Traveling Trauma

Let me tell you about this time I did something right with Boohoo. It stands out because there aren’t that many to choose from it’s usually hard to tell what has upset her and therefore hard to get at the root of the matter. She’s a preschooler so she doesn’t have a huge amount of insight, her trauma was all when she was preverbal, and she rarely can answer a direct question. But as she’s getting older sometimes she just comes out with these “zingers of truth” where she expresses her hurt clearly enough even for this less than bright mama to not miss.

I was taking the kids home for the 4th of July. Andrew was at work already. The kids were stoked about going to see our family. We were all so excited. “All” I had to do was get the last-minute stuff together, get the kids around, pack the van up, and go.

I had cartoons on for the kids. I just needed them to watch the cartoons so I could get everything where it needed to be. Poor Boohoo could not control herself. She was wired, off the wall, in the way, under my feet, poking at her brothers. I could not manage her and get the van loaded. I told her she needed to play in her room while I put the suitcases in the car.

I was specific that she was not in trouble. Mommy was hurrying so we could go on our trip. I needed her to play in her room so I could get it done. I was gentle. I was calm. She went upstairs and was fine. I was proud of all of us for being able to handle what needed to be handled. I lugged all our stuff out to the driveway and loaded it to the point that it was time to put the kids in and finish packing around them. (I’m not the only one that does that, am I?)

I came back inside the house and she was screaming and crying hysterically, “MOMMY IS GOING TO LEAVE WITHOUT ME! MOMMY IS GOING TO LEAVE WITHOUT ME! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!”

It was a knife to the heart. An, “Oh, Jesus” prayer slipped through my lips as I raced up the steps and scooped her up. She calmed down pretty easily, we washed the snot and tears away. Then it was time to talk.

“Boohoo, mommy is NOT going to leave without you.”

She nodded with her sad face on because clearly sometimes mommies do leave without their kids no matter what I tell her.

“Boohoo, mommy is NOT! going to leave without you.”

She nods again.

“I want you to say it.”

She mumbled it.

“Okay, let’s say it louder. Together."

We did. Then again at my insistence louder.

“Now let’s say, ‘Mommy is NEVER going to leave without me".”

We were at a pretty good volume by this point, but I decided that we were going to give this as much noise and emotional energy as the fear stole from her.

“Good. Now let’s say say, ‘Mommy is NEVER EVER going to leave without me.’”

That’s where I got the first wobbly smile out of her because ‘never ever’ is silly and apparently mom had lost her marbles by this point. We “never ever’d” a few times and she was warming up, but I could just tell we weren’t done yet.

“Boohoo, let’s jump and yell. Like this:

Mommy (jump) is (jump) NEVER (jump) EVER (jump) going (jump) to (jump) leave (jump) without (jump) you (jump)!”

So we did. Several times. (It probably speaks to how strange our house is that the boys never came up to see what in the world was happening or maybe Disney Jr was just hot that morning.)

“MOMMY! IS! NEVER! EVER! GOING! TO! LEAVE! WITHOUT! ME!”**

Then we were good. We all went potty, buckled up, and went on a road trip just like every other family…or close enough.

Two months after we got home traveling terrified her. We’ve made progress. Clearly, her fear of abandonment is still going strong, but she verbalized it, (did she ever!) we addressed it, we stomped all over it. (And next time I’m traveling with them by myself we’ll be having a group stomp and shout session before I start packing the car.)

**Because I’m not going to.

Our Someday

I’ve been obsessing mulling things over for awhile now. Hence the lack of posts. I’m sure you all thought we’d climbed on the back of a unicorn and were prancing over a rainbow into the horizon. We tried, but ran into copyright issues even though clearly she didn’t have the foresight to get a unicorn….

As I’m sure you all have marked on your calendars, my birthday is coming up and so a lot of the introspection has revolved around that…me, my life, my world, my reaction and responsibility to my world. Super light stuff.

We had a few heavy attachment issues happen within a week of each other and each one was a sucker punch leaving my stunned and breathless. I’m guessing that if you’ve been sucker-punched three times in a week you should probably just get a hat that says “Sucker” on it because apparently I should be expecting it by now. Two of these incidents I’m not going to talk about en masse. It was enough that my mom witnessed the first, I got a few opinions on the second, and I’m willing to talk about the third.

I’ve blogged before about my resistance to people telling me that “it’s going to be okay” and their uncomfortable response when I’m completely unsupported and unconvinced of that ‘fact’. Lisa blogged beautifully about this and an event similar to what I’m going to share. Unsurprisingly, she’s a lot farther along in her rightness of parenting and rightness of heart than I am. (If you’re not familiar with her blog you should just camp out there today because she’s great and inspiring.) I don’t want us to struggle forever, I don’t want her to hurt that long, I don’t want to keep making boneheaded mistakes for that long and I don’t understand any of it, but I can’t be silent when you make it sound like things might be better by Tuesday, or maybe next Friday at the latest. Some hurts are deeper than that and I don’t want you, or us, to be disappointed at the pace of our healing.

I know right now things are not okay with us, but I believe that someday things will be okay. I know that right now my daughter has hurts that run deep, but I believe that someday she will be healed. I know that right now our relationship is a mess, but I believe that someday we’ll be restored. But when I say “someday” I say it with the knowledge that our someday may not be until Heaven.

Boohoo painted a picture the other day. It was the first time that she painted something other than what she can make out of a circle, which is a flower and a sunshine, or an L. She painted two red people, they were smiley faces with legs. They were so cute. She showed them to me and said that one was me and one was Andrew. I beamed. I was thrilled. It was adorable. I told her so. I felt that flash that I spend my days waiting for, that flash of love, hope, optimism, normalcy. While I was watching her she picked up her paintbrush and drew a giant L in between the figures and said that was her. Great! She looked at me. More smiles from me! She took her paintbrush and completely obliterated the walking smiley face that was me, covered up in red, gone. She looked back up at me and our eyes met again. I smiled, much less brightly. I was crushed. I was hurt.  I said, “Thanks, I always thought I looked good in red,” and kept the heartbreak and despair to myself. Message received, sweetheart. I ached for her. I saw her so clearly for what she is: a hurt, scared child that doesn’t trust any mom, that would rather hurt first than be hurt again, lashing out against a world that is unfair, desperate for help. None of that really eased the disappointment of being the recipient of her rejection once again, or the whiplash from moving from mountaintop to valley inside of 4 seconds.

I believe it’s possible for us to walk out our whole lives wrestling with, shedding tears over, and giving to Jesus our pain, relationship, and hurts. I am trying to learn (and I learn slowly, very very slowly) to be comfortable with the beautiful and terrible discordance of loving well today while putting my Hope in eternity. I’m trying to find the peace in hurting during this life, but know that this life is a flickering candle compared to the life we have coming with Jesus.

(I’m editing this because I don’t want this to be a “woe is me” post and I’m afraid that’s how it came across.) What we have going on IS hard and it is NOT going to be corrected on my time table. My daughter IS hurt. I AM hurt. We do wish healing would come faster. But healing WILL come. We’re not just ACCEPTING that we have to wait until Heaven. We are REJOICING (if sometimes silently and in very small ways and in corners of our hearts and brains that are unfortunately less vocal than the complainy parts, and even when that fails as it sometimes does, we are at least aware that we should be rejoicing because He is always worth our praise) that healing WILL COME in Heaven. It’s good because His plan is being worked, not ours. It’s part of the discordance. Our plan was infinitely easier and more immediately and obviously “successful”, and geared to all our todays. His plan is redemption and eternity.