My Memorial Day

[Originally posted to Facebook on 8/18/2015]

It’s hard sometimes to jump into writing about a journey that doesn’t have a clear beginning or end. But even in that journey, you can identify the turning points. Today marks the first anniversary of one of those turning points. A memorial. A Memorial of Hope.

Having a genetic predisposition and already prone to situational depression, and a personality that cares about everyone but myself, depression condensed like a cloud on my mind. As depression began to rain, things started to wash out. And I excused them. Too busy. Too tired. Not important.

And too late, the rain was a flood and I had not sandbagged my mind...and my brain broke. I was Sad. Unhappy. Uninterested. Indifferent. Depressed. I wanted to be alone. All the time. And I couldn’t be.

                                                              I was pregnant.

A dangerous mix. I reach a point where I stopped eating which isn’t exactly a good choice for growing a human. I stopped sleeping which left me ruminating on all sorts of dreadful things hours into the night. And everything started slipping away. But it wasn’t friends, events, or interests crumbling through my fingers. It was me that was falling apart.

I call that season my faded life, for everything in my mind that was familiar and dependable had left me. Just a lightless shell becoming ever more transparent until I thought my substance may fall apart completely and I’d disappear altogether.

Despair was like drowning, and fighting alone like being waterboarded. Happiness was like finding an air pocket in a submerged car. When it ran out, the claustrophobia of being trapped inside myself was even more overwhelming than before. So at the end, I gave up on Happiness too.

I was at the bottom. The deep cavern I had dug. But God is faithful and always provides a way out so we can endure. And like a trap door, the bottom of my world fell and I screamed in desperate resignation, "When does it all stop falling apart!" Because it looked nothing like hope, nothing like a heroic rescue.

It felt more like being shackled to an anchor. In an ultrasound, what were signs of an infection inside her tiny form turned into an unknown heart condition. Cardiomyopathy - A mystery of the heart. Our little Kylie had entered her own dire straits. As we sat numbing our emotions to make room in our minds for as many facts as we could handle. I remember hearing "miracle...meds...heart transplant...Not. Make. It." Before we left, the doctor made me answer him, "Whose fault is this?"

"Not mine"

he made me reply.

The picture started to come together as the afternoon wore on. She did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. Yet here we are. Everything seemed so turned around and backwards. So hope...less.

But the doctor also said I was her best hope. The critically depressed mother was her best hope. She needed more time. She needed me to care...about her and about myself. Two things so foreign to me then. Something that seemed like it would have been a miracle in and of itself.

I knew my hope, long gone, would not be enough. Make believe hope would kill us both.

That night I made my first decisive choice of hope. If I was going to believe in a God, I didn’t want Him to be small. I didn’t want to whisper anemic prayers in my hollow hideaway.

I wanted to shout my cries from the highest peak to a God who can resurrect the walking dead and give radiant form to those who are vapors. The One who will posture the universe at such a time as this to make known through our story that He makes the sun to rise and the fog to dissipate, holes to be filled, hearts to beat His rhythm and the dirt that forms us to be purified.

I had been timid, a fool; afraid. My tribe was small: I was too frightened to reveal how shattered I was. Anxious of being rejected as a fraud. One had terrifyingly become three. Three had been agonizingly stretched to twelve. No. This cry would resound through ravines and scale cliffs. We needed echoes of hope to amplify our cry. We called them our 300. PlanA; I will hold to this hope and believe in nothing less.

And it came as a host of over three thousand angels. Seen and unseen. Known and unknown. It was not that my depression and despair had been found out but that I had been found.

I was ready to live or die trying. My now expansive tribe breathed when I couldn’t and beat when my heart wasn’t strong. They sang and shouted when I had no words. They rejoiced and cried when I could not feel. Their hope came flooding in -- into my phone, our inbox, our eyes and ears. It was living water filling the dry wells of my soul.

Our tribe brought joy back into our home. Food, play, friends, order. The light of hope began to catch the sparse dust of my faded self. Our tribe had written songs that pierced my soul and felt like holy healing for her: “Take this heart and show it how to beat,” “You’re the rhythm I’m beating in and all the earth can feel it, we are dancing to the sound of your heart. You’re the light that’s beaming in and all the earth can see it. You shine beyond the dark.” “I believe that your love’s in motion and it’s changing me helping me to see your light.”

I became a Genesis - formless and void but the Spirit hovered over the waters of the deep. God spoke and responded to our cry. She was getting better. I was getting better.

Our tribe marched with us to the rhythm of hope. And then I had my first hopeful day. A whole day. It felt so beautiful and I didn’t know if I’d have another one so I cherished it and buried it in my heart. My Friend told me, “Start collecting the hopeful days and soon you will have a whole pile of them.”

We all knew the length of the journey would be long and I would have a high chance of relapse after she was born. But after you have suffered a little while, He himself will restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast. And we made it to the end of the first leg. Kylie Michelle was beautiful.

And I felt God there that day giving me so many signs of his presence. From her painless entry into this world (God delivered her because I literally did nothing and felt no pain), to her panda warmer that I visualized in a prayer session a week before, to the doctor that said he felt something very powerful being there at her delivery, to her release from the NICU.

And as I held our little miracle and watched her cradled in the arms of our Tribe, my hopeful dust erupted into love. She belonged to God but had been entrusted to us and I would love her and fight for her unlike anyone.

And it seemed like I was through the trauma. Our tribe saved us; saved her, saved me. I had a long road of recovery ahead of me. But now I had faith, hope, and love inside me. I had been recast into a transcendent form.

And everything was new. I was like a wildfire inside my soul with an unbridled fiery exterior to match. And just as God loved me in my thousand pieces, he loved me unrefined and said you are malleable, let me lead you to where your light will never extinguish.

I remember telling God you can have everything! It’s all yours; I owe you everything! Which is easy to say when you don’t have much to offer coming from such a dark and despairing place that even you don’t want it. And some things I knew He’d give back; others I wanted Him to keep and take and it was like playing racketball with God. And then there were the tiny corners, the protected spaces. God needed it all laid before Him. God worked with me just the way I’m wired. You know--let’s make this efficient and productive. Go figure. And the pilgrimage began.

The lessons came hard and fast. So fast I could barely breathe from one to the next. It did not feel full of joy but I knew it was good. Let me teach you about anxiety, learn from me about freedom and independence, now responsibility, next envy, after that power, over here kindness, let's explore love -- a lot of love, now examine marriage, patience and friendship, disappointment, grieving, conflict.  Let us journey through health and healing, championing and prayer. Let's not forget self discipline and selflessness. Let me teach you about acceptance and grace.  Now we undo fear. Now to revisit suffering and joy.

What about rest!? When can I learn about that? You say rest but desire ease. Rest you find in Me as we journey. Peace wells in all attitudes.

.

And I’m learning to live in that peace. The things that once overwhelmed my broken mind just seem to exist at lower altitudes than where I have journeyed. I have collected my hopeful days and now I stand atop a mountain.

Surviving has not given us an easy happily ever after. Kylie still has ongoing concerns that keep us growing and stretching our trust and faith in God. We’ve worked hard to repair our family and have learned to press in to our deep and rich tribe. And me…

I walk by faith

for I have been frozen in doubt.

I rest in peace

for I have been overwhelmed by chaos.

I live in love

for I have been buried in fear.

I am captivated by hope

for I have been captive to despair.

Today is my Memorial Day. A beautiful Memorial of Hope.

My sister joist memorial piece

We belong to a tribe called Mosaic that lives by faith, is known by love, and is a voice of hope. 

To Write Love on Her Arms is a nonprofit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and invest directly into treatment and recovery.