Fresh Start
I was sitting in a parking lot waiting on Cameron one afternoon in late September. I just dropped Atticus off to his Oma for the day, and was in between tutoring sessions and students. It was a beautiful fall afternoon, the leaves were starting to change colors. The sun was warm and bright, everything was picturesque looking out the windshield. Cameron came to my window, I rolled it down and simply said, “I feel nothing.”
The day before Atticus’ surgery anniversary, I was sitting on Zoom talking to my nutrition coach explaining how I was feeling inside. I told her explicitly I didn’t feel happy, I was so mad at myself and didn’t know what to do to start fixing it. CrossFit wasn’t working. Journaling wasn’t working, I was literally on my knees in prayer to the point where I felt like I was repeating the same prayer over and over with no response. I couldn’t go to church without feeling immense anger and sadness, worship music made me cry for reasons I couldn’t explain. I felt alone, isolated, and so, SO angry at myself. That’s when she asked me point blank, “Have you reached out to a therapist?” To which I simply answered, “No, but I have a doctor I’ve been avoiding since February sitting in my messenger inbox.” She smiled, and simply responded, “Might not be a bad time to reach out to them.” I got off our zoom call a few minutes later, opened messenger, clicked the link to the doctor’s website and sent in my information without a second thought.
The book of Matthew is quite possibly my favorite book of the Bible. It is so focused on the life and work of Jesus, and I often find myself coming back to that book when my life is out of sorts. Matthew has so many chapters in which Jesus tells us about himself, how to live life, and how we are to respond to life and its various challenges. Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 11 are ones I read repeatedly. In Matthew 11, Jesus tells us about what life with him will be like when we decide to follow him:
“28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
In the past, I often read these verses as a promise for life to be easy for us as Christ followers given that he says, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” After our experience in Nashville and our journey with Spina Bifida, I’ve come to realize the opposite. I firmly believe Jesus is telling us the world is heavy and hard, but HE makes it light. The world is difficult and full of pain, but HE makes it easy. In this specific case, the burden I was shouldering for the past year and a half was far deeper than what I could carry and was determined to carry it on my own. No help, no assistance. So of course it became too much to bear. But God, gentle like he promises, did not force me to reach out for help before it was my time.
In all transparency, I’ve often seen therapy (for myself) as a sign of weakness. Many times I have suggested other people seek therapy and professional help for moments in their life where they just don’t know what to do, but when it came to taking my own advice, that was an immediate and hard NO. I didn’t need therapy, I didn’t need help. That was admitting weakness and there were far too many times in the last year and three months where I’d had my fill of weakness. It’s incredibly difficult transitioning back to a “normal” life once it’s been hard stopped for a tragic moment. Death, birth, loss of a job, unforeseen sickness, and any other unexpected moments have a way of sticking with us beyond what we think the timetable will be. For me, I honestly believed when we left the NICU on January 4th my life would snap back to our normal before. But then the anger started. And then sadness was added on top of that. Followed by frustration. Stress. Anxiety, and finally being left in a parking lot waiting on my husband feeling total numbness. Over the course of the last 10 months, I became an expert in pretending to be okay and have everything under control. Social media posts masked the sadness I felt on the daily, and talking to people became a game of “How good can I make things sound?” After all, as a mother, business owner, wife, and member of a small community you can’t really afford not to have it all together. The tradeoff, however, came when I entered my home each night absolutely exhausted from carrying the weight of pretending my mind wasn’t falling apart every time I stepped out of my front door. I became exhausted, distracted, disconnected and eventually lacking any feeling other than stress and anger. In all honesty, it scared me to death. I kept thinking to myself, “My faith is so strong, why am I doing this?” I avoided praying because it felt like God was tired of hearing the same lamenting prayers over and over again asking for clarity on how to fix what was going on inside my heart and mind. If I had real faith, none of this would be happening, right? Eerily, it felt similar to the thoughts I would have while living in Nashville blaming myself for Atticus’ condition and the situation in which we found ourselves. My pain didn’t magically change when we brought him home. If anything, it magnified after he was born.
“ Nothing makes one feel so strong as a call for help.”
Matthew 11:30 says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” The strange thing was I felt this inexplicable peace underneath the stress and anxiety but it was being drowned out. I knew the promise Jesus tells us about rest. I experienced the rest in my soul while journeying in Nashville. But why was it not happening in this moment? To put it simply, I didn’t have the tools for this part of the adventure and that was okay. It was time to be humble and reach out to someone who did have those tools.
The Tuesday of Fall Break, Cameron, Atticus and I sat in our living room waiting for a zoom call to begin. We had spent the morning playing with Atticus and working on his physical therapy. The night before, I barely slept unsure of what to expect during our session in the morning. The call opened, we started our session with a prayer of blessing over our time, and then the work began.
When a person goes through an experience of trauma the human body has ways of protecting our brain and body systems that enter us into a state of survival. Often times, we call these our “fight or flight” senses. Once the trauma is over and our body begins living. However, we can enter a sort of state of shock where our body basically is stuck in survival mode and doesn’t transition back into a feeling of safety. This can lead to cycles of anger, sadness, stress and anxiety. Basically, in order to survive our traumatic moment we disassociate to “solve the problem” and some people get stuck in that dissociative state. It’s a psychological reaction to keep us safe, and unfortunately for me I was still living in it without realizing it. During my recovery period in Nashville, I had to limit my exposure to stress in order to keep Atticus safe. Exposure to stress increased the possibility of rupturing my placenta, which would lead me to delivering Atticus earlier than we wanted along with a myriad of other health complications. Basically, low blood pressure, no stress, and everything would be fine. Through my work with my doctor I learned my body’s reaction to this news last year was to just not let myself feel anything at all. Though that part of our journey was over, my body was still living in that. I wasn’t weak, I just needed to learn a new skill. Over the course of five weeks, my doctor and I worked through associating feelings to memories and emotions from Nashville to allow my body to feel safe enough to begin functioning like it did before Fetal Surgery and process the things I was not able to do in order to keep my baby safe. Basically, we weren’t forgetting our time in Nashville, we were learning to have the capacity to live with and around it.
One thing I’ve learned since starting work with a healthcare professional is that asking for help is incredibly freeing. In that chapter in Matthew, Jesus doesn’t necessarily explain how our souls find rest with him. I am convinced that comes through two things: trusting God’s plan for our life, and accepting when things are put in our paths. The resource I reached out to was given to me in February by a family friend from my church in Northern Kentucky I haven’t spoken to since childhood. It sat unopened in my inbox until the last week of September. I wasn’t ready for it then, but God knew I would be. In everything we go through, one thing never wavers for me: I trust God wholly and completely, no matter what. Do I question things? Absolutely. Do I get frustrated? You bet. But in everything we have been through, never once has God not shown up. He promises us rest, that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Through the process of therapy and seeking professional help, I now have the knowledge and ability to work through and process when things feel heavy in a way that makes my burden easy and light. Just like he promises. To experience that, though, I had to humble myself and acknowledge I didn’t have the capacity to get through what I needed to on my own. I needed help, and I got help professionally and spiritually. For the first time in months, it feels like I can breathe without weight on my chest. I wonder how many of us are sitting with a resource we’ve been avoiding because we’re worried about how that makes us look? In admitting weakness, though, I’ve come to find that is when I’m strongest.
I oftentimes worry about sharing our journey with Atticus for the fear that it comes across as attention-seeking or trying to “show off our faith.” I’ve also come to find that is the enemy’s way of placing doubt in my path when I want to encourage people to live out their big faith in a genuine, real way. Life isn’t about pretending we’re not struggling. Can you imagine what it would be like if we were more honest with our struggles and encouraged each other instead of judging how someone is handling their current situation? After all, doesn’t Paul tell us in Colossians to make allowances for each other? (Colossians 3:13) That is something I’m still trying to figure out because the more I share our story of Atticus, the more I’ve found everyone has their own form of “Fetal Surgery” they’re still trying to heal from. Our journey with Atticus is ever-changing and growing. This kid is amazing and shows us each day what a little bit of faith, trust (and pixie dust, anyone?) can do when life throws a big curveball your way. He’s also showing me it’s okay to acknowledge those parts of your life you want to change so you don’t pass them down to the next generation. For me, it has always been avoiding passing down generational anxiety to my son. The Bible tells us numerous times to not worry or be afraid; but sometimes we have to be taught how to not be anxious or afraid. For me, that involved reaching out to a professional. And guess what? It worked. Will there still be times of fear? Most definitely, especially when you have a child with a chronic condition that will never be cured this side of heaven. However, through God’s perfect timing I had a way to reach out and learn how to not make it debilitating. In the words of my doctor, we learn how to have capacity so God can give us more and more and we know how to equip ourselves to handle it. I have no idea what is coming down the road with Atticus or my family. But I do know I have been given a fresh start and a new capacity to handle it with the humility and grace of Jesus. And the other thing it has taught me is how to interact with those around me from a place of love and acceptance, not judgment and trying to pretend we’re not all carrying heavy things with us each day. I’m still trying to find the verse in the Bible where Christians are called to be polished, perfect versions of people who have no anxiety and worry, get caught up in trivial matters of the world and have their life together all the time. For me, I’ve found the most genuine people who follow Christ are the ones who struggle but still have joy. They’re the ones who can say, :”Yes, I’m going through ______, but I know God is still working.” So friends, if you are reading this today and you are struggling but still know God is good and working….I see you. I acknowledge you, I feel you. And I can encourage you there IS a light at the end of your tunnel. But sometimes you need a new perspective and strategies to get you there. After all, God uses so many people in ways we never imagined to do some of the greatest work on earth. Don’t give up, reach out for help if you need it. I promise, you won’t regret it.
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If you’ve experienced a traumatic experience and are ready to begin living your life again, give Dr. Lindemann a call. He is kind, caring, and an extremely safe person to begin your journey to healing.
