Leaning

 

     I stood at the kitchen sink, staring out the window into my backyard.  I've been having a tough time lately.  So many things are weighing heavy on my heart.  A judge who disbelieves my doctors' diagnoses, and denied me disability.  A  global pandemic that keeps me isolated even more than usual, robbing me of time with friends and family.  The torturous process of scheduling a Covid vaccine.  The added stress of these things (and more!) increasing the amount of pain I experience daily. 

     As I stood there I started humming.  It was a song from my childhood that I haven't heard in years.  "What have I to dread, what have I to fear leaning on the everlasting arms?"   I struggled to remember the words.  They didn't come to me, but the tune did.  By the time I got to the chorus, "leaning, leaning safe and secure from all alarm, leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms", I was in tears.

     Leaning.  It sounds so easy.  I picture someone leaning up against a tree, peacefully watching what is going on.  That didn't really describe how I was feeling.

     Leaning.  No, more like desperately clinging.  I picture someone clinging to a palm tree in a hurricane, holding on with all his might because that's his only hope.

     Over the next few days, the song stayed in my mind.  I finally googled it just to find out what the lyrics were. I found myself humming it throughout the day.  It was on my mind when I fell asleep, and there when I woke. "What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms; what a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms."  Sometimes it brought tears.  Always it brought peace. 

     One time, I had a flashback and I heard my dad's tenor voice, leading this song in church.  I closed my eyes, wet with tears, and listened as he sang.  I was back in my childhood church.  I heard the others singing, but my dad's voice rang out, "leaning, leaning, leaning on Jesus, leaning on the everlasting arms".  Peace washed over me.

     I started leaning on God when I was a very little girl.  He was the palm tree in what was the hurricane called my life.  He was safety and strength.  He rescued me from a horrible situation, and gave me a new family.  He was peace and calm in the midst of fear and chaos.  And He continues to be.

    The first time I saw him, I saw a grandfatherly figure.  His eyes were tender, and his arms  outstretched to me.  He stood on a porch, with a big rocking chair.  He reached out to me, and I leaned into him.  

     I often go to this place when I am afraid.  

     Frustrated. Overwhelmed.  Disheartened.

Sometimes I lean, sometimes I cling. But I am always comforted.     As this song continues to play in my heart, I'm reminded to lean, to find comfort, to allow Him to handle it all. 

"what a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms

what a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms;

leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms,

leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear, leaning on the everlasting arms?

I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms"

     https://youtu.be/FBJgFa4MZLg

He Didn't Destroy Me

     I grew up in the church.  It wasn't part of my life with my biological family, but I loved it from the time I moved in with my foster/adoptive family.  I didn't understand it then, but I felt safe at church.  I just knew there was something different there.

     My parents were committed leaders. My dad was the worship leader and served on the church board for most of my formative years.  My mom was a Sunday school teacher.  She served in the nursery, taught some of the girl's groups and also cleaned the church.  We hosted weekly Bible study groups at our house.  Basically, if the church doors were open, we were there.  If there was a reason to meet up with others from the church, we were in.
     Those we some of the happiest times of my life.  Sure, there were some sad times.  When a beloved youth pastor and his wife moved away, I was devastated.  When the church split and we didn't go there anymore, I lost contact with friends.  But I formed new friendships at the next church, which lessened the blow.
     Church represented continuity for me.  The location, congregation might be different but my feeling of safety remained.  My soul was soothed.  It truly was a refuge for me.  None of my abuse, damage, brokenness mattered there.

     I hit a rough spot with church when I was in high school that lasted through the summer after graduation.  I was still in a relationship with Jesus.  We still talked-- all the time.  But I no longer felt like the church "fit", if you will.
     Fortunately a group from Youth With A Mission (YWAM) visited our church for a weekend.  I'll go into all the details about that in another post.  But I will say that that weekend was life-altering for me.  I finished out my first year of college, then went into full-time ministry with YWAM for the next 3 years.
     During those years I grew to understand why church had been so comforting for me-- I had experienced God.  I totally immersed myself in getting to know God, to really hear him and recognize his voice.  I begin to deal with my pain from the abuse and trauma in my early childhood.  Bit by bit, I was becoming healthy.  Whole.

     When I married my husband, we quickly rooted our little family in the local church.  And, like our parents, jumped in with both feet.  We taught boy's and girl's groups.  We attended Bible studies at other's homes, and hosted our own.
     My husband's job changed often during our early years of marriage, but we always found a church quickly.  It provided comfort and community, as well as allow us to continue to grow in our relationship with God.
     Naturally, when we had kids we wanted them to have the same church experience we did as children.  As toddlers they loved it.

     My husband's job took us out of state for a bit.  When we moved back here to Pennsylvania, finding a church was suddenly difficult.  We had never experienced that before!   He'd like one, I'd like another.  We visited a church where not one person spoke to us, and another on the same day the pastor resigned.  When we finally visited the church that would be our home for the next 10 years, we were ripe for the picking.  However, our experiences on that first visit were vastly different.  He felt like he was finally home.  I felt like my spidey sense had been activated.  I watched from the sidelines, for a year, as my husband became involved and our children made friends.  I watched until they wore me down.  I overrode my gut instincts and jumped right in.

     During the first 7 years, we were honeymooners.  Our lives revolved around the church, to the point that we sacrificed relationships with our own families.  We were given subtle suggestions that all our friends should be from our church.
     We joined teams.  We led groups.  We hosted Bible studies in our home.  I became the pastor's administrative assistant.  We enjoyed a favor that stirred jealousy in people who were working so hard for it.  We became part of the pastor's family.  They helped us through some really tough times in our life, and we opened up to them.  Me, especially.  I told them all about my trauma and abuse.  I showed them the broken pieces of me that I was trying so desperately to hold together.

     All the while, we were being manipulated.  Coaxed to behave a certain way.  Groomed.  They knew all my secrets, so they knew just what buttons to push.

     The pastor was a narcissistic control freak.  He would joke that he could "punish people without them even knowing it".  At some point that became directed at us, especially me.  But in my blind trust, I didn't see it until it was far too late.  Even when he made inappropriate sexual advances towards me, TWICE, I dismissed it as being in my head.  When my daughter was being punished as a way to control me, I dismissed it as she was being overly sensitive.  When my husband started to feel like something was incredibly wrong going on, I still refused to see it.  I had overridden my gut instinct years before; now I didn't trust it anymore.  They had broken me.

     But it would become much worse.

     One of the greatest offenses one could do at that church was to ask "why" about anything.  Blind obedience was demanded.  Anyone who questioned was quickly discounted and driven out.  His tag line was "if this isn't the church for you, we're happy for you to find another one".
     Well, I committed that greatest sin.  I dared to question.  I dared to compare one of my character issues with his.  They decided I needed to go.  They launched an all-out character assassination of me.  They froze us out.  Shunned, if you will.  We lost friends, but it was so much worse for our kids.  They didn't know why any of it was happening, and I didn't know how to explain.
     By the time we left there, I was broken.  I spent the next year in mourning.  I cried every single day.  My body just shut down.  I developed complex PTSD.  I watched my children fall away from the church because of what we'd all been through.

     I clung to God for my very existence.  We found another church, a place that gave us the space to begin to heal.  You see, a man hurt us, not the church.  A man attacked us, not God.  If there is one thing I know about God, it's that He has to be better than any man.

     It's been almost 10 years since we escaped what I now have come to understand was a cult.  It's been a rough road dealing with all that damage.  Unpacking those boxes, all the little compartments I had to stuff those memories into just to survive, is both freeing and terrifying.  I'm definitely not the person I was then, but my relationship with the church has not changed.  Mainly because it's not based on man.
   
     God has not changed. That gives me hope.  That gives me strength.




   

Breathing Emotions

     I don't deal well with emotions.  Not mine, not others.  And especially not external displays.  As a small child, I learned that crying made things worse.  Laughter and happiness also seemed to have the same negative effect with my father.  He considered it all to be "noise".
     When I went into foster care, even as a 5 year old, I felt like I needed to be strong.  I didn't want anyone to be upset with me.  I didn't want to give anyone a reason to hurt me (this was due to my earlier experiences, not because I was being harmed in my new home).  I became silent, invisible.  Emotions attracted attention.  I didn't want that.
     By the time I was in middle school I had learned to stuff my emotions.  I pushed them so far down, all in an attempt to avoid feeling them.  After all, if everything looked ok on the outside, then it must be, right?
     The older I got, the more determined I became to hide my emotions.  All of them, but especially fear, anger, uncertainty.  I grew to associate these with weakness, and I was anything but that.  I became stoic, leading people to think I didn't care, which was so untrue.  But it was my wall, my protective reflex.
     All of this stuffing of my emotions, however, seemed to heighten my ability to read other people's emotions.  This skill allowed me time to read the situation and prepare accordingly, either to physically or psychologically escape before they emoted.
     As I have worked through the maze that is my life's story, I have gradually learned to add emotions back into my life.  Mostly the "safe ones". Happiness.  Joy.  A semblance of peace.  Sadness.  But, rarely, do I cry.  That is my last piece of strength.  I cry so infrequently that it freaks my husband and kids out when I do.  They flip into a mix of discomfort and concern.  See, the problem with not dealing with your emotions means other people don't know how to deal with your emotions.  People want to share the burden, the joy, the emotion.

     Fast-forward to yesterday.  My husband was out working in the garden.  I bathed, then I put a load of laundry in to wash.  I changed the bed.  As I was pulling up the comforter, I felt my chest seize.  I couldn't breathe.  I began to panic!  I leaned on the bed, gasping for breath.  Every inhale seared through my lungs.

     "I have covid", I thought.

     I made my way through the house and across the yard.  By the time I reached the garden, my chest was on fire.  Tears were trickling down my cheeks.  My husband saw my tears and was instantly on alert.  When I said I couldn't breathe, he flew down the hill and got me back into the house.  After a quick call to my doctor, we headed to the emergency room.
     The hospital is less than 10 minutes from my house, but each minute seemed to make it even harder for me to breathe.  I tried all the coping skills I knew, trying to steady my breaths and stop the pain.  Nothing worked.  By the time we pulled in, tears were freely streaming down my cheeks.  I wasn't even going to try to hold them back.
     My husband ran to the make-shift intake station to tell them what was happening.  The lady took one look at me and quickly appeared with a wheelchair.  I heard my husband tell me they weren't going to let him go in with me.  It made me full out cry which made it even harder to breathe, especially with a mask on.
     In that moment of fear, not knowing if I was going to live or die, emotional control went out the window. I sat in that room all alone, crying as I struggled to breathe.

     A flurry of nurses came into my room, each one wearing multiple layers of gloves, plus masks and gowns.  Blood was drawn.  A chest x-ray was taken.  Telling me to "take a deep breath and hold it" seemed like a cruel joke.  Next came the covid test.  The nurse pushed the swab so far up my nose that I kept wondering if it would come out my tear duct.

     Again, they left me alone in my fear.

     As I waited for the next steps, I texted my kids.  I needed them to hear from me, just in case.  I fought to put that out of my mind.  It upset me, making it too hard to catch my breath,  As I sat there in the solitude, I could hear the man in the room next to me.  He was upset because his caregiver hadn't been allowed to come back with him.  He just didn't understand what was happening.  I could also hear the nurses describing certain rooms as "air borne".  It made me sad to think what they were going through, in their rooms all alone.
     Eventually I was given a breathing treatment.  The nurse said it should work in about  minutes.  Well, my body doesn't do anything "typical", so it was an hour til I started feeling relief.  I was released with an inhaler, being treated for viral bronchitis.  I later learned the covid test was negative.
     After a long day, both physically and emotionally, my breathing eased.  The pain remained in my chest, caused by the exertion of my gasping and coughing.  It serves as a metaphor for my emotions.  Working through an incident doesn't take the pain away.  Knowing what caused an emotional response allows me to learn more about myself.  Showing an emotion allows me to learn about both myself and others who care for me.  While it makes me uncomfortable, is it really fair for me to have others shut down their own emotions or not allow them to share in mine? 
   
     I don't think so.
   

The dreams I dream

Last night I dreamed that I died.
This is not an uncommon dream for me, but this morning I forced myself to wake up.  I just didn't want to see myself die... again.  I've developed this coping mechanism over the years, this ability to force myself awake, to shield myself from nightmares and, also, painful memories from my past.

Death is inevitable.
I know that it's coming, and probably sooner than I'd like.
I know I will die long before my husband does.
I know I am both ready and unready for this to happen. 

My spirit longs to be in God's presence. 
This keeps me from having a fear of dying.
My body is ready to be done with all the pain, torture and torment it continues to go through.
My mind is not ready.
I worry about my kids. 
What will their relationship with their dad, my husband, look like after I am gone?  How will my passing impact their relationship with God?  I want it to draw them closer, not give them reason to retreat.  That is my greatest fear.

I know people think I'm weird when I talk about my death.  But the fact is, I need to be prepared, to have things in order.  I will be a control freak until the end!
My ability to talk about my death speaks to my relationship with God.  How others react to it speaks volumes about their inability to understand that relationship, and me.
The longing to be in His presence is overwhelming.  Just the small taste I've had of him here makes me want more.
It doesn't make me sad.
I know He is a safe place.
I know He is waiting for me with arms wide-open, a big smile on his face,  I see myself running into his embrace like I do a dear friend I haven't seen in a very long time.
He smells good.  Better than downy.
His arms are strong, but he holds me gently.  It's even more soft than the blanket Cinnamin made for me.
I snuggle in and he says "I've been waiting for you".

I'd rather dream of that any day of the week.