I sat Infront of a fireplace after 10pm, fire burning. The shushing of a white noise machine from the baby’s bedroom echoed downstairs. Worship music lulled in the background to hide my wails. I sobbed rhythmically cross-legged on the floor leaning over my 15 year old torn up bible. I cried out to God in guttural tears with a pen in my hand.
“Lord, do what it takes to heal me! Help me be better, Lord, I will do whatever you want! Just take away the searing ache in my heart…I am struggling in all areas. I need help.” I jotted down in my journal.
At the time I had 3 children at that point, 6 and under, at the peak of what felt like insanity. I was being triggered in my marriage, in my parenting, and in almost all of my relationships, daily. I couldn’t function normally then, but nor did I ever feel like I could. My life, thought patterns, capacity, and ability to nurture didn’t seem to “work”. I didn’t know it yet, but I was in an uphill battle with trauma brain I’d eventually come to realize was very, very severe.
Yet, I cried out to Jesus. Every. Single. Day. It was all I knew to do. “Draw me close to you…Never let me go…” was one of my favorite church songs as a child. Drilled into me as I’d attended church every Sunday, and even took sermon notes on how to live righteously every time I was in “big church”.
I remember that night in front of the fireplace, pulling myself up in between crying sessions and throwing myself into a chore around the house I needed to get done. Music still on, bible still out, still sobbing unrelenting. I never had a chance to sweep the floors, and the kids were finally asleep. How could I miss this chance? Even then, I now see how much I just wanted to do it well. This motherhood, wife, life. The whole thing. I didn’t have anything to give but my productivity, and hope of pleasing others. Oh, how I wish I could hug ME that night, hold her tight and tell her she can rest. She is everything she ever would have hoped she’d hear her parents say to her. She is lovely, and beautiful, kind and gentle. She is not a monster, a failure, or a burden, like she’d been told so many times… She can fall apart.
That night as I power swept the kitchen through blurred tearing eyes, I began talking to God out loud and suddenly started to feel what can only be described as commissioned. I felt this odd excitement overwhelm me. I then boldly told God “I am going to DO THIS. I’m going to give my children a whole and healed mom! But I need you to DO IT!! YOU need to do it!” I believe I shouted at this point shaking my broom towards the ceiling and yes…still sobbing. It was a demand. It felt like my own wrestling with God moment, it felt like my own “Jacob” story. “I won’t let you go Lord, until you bless me. Bless my family…Bless my intentions and my broken life”
I like to think Jesus himself saw me that night, the same way I saw myself attempting to clean my horrifically unkept kitchen. Ambitious and relentless. I think he knew I wasn’t going to give up and I think he took my hand right then and started me in a direction. Like guiding a toddler “this way…”. I used to think healing was instant. Benny Hin style. (IYKYK) God would just touch me and cognitively revert me into a new untraumatized person. This is NOT the case. I believe he could do that if he wanted to, but because we have free will. I believe God guides us if we ask him, to do the healing WORK. And work it was/is…
Before anyone thinks I was Mary Poppins herself after that, I hate to disappoint you. But the YEARS, (Yes, years) following were when I really began to see I didn’t have a spiritual issue. I wasn’t living in unrepentant sin. It wasn’t just an extended bout of postpartum depression or hormone imbalance. (a very real contribution.) It wasn’t a discipline issue or any of what I’d heard was responsible for almost every kind of emotional or physical pain. The answer to the chaos in my mind and heart, started long before I had ever entered marriage or motherhood. I was experiencing the symptoms of unresolved childhood trauma.
Did I think I had a beautiful carefree childhood? No. But did I think I was “healed” from whatever the severity of abuse was just by being a Christian? Sadly, yes. It turns out, I had endured every kind of abuse imaginable, on a consistent basis. I see now, the night in front of the fireplace was just where I began to war for the legacy of my family. It was starting then that I was led down a path of understanding, emotional exploration, and the direction of the Lord to begin the healing process. I started educating myself on what attachment theory was, sorting through my own life through the lens of repeatedly unmet needs. It took nearly 6 years before I’d ever land in a trauma therapists office where I’d soon realize why I couldn’t “change”. (And this was after 8 years of biblical talk therapy) I’ll never know why it took so long. I wish I had understood so much more, much sooner. It’s on my list of questions to ask when I get to heaven.
When I started my motherhood journey, I now understand that I was given a failed start. I was just a young girl with absolutely ZERO tools and coping skills, with very little family support. Motherless, without any safe parent to lean on. My nervous system in 24/7 survival mode. My brain in fight or flight, cortisol locked and loaded and in excess at almost all times. That was how I learned to live my life. This was how I mothered. I had to unlearn this. I am STILL unlearning this. I had to visit the parts of me that were so deeply broken, so incredibly wounded and undo the damage done by FEELING… Grieving… Accepting and learning my own story of loss. (A major factor in my healing was EMDR therapy) I had no childhood. No wonder I was struggling with how to pass one down.
And you know what?
I can still give my kids a childhood that’s wonderful. It won’t ever be a perfect one. But I can promise you, it won’t be a devastating one. I know “hurt people, hurt people”. But even us hurting, can choose to heal and not hurt the way we have been. I won’t be a statistic, my children won’t pay for my parents, parents mistakes. My loss of a safe childhood shaped me, yes. But I’d say for the better.
I play with my children now, with deep affection…because no one ever played with me.
I hug my kids now, holding them tight like I wish someone would have, me.
I see their lives as sacred, their childhood to be protected, because no one protected mine.
I make mistakes, too many to count, but I apologize and attune to their needs, because I begged to be seen as a child.
I get to homeschool my children so I can be there for every single milestone and make it a huge deal, because no one celebrated mine.
I have suffered greatly, there is no doubt…but I believe God made me this tenacious, demanding fiery jolt in my family line of origin and said “Alright, she will be the one.” You can be, too.
“The deepest things I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things I know about God.”
-Elizabeth Elliot
I am becoming a better mother because I am a healing one. And that truly is something wonderfully worth passing down.
