How am I supposed to be OK with all of this?

the answer I finally accepted, and how healing sometimes looks like log rolls

For a long time now, I have asked the same question to my therapist, “How am I supposed to be OK with all of this?” The ‘all of this’ being the long-suffering our family has endured through some very challenging behaviors and trauma associated with our daughter, that seem to have no light at the end of the tunnel. My hope, of course, is that my therapist (or some book, a friend, a revealing from God) will have some method or tool to help me come to an understanding about our painful story, anything, really, to help it all make sense. I want to walk out of my sessions, able to breathe deeply and have some closure on this question or something that might help fuel me forward through the inevitable challenging days years. But for years, I have found there simply is no answer to this question and I’m constantly unsatisfied and feeling restless about that.

Until an answer finally arrived most unexpectedly recently.

My husband, two boys, and I were at a park on a chilly, sunny day, one of our first outings as a family of four without our daughter with us this time (hang tight, I explain in a minute), and every hill that we encountered, my 9 and 8 year old boys wanted to log roll down it. And they did. As I stood watching, smiling, laughing even¹, they giggled the whole way down, stood up unsteadily and dizzily laughed as they zig-zagged their way back to the top to do it all over again. And again and again. In a light-hearted way and with a smile stretched across my face, I said aloud to my husband, “I wonder what ages our boys will stop log rolling?” I pulled out my phone to capture this moment on video and watched through the hand-sized rectangle as their bodies rolled down the hill, and away from each other, heading off my camera’s view. I pinch-spread my phone quickly to keep them in the wide-view frame and suddenly, I was hit with overwhelming waves of emotion.

Sometimes healing looks like log rolls.

I was grateful for this moment, for my joy, and my boys’ genuine joy and laughter. But I also knew that in 30 days or so, their sister would be back home and things would be back to painful for all of us. This time away marks her 29^th  visit to a residential treatment facility or psychiatric facility. Of course, the fact that she’s in another one shows that things aren’t quite working. Our biggest prayer is that she’ll finally accept her part in all of this and that her family, who loves her more than she may ever understand, aren’t doing this to her. After all of this time, after all of these years, we finally know that healing won’t take place for any of us until this very important change happens ‘this time around’ while she’s away. But in the meantime, this little respite is our (Derrick, the boys and I) chance to move two logrolls forward. And when the trauma associated with the behaviors comes back upon her arrival, like it always does, we will take two steps back².

This mix of emotions – relieved yet sad for what’s to come, hopeful yet worried about whether the ‘healing’ will take, happy yet frustrated it’s short-lived – are enough to drive a parent crazy. And often, they do for me and that’s when my question always comes to a head, ‘How am I supposed to be OK with all of this?’ But right there, in the middle of this crazy mix of emotions, standing on a beautifully green grassy hill, surrounded by the sound of my son’s laughter, and under the bluest sky I’d seen all winter, I knew my answer;

I’m not.

I’m not supposed to be OK with all of this. And I realized that was OK. Suddenly, flooding my mind were all of the mental health memes with the theme, ‘It’s OK to not be OK’ and it was like a light had turned on. The more I reflected on it, the more comfortable I became with accepting this realization as the ‘understanding’ I’ve been looking for, that deep breath I’ve needed, a period missing at the end of a sentence that has been left hanging open for quite a long time.

I don’t have to be OK with the suffering, the pain, how unfair it feels, and how hard it is for all of us, not just for me and my husband but our boys and our daughter, too, and how this has changed my family forever, and how nothing looks at all like how I had dreamed, planned or ever wanted, and that the future, as my children may see it, may not be as bright as I’d hoped. I don’t have to be OK with any of it.

And furthermore, I can let go of this ridiculous model of healing that I’m clinging to – the one where healing happens linearly, and tidily: the trauma happens, it comes to an end, and the healing begins. I know healing doesn’t happen that way. I know healing is all shades of gray, never black and white, but there is some part of me - that rule-following part, where if I do my part, then the outcome should be what I expect - that I’m holding onto through all of this. There goes those unrealistic expectations wreaking havoc, again.

Healing is messy, too. Like a heavy, barreling log, ungracefully making it’s way forward down a hill, bumping and splaying out of line. And when it successfully reaches it’s destination, it zig-zags, dizzily, taking steps back to the top, only to do it over again and again.

I can live with the tension of our ongoing painful story AND the joy-filled log rolls.

The four of us, Derrick, the boys, and I, have spent a significant amount of time without our daughter, and gone on many-a-vacation, celebrated many-a-family event or birthday, and made many memories without her with us. I used to get extremely sad that she wasn’t there, that she was missing out, that I was missing out not creating memories with my daughter. It still saddens me, of course it does, I am in pain for her journey, too. But that sadness would often steal the fun of the moment, and keep me from being fully present in it with my other family members. It’s extremely hard to be present with your children in a happy, joyful moment when you’re also managing trauma and pain from another child. I’ve heard it said, ‘You’re only as happy as your least happy child.’ I now know this from lived experience BUT, because I’ve had so much experience, only time has helped me get much better at this. It’s entirely likely had she been with us, we wouldn’t have even been able to go to the park. Or our time would have ended too soon, or poorly. So, ultimately, I’m not OK with this either. I’d prefer my daughter to be with us, for all of us to enjoy our time together, and for happy memories to be made by all, but I will live with the tension of her not being here AND the four of us making memories together. And that ultimately, there may never be any tidy resolutions but that alone, is a resolution.

I have been creating tiny collages with words/phrases for The 100 Day Project. This one came out yesterday, before I wrote this. Feel free to follow along in my stories on Instagram. Sometimes healing looks like tiny collages inspiring words.

As I’ve time to reflect further on that moment on the hill, I think about how that view from the rectangle of my camera only showed the hill and the boys in front of me. With my fingers stretching it outward, the trees, more of the sky and the people nearby came into view. If I could zoom even further, you could put us on a ‘Where’s Waldo’ page, and we’d become just another cast of characters in a much larger scene. Most days, our painful story feels like the close-up because that is what is in front of us; it is what we are living out. But if we could zoom out, way out, we would see that there is so much more to the picture. There is so much more at work.  When I feel like what I see in my view is all falling apart, or has no chance for redemption or healing, there is One who sees the whole picture and He is the One who is holding it all together.

That, I can be OK with.

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” – Colossians 1:17

1. …as I stood watching, smiling, laughing even… friends, trauma has a way of stealing so much joy out of what should easily be a joy-filled moment… these little nuances, the transition from watching to laughing, may not seem significant to most, but they most certainly are to someone ‘HEALING’

2. I should add that we are ALWAYS HOPEFUL for a different outcome and have given up the fight to God. I’m only speaking from the experience of coming off of 28 other times she’s been away.