The Friday Five - Truth, Beauty and Goodness for your weekend
Free indeed? A look at trauma, sin and captivity; mental health resources; life hacks when you're living in a tough season of life; supporting families in crises; why voice matters; a poem; a recipe
A personal note
Happy Friday! This week was bittersweet for me. As our nation was celebrating freedom, I was reminded of how un-free many of us feel we are.
Our family went to Asheville, NC to spend a few days with our daughter as she took a leave of absence from the residential treatment facility that she’s been in for a few weeks now. It was prescribed for her so that she could practice her coping skills around us. We trigger her, family activities trigger her, the way we talk about food triggers her - there is a lot that always feels like we are walking on eggshells around her. It makes it difficult to truly BE any way around her and never really feels to me like how a family should feel.
I wrote this week in my article, ‘Are We Free Indeed?’, about the shoulds and how we get ourselves in trouble when we should all over ourselves. The thing is, I grew up in a loving family and home environment so I knew how I wanted my family to be. When I entered motherhood, I brought with me all of the dreams and expectations as to how my life as a mom was going to be. When things suddenly changed with our daughter six years ago1, our world was rocked. Yet, I continued to hold on to these ideals of what I believed my family should be and ultimately, that has caused more harm than good. Living in denial about my life lead to discontentment, constant striving for something that would never ever happen, anger, anxiety and depression. I was also experiencing repeated trauma with her behaviors; behaviors any mother would absolutely fall to pieces over, often leaving us in the emergency room to only kiss her goodbye as she would be transported to the next psychiatric hospital. I was broken, just like my motherhood dreams.
I was held captive for a long time by my trauma and the symptoms from it. Some days, I still allow it to take over me, but not for long. My daughter is held captive by a whole slew of negative self-thoughts and lies - oh, so many lies. I am surrounded by friends and family who are struggling with their captors as I type this out and many are not winning the fight.
Most of us are held captive by something. But the Son sets us free and we can be free indeed. In my article this week, I begin with a poem. There is a line in the poem that inspired the entire thing:
Because sitting in your sin is easier;
It’s the only way you’ve known for so long.
For so long,
it’s held you captive
but you kind of like it,
you kind of need it
Because at least something is holding you
Friends, it’s a choice we make, everyday, to wake up in the morning and choose to have faith, to know and trust that Jesus loves us so wildly and unconditionally that there is absolutely nothing, NOTHING, we could ever do that would separate us from him; no sin we could struggle with for which he hasn’t already paid the price, so we can feel held by him, not by captivity. Even when life doesn’t go the way we plan, and often, it doesn’t, we wake up each day and choose faith, we choose Jesus. He chose us, so that we can choose freedom.
I’ve included some mental health resources in my article. I’d also love for you to read the article I share by my friend, Andrew Sawyer, who is starting a new nonprofit to help families in crises. Even if you aren’t a family in crisis, I really think you can get something from it, particularly how you might be able to play an important role in someone else’s life who may be struggling with a family crisis, in a season of long suffering, or struggling with sin.
I want Christ to shine through me in all I do and how well I love others is one of the biggest and best ways I can. Sometimes, loving others means loving them right where they are, in the yuck, in the battle, in the darkness. Care to meet me there, too?
1. Are We Free Indeed? How trauma and our sin struggles keep us in captivity; and we are forced to choose: will we be slaves to our sin or slaves to our righteousness?
I give a warning that this post might be challenging or triggering for some. I’m writing from a vulnerable place this week and sharing a bit of my sin struggle and what it looks like when we allow it to hold us captive.
Are We Free Indeed? How trauma and our sin struggles keep us in captivity.
With all of the talk about freedom this week, I’m approaching freedom from another perspective… I’d like to warn you that some may find this post triggering or challenging. Please know I wrote it out of a place of empathy, love and genuine care for all of us choosing freedom. I have prayed over it, and if it was for you, I have prayed over you, too.
2. I wrote a separate article this week about life hacks in a hard season: because living in a hard season makes everything harder and finding ways to simplify, edit and appreciate beauty are helpful and healing.
Life hacks in a hard season
Like oil and water, clutter/chaos and trauma do not mix well. Physical clutter and mental clutter both have the capacity to overwhelm, add trauma or a hard season on top of it and it can drive you completely nuts. I realized that while our family was living in the hardest season we’ve experienced thus far, I was hacking …
3. A nonprofit that will be a resource for the hands and feet of Jesus for families in crisis situations, and a really great article by the founder on the different roles you could take to come alongside a family in crises
We were introduced to Andrew Sawyer many months ago, after we had moved to the Raleigh, NC area and seemed to be in constant crises with our daughter. Our church connected us to Andrew and he became a trusted friend who not only encouraged our journey but also had many very helpful and tangible resources for us because he and his wife had been through similar challenges.
Fast forward months later and my husband and I met with Andrew to discuss their new nonprofit, Sustaining Hope for High Impact Parents, and all of the ideas he has for it.
Andrew describes his goal and vision for SHIPP like this: “Sustaining Hope for High Impact Parents is a new nonprofit supporting parents who are navigating their child/teen’s mental health journey. We provide encouragement, coaching, networking, support and advocacy for parents whose child or teen following a mental health crisis.
Our vision is to walk alongside parents so they aren’t alone during their most difficult days of parenting. We fill in the gaps of support left by the brokenness of the mental health system. We are working toward providing families in crisis with physical support after a crisis including accompaniment during crisis intake, handyman services, meals and transportation assistance. We are also advocates on behalf of families in crisis with decision makers. And, we are working toward partnerships with churches and community organizations to ensure families are well taken care of during crisis events.”
He recently published a fantastic article on the Four Types of Family Supporters. I hope you will take a few minutes to read it and perhaps you can identify with one of these roles. Perhaps you’ve lived through crises like the ones he mentions and are on the other side and now have margin enough to be one of these roles in someone else’s life? I assure you, they need it, and they would appreciate it.
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. - Galatians 6:2
4. A poem I wrote this week:
A brief moment at the intersection beside a cemetery in a small town
A red light stopped me at an intersection in the middle of a small town that I was driving through. To my right was a small cemetery, enclosed by a decorative wrought iron fence. The cemetery looked to be the size of about one square block and filled to capacity with tombstones. It was neat and tidy, with freshly cut green grass, roses planted around the edges and poking through the fence to greet the street, and the tombstones, clean and in order. I saw a woman, slouched over, eating her lunch on a bench on the rock-pebbled footpath that cut through the tombstones. I saw a butterfly fluttering from flower to flower. A mockingbird sat on the fence, facing the woman. Another flew up on the other side of her. I’m not sure why, but something about this scene was beckoning me to take it all in. I quickly looked all around, anticipating the light turning green. Across from the cemetery was a barber shop, with the old, white-haired barber sitting out front, reading a newspaper, leaning back on a single, folding chair too small for his frame, looking precariously like it would collapse any second. A couple walked past my window just then, the lady’s arm was wrapped around the man’s, and they were holding a bulging brown paper bag. I looked over to my left and the driver in the car beside me was looking at me; his window was down and that made him feel uncomfortably close. I awkwardly gasped as his stare caught me off guard but the light turned green so I looked away and accelerated. The man reading the paper didn’t move as I drove past him. I bet he knew half of the people in that cemetery, or at least their families. He could likely write a book with all the stories he’d heard over the years, standing bent over, listening while hair dripped to the ground as he snipped dangerously close to so many ears with perfectly sharp scissors. I wondered if his old bones had a plot waiting for him across the street. I wondered if the lady on the bench knew someone in the ground or if the cemetery is her preferred place to sit, eat and be surrounded by bodies but not have to talk. Or listen. I wondered if she feeds the birds crumbs from her lunch, and that’s what they were doing, sitting on the fence, watching her. Does she come everyday? I wondered if the man I caught looking at me, saw that I was looking at the others. And was he wondering something about me?
5. When Women Were Birds, a book by Terry Tempest Williams, is about how and why ‘voice’ is so precious and what makes us human, and connected to others, and how she claimed the lost voice of her mother.
This week, while searching for a quote I had seen someplace before but couldn’t quite pin point the quote or the author, I stumbled upon an author and a book that has since been placed in my Amazon cart and is not on its way to me. I found this interview with the author and was completely intrigued by this comment,
When my mother was dying, she said to me, “Terry, I’m leaving you all my journals but you will have to promise me that you will not look at them until I’m gone.” I gave her my word. I didn’t know she kept journals. She was an extremely private person. A week later, she died. Months later I thought “Now I will find out what my mother was really thinking. Finally I will know, in her most private moments, her real voice.” They were exactly where she said they were. Three shelves of journals, hand-bound and neat. I opened the first one, it was empty. I opened the second one, it was empty… all my mother’s journals were blank. It was a second death, and I just couldn’t deal with it. I put them in the back of my car, drove back home, put them on the shelf, and for 20 years, I didn’t really think about it, until I really needed to hear my mother’s voice. I think the inspiration for When Women Were Birds was that mystery. Why did my mother leave me her journals and why were they all blank?
Read the rest of the interview here.
Check it out on Amazon here.
By the way, the quote that I was looking for wasn’t this quote, but it was similar enough and I’m glad it led me to this book and author:
“Beauty Is Not Optional, It Is a Strategy For Survival” - Terry Tempest Williams
Questions for reflection/Journal Prompts
Terry Tempest Williams’s book made me think about all of my journals, and what I will do with them, and if I’d even want my children to read them, or if I’d rather they remain private. If you keep journals, what are your thoughts on this?
Is there a friend in your life right now who may be struggling in a season of long suffering, crises, trauma or even with their sin struggle that you could come alongside and offer to be there for them, or help? Which role from the article, Four Types of Family Supporters could you play?
What are some areas in life that you wish you could simply, edit or manage better? Make a list and brainstorm or research life hacks or ways to make them more manageable for you so you can invest more time on all that is good, beautiful and true and less on pesky distractions.
Quotable
“In the marshes the buckbean has lifted its feathery mist of flower spikes above the bed of trefoil leaves. The fimbriated flowers are a miracle of workmanship and every blossom exhibits an exquisite disorder of ragged petals finer than lace. But one needs a lens to judge of their beauty: it lies hidden from the power of our eyes, and menyanthes must have bloomed and passed a million times before there came any to perceive and salute her loveliness. The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” – Eden Phillpotts, A Shadow Passes
A few thoughts and shots from the week
This week, we visited one of my favorite east coast towns, Asheville, NC. This town is overflowing with culture and there is something for everyone: history with the Biltmore mansion, a super hip and robust art scene, awesome live music, tons of craft breweries and a winery at Biltmore, tons of options for foodies, wonderful outdoor adventures, wildlife…there truly is something for everyone. I am always so inspired while there and want to come home and try a hundred different creative projects. I always leave with notes filling up my little notebooks, and in this case, as I mention in my life hacks post, now I’m using notecard rings. Plus, the people are diverse and super friendly.
The thing that really stood out to me the most on this trip is from our time walking around the art district and talking to the different artists in their studios. Firstly, how cool is it that these kind people allow strangers to pop into their work space all day long AND take the time away from their work to chat, demonstrate, and show off their work, knowing most of the people walking through won’t purchase anything? And they love it. I thought I’d surely be bothered by that. But they don’t seem to be. An artist showed my daughter and I an encaustic demonstration, another wanted to tell story after story about his paintings that were filled to the brim with details from his vivid and wild imagination. Even a third artist told us she’d book a private paper marbling event for our family next time we are in the area because she loved our enthusiasm. One artist, an older, gray-haired lady with a very messy smock wrapped around her small waist while working on her painting, noticed us while we were making our rounds. As we approached her space, she said to me, “It’s really wonderful how your family is taking the time to visit each gallery and look at all of the pieces and talk about them. Most people just walk straight through and rarely do that.” I told her that as artists, we appreciate that each piece was made my someone’s loving hands and I’ve taught my kids to appreciate a body of work to better appreciate the artist. I couldn’t tell for certain but it almost seemed to me like she may have teared up a little. To be seen - in a world where there are so many distractions - is to be loved. ❤️
Recommended Recipe: Paleo Peach Cobbler
There are not too many things I love more in the summer than fresh, juicy, fragrant peaches. I mentioned last week how we brought home far too many peaches, but don’t you know not a single one went to waste. This recipe is tested and approved! YUM YUM YUM! Even if you don’t follow a paleo diet, I think you’ll love it! If you end up making it, tell me what you think!
Paleo Peach Cobbler recipe here.
The first change we saw in her as part of her PANDAS diagnosis is crippling anxiety that would bring on bouts of extreme and intense rage. Then, we saw OCD, paranoia (she thought her family was poisoning her food and that we wanted to kill her), she had hallucinations, convulsions, different voices would come out of her, and she was homicidal. Her PANDAS diagnosis, coupled with lyme disease and mold sickness, has brought on a whole host of other symptoms now, including, but not limited to, suicidal ideations and attempts, self-harm, and an eating disorder.