Soul Healing-The Beginning

      I recently went though an 18 month period that was filled with so much pain and healing and growing.  It was a hard time to go through but a much needed time for my soul. During this 18 month period I shed many tears (surprise surprise), yelled at God a lot, talked through my own failures with Howie, asked for forgiveness from those I had hurt, forgave those who had hurt me, had a gazillion conversations with a few close friends about areas that I needed to grow in, spent a lot of quiet time alone with just me and God, rested physically and spiritually and matured a lot.  It was quite a fulfilling 18 months.   What started this 18 month journey was stepping down from a ministry leadership position and stepping back from counseling others.  I did this because I felt that God told me I needed a season of rest and to learn to focus on Him first and then my family.   It was such a hard decision for me to make as my heart’s desires is to minister to others through counseling, teaching and leading, but I was at a place in my life where I had no peace and felt like I was a chicken with my head cut off running into walls most days.   My family was suffering because I was so focused on other things, albeit they were good things but they were taking up more time then God wanted them to.  

     The first few months of “healing” (that’s what we shall call this 18 month span of life) I was angry.  Angry at myself mostly because I felt like I had failed people and I had failed at my jobs of being a leader, a counselor, a mom and a wife.   I felt like I had let so many people down.  It crushed me. I was angry at people who had said hurtful things to me or who I felt had just walked away during my time of need.  Angry at God for taking away my heart’s desire of helping people.   It was a tough few months.   I had to learn to take my angry thoughts captive all over again and lay them at the feet of Christ.  I had to think on whatsoever things are true, right, noble and just.  I had to get the enemy out of my head so I could hear what God was trying to tell me.  I had to get self doubt out of my head so I could remember who I was in Christ and that that was all that mattered.   It took me some time to believe the truths that God and others were telling me; “God only wanted me in that position for a season and that season had ended.’  “Lives were touched during my time in ministry.  God had used me in so many ways to reach His people.” “People were not out to intentionally hurt me.”  It was a huge battle in my mind that I had to fight daily.  I would work through the checklist of all the ways I had failed and all the ways I had let people down.  I allowed myself to beat my own self up.  Fortunately I have a God who is so much bigger than me and He began to build me up.  

     My journal entry from one of the days during the first three months of healing-  “So much runs through my mind on a daily basis.  It feels like this constant battle with my thoughts.  I can’t seem to grasp at the truths in these thoughts and feelings that I’m having and it’s so frustrating.   A friend thinks that I’m hiding and avoiding friendships and yet it has been so the opposite of that lately and I feel like I have been honest and open in telling her that.  I feel that people think that since I’m not in a ministry ministering to people right now that that’s not okay.  Yet I am still doing ministry stuff, it’s just not out there for everyone to see like it was before and I am not up on a stage talking about it right now.  I help in the children’s ministry, I‘m on the worship team, I’m mentoring/counseling 4 different women, I’m ministering to my kids and my husband.  Someone recently told me that my story needs to keep getting shared.  Ya, I agree and it does ALL THE TIME.  I don’t have to stand on a stage or lead a group to tell my story.

    Wait, wow, what?!  That’s exactly what I needed to tell myself.  I DON’T HAVE TO STAND ON A STAGE OR LEAD A GROUP OR AN ENTIRE MINISTRY TO SHARE MY STORY!  And I don’t have to share every great encounter I have with people or in my quiet time with God with people for it to mean something.  

    This is a personal time for me, this season of my life.  It’s a time for me to reflect privately with God.  A time for me to share my story in private with others.  It’s not a season for shouting from the mountaintops.  It’s a season of sitting beside the quiet creek and hearing a still small voice whisper in my ear.

    No need to stir up any pots or emotions right now, Caroline.  No you just sit here and quietly be with Me for as long as it takes.  Just be still, My child.  Let Me calm the chaos in your head.  Let Me pull back the waters that are flooding your heart.  Let Me bring rest to your sweet, weary soul.  Me... Me.  Can you hear Me, daughter?

Can you let it just be Me?

Can you let My voice drown out the rest?

Can you let My Words cover and push out all the lies?

Just be with Me?

Just Me.

Me.

   You have nothing that you need to solve.  I’ve got it.  You have nothing that you need to do.  I’ve got it.  You have no battles that you have to go fight.  I’ve got it.  You have no one but Me you have to answer to. 

   Be with Me.  Let Me fill you till you overflow.  Let Me love you how you need to be loved.  Let Me.  I’ve got this.  Lean on Me.  Let Me be in control.  Let Me do the worrying.  Let Me carry all your burdens.  I’ve got this.  Can you just give it all to me?  Can I be your everything?  It’s what I so long to be.”

     That day was a breaking point for me.  A day when God pierced so deeply into my soul and showed me how much healing I really did need to do and that I needed to do it His way and not mine.  There was no magic formula or time frame for me to get through this season God had brought me to.  I needed to just be still, be patient and be with God and God alone.  I needed to share my deepest, darkest hurts and thoughts with Him, not with my friends.  I needed to cry on His shoulder,  not my husband’s.  I needed to sit alone with Him, not in a crowded coffee shop with strangers.  This was not a time for me to  be in community with people, it was a time for me to be in community with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  I could finally stop fighting the lies in my head and start believing the truths in my heart.   This was the beginning of my soul healing...............

How Great Thou Art

~Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.  I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder. Thy power throughout the universe displayed.  Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art, how great Thou art.  

And when I think of God, His Son not sparing sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in.  That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing He bled and died to take away my sin.  Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art, how great Thou art.

When Christ shall come with shouts of acclamation and lead me home, what joy shall fill my heart.  Then I shall bow with humble acclamation and there proclaim, My God how great Thou art!  (How Great Thou Art by Carl Boberg 1885)~

                                                                       _____________________________

                                       

I have realized lately that I have been failing to take the time to just look around at this world that God created and be in awe of it.  There really is so much to look at, even right here outside my window in my front yard.  A beautiful tree with long flowing willow like branches and leaves that are blowing back and forth like they are dancing.  The base of the tree has big, thick roots sticking up and intertwining one another like they are in a group hug.  There’s a yellow rope hanging from the tree that the kids like to swing on when the weather is nice.  On one side of the tree there are three small boards that were nailed up there by our neighbor 4 years ago so that Emma and his granddaughter could climb up into the tree and sit on the ginormous branches and read books or talk about life.  They have both since outgrown this adventure but the boards are still there as a memory of times gone past.  A beautiful tree that has been a part of so many memories and still has so many more memories to make.  God made that tree.  Each intricate part He thoughtfully crafted.  He knows just how many leaves are on that tree right now.  He knows how many rings are on the inner trunk telling us how old it is.  He knows each branch and how much weight it can hold.  And I am pretty sure that if one branch gets too much pressure on it He knows just what to do to bear some of the weight so the branch doesn’t snap.  Of course, throughout the 5 and half years that I have watched this tree in my front year, there have been times when a branch has snapped and fallen to the ground.  A couple of times we (by we, I mean Howie not me.  Well I was there for moral support.) have had to cut branches off because they were dying and weighing the tree down.  It is a beautiful tree.  How great Thou art, Lord, for making something so amazing.  

My favorite place to be in the entire world is San Francisco.  Ever since I was a little girl I have loved The City.  I recently got to drive over there (It’s about a 2 hour drive from where we live) to visit a friend who was in the hospital at UCSF.  As I pulled up to the tolls at the Bay Bridge something wonderful happened.  It happens every time I pull up to those tolls.  My soul is immediately at rest.  It’s hard to explain this feeling that I feel.  It’s like I exhale and my soul is calmed and over the moon happy.  As I pull up to the toll booth I am perfectly happy to hand the worker my $4.  That $4 buys me a trip to my happiest place on earth.  Heck, that’s a lot cheaper then that other place that claims is the “Happiest Place on Earth”.  I start the drive over the beautiful bay bridge.  A ginormous smile automatically appears across my face.  I look to the left and to the right and see the beautiful bay filled with barges and sail boats and ships.  It’s breathtaking to me.  I have to take a moment and there proclaim, “My God how great Thou art!”.  I drive through the tunnel and get to the second half of the bridge and there it is in front me in plain view, the gorgeous City skyline!  All the tall buildings.  I immediately look to the Transamerica Building, it has always been my favorite with it’s triangular shape.  My heart is literally leaping with joy that we are just about in The City, My City!  I look over to the right and there’s AT&T Park, home of the SF Giants, my baseball team.  Chills run down my arms.  My heart, my soul feel at home, they feel at peace.  It doesn’t ever matter where my final destination is in The City because I am just as happy with the drive through.  Yes, there is traffic, but I use that time to look around and take in all that there is to see.  Big, beautiful, tall buildings, the Golden Gate Bridge, an eclectic mix of people all created in God’s image and living their lives just like I am, tall hills to drive up and down, a million different types of restaurants to eat at, Mr. Holme Bakehouse (my favorite bakery), and so much more.  Every time I come to My City I see something new, I explore a new nook that I have never been to before.  It amazes me how much they have packed into the roughly 47 square miles of this City.  Each time after my visit as I drive away I look back to take in the skyline one last time and as that smile beams across my face from ear to ear I thank God for giving me this amazing place that soothes my soul and fills my heart and I think, “How Great Thou Art”!

What in your life makes you stop and proclaim how great God is?  Where is that magical place that God has made for you that soothes your soul and fills your heart?  When was the last time you just sat and looked around at all that God has created?  Can I encourage you to take just five minutes today and enjoy God’s workmanship in and around your life.  Take five minutes to proclaim how great He is!  

Healing Oils

   I had mentioned a while back that Gillian had received two new diagnoses and a new medication, our 9th anti anxiety medication  in a year (/relatabletogether/2018/02/id-like-to-sove-puzzle.html).  Well, that medication was not our golden ticket. It was terrible. It made her worse. I emailed her psychiatrist to let her know and her response was to take her off the meds for three days and then just given her half a pill a day instead of a whole one and then let her know how she was doing in two weeks.  Seriously?!  I didn’t want even a crumb of this medication in my child.  It was making her crazier then before so what, half a pill would just make her a little less crazy?!!  No thank you!  I was mad.  Mad at the doctor for not really helping us, for not giving us any kind of hope that one of the millions of medicines she had was going to help our daughter.  I was mad that she didn’t really seem to be getting just how bad things were for Gillian and how horrible our home life was.  I felt like she didn’t even care. We were just another patient to her, a medical record number and that was it.  

   I stood in the kitchen that night feeling just completely hopeless. My heart was in tachycardia (as it does after a stressful day), my body was exhausted, my emotions were exhausted, my brain was exhausted.   Chris walked in and I looked up at him with tears streaming down my face (again) and said, “If we don’t find something that helps her soon, I am going to die from a heart attack or a stroke.  My body can’t take this anymore.”  I was completely serious.  Years of stress has had a negative affect on my body.  Heart issues, adrenal fatigue, TMJ, back pain, neck pain, anxiety, complete exhaustion.  I was at the end of the rope hanging on by one little thread that was fraying really fast.  He asked me what I thought we should do and I told him that I thought it was time to get her a medical cannabis card and try CBD and THC oils.   He agreed.

    We had talked about trying cannabis oil on and off for the past year but never felt God leading us in that direction.  We had only heard great things about others using them for their special needs kids.  It wasn’t something new to us but it was something new to our home. I don’t know why God didn’t want us to explore this option sooner but when we had talked about it before I never felt a peace about trying it out.  A year ago I had all the appointments lined up to get Gillian a medical cannabis card and an appointment at the dispensary to talk to someone about what we would use.  Literally an hour before the appointments God gave me this totally unsettled feeling so I canceled the appointments and that’s when we started with our psychiatrist and our long journey of anti-anxiety medications.  Now, here we were a year later having exhausted almost every route but this one.  Suddenly I had an overwhelming peace that this was exactly what we were supposed to be doing.  

I kept Gillian home from school the next day and off we went to the doctor to get her cannabis card.  The doctor was a very kind man, who looked over the big pile of medical papers describing all of Gillian’s diagnoses and understood exactly why we were there.  He signed all the paper work and off we went to the dispensary.  In all honesty here, people, this was my first time in a cannabis dispensary and actually my first time even being near any type of marijuana.  I was so nervous when we walked in.  Here we were, a red-headed white lady with her chatty, disabled daughter.  What a pair!  At the entrance was a security guard and a “bouncer-type” guy checking people in.  He was a big guy with tattoos from head to toe and a long beard.   For those of you who know Gillian you know that this is just the type of guy she likes.  She immediately started telling him that she liked his beard and his tattoos.  I was telling her to be quite.  Geesh, child.  There was some logistically issues with our paperwork since I have conservatorship over Gillian and have to be on the paperwork as well so “bouncer dude” had to call the owner, Jason, out.  Honesty again here, I was shaking like a leaf at this point because I was so nervous and had no idea what the heck I was doing.  I was such a rookie.  Jason came out and I told him who I was (we have mutual friends) and why I was here with Gillian.  Oh my word, you guys, he was the nicest guy ever!  He told “bouncer-dude” to handle the paperwork because we were legit and then he took me to the waiting area where we sat and talked about all that had been going on with Gillian for over half an hour.  He got it.  He gets it.  He has a special needs child as well and cannabis has been a life saver for his child. 

Jason explained what THC and CBD do and what the difference is between them.  I was liking what I was hearing and getting excited about trying something new.  He then told me what the side affects are...eating, sleeping and being happy.   What?!  Seriously?!  So basically you’re telling me that this is going to help my daughter eat, which she was rarely doing much of these days, sleep, she has never slept though the night in her 19 years on earth, and be happy , which I would give anything just to see her happy again.  Is this for real?!  I laughed and told him that those are my kind of side affects.  As we were getting ready to leave Jason told me that he knew that this was going to be the start of healing in Gillian and in our family.  He guaranteed it. I was speechless.  No doctor had ever told us that.  No doctor had ever given us any kind of hope for Gillian to be happy and they never even cared about the affect it was all having on our family.  All we ever heard was, “ this medication has some bad side affects but maybe it will help.”   Hope, someone was giving us hope.  It was amazing!

Now normally after an appointment with the psychiatrist I would get in the car and cry because I was so stressed about trying another anti-anxiety medication and nervous abut the side affects we would have to endure.  When I got in the car after leaving the dispensary I cried tears of joy because someone actually cared enough to give us hope.  Someone had been where we are and they had found healing and now they were helping others find healing to and we got to be some of those people.  I immediately called Chris and told him about the entire wonderful experience and the little bottles of hope I now had.  I couldn’t stop smiling.  I was overjoyed that my family, our home, was going to find peace again.  

   It took about 48 hours of Gillian taking the oils and she was a completely different person.  Within a couple of weeks she was sleeping through the night (without us having to give her Unisom) and she was having only about 1-2 tantrums a week.  Peace was being restored in our home.  Laughter was back and everyone was just overall happier.  It was wonderful.  It is wonderful.  It hasn’t been perfect, we occasionally have days where it seems like the oils aren’t helping but she is nowhere near being that horribly anxious person she was before.  

        ___________________________

Now I have to tell you about how awesome all the people at Jayden’s Journey and Kase’s Journey are..........

As Jason, Gillian and I sat on the couch in the waiting area, Gillian kept waving to the security guard and calling him a police officer.  This was cracking every up who worked there and Jason proceeded to tell Gillian that he was just a rent-a-cop.  Oh my word it was hysterical.  They were all totally loving Gillian and commenting on how awesome her fedora was.  She informed them of how much she liked Michael Jackson and the next thing I knew, they had Michael Jackson blaring out the speakers in the dispensary and they were dancing with Gilly.  Remember “Bouncer-dude” the guy who totally intimidated me when we walked in?  Well as we left, Gillian was giving him a big hug and telling him once again how awesome his tattoos and beard were.   When we went back to the dispensary a couple of weeks later “bouncer-guy” saw Gillian and got a huge smile on his face and told her happy he was to see her again.  He’s really just a big teddy bear!  

The first time I visited Kase”s Journey, “rent-a-cop” was there and he remembered Gillian and I and got a big smile on his face and just laughed.  He loved that she called him a police officer and that we all got to joke with him about it.  The people who work at both of these dispensaries are the most amazing people who’s desire is to help people find healing and hope through cannabis.  They know their stuff and are always patient with me as I ask a million questions about the oils and the dosage Gillian is taking.  I now visit one of the dispensaries once or twice a month and they are both such welcoming places.  I laugh now when I think about how nervous I was that first time..  I am so grateful that God has brought us to the place of hope and healing and for the people He has placed in our lives who fight the fights for cannabis.  

Anger Management

     I have anger issues.  I’m sure I’ve had them all my life but the first time I remember anger actually talking over me was when I was 18 years old.  I was angry and I picked up an empty box and chucked it across the room as I was running out of the room.  It felt good at the time.  Later I regretted it as I heard someone say, “I knew she had an anger problem”.  This person was looking for every bit of negative in me at the time and I just gave them more fuel for their fire against me.   It sucked.  Throughout my adult life I would continue to have anger issues which usually ended with me breaking something.    In our first year of marriage I put a hole in the wall.  Howie’s awesome response to that was, “you’d better call your dad to help you fix that because I’m not doing it.”   Talk about embarrassing....”ummm....hi dad.  I just put a hole in the wall because I was mad.  Could you come help me fix it please?”.   Fortunately my dad was a very kind, understanding man with very similar anger issues (ya, it runs in the family) and came over and patched up the hole.   

     I didn’t start working on my anger issues until I was in my thirties.  It had really come to a head in the years that we were going through the worst times of our marriage.  I broke quite a few things, vases, pictures, cups, plates.   It always gave me this release when I would just break one thing, but every single time afterwards I would regret it.  While working through my anger in my early thirties I focused just on the anger and how I responded in that anger.  The Bible specifically says in Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry, and do not sin.” That was my focus, to not let my anger turn to sin.  To calm myself down before I started yelling and threw something.  I found verses that I could recite when I started feeling my blood boil:

-Proverbs, 19:11, “The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger, and his glory is to overlook a transgression.”  

-Psalms 37:8, “Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret- it only causes harm.”

-Proverbs 14:29, “He who is slow to wrath has great understanding, but he who is impulsive exalts folly.”

-Ecclesiastes 7:9, “Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.”

-Psalms 103:8, “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy.”

-James 1:19, “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath.”

-James 1:20, “For the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

     I wrote these verse on note cards and had them everywhere to remind me and to help me get control of my anger.  When I would feel the anger start to surface I would pray and ask God to settle my spirit down and then I would go over the above verses until I felt myself calm down.  It took a lot of work to get into this routine and get my anger managed, but God was faithful through it all and got me through it.  It’s been a long time since I’ve broken anything. Well, actually about a year ago I threw a glass and broke it all over the floor of our bedroom.  My rage had come out of nowhere and took me completely off guard.  I immediately texted three of my closets friends to have them pray for me because I was still feeling full of rage and anger and I was so confused about where it was coming from.  Turns out I was actually having a reaction to barium.  I had had a procedure the previous day and they had used barium and some of the side effects are irritation, anxiety and confusion. It was crazy and barium is now listed on my heath record as a drug I am allergic to.  Needless to say, I don’t count that broken glass as part of my anger issues.  I do still occasionally have moments when I feel the anger rising and I really want to break something but they are few and far between now and I always remember to go and pray and meditate on my anger verses and that always brings be back down to reality. 

     Now I am forty and God has recently revealed a new side of my anger issues to me.  A couple of weeks ago the hubs and I had a bad week over a tough issue that brought up a lot of past triggers for me.  We spent the better part of the week going back and forth on the issue and I was angry the whole time.  I thought I was angry because he wasn’t hearing my side of the issues.  He wasn’t getting what I was saying nor was he understanding my feelings and this was making me mad. I said a lot of mean things and yelled in this time of anger.  It all came to a head one morning as we were talking and right in the middle of the conversation, right after he had said something that was new information to me, he abruptly had to go because he had a meeting to get to.  I hung up the phone and the flood gates opened (does it seem like every one of my stories involves me crying?  Geesh. I am an emotional gal.).  The tears flowed and pain came pouring out of my heart.  I was hurting because of this situation we were in.  All the triggers were bringing up past hurts and I just ached.  I immediately wanted to close the flood gates, shove the hurt back down, grab my phone and play a game to distract myself.  As I reached for the phone I heard God say, “nope”.  Ugh.  Really, God?  Now?  Do I have to?  Of course I do.  I not only had to I needed to.  I sat in the pain and cried it all out right onto God’s shoulder. And do you know what happened as I allowed the pain come to the surface?  The anger went away!  I realized that day, right there in the parking lot of the gym that my anger was masking my pain.  I was allowing my anger to push down the real feelings I was having.   It was easier for me, at least I thought it was,  to just be angry  then to feel the real feels.  But oh my goodness, I was a whole new person once I  let the pain out and the anger just rolled right off my shoulders.  

     This past week I found myself angry again over a situation.  I allowed anger to consume for a couple of days before I realized that I needed to dig deeper and figure out what the anger was hiding.  It didn’t take long to figure it out.  I pinpointed the real feeling (It was abandonment this time) dug deeper into the feeling and all of its triggers and once again the anger just rolled away and I felt like a new person again.  

     People, can I just tell you how freeing and how healing this new realization is for me?!  I wish I could go back to my twenties with this knowledge and re-do all the broken things I threw.  Take back all the angry things that I yelled that I never meant and find the real feelings that needed to come out.  But, alas, that was not God’s plan.  He chose to wait until I was forty to give me this illumination and I trust, I know, that His timing is so much better than my own.  So I take my new found information and I press on with excitement at conquering a whole new level of my anger.

     What is your angry hiding?  How are you using anger in your life to fight against feeling the real feels and dealing with the deeper issues? In your anger are you sinning?  Yelling at your kids or spouse, breaking things?  Is it out of control?   Do you need to write the above verses down on notecards to help remind you to calm down and turn to Christ?  It might be. A lot of hard work for you to get your anger under control but let me tell you, IT IS SO WORTH IT!  

Spring Break Nearly Broke Me

    Oh, it was a week.   A week filled with ups and downs, smiles and frowns. A week filled with calm and chaos, peace and frustrations.  A week filled with laughter and tears, hope and hopelessness.  I never knew so much could fit into just one week, but it can.  Let me rewind a couple of months so you are all up to date.....

    We started Gillian on CBD and THC oils a couple of months ago (I will go into all the details on this decision in a later post) and she has become a whole new person.  Seriously, the change has been dramatic and beautiful.  She sleeps through the night now, her anxiety levels have dropped drastically and all of those tantrums she was throwing....gone. She doesn’t throw them anymore!  Peace has been restored within her body and within our home.  It’s been beyond wonderful.   Everyone has been happy and there’s laughter in our family again.   Amazing beyond words.  (I really will get into all the details in another post, I promise. ;) ). I was excited for Spring Break with Nolan and Gillian (Emma’s spring break is this week so she was at school all last week) and to actually be able to do stuff with Gillian now that she was this new, enjoyable person.  

    

    On Monday we went to Target.  Don’t all things fun start with Target?!  Ummmm....YES!   The kids got to pick out snacks, treats and lunches for the week.  This included for Nolan Lunchables, Hamburger Helper stroganoff, Doritos and Mountain Dew and for Gillian Limon chips, root beer and Lunchables.  Good healthy stuff!  We rarely let them buy junk so this was a special treat.   We walked all around Target for over an hour and everyone was happy and having a good time.  This was a miracle in itself because, honestly, I have not taken Gillian out to a public place like this for months.  It had become so disastrous and we’d end up having to leave after 5 minutes so I just stopped taking her.  This was a breath of fresh air.  We sang songs and had a dance party in the car all the way home (Emma was glad she had to be at school.  Lol).  Yep, this was going to be the best Spring Break ever!   On Tuesday we hung out at home all day and played.  Another great day!  Before Gillian went to bed Tuesday night we talked about how we were going for hair cuts in the morning and then going to the movies.  She LOVES Cortney, who has been cutting all of our hairs for a decade, and was so excited she was going to get to see her.   She slept great Wednesday night just like she had been doing for the past two months. 

    Wednesday morning I got the kids up to get ready to go get hair cuts.   I gave Gillian the oils just like I have for the past two months.   She started acting anxious.  She didn’t want to go get her hair cut.  She started shaking just like she used to.  I got her showered and dressed and made her a protein drink to drink on the way.  She didn’t want it and threw it in the sink.   “What the heck is going on?!”, I thought to myself, “This is not our normal anymore.”  By the time we got to Cortney’s she was in full blown tantrum mode.  I spent the next hour trying to calm her down while everyone got hair cuts.  She refused to let Cortney cut her hair and instead spun herself around in the chair while spitting on the floor.  

    I started going over everything in my mind that had happened in the past 24 hours, trying to figure out what had her so off.  When we left the hairdressers Gillian was asking if we could go to the car wash.  “Of course!”, I responded, hoping that this would get her back on track.  Nope, didn’t work.  Now she was mad that we were going to the movies.  I figured that once we got there she would be okay.  We got our popcorn and water and settled into our reclining chairs.  For the next hour and a half she told me about a thousand times that she wanted to go home.  The movie finally ended and home we went.   The rest of the day consisted of tantrums and tears.  She threw the tantrums and I cried the tears.   I was just beginning to exhale after our years of hell with her.  I was just starting to feel like a normal human being again, why was she reverting back?  I went to bed Wednesday night just assuming that she would be back to her new, wonderful self in the morning. We probably just had an off day and that’s okay, I told myself.  Tomorrow would be great again.  

    I could not have been more wrong.  Thursday was worse then Wednesday. In fact Thursday was worse then any of the bad days we had had before.  The tantrums were bigger then any she had ever had.  The yelling was louder, the stomping was more fierce, the spitting was nonstop.  It was horrible.  I couldn’t even get her out of the house.  Nor did I really want to take her out of the house.  I became a hot mess.  All I kept thinking and texting my husband was, “I cannot go back to this life.  I will have to find a home to put her in if she is going to be like this again.  I can’t do this again. My body can’t do this again.  My emotions can’t do this again.  My other kids cannot go through this all again.”  I was falling apart just at the thought of her going back to her old self again.  It was not pretty.

     Thursday night I messaged with the guy who runs the dispensary where we get the oils from.   He had me up her dosage for Friday and told me to get back to him.  Dosages we’re upped but there was no change.  I was feeling hopeless.  I thought, “this is going to be like every other medication we have done. They work for two months and then they stop working.  What do we have left to try with this kid?  Nothing!  We have nothing!”  Oh the thoughts just kept racing through my mind and then I started yelling at God, “why would you do this God!  Why would you give us a taste of a peaceful child and a peaceful home and then just take it all away?!  You have the power to just make her better so why won’t you just make her better, already!  I’m not asking you to heal all her disabilities, I just want you to take away her anxiety and give her peace in her body. That’s it!  That’s all!  Is that asking to much?!”  I was angry and I wanted to stay angry but the radio was playing worship music and God was trying to talk to me.  I didn’t want to listen. I just wanted to be angry at Him for a little while.  But His voice broke through my hopelessness and I heard Him ask, “Don’t you remember all My truths, child?  Don’t you remember how I work all things together for good?  Don’t you remember that I will never leave you nor forsake you?”  Ugh, yes, I remember all of that, God.  Can I just be mad though?  “Well what would be the purpose in being mad?”  Nothing really.  I just want to be mad...... I always love these conversations with God.  They only happen when I really need a good, swift kick in the butt because I’m being so stubborn and pig headed, but I cherish them and remember them every time they do happen. I was still feeling angry and hopeless but I was also clinging to God’s promises and remembering that He is a good Father and He does love me and He really loves Gillian.  And I may not see the purpose in the chaos right now but He’s working out something amazing that will glorify Him.  

     I texted my community people and told them what was going on and asked them all to pray for Gillian and to pray for me and my attitude.  I could never do this life without the community of amazing people that God has placed in my life.  I messaged back our friend at the dispensary Friday night and he had me up the THC a little more and then mentioned that there was a full moon happening and this could be part of the problem.  Sounds weird right?!  But it’s totally true.  Seriously, ask any special needs mom you know and she will tell you that her kid acts up when there’s a full moon.  Remember when we had the red moon a few months back? Oh my word, these kids were awful that week!   Not really sure what causes the full moon to have that kind of affect on them, but it does.   So I was feeling a little relieved when he reminded me of this.   Friday night I sat on the couch with Chris and just cried.  Poor guy got a lot of tears on his shoulder last week.  My anxiety had kicked backed in (it had been doing so well the past month) and I literally felt like my skin was crawling.  I wanted to just pull my skin off.  This made me sad thinking about Gillian was probably feeling the exact same way except she didn’t know how to communicate that to us.  How scary it must be for her sometimes to be in her body.  I know how she feels but I also know how to talk to others about it and how to talk myself through it, she doesn’t and that breaks this mama’s heart into a million pieces. 

   

    Saturday we started seeing a little improvement in Gillian.  She was calming down and not throwing any more tantrums. She woke up with a stuffy nose so she spent most of the day laying on the couch.  I’m sure her whole body was exhausted from the last few days. Mine was. 

I was selfishly worrying all day that she wasn’t going to be okay for Easter Sunday.  Our plans were to go have breakfast at my sister’s house, followed by going to Church, and then lunch at my in-laws.   I had been looking forward to this day for awhile now and in the back of my head I kept thinking that she was going to ruin it and I was going to end up at home with her all day.  You can send my Mother of the Year award to house.  LOL  I woke up on Easter Sunday at 5:30.  My alarm was set to go off at 6:15 so I laid in bed and just prayed for the next 45 minutes. “God, please bring peace back to Gillian.  Please just let her be okay today so the whole family can be together and enjoy the day.”  I kept sayin that over and over and over again.  I got Gillian up at 7:00 and she was in a pretty decent mood.  Yay!   We talked about how we were going to Auntie’s house and then to our new Church and then to Gramma and Papa’s house.  She was a little apprehensive about it all but we just kept pushing forward.   We got to my sister’s and she was in a great mood the whole time!  When it was time to leave for Church she didn’t give us any trouble.  When we got to Church, she walked right into her Sunday School class with a smile on her face and didn’t even bother to turn around and say goodbye and when we were at my in-laws she sat by me at lunch and put her arm around my neck and her head on my shoulder as if to say “I’m okay mom and I love you”.   It was a beautiful Easter Sunday.  It was an amazing reminder of the horribleness Christ had to suffer to get to that beautiful day of resurrection.  I failed miserably during the few days of “old Gillian” this past week.  I lost my hope, my patience and some of my faith.   But Christ never lost me!  He had His arm around me the entire time guided me forward through the crap and into the light.   Even when I doubted, He just held me tighter.  

    Gillian isn’t quite all the way back to the happy, calm person she was the last couple of moths.  But she’s no where near “old Gillian” and for that I am beyond grateful.  

Grief- Loss of a Loved One

     I’m not gonna lie, I don’t want to write this post as just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes.  Losing someone you love is so painful.  There’s that old phrase “‘Tis better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all”.  Well there are days when I think that’s a bunch of bull crap and I would rather have been all alone and lonely then have amazing people in my life die.  In those moments God usually smacks me up side the head pretty fast and knocks me back into reality and reminds me of how grateful I really am to have loved so many people that are now gone.   I’ve lost grandparents, a dear friend of mine and my husbands, aunts, an uncle, a cousin, and my own dad.  I have grieved each one of these losses individually.  Some I have grieved because the loss affected my own life so much and some I have grieved watching how the loss has affected others so close to me.   Losing a loved one leaves a hole in your heart and an ache in your soul that does lessen a bit over time but that never goes away.  Grieving the loss of my dad, who was my best friend, was definitely the hardest one for me to go through.

     I began grieving the loss of my dad before he was even gone from this earth.  When we first found out that he had cancer the doctors told us he had 1-5 years.  I’m a glass half full kind of a girl so I truly believed with all my heart that we would get the full 5 years.  Denial.  There was no way I was going to accept only having one year left with my dad.  As his cancer progressed and after he had had two strokes, we were just a year into his horrible cancer battle, and it was obvious we were at the end.  I was still in denial clinging on to the five years I had so hoped for, I had so wanted, I so needed with my dad.  I remember driving him home from the VA hospital in Palo Alto realizing that I was taking my dad home to die.  It was so surreal.  I still couldn’t believe that I wasn’t getting the five years the doctors said we could have.  I had blocked out the one to five year phrase and had only been thinking about the five years.  One year had never been an option in my mind.  Five years gave me so much more time for so many more conversations.  It gave my son time to grow up and have amazing memories with my dad to remember him by.  It gave my daughters more time to continue making great memories with him.  Five years gave us time, that I could accept.  One year was not an option.  One year was never on my radar.  So when we lost my dad one year after he had been diagnosed with cancer I was distraught.  I was in disbelief.  I was in denial.  This loss was a hard one for me to come to grips with.  My dad was supposed to live until I was old and grey and watch my kids get married and meet his great-grandchildren.  I wasn’t supposed to have to go through most of my adulthood without my dad.  34 years with him was just not long enough for me.  I walked around for a very long time numb to the fact that he really was gone.  A really long time.  

     I moved straight into guilt once the numbness started to wear off.  The biggest thing that I struggled with was the fact that a few days before my dad died, when he was bedridden, in extreme pain, and basically comatose, I told him that it was okay for him to go.  I told him that I would be okay.  I gave him permission to die.  I was being selfless.  I hated seeing my dad in so much pain wasting away more and more each day.  But, in this point of my grief I wanted to take it all back.  I wanted to be selfish.  I didn’t care if he would have been suffering at least I would have had him around to talk to and to hold his hand.  (Yep, I was a 34 year old women who still loved to hold her daddy’s hand and who still called him daddy. Not ashamed.).  I kept thinking that if I wouldn’t have given him permission to die he would still be alive today.  I wished I would have never said it. Once again, this dumb redhead thought she was more powerful then God. 

     It took awhile for me to admit to my anger with my dad’s death because the only person that I was angry at was God.  I thought that being angry at God was a huge sin so I kept shoving it down deep inside of me in hopes that it would go away.  I couldn’t really be a Christian if I had so much anger at God.  What a horrible person I must be.  I just couldn’t come to terms with being angry at God.  This was the God that I knew without a shadow of a doubt was sovereign and good and “He is allways in charge” (ask me about my tattoo and I’ll tell you the story).   I knew He was the God who would never leave me nor forsake me.  I knew in my heart and believed with all my heart all the truths about God so how could I possibly now be so angry at Him.  I fought this anger for months before I came to the point that I could no longer fight it.  I was lying in bed one night and the anger just came out.  I yelled at God.  I told Him how angry I was that on top of all the other crap He had put in my life (at this point I had a disabled child, a shattered marriage and my grandmother had just died 4 months before my dad) He had chosen to take my dad away as well.  I told Him how unfair it was and how mean it was.  It all just came pouring out like flood gates had been opened wide.  I came to a point where everything I had been feeling had all been said and I just laid there sobbing, exhausted, in the still quietness.  Do you know what I heard in the quietness?  God softly spoke to me.  He said, “Caroline, it’s okay to be angry at me.  I understand.  I can take it.  I can handle it.  I still love you, my child.”  That was it.  Those few words He said to me were full of more healing then I could have ever imagined.  And you know what, it’s really hard to stay angry at someone who is okay with you being angry at them.  My anger had all been released and with that came great peace and a deeper relationship with Christ.

     For those of you who have lost a loved one, you know that it doesn’t take long for people to stop asking how you are and move on with their lives.  We all do that.  We all have our own lives to live, or own drama to attend to and it’s hard to remember that other people are suffering too.  You would think I’d be better at this but I fail daily.  I’ll admit it was hard for me to extend grace to people at first when they’d forget that my dad had just died. I specifically remember going to our Church’s Thanksgiving service the night before the first Thanksgiving without my dad, I had pretty much been crying the whole day not looking forward to our first major holidays without him.  I was talking to someone who asked how my day was and I honestly responded, “Horrible”, to which she replied, “oh my gosh, are your kids driving you crazy, too?!”.  I simply stated, “No, I’m just really struggling with getting through the holidays without my dad.” There was not much left to say after that so instead of standing in awkward silence I just walked away.  That’s when I realized that people who haven’t been there just don’t get it.  They can’t.  But I could learn to extend grace to them just as I would hope people could do for me when I don’t get it.  It’s hard when every one goes on with their lives and you are still stuck in grief.  It’s really easy to just go crawl in a hole and hide and cry.  That’s what I did and that’s when depression loomed over me.  I was sad and I had every right to be.  I didn’t want to be around happy people.  I especially didn’t want to be around happy people who had dads.  This was a healthy time of depression for me.  It would come and go.  Some days I would be perfectly happy and okay with life and then some days it would hit me like a ton of bricks and I just wanted to be alone and cry all day and I gave myself permission to do that.  As time went on the depression decreased.  

     Year four after my dad’s death is when I finally accepted it.  This was the hardest year for holidays and special events.  The first year after my dad died we did every holiday completely different then we had done before.  We didn’t do any of our traditions.  Or goal was to just get through them and get them over with.  Year two we eased back in to the traditions but still felt pretty numb.  Year three we were back to doing everything how we had done it when my dad was alive but we had to have others fill in the blanks my dad left.  Year four is when we (the we here is my mom, sister and I) realized that this really is the new normal and it will never be how it was before.  It just kind of hits you like a bolt of lightening out of the blue.  Year four was the hardest but it was also the most therapeutic. We cried way more tears and I think they were the last of my grieving process tears that I had.  My dad was gone.  This was not okay, but I knew that I was going to be okay.  I still grieve him not being here.  That will never go away.  I still talk about him often and think about him daily.  There’s still a hole in my heart and an ache in my soul that I know will be there until I get to Heaven but I have learned to live with them and grow from them and use them to speak to others in their grief.  

     Grief is hard but necessary after a loss.  We have a choice to make in the midst of our grief.  We can either use our time of grief to learn about ourselves and grow or we can choose to let it eat us alive and take away who we are.  I have traveled both of those roads in my grief and can I tell you, from experience, that allowing it to help you grow and learn about yourself is a much better use of your time.  You can come out on the other side of denial, anger, guilt, depression and acceptance a better person. You can come out on the other side of it all with the most amazing relationship with Christ if you choose to lean on Him and grow as you walk through grief.  And remember, grief lasts a lifetime so continue to allow it to help you grow.  If you are in the process of grief, please don’t do it alone.  No one has to walk it alone.  There is no need to walk it alone.  Reach out to me, or to your pastor or to someone in your life who you know is a safe place.  Take that step to have a community with you on your long, hard road.  

Grief- Loss of the Ideal Marriage

     Every little girl dreams about marrying Prince Charming and having the perfect marriage.  I was no exception.  When I got married I knew I was the right man for me and that we would ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.  The thought never even once crossed my mind that infidelity and addictions would be a part of my perfect marriage.  Why would they.  No person in their right mind ever thinks before they walk down the aisle, “I can’t wait unit my husband cheats on me and the has a bunch of addictions that almost destroys our marriage.  That’s going to be so much fun!”  Nope, that never happens. 

     It took me about 10 years after our marriage had fallen apart to realize that I needed to grieve the loss of my ideal marriage.  I needed to allow myself to grieve the marriage I thought I had so that I could move forward in healing the marriage I now had.  I am pretty sure that we can call those ten years my stage of denial.  Denial mostly came in the form of me acting like we had a great marriage and we were so in love whenever we were around people.  It was a time of sweeping it under the rug and not really dealing with the reality of a broken marriage.  Those were definitely the darkest most hellish years of my life.  Once I realized I needed to fully grieve this ideal marriage in my head I was able to move on to the next stage, which for me was anger.

     Most of this anger came out towards Howie.  After all, in my mind, he was the one that had hurt me the most and ruined our marriage.  -Another side note.....I did come to fully realize that our broken marriage was just as much my fault as it was his.  I had my own issues (co-dependency, anger, perfectionism, etc...) that took their toll on Howie and on our marriage as well. But I will save that for a later post. Side note over.-  He sure did get to feel my wrath for awhile.  I can honestly say that I did not keep my anger as biblical anger.  I definitely allowed it to cause me to sin.  That’s when I started to realize that I had some serous issues that I needed to work through along with Howie.  While working through this anger stage I learned about how I was withholding complete forgiveness from Howie and in that unforgiveness I was clinging onto, bitterness brewed.  Once I was able to fully forgive him, the bitterness and anger subsided and I moved forward into the bargaining and guilt stage.

     Like I said before, I am the queen of “if only” and you can bet that my crown came out in full force once again for this stage of guilt.  If only I was prettier, if only I was a better cook, if  only I was the perfect wife, if only I was a better mom, if only if only, if only.  This time I decided to throw some bargaining into the mix as well to see if that would help.  God if you’ll make my marriage perfect again, I promise to never miss another Sunday at Church. God if I promise to be the perfect submissive wife will you make my marriage perfect again, please?  Lots of pie crust promises, easily made, easily broken.  Once again, I thought I was wiser and more powerful than God and I had some kind of control.  Oh, ya, let’s add control issues to that above list of all my problems I have had to work on.  The thing I cam to realize with all my bargaining with God is that He was re-working my marriage into this amazing marriage that He wanted it to be through taking away the ideal marriage I had envisioned.  He was turning my marriage into a marriage that I could never had even been able to imagine.  He didn’t want my unrealistic promises.  He didn’t need me to be the perfect wife and most amazing cook to turn my marriage into something beautiful.  He needed me to walk through this dark valley of grief along side Him so that He could sanctify me into someone who more like Him then I had ever been before.  I needed the pain of a broken marriage for me to see how broken I truly was.  I needed my picture of an ideal marriage to be crossed out and ripped up so that God could paint a new, better image in mind and not just the image of it but actually give the real life version of it in my own marriage.  Once again, through my bargaining and guilt He was able to  bring me to a place of acceptance. 

     Accepting the loss of the ideal marriage I had envisioned as a young girl and a young wife wasn’t that hard to do once I got to this stage because I was already experiencing a new healing marriage with Howie.  I wasn’t necessarily okay with all the pain I had had to endure through the discovery and healing of a broken marriage but I did know without a shadow of a doubt that I was okay and that I was going to continue to be okay.  I was able to accept this loss so much easier than any of the other losses because God had replaced it with something so much better.  I do realize that He doesn’t always do that with broken marriages and so it takes longer to come to the point of acceptance. I also want to remind you that it took 15 years for me to be able to experience healing in our marriage and to experience a marriage that was better then I ever could have imagined.  It wasn’t something that happened over night.  It was a long process that took a lot of work on both our parts and a lot of amazing, godly people to come along side us and keep us on track.  So please do not feel discouraged if you are in the process of mourning the loss of your ideal marriage and you don’t see a future with a healed marriage.   For me, this process of grieving wasn’t about getting to a better marriage.  It was about getting to a better me and to a place where I was okay if my marriage didn’t come back together because my relationship with Christ was so strong and I knew He would get me through anything.  Acceptance for ultimately came when I chose to accept that God’s will for my life was so much better then the life I was willing for myself.  

Grief- The Life You Envisioned For Your Child

I was only 22 when Gillian, our now 19 year old, was diagnosed with extreme developmental delays at the age of 1.  (I will save you all from trying to do the math, I am now 40.  (LOL). We didn’t fully accept the diagnosis until 6 months later.   She was my miracle baby as I was told I would probably never be able to have my own children.  She was the light of my life and in my mind, at least at the forefront of my mind, just needed more time to develop.  We can call those 6 months between diagnosis and getting help my time of walking through the stage of grief known as denial.  I am sure that if you asked those around us at the time, most of them would say that we were in complete denial and that we couldn’t see that there was something wrong with Gillian.  They couldn’t have been further from the truth.  Like I just said a second ago, at the forefront of my mind I thought that Gillian just needed more time to develop, but in the back of my mind, way down deep in there, I knew.   Howie and I both knew.  We just weren’t ready or at all prepared to start walking down that road yet.  We wanted to enjoy our perfect child in her perfectly normal childhood for a little while longer.  We weren’t stupid.  We saw exactly what was going on with our daughter and we heard everyone’s whispering going on around us which was quite hurtful.  Denial just gave us this beautiful, perfect bubble to live in before our lives and our daughter’s life changed forever. We knew that once we started down the special needs road we could never go back to just being a perfect, little family of three.  Once we started all the weekly therapy appointments (we had at least 6 a week they wanted us to start with) we would never go back to the simple life of playing on the floor with our daughter and just enjoying her for her.   Denial was a gift that I so needed so that I could savor those last precious 6 months of normalcy for my daughter and for our family.  

I remember denial fading overnight for me.  It wasn’t a slow fade.  It actually happened quite fast.  I woke up one morning and it was like all that was lurking in the back of my mind had shot to the forefront and I knew it was time to move forward with this diagnosis and all the therapies.   As fast as denial left, anger came in.  I was angry at the people around us who had normal functioning kids and just got to enjoy them.  They got to go on with their merry little lives while I was stuck going to various therapies with my child and then coming home and repeating all that we had learned with her over and over again.  My life, as I knew it, was over and they all got to keep going on with theirs.  I was also angry because I felt constantly judged by those around us because they felt we waited to long to get Gillian help.  -Okay, quick side note here.....I realize now (18 years later) that all of these people meant well and cared deeply for us.  At the time that was not at all what it felt like but none of them had ever been in the situation before so they didn’t get that their words and actions were hurtful.  Heck, I would have had responded the same way if I were them, but now that I have been there and done that it has taught me a lot in how to respond and love on people as they start their journey into this world of special needs and my hope is that it will give you some insight into how to respond to those people as well, because I know that none of us truly wants to hurt someone who is going through a difficult time.  Okay, side not over-  It was hurtful to us that anyone would think we didn’t want what was best for our daughter and that we weren’t dong our best as her parents.  It was hard for me to get over my anger but in time, it faded just as denial did into another stage.  

Remember how I said in my post on the overview of grief that not everyone goes through the stages of grief in order?  Well for me after anger came depression.  I skipped right over bargaining and guilt for the time being.  Oh, don’t you worry, I eventually went through that stage and I’ll get it to it, but first depression.  Depression for me came in the form of retreating.  If I hadn’t already pushed everyone away with my anger then depression was going to do the rest of the job for me.  I stopped returning friends’ calls, stopped going to most functions and stopped talking to people about what was going on in our lives.  Most people couldn’t relate anyways so what was the point in telling them all about everything that we were doing with Gillian.  That was my mindset. Poor me.  No one gets it.  No one understands.  I felt so alone in this new life I was living.  Depression got a good grip on me for probably about a year.  I feel that it lasted so long because I didn’t tell anyone about it or attempt to get help for it.  Instead I just became this person that I am sure everyone thought was a b word and I didn’t even care.  -Time for another side note......This is why it is so important to reach out to someone who has walked through grief before to walk through it with you.  Doing it by yourself DOES NOT WORK!   Trust me, been there, done that, couldn’t afford the t-shirt.  So please, if you are walking through grief by yourself reach out to me or someone else that you know and allow us to walk through it with it.  No one has to do it alone.  There’s no reason to do it alone and it will only make it harder on you and those around you if you try to do it alone.  We were meant to live life in community.  That is how God created us so go find community to walk through grief with you.....Side note over-  Depression was a horrible enemy that I allowed to stay and visit for far to long and it likes to try to come back from time to time still, but now I have an amazing community of sister’s in Christ who will come in and help me kick him out.  

I started down the stage of bargaining and guilt while still in the stage of depression.  It was somewhere towards the end of that long year.  I became queen of the “if only”thoughts.  If only I had eaten better while pregnant (umm....I lived on salads and iced tea my entire pregnancy.), if only we had started therapies earlier, if only I had made her do more tummy time when she was a baby, if only I had breastfed her longer, if only I had made her sleep on her back and not her tummy (when Gillian was a baby, the trend was back sleeping only, I have no idea what the trend is now as they are constantly changing it.) if only, if only, if only, they would just come one right after another all day long.  God, however, finally told me one day that I needed to stop thinking that I was mightier and wiser then He was.  Nothing I did or didn’t do caused Gillian to have special needs.  She was exactly how God had made her.  She was everything that He wanted her to be and nothing He didn’t want her to be.  She was created in His image just like me and therefore she was perfect.  That led me right in to the stage of acceptance.

Gillian was still my perfect child.  She was still my miracle from Heaven.  She was still the baby we prayed for for so long and wanted so badly.  Her life just looked different then the life I had imagined.  She wasn’t going to be potty trained before starting kindergarten.  She wasn’t going to get to be a free spirit that played outside with all the neighborhood kids everyday.  She wasn’t going to be reading chapter books by the stack all through elementary school.  She wasn’t going to ever have all her high school girlfriends over for a slumber party.  She wasn’t ever going to get her driver’s license.  I’m not ever going to get to cry when she leaves for college.  I’m not ever going to get to meet her boyfriend, or plan her wedding or hold her children.  These are all things that one by one I have had to grieve.  Some I am still in the process of grieving through and I know as time moves forward and friends’ kids and my nieces and nephews and my other two children hit major milestones in life and it hits me that that will never be Gillian, I will have to walk the road of grief once again as I learn to accept that Gillian’s life looks different than the life I pictured for her as I held her in my arms the day she was born.  I move forward in acceptance fully knowing that many days I am not okay with this loss but that I will be okay and so will Gillian.

   

Grief- An Overview

     Oh the not so wonderful 5 stages of grief- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Many of us have been through them.  Some of us have been through them more times than we can count.  Some have never even experienced them at all.  Most people think that grief only happens when someone dies. Grief is defined as keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss.  Grief does not just happen when you someone you loves dies.   No, grief happens when you lose someone or something or an ideal. I have experienced grief and it’s five steps in so many ways- through the loss of my dad, the loss of grandparents, aunts, an uncle and a cousin.  I’ve experienced grief through the loss of an ideal marriage and through the loss of a the life I had planned for a child.  I experience it at each age and stage of Gillian’s life while I watch others move forward as we stay idle.  I’ve experienced it for my other two children when it finally hit me how they have lost so much normal in their childhoods because of parents being separated and losing loved ones and having a special needs sister.  

One thing that I have learned about the five stages of grief in my many journeys through them is that each time it has looked different.  Each journey has looked different, each stage has taken a different amount of time and has required different ways to get through them.  Grief has never looked the same way twice for me.  And I realize that grief doesn’t look the same way for any two people.  We all have our own way of dealing with grief and walking thorough its stages.  There is no right or wrong way to grieve.  For one it takes a lot longer.  For some they are able to move through some stages quite quickly but get stuck on just one or two of the stages.  We cannot judge someone for the way that they walk through the grieving process.  We can only love them as they walk though.

Let’s do a quick overview of each of the five stages today and then over the next week I’d love to tell you what it looked like for me to walk through three areas I have grieved over, marriage, a child’s perfect childhood and death of loved ones.  Personally, I don’t think everyone walks through the stages of grief in a particular order.  Now, please realize that I am not a licensed psychologist, I am only a biblical counselor, so I am not diagnosing anything here. I am simply talking through what I have personally experienced in my own life or what I have studied through biblical counseling courses.   Also, you will notice that I am only stated 5 stages of grief instead of 7.  I am putting shock/disbelief in the same category as denial.  I realize that many times these two can be completely separate but for the sake of keeping this shorter I will combine them. I have also combined bargaining and guilt together for the same reasons.  

     Denial (shock/disbelief)- Most people think denial means that the person doesn’t get that the loss actually happened.  Not true, you know the loss has happened, your mind is just protecting you from the overwhelming amount of emotions that want to flood through all at once.  Denial actually protects you from being completely consumed by what you have experienced.  Denial allows you to go numb for awhile while you get the stuff done that needs to get done.  You know in the back of your mind what just happened but denial puts up a little wall so that it can’t come to the forefront of your thoughts just yet.  As denial fades all the emotions can start to come out.  

Anger- Once the emotions start coming out anger is the first one to take over.  It is hard for any one human to process all the emotions that come with grief.  You cannot process through them all at one time and this can  make you very angry because you just want to be through it all.  Anger also comes out as questioning why this happened to you.  You can be angry at God or at your spouse, or at any number of things or people.  Being angry is Okay, it is part of the process.  It is okay to allow yourself to be angry as you move forward. 

Bargaining/Guilt- Most often people want to bargain with God.  “God, if you do this. I’ll do that”.  It’s our desperate attempt at trying to get our old normal back.  When we don’t get our bargaining ways answered we turn to guilt and the lonely phrase of “if only”.  “If only I would have done this then this loss wouldn’t have happened”.  It’s like we are trying to bargain with ourselves thinking we can go back and change the past. 

Depression- This is the point that you realize nothing you say or do can change what has happened.  Reality starts to set in.  You realize there is a new normal that you don’t want.  All the emotions have now flooded over you and seem to be shocking you from the inside out.  The depression stage of grief sucks.  All the stages sucks, but I think this one is the worst.  It is all consuming.  It usually starts to occur at the point that everyone has stopped asking you how you are and they’ve all gone back to their normal lives and you feel completely alone.  

Acceptance- This doesn’t mean that your time of grieving is over just because you have accepted what has happened.  Grieving is a lifelong process.  No one ever fully gets over the loss of someone or something.  When we accept our loss we are saying that what happened is not okay, but I am going to be okay.  We fully realize the new normal even though we don’t like it.  We start to get back to our lives even though there is now a big empty space inside us.  We start moving forward.  

Grief truly is a lifelong process which is why I believe that God tell us that in Heaven there will be no more tears.  He knows the grief we face here in this world and He grieves when we grieve.  If you are in the midst of these stages of grief today, please know that I am praying for you and my heart is heavy for you.  Do not walk through this process alone.  Reach out to someone you know who has walked through them ahead of you so they can be praying for you and so they can make sure that you don’t get stuck or completely consumed by your grief.  If you are blessed to be able to walk with someone on this road, please remember that their journey will look different then yours and that’s okay.  Don’t judge them or tell them that they are doing it wrong because it takes them longer than it took you or because they aren’t doing it how you did it.  Just be a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on and a great prayer warrior.  

I’d Like to Sove the Puzzle?

    Wheel of Fortune is one of Gillian’s favorite shows.  Vanna White wears pretty dresses and Gillian loves pretty dresses.  Every night before bed Gillian watches an episode. We sit in anticipation waiting for Vanna to walk out in her pretty dress so we can see what color it is.  In a few episodes she has walked out in a pantsuit and Gillian gets so irritated that we end up deleting that episode and moving on to the next one.  Once we get through talking all about Vanna”s pretty dress we move on to the contestants.  Gillian has to know each one’s name so she can cheer them on when it’s their turn.  She gets so into it!  She even likes to call out letters with them. She’s just helping them fill in the blanks.  If someone lands on “lose a turn” or “bankrupt” she responds with an “oh man, that’s okay Bob (or whatever their name is)” while clapping for them. When the puzzle is finally solved she hoots and hollers for the person who won.  An episode of Wheel of Fortune is quite the exciting ordeal in our house. 

    I feel like life with Gillian and all her diagnoses is like playing a game of Wheel of Fortune that may never end.  This adult child of mine is very complicated and I’m often told by doctors and therapists that she’s like no one they’ve ever worked with before.  Some like the challenge of figuring her out and some just can’t handle it.  (It depends on the day which group I fall into.). Every so once in awhile we get to add more letters to Gillian’s long list of diagnoses and every time we do my hope is that we will be able to solve the puzzle.  Unfortunately, the puzzle usually just becomes more challenging.  We recently got more letters, we even got to “buy a vowel” to throw in there.  It always seems like once you get a vowel or two up on the board the puzzle becomes easier to solve, not this time.                                                      

    We recently saw one of Gillian’s specialist to talk about her severe anxiety disorder and the possibility of trying new medication. (So far we have tried 8 different meds and she has had an adverse reaction to all of them.)  That’s all the appointment was supposed to be about.  I wasn’t looking to add new letters to the puzzle that day.  We’ve got enough to handle already.  Chris and I sat there with the doctor and talked for 30 minutes straight telling her all that had been going on with Gillian lately and her anxiety. We gave her detailed stories and described in depth scenarios where Gillian had become completely out of hand.  She listened, asked some questions and then sat back in her chair and asked, “Does anyone in your family have obsessive compulsive disorder?”.  Chris and I looked at each other trying to figure out the answer and then replied with a “no”.  It took me a few seconds to realize what she was implying here. I finally asked, “Are you telling us that Gillian has OCD?”.  She immediately replied, “yes”.   

    After we finished talking about our newest member of the family, OCD, we talked about a few more scenarios we’ve had recently with Gillian.  The doctor immediately said, “She has separation anxiety”.  Wait, what?!  I didn’t come in here to buy anything and I definitely  wasn’t looking for the two for one special!  But I got it.  Yay! (That’s sarcasm right there for those who couldn’t tell. Lol). 

    Now, the way my mind works is that when it gets a new problem it finds the solution.  I go into head down and move forward mode.  I know that later I’ll be able to process the feelings and emotions but for now we need to get down to business.  We talked with the doctor about new medications we could try and about how this will be a lifelong battle we will have to fight for her.  See, that’s the thing with Gillian, she doesn’t have the kind of brain that can help her cope with and fight mental illness.  She can’t use the tools that most of us can to calm our anxiety or to talk ourselves down from an obsession.  That’s why we have no choice but to find the right medication that can help her brain do what she can’t do.  We, as her parents, are the ones who have to diligently remember to give her all of her meds ever single day.  We are the ones who have to keep a close eye on her to see if she is having any adverse reactions to a new med and then make sure to report it accurately to the doctor.  We are fighting this battle for her that she can’t fight.  At times it can be completely overwhelming.  Especially when you start questioning whether or not you are making the right decision or reporting the right reactions you are seeing to the doctor.  

   

    We walked out of the doctor’s office with way more than we came in with- 2 more diagnoses to add to the list, a new medication to try and a very heavy heart.   Fortunately we had an hour drive home where my brain and my heart could collide and start processing.  It didn’t take long for the feeling of being overwhelmed to wash over me and for the tears to fall.  The questions started pouring out, “Is this just going to keep happening for the rest of her life?  Are we just going to keep getting diagnoses to add to the list?  Will we get one thing under control just in time for something else to come out?  I’m suppose to give people hope but how can I do that when I’m feeling so hopeless?”  Tears and more tears streamed down my face as my heart, once again, aches for this child of mine who can’t help herself and as it feels completely overwhelmed and incapable of trying to do it all for her.  I sat, staring out the window, with my tears and my thoughts for awhile.  Then the music that had been playing this whole time started breaking through into my head.....

   “All the poor and powerless, all the lost and lonely..... will know that You are holy.....and all will sing out hallelujah, and we will sing out hallelujah.  And all the hearts who are content And all who feel unworthy. And all who hurt with nothing left, will know that You are holy.... shout it go on and scream it from the mountains. Go on and tell it to the masses that He is God!”  I couldn’t help but chuckle at first at these perfectly timed words piercing straight into my soul.  God, you always give me exactly what I need exactly when I need it. There was my hope!  There was my reminder of the hope I have for me and the hope I have to give to others!  He is God.  Period.  That’s it.  That’s all I need to remember.  HE IS GOD!  Tears of pain turned to tears of worship and remembrance of who He is.  He is God and God is good.  Even in the midst of diagnoses and medications and heartache, He is still good.  He is still God.   That was something that my heart and mind could easily process. That was something that I could grasp on to.  He is God is what I will shout from the mountaintops for all to hear!

    There’s still an unsolved puzzle to deal with though.  Gillian’s list now looks like this..... left hemiparetic cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, epilepsy, sensory processing disorder, polycystic ovarian syndrome, severe anxiety disorder, separation anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder.  Fortunately, when I deal with professionals or other special needs parents I can say- CP, ID, epilepsy, SPD, PCOS, SAD, separation anxiety and OCD.  These are the letters I use when I’m trying to solve the Gillian puzzle.  They add up to a whole lot of nothing.  Actually that’s not true.  They add up to a whole lot of me needing Jesus.  A whole lot of time spent on my knees crying at my Saviour’s feet.  A whole lot of learning how to be completely selfless.  A whole lot of love for this adult child of mine.  I’ve realized that’s it’s no longer about trying to solve the puzzle.  I actually don’t even think that there is a puzzle to be solved anymore.  It’s about shouting form the mountains that He is God even in the midst of new diagnoses, new meds and whatever else may come our way.  

___________________
Here’s a link to the song I quoted above.  “All the Poor and Powerless” by All Sons and Daughters. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ieOL4X3nk2c

Jesus Wept

        This morning was a rough one with Gillian.  The entire last week has been been a swinging pendulum on the rough not rough scale.  Today it swung towards rough. The morning started out well.  Gillian was in a great mood and excited about the eye doctor appointment we have this afternoon.  She loves going to the doctor’s, thank goodness since she’s had to go to so many in her lifetime.  We got ready for school without any drama until it was time to actually get in to the car to go.  I basically had to drag her to the car.  Fun times.  When we got in the car she asked for some nuts.  ( I always keep bags of nuts in my car for when I get the munchies.  Keeps me from driving through somewhere and eating crap.) and so I gave her one of my bags.  That kid started shoveling them into her mouth as fast as she could.  The whole way to school was filled with shoveling nuts into her mouth followed by spitting.  

       We pulled up to school and I asked for the bag of nuts back.  Well she was not having that at all.  She jumps out of the car and goes full on tantrum (you know, stomping, spitting and screaming at me).  I grab her by the hand and start dragging her towards the drop off area where all the teachers and paras wait for the kids.  She still has the bag of nuts in her hand.  I ask for them again and she tells me no.  I try to grab them from her (one of the paras is quietly waiting for me to hand her off to her) and get them but then she goes running out into the street where the buses are pulling in and out stomping and screaming.  At this point two other paras (one who is the nicest man but will use his brawn if need be and it need be) come running out to get her out of the way of the busses and into the safety of the waiting area.  Now she has three paras all around her trying to calm her down and one looks at me and tells me its okay for me to go, they got it.

      I start walking away and my emotions just washed over me like a giant tidal wave.  “Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry”. I kept walking back to the car where Emma and Nolan were waiting for me to take them to school.  As I opened the car door I could feel the first tear start to fall.  “Keep it together.  Don’t cry.”  I get in the car and Nolan says, “I’m sorry you had to do that mommy.”  Oh how the floodgates did open.  Emma leaned over and hugged me and I just sobbed.  She just kept saying, “I’m so sorry you have to deal with this mom.” Once I finally got myself calmed down I told them both that I wasn’t crying for me.  I was crying for her.  My poor, sweet Gillian who is trapped inside this body of emotions that she doesn’t know how to handle.  She doesn’t know how to cope and deal with the everyday pressures of life.  She doesn’t know how to communicate with us how she is feeling, or what she is thinking or how we can help her.  I weep because I my hurt for and with her.  Those tears were cleansing tears.  I do not apologize for the tears I cry (Okay, sometimes I do, but I am quickly reminded that there is no need for apologies), they are tears of compassion, tears of pain and always tears of healing. 

     Jesus wept.  These two words give you and me permission to weep, too.  We are free to let the tears fall.  There is no reason to hold them in.  There is no reason to apologize for them when they do start to fall.  God will weep with us when we weep, whether they be tears of compassion or tears of pain He weeps with us.  Weeping is powerful.  Weeping brings healing.  God gives us so many promises when it comes to our tears-

 Psalm 30:5b, “weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”  

Revelation 21:4, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.  All these things are gone forever.”

John 11:35, “Jesus Wept”. It’s the shortest verse in the Bible and for me, at times, has been  one of the most powerful. Why was Jesus weeping?  He had just spoken with the sisters of his friend who had died.  They were mourning.  Jesus is full of compassion and felt their suffering.  I could go into so much more detail here of why Jesus wept but for now I want to stick with the compassion component.  (If you’d like to read a great article on this short, powerful verse go here 

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/why-jesus-wept

      Jesus hurts when we hurt.  He weeps when we weep and yet why is it that when we cry we automatically apologize for crying?  Jesus wept without apologizing, so why can’t we?

     After I cried those tears in the car this morning I was able to laugh. I got the hurt out and was able to move forward to the joy.  Emma, Nolan and I were all able to take a deep breathe and move forward making each other laugh all the way to school.  And I know that on this side of Heaven I will shed many more tears and that’s okay, but on the day that God brings me home to be with Him there will be no more tears for eternity.  So for now, I thank God for giving me the permission to weep as Jesus wept and I do so unapologetically just like Jesus did.