February 2020 archive

Vulnerable.

by

Warrior
“‘What is it you’re frightened of?’
asks my warrior side.
What fills your heart with such dread?
‘What happened to your coat of bravery you wore so confidently?’
I feel like a deer sometimes, I answer.
I’m not always like you.
I want to lie down in flower-kissed pasture,
let my eyes close against the sun.
I don’t want to be poised for battle, I say.
My buttons can’t always cover what’s inside.
Don’t be disappointed by what you see, I plead.
More kindly now, my warrior side asks,
‘But what is it you are really frightened of?’
The possibilities of the inevitable,
I manage to say in my soft deer voice.”
-Beverly Hyman-Fead, Patient Poets: Illness from Inside Out, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Today I’m the deer.
I want to lie down in a safe pasture with the sun in my face and cease to fight.

I’m terrified of Chiari. It was the first enemy. Both Danica and I slayed her. She’s resurrected and attacking my unsuspecting Laney girl without warning.

I’m angry from battling for insurance coverage for necessary imaging for Delaney and now the process of appeal for the ones denied. Maybe it’s just a cover for how mad I am this is happening at all.

I’m frustrated from fighting for care for an injury behind a tooth that has taken me to six appointments at four different dental specialists with no resolution.

I’m afraid of how sick I feel as persistent infections rage and my brain burns. There is no plan for treatment.

I’m devastated by the re-tethering of my spinal cord for the third time. I’m losing the feeling in my legs and feet. My neck is pulled backwards when I straighten my spine. I’m finding ways to curl up when I sit on the couch or in bed to make the stretching and burning less. If I sway in my belly hardens with contractions like labor. I’m not emptying my bladder fully because I cannot feel it. I’ve had two UTIs in the past month as a result. I will not seek surgery again until I’m unable to walk. I cannot.

I’m grieved by the hard decisions to close two doors to people and places I was sure God called me to this year. Things I wanted to prove I’m turning this pain into purpose. Things I wanted to prove I am doing something else with my life than just this surviving.

I’m heartbroken by the loss of intimacy with several close people in my life. I risked talking about my hurt. I forgot it’s safer to keep it to myself.

I’m lonely in the way being chronically ill always will be. Because only someone enlisted in the same war can crawl into the foxhole with me. But they can’t turn to look me in the eyes because our enemy is relentless (and their neck is most likely also fused). There are so many beautiful people waving flags and cheering from a distance. But I need triage instead of a parade. You can’t see that from over there.

I’m furious my children need a foxhole too.

I’m pretending like a good soldier. My husband needs me to say I’m okay. My girls need to feel I’m okay. If the bile starts to come up I swallow hard. Remember Monica. If you say you are hurt too loudly people may decide to walk away.

I’m ashamed. After all God’s faithfulness to my family and I how can I feel this hopeless about where we will live in a few months? This need to know where we will shelter trumps everything else all the time. Dan emailed today, “When are we going to talk about moving?” I’m paralyzed. This is just one more thing I am supposed to figure out.

I’m exhausted. Every night I sleep less my joints get looser and my body weaker.

I’m just so very tired.

Chronic illness is fraught with imagery of battles that might be won or at least an enemy that could be held at bay. We call ourselves ‘Warriors’ in the fight for big and little things in our lives especially access to care. This rubs against a faith that bids us to surrender to the will of God and His perfect plan knowing that might include long term suffering and even death for His glory. My mind and spirit are confused and fatigued by both.

I just want to lie down.

I didn’t prepare the FedEx with twenty pages of notes and reports and the discs of Delaney’s scans for the neurosurgeon in New York. I couldn’t write an encouraging note to someone else to shift any of this weight into kindness even though it’s what saves me most of the time. I didn’t make the pasta dish I promised the girls I would. I texted Dan I simply cannot pick the girls up from school even though it’s his gym day.

I’m paralyzed.
I wish I could scream.
I wish I could run.
I wish I could defect.

Instead I hear a tiny whisper of truth from a Word hidden in my heart.

“The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”-Exodus 14:14

You might also like

Grief. When lightning strikes again

by

Chiari Lightning

You thought
you had hit
every layer possible,
that you had found
the far limit
of your sorrow,
of your grief.

Now the world falls
from beneath your feet
all over again,
as if the wound
were opening
for the first time,
only now with
an ache you recognize
as ancient.

Here is the time
for kindness—
your own, to yourself—
as you fall
and fall,
as you land hard
in this layer
that lies deeper than
you ever imagined
you could go.

Think of it as
a secret room—
this space
that has opened
before you,
that has opened
inside you,
though it may look
sharp in every corner
and sinister
no matter where
you turn.

Think of it as
a hidden chamber
in your heart
where you can stay
as long as you need,
where you will
find provision
you never wanted
but on which
your life will now
depend.

I want to tell you
there is treasure
even here—
that the sharp lines
that so match your scars
will lead
to solace;
that this space
that feels so foreign
will become for you
a shelter.

So let yourself fall.
It will not be
the last time,
but do not let this be
cause for fear.

These are the rooms
around which your
new home will grow—
the home of your heart,
the home of your life
that welcomes you
with such completeness,
opening and
opening and
opening itself to you,
no part of you
turned away.

—Jan Richardson, The Cure for Sorrow, A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

It was a September afternoon like most others during that season of my life. I’d worked from home all day on database lists ordered from non-profit and political clients through my employer outside Washington DC while caring for my not quite yet 2 year old Danica. A little after 2 pm I would wake her from her one hour afternoon nap, and we would drive to Holy Cross, a Lutheran church about fifteen minutes from our rented house on 35th St. We would wait in the parking lot for the bus from Lake Center Christian School to drop Delaney. She was in 2nd grade. My habit was to arrive a few minutes early. Danica would have a bottle in her car seat, and I would stare at the church steeple, breathe deeply and pray. The spiritual discipline of “hard stops” had saved me over and over. On that particular afternoon my heart was blocked with a sadness and a fear I couldn’t name. We returned home from the bus, and I put a pot of water on the stove for macaroni and cheese. I turned the TV on for the girls to watch a show while I checked in with work to run another list order. I was standing in the little kitchen with the indian summer sun warming my face through the window when the phone rang.

We knew something was wrong with Danica since her neck went crooked in May. They called it ‘acquired torticollis’. I’d managed my telecommuting job and driving her back and forth to Akron Children’s Hospital several times a week for appointments and therapy. Her pain and disability seemed to be getting worse. Finally a physiatrist ordered an MRI under sedation. This was the first time I heard the words “Chiari malformation.” They meant nothing. The doctor kept talking, Hannah Montana was saying “Sweet Niblets” and Delaney laughed out loud as I ran to my laptop and googled the words. I began to weep. The pot of water boiled over onto the stove and floor.

Two weeks ago Delaney saw a neurosurgeon at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. We heard those words for the third time. “Chiari malformation.” Danica. Myself. Now Laney. This time these words meant everything.

Chiari.
Complex Chiari.
Brain stem compression.
Complicated family history.
The doctor kept talking, but I quickly sunk beneath his words.

Since Delaney’s appointment I’ve been in crisis management mode. The fight for access to the many additional imaging orders needed and other specialist consults is all consuming. And it all feels much more urgent because my girl is a senior in high school with very specific plans for college in August. She has always been the one with wings so ready to fly. Except now she struggles to hold her head up.

I’ve moved through the past two weeks in a dense cloud of physical exhaustion, my own very real pain and what I now recognize as grief. But it’s a sadness and loss I’ve never known before. It’s not an opening of an old wound but something new altogether. After all we’ve been through this impossibly hard thing with my Laney has buried me alive.

God is meeting me in this dark place.

I believe there is generous enough grace to hold me there as long as I need to stay.

I believe there is strong enough grace to rescue me when every bit of oxygen is gone, and I must rise.

We will need kindness and shelter to make it through this next storm. I’m so grateful you are here. Thank you for praying for us. Thank you for staying.

“For the righteous will not be moved. He is not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady. He will not be afraid.”-Psalm 112:6-8

You might also like