sad and sadder

The door clicks, followed by the soft footfalls of six-year-old bare feet on the hardwood floor in the hall. There is a pause, then more shuffling. Another click. The quiet clamor back up the ladder to the top bunk. All is quiet. I can return to my book in peace.

I no sooner reconnect with the words on the page when a soft wail rises from my son's room. As my niece and nephew are spending the might, I get up immediately to both see who it is and to keep that one from waking the other. Another wail rises as I make my way into the darkness, trusting my ears, not my eyes, to lead me. They lead me to the top bunk.

It is, as I expected, my son who is quietly sobbing atop his loft. "Whatsa matter, Buddy?" I ask. "I don't know, I'm just sad," he sobs. I sweep him down out of his bunk so as to not awaken the one I know I will be less easily able to comfort, and I take him out into the hallway. We sit, his head in my neck, and I ask him why he's sad. He sniffles, wiping tears from his big, brown eyes. "I dunno," he chokes out. "I'm just sad. I'm really sad."

This is what I'm talking about.

So, why does this innocent, cheerful, albeit slightly sensitive child's tiny bright red apple fall so close to his mother's tree? Is it genetics? Learned behavior? Generational cursing? Self-pity? Lack of contentment? Poor nutrition?

I don't know, but I sure wish I did. For him. For me. For others.

What causes a child who has everything—loving (albeit imperfect) parents, a room full of toys, food in his belly, friends who seek him out, a roof over his head, a knowledge and certainty that he is loved—to go to bed, night after night, feeling sad to the point of tears?

What causes his mother to do the same?

yearning: in response

Some good friends have had some insightful thoughts about my previous post, but my thoughts are too extensive to post within the comments, so I will reflect upon them here.

I still stand in agreement with the quote, albeit taken out of its proper context, and with KP, who states, "some parts of our society are trying to vilify any mood state or behavior that is outside of 'normal' and 'happy'." We are taught, repetitively, that happiness is our ultimate goal in life, and anything short of that is both short-coming and short-sighted. I don't know a single person who would tell you his or her life is completely happy. Not a one. What is wrong with those people?

Nothing. Nothing is wrong with a one of us. Other than not measuring up to an unattainable goal. I do not believe, rightly or wrongly, that perpetual happiness is our intended state on this earth. Now, joy, perhaps. Peace, possibly. Contentment, I'm not so sure. But these are not qualities that are naturally occurring. They are fruit that is cultivated.

I'm not saying the opposite, either. I'm not saying that our sole purpose on this earth is merely to suffer. I don't buy that line of bull, either. I'm simply saying that I do believe, wholeheartedly, that we are living every moment in the tension between the now and the not yet. We were meant to live life one way, and we are living it another. That tension is uncomfortable at best, unbearable at its worst. But we don't want to be uncomfortable, not indefinitely, at any rate.

I know there is contextual and circumstantial depression. I know there is chemical depression. I know there is spiritual depression, strongholds and the like. I preach this message several times a week. I know full well that all of the above and more weave together in a delicate, intricate web that is not always easy to untangle. And I know that all strings leading to the center must be considered, not just one.

But I believe that, even as Christians, we are quick to ignore or even disdain this spiritual component. Why is that? I believe it is, in part, because we believe we can control the other parts, but the God part we know we cannot. And that frustrates us. Or, it frustrates me, at least. (And "frustrate" is a mild term, believe me.) I don't want to consider where God fits in to the picture, because there is no formula to follow or pill to take that guarantees an outcome. But, quite frankly, none of those things have provided an overwhelmingly beneficial, sustainable outcome, either, so where does that leave me, and others like me?

KP points to the year I've had, which I've moaned about repeatedly here, as just cause for feeling depressed. I agree. And I also agree wholeheartedly that better self-care and stewardship of my time and energy would certainly help the situation. But it doesn't explain the melancholia that has rested heavily upon my shoulders for as long as I can remember, not ever giving up its roost even in the face of medication, nutrition, exercise, strong relationships, and all the self-care I could possibly muster at various given points in my life.

The past year doesn't explain waking up nearly every morning, from the time I was a child through to the present, feeling as if I could cry for truly no good reason. It doesn't explain the ache in my heart when things end, when moments pass, when life slips through my fingers. It doesn't explain the persistent numbness in my spirit, the quickness to cry at certain things, the inability to cry at others. There is more to it than my overextended schedule. But you know this.

There is more to it than biochemistry. Than my blood sugar. Than not getting enough sleep. There is more to it than feeling occasionally distant from my husband, feeling inadequate as a parent, expecting too much of myself in nearly everything I do. There is more to it than what we want to naturally equate it to. Personally, I believe that this "more to it" has something to do with God. No Christianese bullshit about it.

So, I retract my ending statement from the last post, in which I question whether or not the depression I feel is just my heart longing for its true home. Is it just that? No. And that's not what I intended to imply. But is it part of the equation? Is it one of the strings entwined among the others? Is it something I must consider and move toward in order to move toward joy? I believe the answer is resoundingly yes.

i love to tell the story

To be a person is to have a story to tell.

Karen Blixen

Love this quote. This is why I read memoir rather than fiction--our real-life stories are so much more interesting to me than the made-up ones. This is also why I keep this blog--I find that I have stories to tell, and stories beg for an audience. "...a story to tell..." she states. We must tell our stories, or we lose something of ourselves, I think.

I've discovered this truth Ms. Blixen shares is partially behind my love of counseling, as well--people's stories are compelling to me. There is healing in their telling. There is healing in my hearing. And it is an amazing thing to enter someone's story and help them rewrite it for the better. There is no greater honor, I believe.

And so I write and read and talk and listen and share and counsel and pray and live all within this love of story and its power to create, to recreate, to name, to rename, to heal, to give life. If you are alive, you have a story to tell. We will all be richer for the hearing of it--won't you share it?

well-meaning

"There's nothing you can say, he told me with a shrug, looking intently into my tear-filled eyes with his own. "There's nothing you can say." And so I hugged him tightly, adding my tears to those already blended on the shoulder of his jacket, and I didn't say anything at all.

It was Good Friday. He had just lost his twelve year old daughter after a long, hard fight against the insidious evil that is cancer. There are no words for these moments. Only tears.

Tim was a friend and colleague. We had gone through grad school together, and despite a mutual disdain for one another at the very beginning, by the time we worked together there had grown a deep respect and an amusing fondness between us. Though I had moved away a year or so earlier, while Lin was in remission, I had kept abreast of Lin's recurrence through Tim's email updates, maintaining that connection within my heart. That Friday, my heart was aching with the need to speak something that could not be articulated, but only felt.

There is something about the silence of grief—the void created by loss—that compels those of us around to fill that space with well-meaning words. I felt it then, I feel it now. That helpless, I-want-to-make-it-all-better feeling that drives so much of what I write and say and do. But despite my clinical training and my carefully-crafted prose and even my very best intentions, I can't make anything better. And I can't quite come to peace with that.

I re-read my attempt to process another Good Friday funeral, and I find myself wanting to delete my words. "No, no, no—I said it all wrong," I think to myself. I remember Jill at women's group, this past week, graciously dodging our often mis-aimed attempts to say the right thing, and I wish I'd just never said anything at all.

I have to step back and remember who these words were really written for. Often the words we speak are often the words we ourselves need to hear. This was certainly the case with this post. As I wrestled with my own questions of faith, brought too close to the surface by David's death, I spoke, unaware, to the reassurances I, myself, needed to hear. Perhaps they will bless others, perhaps not. But my heart was more at peace for having written them.

Sometimes it is best to keep quiet. To listen, to cry, to hold. To not attempt to speak what is truly not speak-able. But sometimes our own hearts must grapple to put words to that which alludes words, no matter how clumsily we may do so. For me, it is this process within which God speaks the perfect Word, and that is, after all, what we're all longing to hear.

not writing

It has been over two months since I’ve sat down at my computer with the intention of writing. Two months since I‘ve tried to put words to that which most often goes unspoken in my life. Two months since I have last invited my creativity to come out and play, to reboot from its idle status, to come up for air and fill its lungs with life-giving oxygen. The keyboard feels foreign under my awkward fingertips. Two months is a long time.

I’ve forgotten how to balance my laptop on one knee from my perch on the couch in the living room. I’ve forgotten how it was that I used to look at the world when I was writing regularly. I’ve forgotten that it is necessary to barricade the cat in another room when planning a creative endeavor. Will it all come back to me? Will it have the opportunity?

More importantly, will I allow it?

The excuses for not writing are numerous. I have young children. I have a career. I have a hang nail. I need to get through my email. I need to deal with the kitchen. I need to eat my way through the kitchen. I need to pick up the slack that my husband used to pick up in his pre-graduate school days. I need to slack off after too much picking up the slack. They all hit the floor with a hollow “ping,” bouncing and scattering into dusty, dark corners, unable to be retrieved. As with most excuses, they don’t have much weight to them.

The truth is, I could find the time to write if I really wanted to. I would make the time to write if I really wanted to. And I would really want to, if I weren’t so damn scared by the whole thing.

I’m beyond caring what other people think of my writing. That boogey man doesn’t scare me anymore—I’ve written enough and grown enough and read enough in the last few years of writing to know that I do alright, and I’ll find an audience as long as there are other women out there who struggle with mommy guilt and spiritual angst and an addiction to chocolate chip cookies. I’m not afraid to put it out there.

I’m afraid, I believe, to look at what’s in there. That’s why I’m writing tonight about not writing—because it’s safer than writing about the fact that I lost ten pounds and gained it all right back within a month because my appetite is insatiable for all things sweet and high in carbohydrates. It is safer than writing about learning to unentangle myself emotionally from my daughter so as to avoid being the primary topic of therapy in her twenties. And it is safer than writing about the low-lying gray cloud that settled in over our house about a month before my husband started graduate school and hasn’t budged an inch in almost a full year.

When I sit down to write, I typically open up the junk drawer that is my life and rustle around inside until I determine which item to pull out and put away. Usually it’s a little angst-gadget here, a little ball of neuroticism there, and a humor-ma-bobbie or two thrown in for good measure. But not lately. Lately, my life feels less like a junk drawer and more like the proverbial monsters-lurking-within closet. Vices and habits and hang-ups and heart-breaks loom larger-than-life, and, to be frank, I don’t want to open the door.

Of course, opening the door is what I need to do. Of course. I am a counselor. I know this. I tell lots of other people, in my smug, confident, counselor-voice, “My dear, you need to open that door.” They nod, “Yes, Lorie. I need to open that door. I will open that door.” And miraculously, some of them even go off and do it. Truly. And I am forever in awe.

I have opened doors. I have closed doors. I have purged closets and junk drawers alike, and have worked to have a place for everything and everything in its place. But sometimes I get tired, just as I do within my home, of continually re-straightening that with which I thought I was already done. And so I avoid closets like the plague, and refuse to sit down at my computer, turning instead to inane tasks or pleasurable reads, trying to take my mind off that which my mind will not be taken off of.

Tonight, if only for a moment, the running stops. I have closed the bedroom door behind me, and for the next two hours, it’s just me and whatever is lurking behind that door. And after I’ve wrestled a while, if I have any bravery and energy left, I’ll write about it.

In about two more months…

significantly confused

I didn’t know whether to stand up or not.

I sat there for a moment, listening to the pastor’s call for prayer, feeling the tears threaten but not fully understanding why. “I’m not really a stay-at-home mom,” I thought. “I work part time. The call is for stay-at-home mothers.” The tension within me grew as he continued, speaking the truth that I knew so many of my friends needed to hear—that staying home and wiping noses and packing lunches and practicing math facts is significant. That there is worth in the thousands of little sacrifices they were making every single day. That the job they were doing has infinite value. It was a tender, much-needed call for prayer—I just didn’t know if it was for me.

It was a tension I was very familiar with, having dealt with it from the time my first child was six weeks old and I returned to my part time counseling practice. I had the “best of both worlds,” my friends would say. I had three days per week home with my children, but I had two or three days each week of meaningful and significant work (translated as ADULT CONVERSATION) to “get me through.” And though it was not my choice—we needed my income to make ends meet no matter how modestly we tried to live—it did indeed seem to be ideal. The problem was I was both a stay-at-home mom and a working mother, and I didn’t fully fit in either opposing camp.

Nor did I feel I was able to do either one adequately because of the other. What others considered the “best of both worlds” was a constant struggle of having a little bit of both but not fully enough of either. Paying bills and doing laundry and playing “Super Cat” takes time—when your week is short two or three days, time is of a premium. Something has to go. Utility companies tend to want to get paid. Super Cat suffers. Guilt ensues.

Women around me were beginning to stand. I hesitated. “What if someone thinks I’m not really a stay-at-home mom because I work here at the church?” I realized, albeit much later, how ridiculous this was—as if working two or three days a week disqualified me from needing prayer for the other three days. “What if someone thinks I shouldn’t be standing?” I stood up.

Friends tell me sometimes they wish they were working, too, so that they felt they were doing something more significant. Friends who are working tell me they wish their job were more like mine, so that they felt they were doing something more significant. And the truth be told, I love my job for that very reason. What I do matters. Not everyone can say that. But there is a trap hidden within that significance, and as I was being prayed for that morning, God began to reveal it.

The tears that merely threatened earlier began to flow of their own accord. I had been convicted—of believing that what I do outside of the home is more significant than what I do within. Of wishing away my time while at one in a longing to be at the other. Of not always giving the best of myself to my children. I, too, had fallen into the trap. I, too, believed somewhere in my mind that motherhood was somehow a lesser calling. I, too, needed prayer.

I prayed that morning, as I stood in my rightful place accepting the blessing I so desperately needed, that the Lord would help me to truly see—packing lunches is significant. Answering my son’s fifty questions when I’m walking and would rather listen to my worship music is significant. Paying the bills is significant. Making jewelry with my daughter is significant. Reading an extra chapter before bedtime when I’d rather get started on my own book is significant. Play dough is significant. Sidewalk chalk is significant. Super Cat is significant.

I am a part-time stay-at-home mom, and that is significant.

sitting on the couch while the cultural war rages on: why parents do not engage

As the mother of a daughter, there are several choices I’ve had to make that have been less than popular, and, at times, less than comfortable, in regard to how I allow my daughter to interact with our current culture. Such decisions have been made after a great deal of inner debate, and have been guided in part by insight from books I’ve read and discussed with others, such as Home Invasion by Rebecca Hagelin and Your Girl by Vicky Courtney. So when I came across Dean’s post about a hyper-sexualized middle school talent show a few weeks back, I began giving further thought as to why it seems so many other parents DON’T seem to be making similar choices.

Dean quotes from the original New York Times article about the highly provocative nature of the “talent” being displayed, then quotes another blogger who asks, “Why are parents giving up?” Dean responds that the answer is simple. “Many of these parents probably hold secret misgivings about what goes on in these productions, but silence them in an effort not to damage their child's acceptance in the achievement elite.” He concludes his post by saying, "Because those parents who might object to this kind of thing are silent, those who have the greatest tolerance for the sexualization of children continue to push the boundaries of acceptability. Combine this reality with the common belief that sexual mores inevitably become looser as time goes by and the belief that the highest calling one can have on one's life is to be a celebrity (which requires the early sacrifice of modesty) and you end up with talent shows like this one."

While I agree entirely that this is a legitimate factor, I disagree that it is as “simple” as this. I think there are many more reasons why even well-meaning, able-conscienced parents throw up their hands and allow their children to be swallowed whole by the culture. I will take a moment here to offer up just a few.

Rebecca Hagelin states, in the introduction to the afore mentioned book, “…too often, even good moms and dads, when confronted with the struggle—and believe me, it’s a struggle—simply give up. They shrug their shoulders and decide, 'I just don’t have the energy to argue. Everybody’s doing it, so what’s the harm in my child doing it too?' This syndrome has become the mantra of too many parents.” It takes energy to engage in the cultural war against our children and families. Many parents simply lack the energy or the motivation to stand up for what they know internally to be right and appropriate, because they think they are but one facing millions (or even just one other) and they are not up for the argument. They don’t want to be challenged or questioned, they don’t want to be given a hard time, they just want to sit on their couch and be comfortable. If every parent who had a conscience would take the time and energy to stand up for what they believe to be right and appropriate for their children, be it at the school talent show or with the entertainment industry or with their own child, we would see standards change. They would have to.

Furthermore, many parents not only lack energy and motivation, but conviction as well. It bothers them that their twelve year old is gyrating her pelvis on stage (or even just in the living room) with her abdomen exposed and the rest of her body barely covered, but they aren’t really sure why and they’re not bothered enough to really DO something about it. In a culture that lacks a moral compass, lines are not easily drawn. If a parent has not taken the time to draw these lines both for themselves and for their child, they are not equipped to respond to the uneasiness that arises within them in such situations. And they will likely not become passionate about it until the threat of pregnancy or STD is eminent, because those are the only lines they ARE clear about.

But the lines are not drawn come middle school, when the sign-ups begin for the talent show—they begin as early as life begins with the choices surrounding what their children will and will not be exposed to and how they will deal with such exposure. Rebecca Hagelin states, “…media companies who want your child to like their programming at, say, fourteen, start trying to captivate them at age four. The idea is to get the kids and the parents gradually numb to certain ideas that would normally offend their sensibilities—and they start, oh, so subtly and cleverly to do so.” Many parents have become numb to the culture because they are over-saturated by it. About ten years ago my husband and I partook in a little experiment and for all intents and purposes stopped watching TV all together. As the time has gone by, we find ourselves more and more appalled by what is on television, because we have not been regularly and systematically desensitized by the entertainment industry for the last decade. This makes us all the more vigilant about what we allow our children to be exposed to, because we have seen first hand how we can become numb to our consciences.

As previously mentioned, in the interest of time and space, these are but a few of the reasons I believe many parents simply “give up” in the battle against our culture. I believe many (myself included, at times) lack the energy, the motivation, the conviction, and the moral sensitivity necessary to enter into a war that will likely not be won in our lifetime. Combine these factors with a driving desire to be comfortable and not rock the boat, and the pervasive message that parents are no longer the experts when it comes to their own children, and you get entire armies of parents who sit, dazed and useless, on their couches while their children become casualties.

Although the war is daunting, I strongly believe battles can be won for our children in the day to day if we only take the time and the energy to say no to that which makes us uncomfortable. Our conscience is our God-given, internal alarm that tells us that something is not right. As parents we must learn to trust it and follow it, because if we do not exercise our conscience, it will weaken over time, and our children will pay the price.

augusta, gone

I became busier and busier. Work. Meetings. Off in my car. The only times I went to anything was when I had to. Teacher conferences were no longer the contented exchanges of pleasantries and congratulations they had been when the children were younger. Now I dreaded every phone call from the school. Jack had done something. Been sent out of class. Augusta was in trouble again. She smelled like smoke. She skipped school. She swore in class. She looked stoned. She was missing again. She fell asleep. She said she was sick.

In the car, driving somewhere—to the store, maybe—she starts in on me. “I just want to be free,” she tells me. “I need to be free. You can’t control me. I want to be my own person. That’s my right. You can’t control me. Someday I’m just going to go. I’ll just leave. You’ll see.”

From Augusta, Gone, by Martha Tod Dudman

I’ve taken, lately, to reading a lot of memoir, as I have an afore-mentioned fascination with the stories of people’s lives. (That and I’ve sworn off anything resembling a self-help book in any way, shape, or form. They give me hives. And they’re poorly written.) On the whole, it has been an incredibly enjoyable and gratifying decision. Until, that is, I found Augusta, Gone while perusing the tables at Barnes and Noble, and, against my better judgment, entered into the lives of Martha and her children. I’ve regretted it ever since.

I read the book a month ago, at least, and it is still on my mind. While it is well written (albeit a little too stream of consciousness for my taste at times), it is not the writing itself that made the deepest impression. It was the anxiety-provoking, superimposed images of my daughter and my self, woven throughout my reading of the book, that linger like the smell of gasoline on my hands and offend my nose when I least expect it—reaching up to brush my hair from my face, taking a drink from my glass, putting my hand to my chin as I struggle for clarity of thought in session. My squeaky-clean, sanitized life cannot wash away the smell of fear that spilled over from the pages of their lives onto my innocent hands. And its scent is giving me a headache.

I will be unflatteringly honest. Everything within me wants to judge this woman. Divorced. Single parent. Working full-time. Working over-time. Over-indulgent and permissive. Unwilling to set limits. Unchurched. Sleeping with her boyfriend. Trying to be her daughter’s friend. Her own history of rebellion. Of drugs. Of sex. Of running away. I want to judge her. Some of you may think I would be justified in doing so. She’s reaping what she’s sown, you may think. What did she think would happen? It’s her own fault. I want to think this. I desperately want to think this.

Because if I can think this—if I can ramble down this list of offenses that create an equation for parental failure—then I can avoid it. If X + Y + Z = drugs, alcohol, running away, hatred of authority, rebellion, and heartbreak, then I know to avoid X, Y, and Z. Don’t get divorced. Check. Don’t abhor church. Check. Don’t work full time. Check. Don’t have a history of rebellion. Check. Parenting is reduced to a “to-don’t” list, and I am safe. My daughter is safe. My heart is safe.

I was good at algebra—I can memorize any equation and plug in all the right variables and know exactly what my answer will be. Faith. Strong parenting skills. Solid marriage. Good communication. Involvement. Time. Plug them all in and the answer is a healthy adolescent. But the reality is this—there is no such perfect equation. And as much as I want to believe she doesn’t, as much as I want to believe that she simply had the variables all wrong, Martha Tod Dudman knows this all too well.

I know it, too, and it scares me.

pastoral privilege

A great part of my work has been listening to people, in that particular intense privacy of confession, or at least unburdening, and it has been very interesting to me... seeing how well the two sides bring each other along, how much they can require of each other, how the life that is the real subject of it all is manifest in it... When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the "I" whose predicate can be "love" or "fear" or "want," and whose object can be "someone" or "nothing" and it won't really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around "I" like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else. But quick, and avid, and resourceful. To see this aspect of life is a privilege of the ministry which is seldom mentioned.

The Reverend John Ames, in Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat...

Counselors should not watch sporting events. At least, this one should not. I’ve known this since childhood, before I was even aware that I was a counselor (because, in truth, I’ve always been a counselor), yet it does not, unfortunately, prevent me from occasionally plopping my fanny in front of the tube and subjecting myself to emotional torture for hours at a time.

ABC’s Wide World of Sports was a fixture at our house growing up, back in the pre-Victorian era of cable-less television. Every Saturday and Sunday, the TV would be tuned, by hand (gasp), to channel 24 and my male relatives, who will remain nameless but include my father and brother, would be worthless until it was over. As we owned only one TV, and as it was against some sacred childhood code to have a television on and not sit in front of it, I watched an unfortunate amount of sports in my tender youth. It was here that the drama of athletic events unfolded for me, engulfing me perhaps for the first time in a surge of emotions not my own. You see, I did not merely watch sports. I felt them.

Every fall, every bobble, every foul, every error. Every heart-stopping win, every heart-breaking loss. My overdeveloped sense of empathy would wrap itself up in knots, tangling up within the muddled mess every personal disappointment stored in my memory bank. Every disqualification, every overtime, every hope deferred, every dream crushed. I felt it all. Indeed, I feel it still.

As I do not watch many sporting events any longer, unless, of course I’m at my father’s or my brother’s homes, I have managed to spare myself the by-proxied agony of defeat for much of my adult life—the last ten minutes of a Superbowl here, the last quarter of an OSU-Michigan game there. I can handle anything in small, digestible portions. I am fairly safe, therefore, until an even-numbered year rolls around and the fanfare begins on a Friday evening and our television set doesn’t cool down until over two weeks later.

Just as the Olympics are the height of athletic competition, so are they the height of emotional turmoil for the empathetic viewer. The stories, the hopes, the dreams. There are no greater heights and no greater depths than observed at the Olympic games. Fallen skiers. Fallen skaters. Fallen heroes. What makes for a good counselor makes for a miserable sports observer. I am an emotional wreck for two weeks.

“That’s just the nature of sport,” my father tells me. Michelle Kwan claims she understands this, but her tear-filled eyes tell us otherwise. My eyes fill with hers—me, who does not even like Michelle Kwan and finds her obsession with Olympic gold bordering on pitiful—I am saddened for her in her disappointment. She is but one of many who move me to tears.

My saving grace (read: copout) in our internet age has been to sit with my wireless laptop in my lap as I sit in front of the Olympic coverage. (We are, for the record, still pre-Victorian in our own household, thereby the Olympics don’t start at our house until 8:00PM.) Even this does not spare me. Even the knowledge of who wins and who loses, who succeeds and who fails, who celebrates and who mourns—even with this knowledge, I am still a nervous wreck. Skaters fall and still medal—I cry. Nerds and beauty queens stand together on a podium—I cry. One skater goes home, another gets a chance of a lifetime—I cry for them both.

In the word of Bill Clinton, Olympic hopefuls, “I feel your pain.”

Perhaps I should be a politician. The counseling experience does not serve me well come Olympic time. Watching sports is definitely hazardous to a Mental Health Professional’s mental health.

end of the tunnel

It was a true story, but it had a once-upon-a-time-in-a-land-far-far-away quality that distanced me from it in the telling. Not that its content was fairy tale material. No Prince Charming, no Fairy Godmother, no Happily-Ever-After. In truth, it was a sad story, as stories go, but, to my amazement, I simply was not sad to tell it.

My life’s work is stories, but not the writing of them. I enter stories, sit down in the middle of one with the main character and, like a 1980’s choose-your-own-ending paper-back, help her contemplate how her story will proceed from here. Fiction or fantasy, prose or poetry, description or dialogue—I hear a lot of stories. I participate in a lot of stories. I tell a lot of stories.

I told them the story of a girl, that day—a girl not at all unlike them. I could see it in their reddening, tear-rimmed eyes, in their nodding heads, their forward leaning torsos. I was telling their story, as well. They had experienced her dark nights, her never-dawning mornings, her days of February gray that lasted year long. They had heard the same well-meaning-poorly-thought-out advice, the holier-than-thou condemnations, the get-a-grip-and-stop-feeling-sorry-for-yourself-and-suck-it-up-and-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps sermons. They had felt the condemnation, the shame, the futility. They had battled the discouragement, the desperation, the despair. They had been there. They were there now.

They had come, that afternoon, to deal with their own depression. They were expectant, though of what, they were not certain. They teetered precariously between hope and hopelessness—hoping to hope. Daring to entertain the thought that there was more to life than this, that there was a way to get there, that there was something to hope for. And so I told them my story.

The details of my own depression are unremarkable save but one—I am not depressed any longer. The light my father swore to me was shining at the end of the long, dark, never-ending tunnel, once completely out of view and out of reach, now shines like the October sun in the blue fall sky. Like an old high school friend or a sibling who lives out of state or a distant aunt on my father’s mother’s side, the girl in my story is familiar to me, yet I do not know her any longer. It is my story, but it is no longer my life—merely my pre-story, giving the reader the background so as to understand the current plot more fully.

I told them the story of a girl who was once severely depressed, for a very, very long time. That girl is me, but I am no longer that girl. It was a fairy tale of sorts after all—happy endings happen, even in the absence of Fairy Godmothers. There is a Light that shines in the darkness, and it doesn’t glow at the end of a magic wand.

Hope for the hopeless. This is my story, this is my song…

time's up, session's over

I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t do real life well.

It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, but as I drove home from the ladies night half of my small group tonight, it really hit me. I don’t think I do relationships well.

My mom always told me I should be a teacher. When I began exploring the idea of counseling, she became even more persistent with the teaching suggestion, and would tag on to the immediate end of every comment something along the lines of “You’ll never be able to do counseling. You’ll take everything home with you.”

She was wrong. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve “taken something home” with me—the times when a client’s pain clung to me like second-hand smoke, unable to be escaped from until I’d properly showered. I remember the night a marriage literally ended right in my office and I missed my exit coming home. And my street. And my driveway. I remember the mother whose 18-month-old had been hit and killed by a car—I remember because my own daughter was 18 months old and after this precious woman would come and sob for her weekly hour I would go in the next room and sob as well. I remember the 23-year-old widow whose husband was diagnosed with cancer on their wedding day and I couldn’t sleep for several nights after each session. But these are the exceptions, not the rule.

I have always believed that was God’s grace. I have always believed I was able to not carry the weight of the world because I was walking in my calling and God was putting his grace on what I was doing. I still believe that to be true. But I think there is more to it than grace… and it’s not all from God.

We talked tonight about being open, vulnerable, real. We talked about being more intentional, making more time, pressing one another a little. We talked about how that happens, and about what happens when it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. We talked about how vulnerable it is to put your stuff out there in the open and have someone walk away with a trite “I’ll be praying for you” while you stand there bleeding. We talked about sharing intimate, scary, painful things and then never hearing from the people we’d talked to. And that’s when it hit me.

I’ve done that to some of these women. If not all of them. I’ve sat with them in their pain, I’ve prayed with them, I’ve prayed for them, I’ve followed up with them from time to time, but I’ve never walked it out with a single one of them. Maybe not with anyone, ever. The realization devastated and confused me. And that’s when it really hit me.

I’ve always considered myself a caring person—and it’s not that I don’t care about the people who populate my life. I care for all of them deeply. Deanne. Laura. Penny. Faith. Terri. Marylee. Jane. Bonnie. Beth. Tammy. Karen. Cindy.
Josie. Jen. My family. My husband’s family. So why don’t I show them? Why don’t I show them more? I know that I care. But why don’t I care enough? It’s more than just busy-ness, although I give busy-ness its fair share of credit. It’s not just having young children, although that is a key factor as well. Laziness plays a role, as does fear and insecurity and even, to be honest, probably apathy. And that really sucks to say. But they are not “it” in their entirety. There is something more that holds me back—keeps me from sending a card, an email, making a call, going to my knees daily—something that keeps me from walking through the trenches with them.

And so I wonder, on my way home, how to find the balance. How to really care for people in real life—clients, friends, family, the world—enough to allow God to use me in their lives but not to the point that it completely overwhelms mine. And that’s when the realization comes, smacking me upside the head with a big ol’ THWACK. I’ve attempted to create that balance by living my life in one-hour sessions. Life, to me, apparently, IS therapy.

The client comes in once a week, our time is intense and I am fully present and caring and invested, and then they leave and I do the same for the next person. And the next, and the next, and the next. I think about them throughout the week. I pray for them. I think about their struggles and I seek wisdom in how to approach them and I pray for them some more. But I don’t call them or email them or send them pretty cards or call them up and ask them how it’s going, because that would be inappropriate. And that is all well and good.

Somehow, though, this has become my life, and I don’t know what to do with that, or if I even should.

Is it God’s grace that I do not carry every burden that is brought into my presence, or is it a laziness and lack of caring on my part? Is it wisdom, or fear? Is it good or bad? Or is it just what it is? I look for no answers from you—I know you don’t have them anyway. But the questions are out there, nonetheless. I don’t know how to do this real life thing. And it’s really messing with me.

But hey, my time is up—session’s over. We’ll talk about it again next week.

bad day at work

Some days, it is all I can do to not curl up next to a client on the couch and draw them into my lap like I do my daughter, stroking their hair and letting them cry until they are spent. Some days, it is all I can do not to go after their fathers, their mothers, their husbands, their wives, their boyfriends, their babysitters, their classmates and wring justice from them like a sponge. Some days, it is all I can do to look them in the eye and answer, “I don’t know why God allowed ______________ to happen to you/your husband/your father/your daughter, but it sure sucks.” Some days, it is all I can do not to go charging up to God’s front door and bang on it until it opens, demanding those answers myself.

Some days, it is all I can do not to hang up the towel and believe that I have nothing to offer these people. And so I sit with them in their pain and I cry out to God for the sins committed against them and I offer to them all that I have that is worth offering and they take it or they leave it. Grace. Forgiveness. Repentance. Peace. Acceptance. Salvation. God.

Some days, it is all I can do.

the tyranny of what i want

Some days, there is just nothing profound to say. Saw eleven hours worth of clients with only one break. Don't want to go back in on Saturday. Wanted to eat everything in the house when I came home. Skipped my weight work-out because it was already 9:45 and hadn't eaten dinner yet. Freaking out internally about my weight and the upcoming surgery and what will happen when I can't exercise for six weeks. Trying not to obsess about food, weight, exercise, appearance, etc. Saw my kids for two hours this morning- both were in bed when I got home. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Tom works online across the room while I sit here with my laptop feeling the cool breeze float in through the front door. Mere yards between us, yet miles apart. I am tired. I am overwhelmed. And I want chocolate. Lots of it. Or cinnamon granola. Or ice cream. Or anything else that will quickly yet momentarily fill the void that is screaming within me.

When will this battle end?

Since Jesus went through everything you're going through and more, learn to think like him. Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then you'll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want. 1 Peter 4:1-2, The Message