Monthly Archives: September 2014

And as I typed the words, I came to believe them

04 Thursday Sep 2014

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I got triggered the other day for the first time in a little while. I refer here to my PTSD. Something happened at work and I had a flashback to what had happened to me in medical school. When one of my fellow students did unspeakable things. And when those higher ups punished me for it instead of helping me. I have never had this happen at work before but there I was. My heart rate was picking up, my throat beginning to gag, the tears welling up. I quietly slipped away from the lecture. I wanted to call my husband but I knew if I spoke, I would begin to cry and wouldn’t be able to stop. So, I texted him instead:

I had a flashback and had to leave. Feeling sad. Please pray.

He couldn’t read the text right away, busy with taking care of baby Princess and our castle. So, I decided to pray with him anyway. I texted him:

God is good. God is good. I knew He is. Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ on my left, Christ on my right. Christ in the ear of all who hear me, Christ in the tongue of all who speak of me, Christ in the eye of all who see me. We pray for (the Violent Man)’s soul, for (the unethical Higher Up)’s soul. Poor banished children of Eve. May God have mercy on their souls.

And as I typed the words, I came to believe them. And I became calm.

I cannot say I never get angry with the Violent Man or the unethical Higher Up, but I have forgiven them as much as I can as of now. I pray for them and when I do, I forgive them more and more. I forgive because that’s what God tells us to do. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us. God has forgiven me, poor wretched sinner that I am. But it’s also true that forgiving them makes me feel better. Brings healing. Loosens the hold it all has over me.

Life is not static. It is not clean. I have my days of mourning and my days of joy. But I have come out of the whole thing better than might be expected. I have forgiven, I have trusted. Because I have to, really. We’re not owed anything in this life. It’s all a gift. There will be trauma. There will be pain. But there is so much more.

My husband got my text soon after I’d sent it. I texted him I was calmed down but asked that he still pray for me. He replied simply:

Yes Love…

My husband loves me. My babies too. God loves me perfectly. Jesus said that it’s easy to love your friends, but that we’re called to love our enemies as well. I used to think that was for the benefit of the enemies, or maybe just a way to keep us all in line. But I think it’s more than that. God really does love all of us more than we can comprehend, yes even child molesting sociopaths. So, yes, it is for our enemy’s sake he tells us to love one another. But he also knows that in striving to love our enemies, we grow closer to him, closer to being good, closer to all that is good. And so in trauma we find God, we find goodness. Our dark days are a gift as much as our joyful. He really does bring beauty from ashes.

The Unspeakable Beauty of Being Broken

04 Thursday Sep 2014

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I accidentally drove to Cranberry this past weekend. I’d meant to drive 2 hours east to Harrisburg but somehow drove 2 hours west to Cranberry instead. I called my husband Poobah and said, “I have to tell you something but you have to promise not to get mad at me.” Not the words he was hoping to hear I am sure. He agreed to the fairly absurd request (one can’t choose to not have at least an initial angry impulse if that’s what’s stirred in them after all) and I told him where I was. He didn’t get angry but he was certainly confused. How is it I had driven for two hours on the Pennsylvania Turnpike the wrong way? Hadn’t I noticed all the signs for the exits that lead to Pittsburgh? I really didn’t know how to explain it and simply told him I’d done it before and that we would try to make the best time we could over to Harrisburg now.

How it happened is not really so complex or mysterious. I’m not on my way to early onset Alzheimer’s or Lewy body dementia. I didn’t have a psychotic break and lose touch with reality. I was just really stressed out with life in general and then climbed into a Honda Civic with three young kids for a three and a half hour drive.

Still, it scared me. It didn’t seem like something a normal person would do. I’d done it before. I’d probably do it again. And it just isn’t normal. Therefore, I’m not normal.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve never been a big fan of normal. I’ve always wanted to be unique, to be myself exactly as I am. I’ve taught my kids the same thing. Truth is, I love my oddball patients the most. I’ve always been a fan of the underdog.

What was scaring me now was the fear that I’m not just unique or special, that I’m somehow… wrong. There lies in me a fear I think we all have to one extent or another: the fear that I’m a fraud. In me, I suspect, it runs deeper and wider than it does in most.

I feel sometimes that my whole life is a house of cards precariously standing by the grace of so many cards all pushing against one another with just the right amount of force, positioned just so for balance. And at any moment, it might just collapse. It all just might fall apart and I will be left with nothing more than a pile of scattered cards. I could just lose it all, just like that, in an instant. I could lose it all because I am not who we all think I am, me included.

It all feels so fragile to me at times. The thing I have to remind myself is that it is. It is fragile. All of it. Everything any of us thinks we have. Anyone’s house of cards could come crashing down. And yes, maybe it would be my fault if it happened. Maybe I would make a mistake and cause it all to fall.

It’s already fallen. The world. Nothing’s owed us. We’re all broken, all imperfect, all sick. Any one of us could knock it all down on any given day. I tend to think that those of us that know how broken we are, are maybe actually the wise ones. I sat in on a drug rehab group recently and listened to a beautiful group of people trying to get their lives back in order after addiction. They laid themselves bare to one another, talking about the wounds of their past, of those who’d loved them and those who hadn’t, of those they’d hurt and betrayed and deceived along the way. Their cards lie scattered and they knew it and they knew it was their own doing. They knew even if they could begin to build again, it would still be a fragile thing and that it very well might fall into chaos again. I hated to leave the group to return to the real world, full of the superficial interactions that make up the day to day of life. I have felt the fragility of it all since I was a little girl and have found so many either don’t know yet, or wish to ignore it or pretend it away. I suppose for many of us, it’s a necessary lie.

Like the woman at Jesus’s feet, cleaning them with her tears and drying them with her hair, breaking open her alabaster jar to anoint him with perfume, we are all but whores at the feet of the Lord. A pile of cards that will one day be made whole again when we leave this broken world for something so much better.