The girl who wouldn't quit apologizing - (OCD story part 2)

(If you are just joining, this is a continuation of a story I'm working on about a 13-year-old girl in a very tumultuous phase of her life. It will make more sense if you read the first post here and then return to this post for part two.)
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My next big obsession was with light switches. I had heard that a light switch stuck midway between “on” and “off” could cause a fire and this knowledge sent me spiraling. I didn’t want my house burning down and so I began checking and rechecking light switches to make sure they were in the correct position. Occasionally I would worry that perhaps I didn’t flick them down hard enough when attempting to turn them off. But my primary concern was just the opposite, that I had somehow pushed them too hard, and, in my vigor, the switch had bounced back up to the middle position, leaving my house just minutes away from being engulfed in flames. Though I had never actually witnessed a light switch “bounce” out of position, it mattered little. There was a chance that it could, and therefore I checked. 

Three was often my favorite checking number. If not three then five. Even though I preferred even numbers for their symmetry in many situations, odd numbers felt safer when I was checking for danger. Upon leaving a room, I would hit the light switch three times to make sure it was in the desired position. On occasion, almost instantaneously after exiting, I would be overcome with concern that perhaps I hadn’t checked well enough and I would have to return for a recheck. I hated it. I wanted desperately to leave a room without the burden of checking. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t risk it. 

It was at this age when my parents began permitting us to stay home alone; my sister and I took on the role of babysitters to the younger two. In addition to keeping humans alive, I felt an intense responsibility to check the light switches in each room while my parents were away. In the evenings before we would go to bed, I would make my rounds to every room in the house to make sure it wouldn’t go up in flames while we slept. I doubt my parents had any idea this was going on. These were compulsions I tried desperately to keep hidden. 

There were other behaviors that were more difficult to hide. As a homeschool family, most of our mornings were spent doing our studies independently, each at our own levels. After lunch, we would join together in the living room while my mom read to us aloud. The stories she read ranged from Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and The Boxcar Children in the earlier years, to Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings as we grew older. We called this 30-45 minute segment of the day “Storytime.” My sister and I loved to work on something crafty with our hands, like cross stitch or crochet, while my mom read in the background. My brothers enjoyed playing with their Hot Wheel cars, motoring them across the coffee table and around the living room. 

I had always been accustomed to listening quietly as my mom read but then something shifted internally in me. Suddenly, I felt the “need” to echo the words my mom was saying under my breath. I couldn’t explain it, the urge just materialized and I didn’t feel right unless I succumbed to it. I knew it was weird, and I hated doing it because it made it hard to enjoy the book, but it felt so important that I replicate what she was reading. How it was that my mom didn’t end up screaming at me to please shut up, is beyond me. Imagine trying to read a chapter book with someone trying to parrot over you. She would ask me to stop on occasion, and I would respond by reducing my volume and trying to be sneakier about it. Then she would give up and try to ignore the fact that I was muttering the latter half of every sentence, a split second behind her, as if this was perfectly acceptable and expected behavior. 

Then there were the apologies. My life became a series of a million little mistakes for which I felt I owed the world an “I’m sorry.” A fingernail would catch the skin of someone walking by, just barely scraping the surface. Panic would seize me and I would begin apologizing profusely, much to the surprise of the “victim,” who hadn’t even noticed I’d touched them. As I continued walking to my destination, I would replay the situation and then the apology over in my mind. I would question myself and the authenticity of my words. What if I didn’t actually mean it when I had said “I’m sorry?” I would repeat the apology again in my head, hoping perhaps that now that I was really focused on the words, it would “count.” Sometimes, if the person I brushed or bumped was a family member or person I would see again, I would go back to them and re-apologize, and this time, ask for forgiveness too. Even if they looked at me and laughed and told me it really wasn’t a big deal, my world would feel off kilter until I said I was sorry. 

Occasionally, a situation arose where an apology was actually deserved, but more commonly, was there no real offense that had taken place. I apologized for bad thoughts I had about others, thoughts that I’m sure they would have preferred I just kept to myself. I apologized for apologizing and not meaning it. I apologized for apologizing and annoying others. I apologized for possibly putting a tiny knick in the paint on a wall. Those close to me began asking me to PLEASE QUIT APOLOGIZING yet I was so plagued by guilt that I couldn’t bear to stop. My “misdemeanors” were running circles in my head, tormenting me, and it helped me to get them off my chest. Sometimes mid-apology, my confidence would waver and I would say something like, “I think I might have thought something bad about you.” Nothing could feel more genuine than a confessor who is questioning whether she even committed the crime!

Next came the fist phase. My homeschooled upbringing had kept me sheltered from most things vulgar and crass, but eventually someone educated me on the way one’s middle finger could be used negatively. I grew petrified that I might accidentally point my central digit at someone, which would of course illicit the need for an apology. I worried that because my middle finger went with me everywhere, my life would soon become an endless loop of me accidentally flipping people off and then having to apologize for it. Truly this was the cardinal sin, one hardly worthy of forgiveness. My fear of accidentally flipping someone off grew so great that I remedied it by walking around with my hands in fists. Aha! If my fingers were always balled up inside my fists, I could avoid pointing them at anyone! Problem solved. But only momentarily.

It didn’t take me long to realize that yes, my fist solution prevented me from offending those around me, but alas, my middle finger was always pointing somewhere. When my hands were in fists, my middle finger was now directed toward none other than my very own self. There simply was no winning! No matter how I, or others tried to convince me that this hand gesture was about the intent behind it, not the mere direction one’s finger was pointing as you went about life, I could not be abated. Though I never intentionally flipped anyone (or myself) the bird, I walked through those days in a perpetual state of horror and discomfort over what these hands of mine were capable of.




........to be continued!



Sorry folks! This is where I will leave you hanging for now. I'm working on the rest of this story and hope to publish it here in the next few weeks. If you want to be the first to know when it goes live, you can subscribe to my blog by over on my home page here. Enter your email address in the "Subscribe to my posts" box in the far right column and I will send a link directly to your inbox every time new content has been published! (If you are using your mobile device, be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on "View web version" first to find the subscribe box). Thanks for reading!

Even the dead ends

I dusted off my seed starter trays about four weeks ago. I planted a handful of different flower and vegetable seeds and placed them in my new toy, a small, plastic greenhouse I purchased off of Amazon, and situated in front of my bedroom window. At first, it was almost as if the seedlings leapt from beneath the soil’s surface, as desperate as I to grow and rid themselves of the darkness they were experiencing below. They shot up toward the heat of the sun, stretching out for the light. Initially, the visual change I witnessed in my seedlings was invigorating and I felt elated. My greenhouse was working! After years of trial and error with starting seeds indoors, I was finally figuring it out. Over the past few weeks, the zinnias, nasturtiums, cosmos, tomatoes, peppers and sweet peas in my master bedroom have become my little obsession. I check those plant babies nearly as often as I do my own offspring. I am so desperate to see progress and to watch them flourish. At first, they all looked the same - tiny stems with two little leaves. Then, new leaves appeared, the plants grew taller, and they began to differentiate. The days when they grow in huge spurts are so rewarding and I feel like a plant magician. But rarely do these visible “big growth” days occur consecutively. The growth happens in fits and starts. Growth, followed by rest and absorption, and, I imagine, unnoteworthy root expansion beneath the surface. As their “plant mama,” I do my best to meet their needs. Some days, it’s easier to figure out exactly what those needs are than others. When the surface of the dirt begins to appear dry, when its color turns from rich, dark chocolate to milk, I know it’s water that the seedlings need. When a seedling soars vertically but grows so thin and “leggy” that it can’t even support the weight of its own leaves, I know it is light that it’s lacking. When a plant matures rapidly and then suddenly stops cold, a closer look usually reveals the need for a larger growing vessel, the tiny plastic tray capsule it began in now appearing cartoonish and ridiculous in comparison to the size of the plant. Until I give the roots more space to spread and expand, growth stalls. My sweet peas have grown so tall, they no longer fit in my greenhouse and I’ve had to relocate them to the desk in my office, where the ceiling is their only height limitation. They are currently winding their way up classy wooden kabob sticks that have been taped together because one on it’s own was not tall enough for the speed of their vertical pursuits. I’m anxious to get them outside but the still-present piles of snow in our yard serve as a visual reminder that perhaps such a move would be jumping the gun. Though the plants might appear ready for the great outdoors, the conditions of the outdoors might be still be too much for them. They still have a lot of maturing yet to do. I can relate a lot to my plant babies. Are you catching the many metaphors to life that are hidden in my words? It’s no surprise to me that Jesus often used plants as illustrations throughout scripture. Their growth parallels our own growth process as humans so perfectly. As one who is in hot pursuit of growth and healing in my own life, at times it is so frustrating to me how non-linear the process can be. Logic informs me that the best possible route from point A to point B is a straight line, direct and lacking in all types of funny business. Everything works together toward a singular purpose, nothing is wasted. Yet, if I were to map my own growth process, it is so far from straight and direct. My path looks more like the loopy zig-zag of a lost person, turning around in random driveways, trying to reach their destination (which they aren’t even fully certain of in the first place), without directions. Initially, I went to therapy to address “X” and here I find myself having to face down “T,” “U,” “V” and “W” before we can even begin to touch on “X.” It’s super annoying. For both my husband and I. I started to do this individual work because it was evident we wouldn’t make the progress in our couple’s work until I took care of a few of my own issues. As it turns out, “X,” wasn’t my only issue. It’s hard to be patient as we work through other struggles that feel like “detours,” seemingly unrelated to our original goal. Meanwhile, I have some big plans, plans that I feel were laid directly on my heart by God. Yet I’m running into all sorts of barricades. Why would He call me to something only to require me to weave my way through a maze of obstacles? At times I worry, did I mishear him, perhaps? Am I practicing avoidance? But if I were, wouldn’t I have a clear idea of what exactly it is that I’m avoiding? On other days, I feel motivated and ready. I want to get started! Shouldn’t I get started? I feel a lot like those sweet peas on my desk. I’m standing taller! I’ve made so much progress! Isn’t it time? But then I wonder, how are my roots? Are they strong enough to hold me up to withstand the gales of wind that will certainly blow my way? And is it the right season? Technically, it’s still winter. Perhaps I need to hold out for spring. Growth can be a lot like walking into a thick fog. We can’t exactly see what’s on the other side, but we believe that the heat of the sun is back there somewhere, burning off the clouds. We know the general direction we should be headed, but until we reach the other side of the fog, we just have to continue to put one foot in front of the other. We can make lists and do all the things and yet, the depth of the fog remains. We must march our way through its entirety. Fruit comes at harvest. It cannot be rushed. As a gardener, I’m learning that I can’t force my plants to do anything. I cannot speed their growth. I can only provide them with the things I know they need - fertilizer, water, and on sunny days, a prime spot in my south-facing bedroom window. As much as I want to hurry their maturation and see them blossom into their full potential at a much more rapid pace, I am at the mercy of their own process. I just have to keep showing up with the things I know will keep them healthy and then surrender and wait. I know I write a lot about growth. It will likely be my forever-message…until God gives me a new one. Until then, be encouraged. Slow forward progress is better than no progress. And even when it feels pointless, a walk down and back on a dead end street is good too. The path may seem indirect but we are building our roots, being prepared, receiving nourishment, practicing obedience. The Master Gardener has a master plan. And praise Jesus that I don’t have to be the one to decide when the time for harvest is right. For now, I need to keep showing up, enjoy all that is happening in the garden, and surrender my vision for His.

The hardest best thing

There was a time in my life when weeks like this one would have slayed me. Riding the roller coaster of therapy is brutal. Author Glennan Doyle writes about life being “freaking brutiful,” an intertwining of brutal and beautiful. That’s about how I would describe wading through the process of therapy. It’s freaking brutiful.

I used to think those in therapy were the ones most broken. Now, with three consecutive years of the stuff securely under my belt (plus all the “bonus” sessions with my kids), I realize how incredibly wrong I was. Therapy may be for the broken, simply because brokenness is synonymous with being human, but I believe it's those who face their brokenness head on, they are the some of the world's strongest. They are the bravest, the ones with the grit and endurance, the ones not just longing for healing, but going after it. They are willing to get down into the thick of the mess and do the hard and dirty work, the work that is brutiful.

They are the ones who are unwilling to stay the way they are.

And that, my friends, is beautiful. 

To those of who have gone before, I commend you. You are the definition of hardcore. To those of you currently in the trenches, solidarity! Stay in it. I'm (pretty) sure the "other side" of all this tough business is worth the work of getting there (if you get there before me, please confirm). And for anyone wondering if perhaps maybe it's time to do some work with a counselor, the answer is almost undoubtedly yes. 

It’s no secret that our family has been forking over a huge portion of our income toward this business of “addressing our crap” (also known more eloquently by most as “going to therapy”). It’s been one of THE hardest best things I personally have ever done, third only to marriage and parenting...which are two of the reason I’m in therapy…but I digress. 

Perhaps you remember back in the fall when I wrote about the struggles we were facing with two of our offspring? And then I boldly (stupidly?) stated we were “just waiting for kid three to show his cards” and then we’d get him enrolled in whatever form of therapy he needed? Why do I open my Big. Fat. Mouth? 

So we are 5 for 5 over here when it comes to therapy needs now...which is a perfect score, if anyone is keeping track (where do I pick up my prize??) When our third kid received his diagnosis, our pediatrician kindly made an attempt at consoling me by highlighting the hereditary nature of the various players in our household (OCD, anxiety, ADHD). 

“They are just like eye color," she told me. "No one is to blame. These things are inherited in the genes, just like tall stature or brown hair.” 

Awesome. 

“Sorry kids,” are the only words of comfort I can offer the offspring. The genes be STRONG in this clan.

Though at times, addressing each of our specific needs has been challenging and overwhelming, I’m so grateful for the massive number of tools “doing our work” together has equipped our family with along the way. In fact, we now have so many tools, we had to trade in our tool belt for a full blown tool shed in which to store all these dang tools we-never-knew-we-needed-but-now-we-can’t-seem-to-live-without. And we are all the better for it. I'm super proud of us. I stand witness to some really amazing change and powerful areas of growth. 

Technically, as the mother and in-house transportation and sit-in supervisor for all the these appointments, I have been the “lucky recipient” of all sorts of extra, “free” kid-sized therapy sessions to supplement my own. Quite honestly, sometimes there are more take-home nuggets when they are presented at a grade school-aged cognitive level. We have a vast supply of amazing resources available to us that are helping our kids conquer their struggles at such young ages. What a gift that they get to obliterate their mental beasts when they are still tiny, before they grow and invade and take over their minds and tell them all sorts of lies, reinforced over decades. It makes me teary just to think that they might not have wrestle with their struggles to the degree their dad and I have. 

The kids' progress is easy for me to see since I'm one step removed as the observer. But my own progress? Though sometimes it's harder to identify, I know I am changing too. So, as this new year launches, it felt like a valuable exercise for me to take a minute and identify just a few of the many things this brutiful process has been teaching me. I also know that vulnerability can work as a powerful adhesive to bind us together. I am not alone in my struggles and so I'm calling them out aloud in case one of you whispers "me too." 

I will start first with the things that therapy has revealed that have been more painful, the things that perhaps, at first blush, I would rather not have known: 

I struggle with extreme rigidity.

I am a very black and white thinker. There is always a right and a wrong. Your side and my side. The blameless and the one at fault. (And for the record, usually he is the problem, not me, of course).

I continue to struggle with a list of OCD tendencies longer than my daughter’s (who has been in intense treatment for her OCD for 5 months and counting).

I have anxiety. Not a heart-racing, panic-attack or scared-of-heights form that we often think of. But more of the crippling thoughts kind where I am perpetually worried I’m not doing enough, saying enough, being enough. My mind often torments me.

Since I seem to be feeling particularly open, I’ll throw this one out there: I have a lot of sexual baggage. Like a lot a lot. To this day, I am still fighting against the sex-negative messaging of my past. This is originally why therapy was initiated. But, as I’m told is common in therapy, one thing led to another and we’ve had to peel back layer after layer after layer after layer to work on adjusting the faulty foundation before we’ve been able to do more focused work in this area. 

I struggle with anger. I identify wholeheartedly as a “Type One - Reformer” (and perfectionist!) on the Enneagram but it always made me frown a little to read that one of my bigger struggles as a “Type One” was anger. I’m not really a yeller, I thought. I don’t really feel like an angry person. Sure, sometimes I certainly lose it with the kids but I don’t rage like some people I hear about. Very recently, I have realized there are other forms of anger, not just the explosive, yelling variety most of us picture. There is also the slow boiler, the one who gradually and quietly comes to a simmer. She doesn’t even realize it has happened until she is so seeped in bitterness and resentment she could swim in it. This is the kind of anger I identify with. 

I keep tally. Of everything. Tit for tat. I’m gung ho about fairness and equality, when the scale isn’t tipping in my favor.

I do much better “coming to realize” my faults on my own than when someone else calls me out on them. When I am critiqued, I’m prone to deflection and blame-shifting.

I work with a distinct ceiling above me. I only take on what I know I am capable of (and typically only the things I know I will also be successful in). My husband has no such ceiling. The sky’s the limit! Rarely does he take on something within his current capabilities. He is ever game to phone a friend and call in for reinforcements when he wants something done and doesn’t know how to do it. This makes doing remodeling projects together impossible (so far). I always have to bow out because his process is so different from mine. But we are working on this! Let’s just take a moment of silence in honor of the fact that WE NOW AT LEAST ARE AWARE THAT THIS IS HAPPENING. This is big, y’all. Stay tuned...we might have a little endeavour coming down the pipes.

This is the just the short list of some pretty tough, hard-to-swallow realities that therapy has brought to my attention. But it most certainly hasn’t all been hard. There’s the beautiful too. 

My time in (all the) therapies has also revealed an entire host of things that I’m incredibly grateful for like that: 

I married a really amazing person. 

I am capable. 

I am resilient. 

People enjoy my company (I really want to delete this one because it feels conceited to say so aloud but after a lifetime of battling insecurities and wondering if I was accepted and desired anywhere, it feels significant to name. Perhaps my next step will be to name it sans disclaimer?)

I can do hard things. 

I can change. 

I am so much stronger than I ever realized.

I freaking don’t give up. 

I can sit in discomfort. And it gets easier the more times I do it. 

I am a good enough mom. 

My kids know I love them.

I deserve pleasure. 

It is OK for me to take breaks.

Self-care is not selfish. It is exactly as it reads - the act of caring for ourselves. I am a mess without it. 

I can have an area that I need to work on and it doesn’t make all of me a failure. (This one is still a challenge but I’m working on it).

Sometimes “doing the work” looks like sitting on the porch in the sunshine, reading a novel. Seriously!

I have a right to everything I feel.

I have a voice. And it matters. 

I think I might be a bit of a feminist - who knew?!

I have HOPE!!!!!

There is power in naming and recording, seeing where one once was, and how far one has come. Especially when things feel slow and arduous, and you can't tell if the needle is inching up the scale. Even when prone to despair, the exercise of making a list like this of “things learned” serves as a reminder of all the movement, no matter how subtle. 

This process, it's freaking brutiful.  

The Slog

Hi oh faithful reader! So much for that nutrition series I promised, eh? What? You have no recollection of said series? Forget I said anything then. For the two of you that might still be waiting for the series to materialize, I must be honest and say that it ain’t happening. At least not right now. I was on a roll for a hot second (three posts – ha!) and then I fell off the wagon. In the most positive of ways one can fall off a wagon, I would argue. Technically, I guess you could say I jumped.

The old me would have powered through my verbal commitment to the internet, made the arrangements, written half-heartedly and pushed myself to the point of resentment (of whom, I’m not entirely sure) to pull off the promised series. But then I would have felt annoyed and unfulfilled because my energies were needed elsewhere, and I found myself experiencing a heavy sense of obligation, even if entirely self-induced.

I teetered on the edge of the wagon for a good long while, fighting the inner voices that screamed that not following through on a writing series that NO ONE HAD ASKED ME TO DO somehow made me a failure. Totally crazy, I realize (spoiler alert: I’m in therapy – but we’ll get there….)

Anyhow, I battled those self-inflicted negative thoughts of failure and eventually stocked up enough grace for myself to don my knee pads and jump off the wagon ON PURPOSE, intentionally trading my laptop and my promised writing series for a bedside table towering high with novels that I have been reading as if my life depended on it.

So that’s where I’ve been. Reading my novels and entertaining my 4-year-old whose preschool began their “summer” break WAY earlier than his mother feels was necessary. But I digress… It still bothers me that I didn’t finish the writing series but I’m sitting with it (which I’m told is all a part of the process). I say all this not to justify my absence but rather to give permission. For some of us, the harder choice is to say no to productivity and yes to this life-giving thing called rest. (You all know who you are).

Back in December, I began a new kind of therapy which I’ve eluded to in some of my recent posts. Graham and I did some significant work together with a couple’s therapist but then determined there were some issues that needed to be addressed individually before we could continue to move forward. There are many, many layers to the struggles I (we) have experienced, but one significant contributor that I bring to the table is my anxiety. I don’t suffer from the panic-attack-fearful-of-flying kind of anxiety, but rather, a form that presents itself as intrusive thoughts that can literally consume me if not held in check. Our couple’s therapist provided me the verbiage that these thoughts “torment” me and I can think of no better way to describe it. So, I’ve been engaging in some pretty hard work the past 7 months to kick decades of anxiety struggles to the curb. Or at least out of the driver’s seat. At this point, I would consider even that a win.

My individual therapist (who specializes in anxiety and trauma) uses a method called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and, to be totally frank, it sucks. Which is one of the reasons establishing times to REST and creating MARGIN in my life has become of utmost importance. There is just no way around it: the process is dang tiring. Part of the reason for this is because it pushes you out of your comfort zone in about every way possible. It is no secret that I like a plan. Give me a verbal prescription of what you want done, exacting in detail, and I will not disappoint. When I began CBT, I came in with a list, an agenda of all that I wanted to accomplish. I was ready to get down to business and “get it done.” I would leave my appointments asking, “What is my homework for this week? What should I be working on? What do I need to be doing to achieve my goals?”

My therapist saw right through this piece of me and seized the perfect opportunity to make me sit in the gray. Some weeks, she INTENTIONALLY didn’t give me homework. She let me carry the sessions all over the place ON PURPOSE. There was so much less structure in our times together than I’d envisioned. I found it super annoying and remedied these feelings of discomfort by labeling her as incompetent. Certainly, she was unskilled, and the problem was her inability to “keep us on task.”

As it turns out, she knew what she was doing. And I hate being wrong.

I don’t have a check-box therapy plan (so frustrating). There isn’t a map showing how she plans to get me from Point A to Point B (infuriating). The process has been very organic in nature (drives me literally bonkers). But now I’m started to see it. She’s pushing me. Testing me. Stretching me. Forcing me to be okay when things aren’t black and white.  

It’s awful.

And at the same time, it’s good.

Because the process has been so ALL OVER THE MAP, I often feel like I have no barometer on which to measure myself to determine if I’ve made any progress. It’s been hard to know if I’m “getting anywhere.”

This past week, we paid our couple’s therapist a visit for the first time in 8 months to “check in.” She's been in our lives for awhile now. She knows where we started, knows what I looked like before I began this most recent journey into therapy. I went into our time together wondering, Had I made any progress with my beasts? The appointment itself didn’t provide this feedback, which I found hugely disappointing. But a follow up session with my individual therapist, who collaborates with our couple’s therapist, provided the affirmation I needed. She shared the following observation that had been passed on to her: “Kelsie appears visibly stronger.”

VISIBLY STRONGER! I can think of no better praise right now.

What do these words do for me? They help me see that all this yucky-feeling unknown I’ve pushed through, all these sessions that have felt all-over-the-place have actually been doing something. I’m not following a check box, step-by-step plan (at least not that my therapist has shared with me) but it is working. My intrusive thoughts have diminished by at least a fraction of a hair. If not twice that! Or more! I now have an answer for all those times where I’ve left a session wondering “Did that really accomplish anything?” Maybe not in that immediate moment. But in the long term? Absolutely.

And my sitting on the couch reading novels instead of “doing something more productive”? This practice has held an important therapeutic role too. I’m learning to chill. I’m learning to let go. I’m learning to NOT function out of anxiety and spend my hours writing the thing for the people who didn’t even ask for it and DON’T EVEN CARE. I’m no longer operating solely under the dictatorship of those intrusive thoughts. Has it been easy? Heck no. Does it seem counterintuitive that my BEST THERAPY right now might actually be to quit doing and simply put my feet up and indulge myself in a novel. Yep. But it’s working! And that gives me such hope.

So, what does reading all this offer you, the reader, beyond just a bird’s eye view into some of the juicy details of my life? (We all love a good juicy detail - send me yours when you have a sec – j/k!) I know that some of you are in a process that isn’t fun. You might be working toward something, working on something, stuck in the middle of something, enduring something. You might be in a place where it is difficult to see the forest for the trees. The process might be feeling hard and ugly. And you might be wondering whether it’s still worth it to continue.

I have a friend who often reminds me it’s the middle that’s the hardest. The middle is the place where you could just as easily fall back from whence you came as exert the hard push needed to make it to the finish. The middle is the point where it’s most tempting to give up on progress and abort the mission.

I know the feeling. I’ve been there countless times. My word for the year is HOPE and I hadn’t had much of it until this past week. But God is meeting me here in the middle and, through the affirmations of others, reminding me He never left my side. 

I pray for the same for you. I pray that wherever it is that you are working or waiting or longing or hurting, that you would see glimmers of hope shining through the trees as you try to get a visual on your own personal forest. That you would see God showing up along the way. Stay strong and stick with your slog through the middle. Don't be afraid to do the work, no matter how much ugly it brings up or how awful it feels. You are in process and there is light at the end of this mess.

Bravery like birds

I hug her one last time, kiss her cheek, and whisper in her ear that she’s brave. In her eyes, old tears dried at the corners, I see fear, and it pains me. I bite my lip, send up yet another silent prayer, and turn my back and walk away. I feel like a mother bird, pushing her young offspring out of the nest, wishing, hoping and praying that she will open her wings and realize she can fly.

They, the ubiquitous “they,” always say that having kids is like watching your heart walk around outside of your body and I had never understood exactly what they meant until recently. In so many ways, she’s my mini-me. We think alike, we view the world the same way, we share similar struggles. I know the feelings of fear and dread that knot in her stomach this morning, all the emotions raging within, her mind that spins with tormenting thoughts, distracting, wholly consuming.

Her goal today is to get in trouble at school. There are many things we say and do in parenting that we never anticipated. Please take that rock out of your nose. Stop licking your brother’s toes. But asking my child to break a rule? This is unchartered territory, not the advice I’m accustomed to reading in the pages of parenting books. Specifically, we’ve instructed her to disregard her classroom rules and get up, walk over to the pencil sharpener and begin sharpening her pencils during a time when her classmates are seated on the floor and listening to a lesson. She is to stand there, toying with the pencil sharpener and creating a ruckus until her teacher calls her back. This is our baby step toward facing her fear of “getting in trouble.”

It’s counterintuitive and baffling, especially for me, a fellow rule-follower to the Nth degree. She and I, we care so much about what other people think. We’ve lived our lives boxed in on all sides by the opinions of others, desiring perfection, wanting to be found satisfactory. Because alas, on most days, we catch ourselves assessing our worth as based upon what we do, what we have, and what other people think of us.

It is these chains that we are trying to break today, in days past, and in the many days to come. We are undertaking what those in the psychotherapy world would term “exposures,” instances where we intentionally face situations that make us feel most anxious. And then, equipped with “coping thoughts” and strategies, we ride the waves of emotion with the goal of coming out okay on the other side, braver, stronger, relieved and very much still alive. These exercises are a part of a new approach we are taking, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a practice that is believed to help individuals overcome anxiety, which is our obvious long-term goal.

All morning, I’ve watched her. I know exactly how she is feeling. It’s written all over her face. I know she will think of nothing else until the triggering deed is complete. I know how it will consume her, how she will think, rethink, overthink and then begin the cycle again. She will obsess over how and when she should approach the pencil sharpener. Should she jump up and run to it right away after her classmates are settled on the carpet? Should she wait until five minutes into the lesson? What if her teacher asks them to bring pencils to the carpet? What if it makes sense to go and sharpen her pencil during that time frame? Will the exposure be void? What if her teacher never asks them to go to the carpet? What if she can’t get the pencil sharpener to work? What if her teacher never calls her back from the sharpener and she stands there sharpening for 15 minutes? What will others think of her?

We rehearse and discuss all morning long. She is plagued. She cannot fathom how this pencil sharpening ordeal will go down without an eternal stamp of embarrassment tattooed across her forehead. She can’t get outside of the situation and see it for what it is. It feels so life-altering.

Experience tells me this is how the morning will go down: she will walk over to the pencil sharpener and her teacher will say a simple “Hey, can you please join us at the carpet?” And then it will be over. All this anxiety over a situation that lasted a grand total of three seconds. No “behavior slip” with her name on it. No trips to the principal’s office. Her permanent record with remain unmarred. Her teacher will still like her. She will not lose any friendships over this. Her friends probably won’t even notice that she was missing at the carpet and they most certainly won’t remember the situation in two minute’s time.

It’s easy being the outsider looking in, but to be the one experiencing it? I’ve been there countless times before and I know it’s the pits. I can hardly stand it, knowing I am pushing my child to do this. Yet I know it is for her best. How often have I obsessed over similar circumstances?

We have been attending an anxiety group “for our daughter” and meanwhile, I catch myself frantically taking notes for me. Everything they present applies to my struggles. They are highlighting all MY behaviors. They are giving voice to the way I view so many situations.

I’m like a schoolgirl on her first day of class, absorbing, inhaling information. I’ve been doing my own therapy too and it’s like all my worlds are colliding in perfect synchrony, pieces coming together and building upon each other. We learn about our inner critics, these voices that tell us we are failures, not good enough, voices that convince us everyone is paying attention and judging. We learn about positive self-talk, our own inner voice that is to replace all the negative ones. We need to create new pathways in our brains. We need to reroute our thoughts onto detours, with the goal of those detours one day becoming the new main thoroughfare. All this is taught at a child’s level, which is apparently just the level I need.

I feel EVERYTHING. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t see it more clearly before. I’m mortified that it took hearing the information presented at a class intended for my child to obtain a full grasp on it. I feel entirely overwhelmed. There is so much work to do. She’s been on this earth for less than a decade and I’ve been here for over three and here we find ourselves, on the same page. I mourn the fact that I didn’t have the tools I needed earlier to combat my anxiety, that for so long I have allowed what other people think of me to govern my life. I feel responsible. It stings knowing my daughter shares my DNA, that she struggles because I struggle. I know genetics are not my fault, but it doesn’t erase how this knowledge pains me.

At the same time, I celebrate our progress. I celebrate the ways God is working in our home and family. The Holy Spirit is moving and empowering and filling our minds and teaching us the way HE views us. More than ever before, we are learning to view ourselves as “fearfully and wonderfully made.” We are countering our negative thoughts about ourselves. We are replacing them with words of worth. We are learning to let go of the opinions of those around us. We are breaking the rules. We are living on the edge a little. Well. The “edge” for us anyways.

And, by the grace of God, we are being pushed from the nest and realizing, Hey. We might just have wings to fly.

This, my friends, is bravery.