A Season of Healing

I am sitting here in the quiet of my Sunday morning. I can hear Faith quietly cooing to herself.

We live a block away from our church. I can watch as the congregation fills the parking lot up with their cars. We will not be there. My kids can’t today, that would be too much on them, it wouldn’t result well, one, maybe four would trigger and end up cycling all day.

My heart aches and I mean actually pains as I read about the Japanese earthquake. The destruction, the terror, the loss of human lives is HEARTBREAKING. A year and a couple months before I would have watched it, lived it as to not forget this tragedy.  I can’t.  You see, I too like my children have been traumatized. I don’t doubt that my PTSD is preparatory to help me understand and relate with my children’s fears, triggers and trauma.

For a year I could not write, barely talk about, or even “go there” in my brain when it came to the Haitian earthquake. I remember facebooking my friend Annie who runs a school and goat program in Haiti, and telling her the news. I remember begging my friend Tanya to help me figure out how to get the kids on a plane.

The phone calls, the frantic emails I began getting from parents. All we could do was stay GLUED to the TV, BEGGING Anderson Cooper to randomly go to my children’s Orphanage. Out loud BEGGING the Lord that my children (all 300) were alive, were O.K., had water, and food.

My husband and I didn’t sleep that night, or for the three weeks to come. Somehow Bugs, Scoobs and P.B. were fed and put to bed. Still we had no word. It took 32 hours, 32 hours to hear ANYTHING about the children. A good friend was able to get through, and half a world away was able to let me know they had “heard” that the Orphanage was still standing and the kids were O.K.

Eight days later, still sleepless, we were on a plane, with a backpacks, paperwork for 52 children, water filters and protein bars. I wasn’t sure, where or how we were going to sleep, but we had a plane and a plan and a whole lot of prayers behind us. Someday I will talk about all of the miracles. Someday I will write about Gods hands in that two weeks of bringing 65 children miraculously home to their forever families. Someday I will speak about the horrors I saw. The bodies at the Central Hospital, The limbless babies I held and comforted until they passed away at the embassy waiting for medical visas. Waking to the Ground shaking underneath me as yet another Aftershock hit. The hollowness in the children’s eyes and faces, the hollowness and shock in everyone’s eyes. The endless tent cities and people standing in lines, bleeding hoping for water, food, and bandages. Having to leave some of the children behind.

I get trauma, on a very real level. Japan has rocked my family’s world again. The TV is not being turned on. I don’t open the Internet unless they are engaged in something else.

Somethings just are not blogable. This weekend is one of them.

One of my children is in a difficult cycle. One that is hard to break. When we get to this place, the safest thing for them and everyone is to actually find them a safe place to go.

Crazy that I said something about that on my Thursday post, must have seen it coming.

So here I go quoting me, to myself.

“That doesn't mean if they have to be in a safer place than your home, you are failing...it means we STILL, NO MATTER WHAT..need to be their constant source of L.O.V.E.
Love is A LOT of things.  We as therapeutic parents have to KNOW that”.

So let’s talk about using respite. Sometimes the most stressful place your children can be is in your home, because LOVE is scary, LOVE is what they didn’t have before and they SURVIVED…so is it possible that they believe in turn it is LOVE that might kill them?...and still we MUST keep on loving, keeping them safe from themselves….teaching them that LOVE, HOME: is safe, even if from time to time they need, or we need a break.

I miss church. I miss having a calling and being able to serve my community and congregation. I am sure to many, our family just seems “missing in action”; I mean that in so many ways. Our family barely attends family get-togethers, we don’t travel, we don’t host dinners and parties, church is optional, I don’t teach my kids art classes anymore, our kids rarely play in the front yard. A trip to the grocery store becomes a rage…I know we are going to get there….but just not yet. This is our season of healing.

I have had to take a hard long look at what my definition of being a Woman of God looks like. In my childhood it was the regular attendance of church, teaching Sunday school, well coiffed children sitting reverently in a pew. Daily Scripture study, a well kept home, daily prayers, a happy family, and bringing food to the sick, serving and helping your neighbors. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in those things….but my view is and has to be much wider.

Because I can’t be, and do all of those things right now, am I not Godly?

As I read in the scriptures I turn to women like, Naomi, Ruth, and Esther, men like Daniel, and the Apostles. Their lives were not easy.  They were MESSY and HARD, and faithful.  They’re seasons were full of walking in deserts, being banished from cities, being mocked, beheaded, tortured, judged, and doing what was right in the face of total adversity.

O.K.  I can rock that look (not the be-headed or banished)…but let’s be honest. Life is HARD and not pretty sometimes. We can want it to be something better than it is at the moment, but we can also spend our lives waiting for it to be something better.

If I do that I will miss out on the mini-miracles that happen everyday.

So I am choosing to embrace my season of Healing. Let it be what it is. I will still cry, stomp my feet and be sad when I miss my old life…but, Being Still, letting it be what it is, accepting where we are, and allowing God to set the pace for my family. That is really what being Godly is about.

So here goes…."Our Season of Healing."