I’ll go for love

 I love my home. I love that I can watch the sunrise in the mountains and the sunset at the beach in the same day. I love the parks in my neighborhood and the diversity of people who walk among them. I love my neighbors, the kids who greet me when I come and go and keep track of where I’m going, Gary who picks up my packages and my apartment manager who happily snuggles my cat when I’m out of town. I love that I can be at my sister’s house in an hour and Julia’s house too. I love my yellow and white striped shower curtain and my marble table that is too heavy for me to move. I love the framed artwork of friends and family that hangs on my walls and the bench in my entryway with drawers that hold pieces of memories too painful to see everyday but too precious to give away. I love my home. 

I have said over and over, I will never move…except for love. The only thing I ever thought could draw me away from all of these things I love and hold so dear was a greater love. 

This year, I fell in love- twice. Once with a tiny baby boy and once with a grown man. Both of these loves left my life suddenly and through no choice of my own and my heart is shattered. 

In the process of falling in love I began to see that if this love were to grow and blossom I most likely would have to leave my home, this home that I love with a bright yellow rug next to the front door and struggling flower buds in the window. And I knew that I could and eventually would…for the first time I found a love big enough to move me. 

But for reasons too complex for this space, that love was taken away…but I wasn’t the same. The space that had held me for so long could no longer hold. I had always said, I will only go for love…with my love always directed at someone else, but what if I loved myself enough to go? What if I was reason enough to dream bigger, to take the risk, to go on a great adventure? What if…

A grief held close

 I recently told a friend that I felt like a burden. That I had been grieving for too long and maybe people were tired of holding all my tears. I told her how some said things like, “you have to find happiness in yourself” or “your identity isn’t in those things so you can move on” and so on. How quick fix slogans were thrown around and I wondered if people were as exhausted by my grief as I was…

With tears in her eyes, she responded with perhaps the most loving words I have ever heard…I was not too much, I was not a burden…but I never left her heart or mind, she never stopped thinking of me and praying for me and wishing she could somehow take the pain, wishing she could make the healing come faster…not for her sake, but for mine. I had never left her heart and mind. 

Grief is exhausting. But knowing someone carries you as you go through it, knowing their heart aches with yours and that they hold you close even when it hurts…it’s the heart behind “weep with those who weep,” we need others to keep us close when we hurt, so close they can feel it too…and somehow lighten the load.

You are not a burden, you are a grief held close and deeply loved….you don’t have to rush your healing or hide your pain, you are a part of someone else’s heart.

Love Not Expressed

 If your loved one is trying not to drown, don’t ask them what they’re learning… 

Modern day proverb (just kidding, I made it up)

Everyone wants to make sense of grief. We want it to go away as quickly as it came and to have a reason for being here in the first place. We don’t want to watch our friends cry for months on end and we want them back to their usual selves as soon as possible, because really they are just more likable that way. We want them to hurry up and figure out what they’re supposed to learn so we can all move on. We want them to find happiness in themselves, their identity in anything other than what has broken their heart so we can all be free of the pain. But if it were possible, the love wouldn’t have been real in the first place. Everything we truly love becomes a part of us. Being a mom, a lover, a friend, a daughter or a sister- if our identity doesn’t somehow get tangled up in those things- are we doing it right? 

Grief has no timeline. It’s intention is not to make sense. It is a burden to bear, a mountain of “love not expressed,” an ocean of tears- that threaten to drown you and at no point should you hear shouting from the shoreline, “what are you learning?!” There doesn’t have to be some greater purpose and if there is, we are under no obligations to find it as we struggle for air, we have only to breathe. Just take the next breath, step, prayer- and try to hold on for one more day. 

“…weep with those who weep,”  and they will learn how to swim to shore.

One of the hardest things about sudden loss and grief is that the world doesn't stop with you. It just keeps rushing by-like a freight train, threatening to take you out. You can't breathe or see or hope...and everyone carries on. How are they still going? Still fighting their endless, fruitless wars, still hating their neighbor, still selfish and self-absorbed...can't they see, they could lose everything in one breath? 

Maybe the grief is the gift. The thing that puts everything right again, that reminds us who we are and why we're here. That teaches us to love deeply and cling to what is good. 

Can you be still with me here, just for a moment? Will your world stop with mine? Can you lay down your ideology and need to be right and first and can you just hold me and all of space and time in this deep, deep sadness?  

World Mental Health Day

Today is World Mental Health Day AND National Emergency Department Nurses Day, so I'm giving you a twofer in this post as I share some stories about mental health from work and my personal story as well...

He thought he was having a stroke. He was a young man, probably around 30 years old and he had numbness and tingling in his hands and legs. His heart was racing too. He was medically fine though, I could tell just by looking at him. So I asked him a few more questions... was it a particularly stressful time for him? Did something happen recently of significance? Did he want to talk about it? He answered yes to all of the above. He wasn't having a stroke, he had anxiety. Most mental health issues will also present physically, and sometimes in unexpected ways. It's so important to ask questions pertaining not only to someones physical health but their mental health as well to get a full picture of the presenting problem and possible routes of treatment. It's important for us to ask of each other too, take a minute today to ask someone how they're really doing.

Blood was still dripping down her arm when they brought her to me. She had cut her wrists several times. She was 15. Her brother found her and told her Grandmother, whom she lived with. They brought her straight to the ED. As she went to put her green gown on, her Grandmother mouthed the words to me, "she's crazy." I decided to have her Grandmother wait outside. She came out in her green gown a few minutes later, still bleeding and sat on the bed. "Want to tell me what happened?" I asked as I firmly held gauze on her wound. She began to tell me how she missed her parents, her mom had left when she was little, she was in Texas now. Her dad lived nearby but had a new family now and she never saw him. She was abandoned and heartbroken and didn't want to live. I hear you sweet girl, I hear you. I told her how valuable she was, how much we needed her in the world, how it was ok to have all those feelings but that she could do something about it, that healing and hope were possible. Remember to speak words of life to yourself and others today and everyday.

She had a 3-week old baby. She was there for him but a few questions in and I could see she was there for herself too. She was overwhelmed, scared, tired, her emotions were all over the place. She questioned if she was doing it right, doing enough. Mental health care for new moms is so important and often overlooked. Being a new mom is HARD and we have to do better in our follow-up care when it comes to mental health. Check in on the new moms in your life, if you are one, don't be afraid to ask for help or talk about your feelings.

"You always seem SO calm, how do you handle all of this?" my co-worker asked me one night. She's right, my demeanor is typically very even, especially in crisis situations. But I struggle with anxiety, sometimes paralyzing anxiety. I've had two panic attacks and countless sleepless nights. I have trouble making decisions or feeling confident about anything, I'm constantly second guessing myself. I worry about what I did or didn't do or say, I worry about other's perception of me, my thoughts spin around me, suffocating me. I'm so glad I asked for help. I'm so glad I told my friends and talked to a therapist. I'm grateful that I understood that there was no shame in my needing help to care for my mental health, that there truly is no health without mental health. I'm grateful for all the people who have removed any sort of stigma or shame I might feel. I'm hopeful that we're heading in that direction in general and that we will begin to treat mental health with the same importance that we do physical health, the two are so inextricably tied, you really can't have one without the other.

Friday

Her eyes. I couldn't stop looking at her eyes. They held a haunting familiarity that I couldn't quite place. She was in a green gown. 20. That's how many pills she remembers taking. Then I remember, I had met her just 5 days before, her daughter had a fever, 103. I had held her beautiful 10 month old baby girl in my arms, comforted her as she cried, smiled in response to her smile and watched her nuzzle into her mama as they spent half the night in the waiting room. And now, now she was barely alive and not sure she wanted to be. She told me about the long battle with depression, how it got worse after the baby was born, how she didn't tell anyone. She told me about her untreated schizophrenia. She told me she was scared and tired and wished she had died. She cried and apologized for crying, she was overwhelmed, being a mom was so hard, no one talks about mental health. And all I can see is the sweet smile of her baby girl, the way her hair fell on her face, the tiny fists that gripped her mama because she felt most safe with her. And I hope I can keep her mom safe, I hope I can say one right thing or that she feels safe again as her hand grips mine.

 

Keep Telling Your Story

I was talking to a woman tonight whom I had only met once before. The first time we met was at the engagement of two of our friends and this time it was one of their birthdays. To celebrate him his fiance planned a day at Universal Studios followed by dinner at City Walk (I have a point I promise!). The woman asked me why I hadn't been able to join them at the park earlier that day and I told her it was because I was up until 3am doing street outreach and was a basically a zombie until the afternoon.

Having only met one other time we had never talked about After Hours, she had no idea I was a part of the ministry. She was intrigued and asked a lot of questions including how I got into it myself.
I began to tell her of a young woman in college who believed God was calling her to reach out to women in prostitution. I told her how I knew it sounded a little weird to say "God told me" but that was the most accurate way to explain it, I just knew it was what God wanted me to do. I also knew that it was crazy.

I went on to tell her the rest of the story, how I was scared, how I was frustrated in the waiting, how I prayed for so long and how God again spoke to me showing me where to find the ministry I had been looking for. I've been telling this story for ten years and it still brings tears to my eyes. God spoke to me. God led me. God answered prayer. God empowered me. God breathed life and vision into me. God did exceedingly more than I could have imagined. God was faithful.

This weekend was really difficult. It was challenging personally and challenging in ministry. On Friday afternoon I was so overwhelmingly discouraged I found myself in a pile on my floor flooded in my tears. And it's about 30 hours later and God has been faithful once again. He has lifted my head one more time, wiped away my tears and opened my eyes to the hope that surrounds me. You know what the same woman said to me tonight, almost offhand but I'm convinced straight from the Holy Spirit? She said, "where there is life, there is hope, and we are still alive." Woah. I mean, woah.

There is hope in remembering too. In the retelling of our stories. Tell your stories and ask people to hear their stories too. We need to remember, we need to retell. God has been faithful and He will be again. God speaks to us, God leads us, God hears us, God answers us, God cares deeply for all of us. God is faithful.