in order to survive really felt like another slow death. About all I was capable of was looking "normal" in public. As long as I didn't talk below the surface level, as long as nothing forced me to access my feelings I'd be ok. At my boys Christmas program I couldn't even manage that though. In the dark, with the lights in the gym turned down low and my babies up front singing Joy To The World, I sat in my seat near the back and my tears silently fell, and fell, and fell...... With all my might I tried to keep my chin from quivering with the fear that I'd never climb out. Never be ok again. My throat burned with the pain I was stifling down, the dam of tears I was holding back.

 If my surroundings and home were chaotic it sent me over a cliff. But the effort it took to clean them up left me in tears. Shaun was trying to work on making more progress finishing the room over the garage the week before Christmas and as he started sawing through the drywall to make the access bigger and I saw the dust clouds coming into our house I started having a panic attack. Standing there in the hallway of our upstairs, holding onto the railing, trying to breathe in a whole breath, the more I tried to breath in the harder it got... the harder it got the more scared I became... And then tears... falling, falling.... that dust clouds could reduce me to gasping for air, that this is me, and how did life become this? Why could I not climb out? Where was the strength to fight? It was dark, and isolating, and scary, and I was afraid to even tell anyone how bad things were inside me. I was begging God for peace. Begging to come back and to be alive again, to not constantly feel like I was drowning. I couldn't seem to rescue myself. I needed Him to come for me. I needed Him desperately.

Three days before Christmas He came. He came in all His mighty, mysterious, unexpectedly humble  glory. He came and He pulled me up.... in a rush I came up from below and that first fresh intake of air when gravity became light again was so full of life and hope and peace I can not explain it. He used a series of events looking for bunnies to give to Jaden for Christmas to give me a chance to take a ride in the car all by myself. That all by itself was calming and helpful. I had no idea that car ride that seemed to be down back roads in the cold was really forging straight upwards, pressing up through the cold weight of the ocean waters, toward the surface again. My journey down dark backroads led to pick up Jaden's gift from a woman who has survived absolutely horrific trauma herself... and has come through it. And she has not just come through, she has used it all to glorify Jesus. She didn't even have to talk about anything. Just her presence exuded so much peace. There she was, the trauma years behind her, standing in the midst of the new life that she has built, genuinely happy again. By the grace of God. Being around her was like opening my eyes to my future and finding hope waiting for me there. On my car ride back home tears fell again. But they weren't tears of desperation or grief or pain. They were tears of joy, and of deep, deep thankfulness. I could sense that something was breaking inside me... something was being lifted, and I was starting to feel light again. When I came inside I told Shaun I didn't know what had happened, but something had shifted.

I tried to explain more to him over the next few days as I was noticing the depth of the change that had happened inside me. I was standing in my chaotic, messy kitchen and for the first time I wasn't screaming on the inside because of the mess. I was perfectly at peace. My kids could be loud and out of control and it wasn't undoing me and making my chest feel like the heart inside me was a bomb about to go off. The future (and by future I mean something as simple as the next day) didn't feel like a looming place  that was crushing me with all it expected of me where I would surely fail. It started to feel bright. It started to feel like a place I could welcome without terror. I started telling myself that I am strong. I have something to offer. I will not be buried by my grief. I can face the terror and reality of this world and not have it suck me back under its currents of anxiety. I can be a voice of truth and hope. Basically, my peace became internal instead of external. Instead of my peace depending on my surroundings, or my kid's good behavior, or things going perfectly and smoothly, my peace became something that just was.It was His peace that passes understand, and it was on the inside now, and the things on the outside couldn't shake it anymore. The grief couldn't swallow it. The noise couldn't drown it. The expectations couldn't shake it. It couldn't be lost in the mess or buried by the pain. It was rising, surfacing, breaking through the waves, shining in all its precious sacredness. And I am hanging onto it as though my life depends upon it. Because it does.

It's only been a few weeks, but things are different this time. Instead of feeling like I "just can't" I feel like "I CAN"... I'm telling myself I can. And even if I try and fail, so what? My peace doesn't depend on always succeeding! This is translating to a million things that I wanted to do but was so busy maintaining the things that had to be just-so to keep my anxiety at bay that I didn't have time for anything else. This means things as simple as scheduling an eye doctor appointment for myself, or letting my kitchen be a mess so I can spend a day cleaning out my closet. It means being able to vacuum out my car or clean out my purse without feeling so overwhelmed by the task that I feel unable to start it. It means sitting down today to write again, without being so paralyzed by the fear of what people will think of our story that it keeps me from sharing the hope and faithfulness of God THROUGH our story.

I'm ready to climb out of the pit of grief and begin building my life again. I'm ready to stop looking at what I've lost, and do the best I can with what I still have. I'm ready to just let the lies and slander of my character roll off my back. They aren't true. And I don't need to take my focus off all the good that is in front of me to do and waste my time defending myself against irrational and evil people. I'm ready to accept that this is my story. It can't be changed. And honestly, I wouldn't want it to be any different. There is purpose for me in this place. Yes, I've suffered immensely for standing up for victims and for the truth. But I count it a privilege and an honor to suffer it for Him, for them. The healing and beauty and freedom and vindication I'm witnessing far outweigh the suffering. So many places in Scripture we are told we are blessed for suffering for Christ. Suffering for Him is an inevitable part of the cost we must count when we choose to follow Him. But what a beautiful place it is to know Him in His suffering, to tell Him, even in this dark place, that I love Him this much, that I love Him til the end, and that I'm honored to bear this for Him.

2 Timothy 3:12-13  In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,  while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

2 Corinthians 4:8-9 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;  persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

1 Peter 5:10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 

James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,  because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Romans 5:3-4 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;  perseverance, character; and character, hope.

Hope. Hope for the future. That no matter what happens or what it looks like, He's holding me in it. He has a plan. It's bigger than me. It's bigger than my lifetime even. I am a small piece in the huge story that is unfolding. Having hope that the plan that's unfolding can be trusted brings me peace. I am so so humbled and honored to be a part of what's happening right now, where sexual abuse is being exposed and spoken out against, especially in the House of God. How many years has He wept over what evil men were doing to children in His name.... and now He is dealing with it. Ripping back the lid on the darkness and shining the light of truth that begins to bring healing. It's a privilege to be a voice in this day, and this time, and to stand up for these precious souls who have endured so much at the hands of men who claimed to be "men of God." 

If you are a victim of sexual abuse, you are not alone. You are worth so much, you are precious, you are loved. What happened was not your fault. There is Hope ready for you to take hold of, and Peace that is waiting to come live inside your heart. Use your voice. Don't let the pain bury you. You have so much to offer. You are part of an army. 

This song has helped put music to my feelings. It has allowed me to grieve and to declare that I will not drown. I hope it can be the same for you. 

xoxo