Brave, Anyway

Tag: anxiety

  • Good Grief

    Good Grief

    There’s no right way to grieve people say. To people who are grieving I say There’s no one right way to grieve.

    I am unsure if people mean it when they say it or if they are just offering encouragement. What I am sure of is that after seeing countless family and friends grieve people and situations and lives they’d hoped to have, I mean it when I say it to them. What I am equally sure of is that I do not think that it applies to me, because often it feels like I’m grieving all wrong.

    Losing my Dad and my bonus Dad five weeks apart has me asking myself each night if I did the right things that day, if how I am feeling is too much or too little, if they would agree with what I said or did, if I’m setting the right example for my girls, if God is rolling His eyes at me or pleased. And every day I fall asleep still having no idea, really.

    My father-in-law lived with us for almost 15 years. Ella does not remember a time when her Papa Ted wasn’t downstairs. I’m thankful for his consistent and loving presence in their lives, and his support on all their hard days. I’m thankful that he got his wish to spend all his days at home, not in a hospital or in a “place old people go to die.” And I’m thankful that he embraced the unconventional, and that together we showed the girls what family is truly about.

    Grief is so many things throughout each day. It’s sadness when you want to tell that person something. It’s frustration that you suddenly have to figure out a bunch of stuff. It’s happiness that your loved ones are no longer held back by old bodies. It’s anxious idleness during the times of day you previously had tasks with or for them.

    Navigating grief is like driving through the streets in Grand Theft Auto or The Transporter. Sometimes you’re looking for something, sometimes you’re racing, sometimes you make a quick turn to avoid something, sometimes you accomplish something and feel great and celebrate, sometimes something unexpected hits you hard, sometimes great music comes on and makes you smile, sometimes you screech to a halt and don’t know what to do next.

    My current stage of grief is the one with no sappy or slow music of any kind. The Beastie Boys, Eminem and DMX are all safe. Even on the way to church: The Humpty Dance. It’s also the one where I limit the number of people I talk to in a day, where I fall asleep at 8 pm and wake up at 1 with a dozen thoughts all vying for attention, and where I am so secretly enraged at Audrey’s teacher for giving homework that I consider all the steps it would take to find her address and print 100 copies of the work we did and attach them to real estate signs that could then be placed all over her yard. How’s that for showing my work?!

    It’s also the stage where I really want hugs but wonder in the middle of them if I am really doing it right, or at least OK.

    The house is different. The world is different. Maybe I’m different – I’m not sure yet. But a new season is ahead, one where God is going to do a new thing. Whatever that new thing is, today it seems far away. Today’s job is to drive carefully, no tickets and no tricks on just two tires.

  • June in Pictures

    June in Pictures

    June: in like a lion and out like a lamb, just like the weather in March.

    Ella is at Appalachia Service Project, serving in Dickenson County. Teams like the one she’s with travel to Central Appalachia from around the U.S. to repair homes in some of the most beautiful country in our land.

    She will never be the same – because of the opportunity to serve, because of the worship, because of the people and their stories, and because she’s never gone this long with limited cell service. I am so ridiculously proud of her.

    Ella and teammates working on flooring.

    Today, Audrey has been cancer-free for an entire decade. A decade. It was and is just an unbelievable glorious gigantic miraculous miracle.

    My favorite Facebook Memories moment.

    About a week ago, one of Ella’s pals shared a moment she captured on Ring Dance night that she forgot to send, and it’s just *the* most adorable thing. It was a really windy evening and this picture captures that, along with the looks of happiness that young people have on their first big night as kind-of adults.

    I love these smiles.

    At the trampoline park, Audrey encouraged a room full of kids to line up boys against girls for dodgeball – and then talked serious 5th/6th grade trash. I loved every minute of it. Girls won.

    That look!

    I had my mammogram this month, in the month I hate to have doctor appointments. There’s no picture of this. The follow-up letter informed me my breasts were dense but fine. I’m not sure how I feel about them being called dense, but I’m considering it a win that I didn’t get something in writing that called them saggy.

    June sky on one of those nights I was anxiously waiting for test results.

    My parents had their 50th wedding anniversary and we all celebrated under the big tree in my sister’s yard. I love that tree, and it’s lesson that deeply planted roots result in abundant life and growth.

    Two seconds later he gave her rabbit ears and she rolled her eyes.

    Pancakes played Fortnite from the pink gaming chair that is Audrey’s throne. She loves when the girls are home to play all day, but she gets far fewer treats now that Audrey is here all day monitoring my every move. Cute cuddly things need treats!

    Princess Pancakes Sassypants

    Even the cats got along this month. While Henry Fonda always loves Katherine Hepburn, Kate rarely loves Henry and generally delights in bullying him.

    A rare moment when Kate tolerates Henry’s affections.

    June was good. The angsty minefield month is finished, and it was really, really good. I am ridiculously blessed, and thankful to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that I ask or think.

  • Trust in June

    Trust in June

    I don’t love the month of June. It always brings the chaotic last two weeks of school, which seems fun but really means standardized tests, World War III because of a dwindling supply of the good lunch box treats, and someone telling me at 4:46 pm that by 6 we have to be dressed and at a very important ceremony I’ve never heard of.

    June also is a month of anniversaries, and while most of them are good the ones that aren’t good are so overwhelmingly not good that my body and mind still have a physical reaction every time I turn the calendar and see June 1. I struggle to sleep, I struggle to concentrate, and my heart races or I break out in a sweat at the slightest disruption in schedule or routine. Eleven years ago in June, the world just exploded when one doctor appointment after another revealed that Audrey would be born with cancer, then needed surgery, and then and then and then. And even though I know that the story has a happy ending, June is filled with trepidation for me. A minefield I have to carefully navigate each year.

    This morning I got dressed up for church even though I really wanted to wear black joggers and my Nikes. I was hoping the perpetual pit in my stomach might wane if I could feel “together” and be in a place of worship. I have been reminding myself that it’s National Cancer Survivors Day and I should be celebrating the miracle of Audrey, but I didn’t remember that it’s Pentecost until I arrived at church.

    On Pentecost we remember the day the disciples received the Holy Spirit. It’s a day for tongues of fire and baptisms and new experiences. In children’s church today, the kids all blew on their hands to experience and be able to easily remember that you while can’t see the spirit you can know it’s there because you feel it or felt it. And it struck me that my experience with a voice and a feeling over a decade ago is what I really need to remember as I go through this month.

    When Audrey was just three months old, some of her test results came back with concerning indicators. Her oncologist asked that she come in the next day for full scans and bone marrow testing, and the pit in my stomach seemed bigger than it had ever been. That night, after she’d received her injection in preparation for the next day’s scans, I was sitting in my favorite chair in the family room and I heard a quiet male voice say you can trust me. I looked up expecting to see my Dad – I thought maybe he was still at our house and had not left to go home. But no one was there. I wondered for a minute about what had just happened and if I really was losing it, but I also realized in the moment that I was suddenly and unexplainably completely calm and at peace.

    I remember the voice vividly in really hard moments, when I need it most I guess. But day to day as life happens, with all sorts of little frustrating moments or anxieties, I don’t think about it as much. I guess the truth is I rely on myself for as long as I can possibly stand it and then I really only rely on God when I fail miserably. Not good.

    At the time, I told just a couple of people – in part because I didn’t want to seem crazy (she’s hearing voices now!), in part because not everyone around me believed in the God who I thought might be sending me a message, and in part – mostly – because I just couldn’t believe that someone as awful as me was worthy of a message. When the chips are really down, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that what’s happening is your punishment or that God only loves and communicates with perfect people.

    This June is a bit of an additional challenge because a couple weeks ago in my frustration with myself for still feeling unease about June, I decided that the way to cure that was to overexpose myself to scary things all month. For the first time in over a decade, I threw superstitious caution to the wind and scheduled doctor appointments and even my regular mammogram for this month. My Dad would call that ignorance gone to seed, but I’m calling it a long overdue and necessary trial by fire. (I’m only calling it that because I still don’t like it when my Dad is right and I am wrong.)

    I loved every minute of this weekend’s Jubilee coverage. These are my faces when I realize I should have made different choices.

    Perhaps if I rely on Him more, in all things whether big or small, I wouldn’t spend June in such a state of unease each year. Perhaps if I firmly resolve to focus on the outcome instead of the obstacle, I wouldn’t spend June in such a state of unease each year. Perhaps if I stop hiding pieces of me and just embrace that I am a mix of good and bad and all sorts of contradictions but God loves me anyway, I wouldn’t suffer in silence and spend June in such a state of unease each year.

    I think one of the lessons of Pentecost is that the church is filled with believers that are human, people who’ve lied or doubted or panicked. People with imperfections. None of us is a surprise to God – He knows exactly who we are. It’s we that don’t fully understand who He is and how He works. As lights, as the church, perhaps we are at our best and most effective when we are honest with God and others about all the things that make us human and about all the experiences we have that are just unbelievable.

    Pentecost headbands with firelights!
  • Tough Talks

    Tough Talks

    Feast or famine. We’re all getting along gloriously, or annoyed and arguing all day. We find three pairs of shoes we want, or zero pairs of shoes that will be the needed match. The kitchen is full of desserts and we overeat, or we hate everything we see in the pantry.

    Tough conversations also seem to fall into this category. We can go for weeks or months without one, and then suddenly as the girls’ worlds get bigger in some way, I’m ambushed – sometimes caught still trying to map out what I should bring back up when a new subject pops up. What the heck did parents do before portable devices with a pathway to Google?! I rationally know I am not dumb, but I certainly feel like it pretty regularly. And I know the exact face I make when I know I am expected to speak but am out of my comfort zone, and four- letter-naughty words are rattling around in my head.

    Did you know makeup is tested on animals? I knew this, and yet I didn’t really know it. My go-to when unprepared is to respond to a question by asking a question, to buy time and assess the seriousness – a little but what have you heard? – but that didn’t even help here. She’d read a lot by the time she asked me. There’s no good answer for why humans would intentionally hurt animals, whether you’re trying to explain it to a person who doesn’t love animals or to a 10-year-old tender-hearted animal-lover. Cruelty is cruelty and it’s just not right. And no words can erase or explain the images that are so easily found on social media. So I landed on the old “when you know better, you do better” and sat patiently as she went through all of my products. Thankfully only four things ended up in the bad brands pile and a quick trip to Sephora fixed that. I was so proud to watch Audrey proudly tell the guy who greeted us that we were there to replace products by brands that aren’t kind to animals.

    Is abortion a sin? I’ve found that when I don’t feel certain in my answer, often because I am not really sure what I think or believe, that I just focus on statements that I am certain about. (1) Every woman I know who’s had one, whether they ultimately regretted it or not, remembers that day as one of the hardest of her life. (2) 1 in 3 or 4 women have had one, so we all know people who’ve made that choice and people who’ve made that choice fill our churches. (3) It takes two people to create a baby but abortion seems to be a sin of women only, and that’s just wrong. Whether the father is a loving counterpart or an abuser, he didn’t use birth control or tried to and it didn’t work, he drove her to the procedure or didn’t know the details, or maybe he was not around to even find out his counterpart was pregnant – he shares responsibility in the pregnancy and the outcome. (4) If we don’t lean toward empathy for people who’ve had to make this hard choice, no matter what choice they ended up making, we will never have real conversations with many of the people in our lives because shame thrives in environments of judgment.

    I feel weird about x. I hate when I don’t know context and I sense that if I ask a dozen questions to get the needed context I might frustrate the child and the opportunity for the conversation will be lost. If a situation makes you uncomfortable, even if it makes you seem silly to others, remove yourself from the situation. Always follow your gut. Additionally, if your gut says all is ok but something isn’t sitting right with a BFF, follow her gut. Maybe she’s more in touch with the universe today. Or maybe someone who would never be harmful to you would be harmful to her or someone else. Maybe it’s not even about physical harm; maybe it’s about mental peace. Follow your gut and support your tribe when they need to follow theirs. As a Mom or a friend or a colleague or a stranger, we need to support women following their instincts or advocating for who and what comes into their space.

    There’s no reason for this anxiety today. You’re right; today was a good day. But anxiety is not always about what’s happened today. Sometimes it’s about what happened a while ago. Sometimes it’s about lack of sleep or a good meal, sometimes it’s about overstimulation or a trigger, and sometimes it’s just about brain chemistry or hormones. Anxiety isn’t always going to make sense. Time spent in the moment overanalyzing all the reasons it may be happening or shouldn’t be happening is time spent poorly – time spent on how we help someone or ourselves get back to peace is time well spent. Sometimes we will really want to do things that will be a struggle for someone we care about. We can do them on our own or not do them – but part of loving someone with anxiety is not expecting them to do things that will cause them stress and helping them feel safe enough to communicate and to create boundaries, without fear of our reactions.

    Tough conversations make me second guess myself in ways I never do in other areas. Why did I take classes like Women in Cinema or Art History?! I should have been in classes like Explanations for Life’s Big Questions and Appropriate Responses to Drug and Alcohol Questions at Each Age Range.

    Just as I was overthinking all the ways I could maybe go back and touch on a few extra points without being annoying, I found my “Kindness Is” shirt in the mailbox (check out Kind Cotton!). I’d forgotten I ordered it, but it arrived at just the right time. Perhaps as long as we teach our kids the core things, and keep focusing primarily on those, we don’t always have to overthink so much.

  • Melancholy Mom Notes to My Girls

    Melancholy Mom Notes to My Girls

    When you are sad or hurting it breaks my heart. I would rather feel the pain of someone smashing a limb of my own than watch you struggle. Watching you struggle and knowing the reason why fills me with sadness and regret. And it motivates me to do absolutely everything possible to make the remainder of your childhood as great and as carefree as possible. To get you any help and to tap any source to see you genuinely smile and feel peace.

    I will do anything to help you grow into responsible and caring and successful adults, and that includes setting boundaries for you and having rules for you and even enforcing consequences for you when those rules are broken. It’s my job, my most important job, to help you see how to be good people and to help you want to be good people.

    I want more than anything for you to trust people. To believe firmly that the vast majority of people are good. And instead of focusing on the havoc that selfishness in people can wreak, I want you to focus on the best of people that you have seen – the people who have rallied around you and loved you and supported you and prayed for you.

    I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt what love is and what love isn’t. I want you to know that you know, deep down in your gut. Things may get confusing as you explore relationships of your own, and when you’re confused I hope you will seek the counsel of the right friends and adults. Just as you would choose a cardiologist for a physical heart problem, choose people who have loved with honor and integrity and selflessness for an emotional heart problem.

    I hope you two rely on each other always, even when you’re mad at each other or in different places in your life. You are each the only other person in the whole world who has experienced love and heartbreak and disappointment and resilience together during this time. You can keep each other grounded, you can keep each other honest, and you can support each other as no one else can. Commit yourselves to letting each other say anything, and to forgiving each other no matter what.

    I understand that in great part you will learn from your parents how to be a parent. I really, really, really hope I am a good enough example, but I know with absolute certainty that I fall short. A lot short. I commit to always doing my best to be honest with myself about the good and bad, to allowing you to be honest with me about the good and bad, and to trying to do better.

    No matter what, I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will always prioritize you and choose you over anything and anyone and everything and everyone.

    I will always choose you.

    I will always choose you.

    I will always choose you.

    I will always, always, always choose you.

    No one, including and especially me, will ever be more important than you.

    Love you my girlys.