Somehow I “drove” through the busy city of Fond du Lac, four-lane highways, numerous stoplights, and miles of dark country road before what Mark was saying registered. He wasn’t angry, but rather he was coming with Joshua and Tamara, my future daughter-in-law, to find me, and he would drive my car the rest of the way. It finally sunk in he was pleading with me to please, pull over!
I had been advised in college by a fellow student, “If you’re going to try and commit suicide, don’t do it in your own hometown. You’ll never live it down if you fail.”
This sounded like sage advice at the time, and I tucked it away, cringing now with how foolish it is in truth. That’s one of the lame reasons I drove an hour down the road before pulling off. As it ended up, my husband found me parked on the side of a road and took me to the emergency room at the very hospital I worked at. The warning from my college days rang in my head when I awakened enough to realize where I was.
My decision to go to sleep and wake up in heaven had not been well thought out. The ER doctor asked me what I thought I was doing. He said, “You’re a nurse. You should know sleeping pills don’t work. Your body throws up what you don’t need. Seriously?”
I shrugged my shoulders in defeat and shook my head in weariness, closing my eyes to shut everyone out. I despaired that not only had I failed to live effectively, but I also couldn’t even die properly, and I was now facing all the backlash from my stupidity.
I was admitted to our local psych ward at a different facility on Sunday afternoon under the state’s chapter 51 statute.
The psychiatrist who met with Mark and me told us, “You gotta figure out what’s up here and what’s going to be different moving forward. This wasn’t a serious attempt to end your life, but something’s gotta change.”
After spending several hours with me, Mark went home to be with our kids. I wasn’t allowed to go home but was encouraged to spend time in the day room and watch the Packers football game that evening with the other patients on the unit. I looked around, and my first thought was I’m not one of you people. I don’t need to be here. Shame immediately engulfed me. Who did I think I was to say they were “you people” and I wasn’t one of them? They were hurting just as I was, maybe for different reasons, but hurting just the same.
The next morning Mark came in early and the doctor showed up at 7:00 to meet with Mark and me.
I told him, “You know, my health is lousy, and my job is incredibly stressful; I have a lot on my plate, but nobody is holding a gun to my head saying I have to do any of this. Something must change, and I don’t know what that will be, but I will not be pressed on all sides and made to feel this desperate and without options again.”
He told both of us that he truly didn’t think it was a chapter 51 case, and so he was dismissing it. Discharge orders were in by 7:30 a.m. I went home to reevaluate and get my life together.
My husband was okay with me quitting my job if that’s what I wanted, but he wisely didn’t force a decision either way. I lay on the floor of my bedroom, facedown, weeping, in as humble a posture as I could manage, and prayed: “God, I cannot believe I have to get up and walk out of this room and go back to work. I cannot hide in my home for the rest of my days and avoid people forever. I have no idea how I am going to do this, but You decided it was not ending this way, so show up for me. I need You to carry me now. I haven’t the strength to do it alone.”
The fallout from my actions spread farther than I had bargained.
Most people shouldn’t have had any clue what happened, but word gets around in a small town, and there was no hiding it. I was the most surprised at the backlash of anger, the complete lack of compassion on the part of some friends, family, and acquaintances. One coworker narrowed her eyes and through clenched teeth said, “You call your bereavement program Hope After Loss Organization. What right do you have to tell anyone about hope after anything?”
But my hope wasn’t in me. Psalm 107 was there for people who had been foolish. They cried out to the Lord in their distress, and He delivered them. He didn’t react to their heartfelt cry for redemption with scorn, saying, “You blew it, you idiot. Fix it yourself.” No, He had compassion and offered forgiveness and restoration.
I can wish I had a spotless record, but I do not.
Instead of wasting time wishing away the past or that it was different or that I was a better person, I have taken to heart some wise advice from Dr. John Piper:
“You believe with all your might in justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone to the glory of God alone. And when you stumble and act inconsistently with that profession of glorious acceptance, you hate it. You get up. You confess your sins and you keep on going, because his righteous is the bottom line, not yours. His righteousness is the bottom line.”1
My hope was in God, but I had no short, pat answer for my coworker, so I shrugged my shoulders and once more threw myself at Jesus’ chest and asked for mercy and grace.
I’m quite aware that there are those who still feel my life is a joke and that I haven’t lived up to what I have “preached” to be true. This is a source of grief that I brought shame to Jesus’ name even though it was my decision, not His, to be a fool.
One valuable lesson learned from the whole experience is that no challenge I have—whether it be a job, a relationship, or my inability to control my health—is worth taking my own life. I can choose not to be defined by the roles I play in my life: a mom, a wife, a friend, an employee. I can choose to be strong should those roles change or be taken away from me. What I do does not define who I am. Nothing should have that kind of power over my heart and mind and soul.
My desire to be a “rock star” and make people happy was an elusive pursuit and a futile one. Living for the approval of others isn’t safe. How many folks need to think I’m good or amazing or worthwhile? There will always be somebody who is unhappy with me.
If life’s about being good enough, I’m utterly overdrawn at the bank.
What a precious gift God gave me to help me fall completely short and not be enough. This concept is spelled out in Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (NIV).
This verse is for everyone. No one is good. No one is enough. We’re all sinners. Trying to keep our lives together and be as good as possible doesn’t work.
How freeing to finally quit trying so hard to be good enough. It’s all because of Jesus that I’m alive and have anything good going on in my life.
The enemy taunted me for years, pointing out my flaws! The subtlety by which he accuses is this: he uses portions of the truth—I am all those things I never wanted to be.
And now when the enemy tosses my miserable and multiple failures in my face, I imagine seeing Jesus walking along the Sea of Galilee. He looks up and sees me. His face breaks into a huge grin, and He beckons me with His whole arm, not just a couple of fingers, to come to Him, to come running. He tosses both arms wide and envelops me in a hug and draws me close to His side. He says, I love you. I died, lady. I died for you. For all your sins. For all your mess. You are not too much for Me. Come, walk with Me here; tell Me about your day. I’m listening, and I am not wishing you were different or better. You are loved with an everlasting love. You. Are. Mine.
And then the accuser, the enemy of my soul, slips away, defeated in the moment, and ultimately will be defeated forever.
Let me be clear, I also feel as though I got a good hard spanking from my heavenly Father. He could have allowed me to die, but He did not. He was not done with me yet, and my life was not going to end at a truck stop. The grace He lavished on me and on my family was crazy amazing. He scared me straight, and it takes my breath away when I contemplate all the ways He protected me when I would not and could not protect myself. God preserved me through terrible hardship in the pursuit of true health and not simply a masked semblance of it. Even with all I continued to endure in the next eighteen months, I was no
t suicidal. It’s not my decision to dictate to Him how and when I’m going to die. He is the Father, and I am the child. He is in charge of that business, and it’s not mine to meddle with.
In the article “Lay Aside the Weight of Perfection,” author Jon Bloom summarizes why I believe God didn’t simply allow struggles in my life but actually caused them. God was not against me and wanting to expose all my faults maliciously; rather, He did it out of love so I would quit striving for something I would never be able to attain.
“God is calling us to the wonderfully refreshing experience of getting our eyes off ourselves and how we’re measuring up, and onto Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). He wants us to stop pursuing or being paralyzed by perfectionism so we are free to pursue love (1 Corinthians 14:1; 1 Timothy 1:5) and pursue trusting him with all our hearts (Proverbs 3:5). And if perfectionism has an inordinate influence on us, God will mercifully design circumstances to defeat our best efforts to fight sin “successfully” until we learn where our freedom really comes from.
In Christ, you are free! You are free to follow Jesus imperfectly. You are free to fight the fight of faith defectively, because that’s the only way you will ever fight for faith in this age.”2
For years Satan had victory over my emotional and mental health because of severe physical illnesses. His goal was to devour me and to leave me faithless. With a sob catching in my throat and a heavy, settled surety of heart, I can now declare, “My God is good.” Period. No catches, no conditions, no quid pro quo. However, I couldn’t declare those truths fully without first experiencing a depth of suffering I couldn’t fathom enduring or surviving.
Establishing His authority over the timing of my death was essential because I couldn’t have endured the coming storm without it.
7
THE DARK BEFORE THE DAWN
When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
For I will be with thee thy troubles to bless
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
—JOHN KEEN, “HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION,
YE SAINTS OF THE LORD”
In July 2011 I had been given a new journal by one of the moms I worked with while a bereavement specialist with HALO. The journal had the “Footprints” poem motif illustrated on the cover, the familiar single set of footprints in the sand. There is only one entry:
Dear God, The psalm that says You brought me up out of a horrible pit and set my feet on a rock…. I cringe at being in the pit. I find myself afraid of what fires You’ve got to take me through to purify my inner woman. I don’t want to be afraid. Perfect love casts out fear. Your love is perfect; mine is not. I want to trust You more than I want to avoid the pain that comes with growth.
Help me.
As the summer unfolded, I had no idea that God was going to answer my heartfelt prayers by plunging me into a horribly terrifying pit.
Over the years, doctors had prescribed a number of different medications to help me deal with the symptoms of my then undiagnosed autoimmune diseases. For years I had been in and out of the hospital seeking a diagnosis for my abdominal pain. My gut feeling—pun intended—is that when doctors don’t know for sure why someone has abdominal pain, the diagnosis is irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Those three little letters are one giant garbage can of festering symptoms: spasms, constipation, diarrhea, excessive gas, indigestion, and vomiting.
In late July 2011, I attended the Rachel’s Vineyard Leadership Conference in Pennsylvania since the arrangements had already been made for me to go and learn more about grief counseling to enhance my work as a bereavement specialist with HALO.
At the conference I asked a dear friend to pray with me and for me. We knelt beside her bed, and I poured out my heart, asking God for direction. Financially, I couldn’t just walk away from my job, but my health was failing and I couldn’t keep up with the demands at both work and home. I was bewildered and begging God for wisdom because I didn’t have a clue how He was going to sort out the tangled threads of my life.
Throughout the conference, all was not well in my abdominal world, but I didn’t understand the severity of what was happening until I returned home. A couple of days later, I was in so much pain at work I notified my boss and went to the ER because I feared I would faint and end up with another concussion related to the syncope.
The ER doctor examined me and said I had a deep anal fissure. (Please forgive me if revealing this is too much information. I do know some of you may be squeamish, but this is the way it happened.) The intense pain was causing my heart to go into syncope. He gave me an injection of lidocaine to mask the pain, and I was released.
My world turned upside down after that. The fissure would not heal. The pain was excruciating, and I couldn’t find relief even with strong narcotics accompanied by meds to control the vomiting. I was in and out of the ER for days afterward. Finally, I was referred to a specialist in Green Bay.
After a barium bowel study, in addition to the fissure, the doctor pointed out the presence of four issues that were much more serious—a sigmoidocele, a rectocele, an enterocoele, and a cystocele. Basically my lower intestinal organs were either dropping, collapsing, and/or bulging in the wrong places.
The specialist told us that while the fissure was the most painful, it was the least of my problems. Everything in my pelvis was sitting in a heap, in part due to having eight pregnancies, hormone changes, IBS, and the hysterectomy in 2008. I was at huge risk of a complete bowel obstruction. I pictured a train wreck with a number of cars piled every which way on top of one another and none of them on the track where they were supposed to be.
Even though the news was bad, a part of me was satisfied that at least I was getting some answers. But what the doctor said next felt like a slap in the face: he declared himself too old to deal with a case this extreme. He wouldn’t take me on as a patient.
At this point I had no idea where to find treatment. Three of my girlfriends did some research and thought the Mayo Clinic might offer a solution. They dropped everything they had going on in order to drive six hours to Rochester. We arrived about midnight, barely making it to the ER, and I spent four hours getting IV medications, which temporarily relieved the excruciating pain. My friends got Charity and me settled in a hotel across the street from the hospital, paying for the room, and then drove all the way home. Because I was in terrible pain night after night, Charity would put me in a wheelchair and roll me to the ER. And night after night I would beg someone, anyone to please fix me.
My body was my enemy, and I had no way to eliminate the pain or escape from it. After seeing a number of doctors and having a radiologist review the barium study from Green Bay, he erroneously determined I had no bowel issues.
On the tenth morning, a surgeon did a minor procedure to help the pain from the fissure and released me from care. Mark and Mary Elisabeth drove to pick up Charity and me to go home. The injected anesthetic carried me through the six-hour drive, but I was home only hours when the pain came back again in waves.
My husband was desperate and called my ob-gyn, Dr. H, who knew me and knew that if I said I was in pain, I was. He advised that we go to the ER at our local hospital and he would make sure I was admitted. Mark brought me there, and I was given a consultation with our local surgeon. He was able to relieve the pressure on the fissure so I could finally begin healing there. He told me he was not skilled enough to surgically fix the collapse of my lower internal organs.
The next referral took me to Milwaukee to no avail because the doctor wouldn’t even examine me, and then to Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. There was no help to be found there for me either.
The despair, frustration, and confusion I felt were downright palpable. How could I be making this stuff up? The Green Bay specialist said my GI problems were so bad he wouldn’t treat me. My local surgeon said my problem was too difficult for him to fix. So how could the doctors at Mayo and at Rush both say my issues
didn’t even exist? How could I be too much trouble to several physicians but other doctors couldn’t even say that I had a problem?
In November, after having spent ten days chasing appointments in Chicago, I was referred to doctors in West Allis, Wisconsin, who weren’t afraid to see me or do surgery for me.
After meeting with these two doctors in West Allis, the GI surgeon examined me and looked at my previous test results. “Oh yeah,” she said, “you’re a mess.” I gave a sigh of relief. At least she knew it wasn’t all in my mind!
By now it was late November, and my surgery could not be scheduled until mid-January. Despite my poor health, I still had long, full, beautiful hair, and one day in December 2011, I leaned against the sink and arranged my hair in six sections. Then I began to cut off the ponytails to give to Locks of Love.
It was a desperate move. I did it in part because I did not have the strength to stand up in the shower, but more than that, it was an utter humbling before God. If having long and beautiful hair was in any way vain, then the cause for my vanity was now gone. Mark walked in while I was on ponytail number three. When he saw what I was doing, his eyes welled up with tears. His chest heaved with sobs as he turned and left the bathroom, visibly helpless to do anything for me or to change the situation for the better. After the ponytails were cut, I weakly took his hair clippers to my head and shaved off the rest of it.
When January 2012 rolled around and it was time for my surgery, my requests for interventions to help me deal with the procedures and pain were ignored or unable to be accomplished. I’m not going to go into medical detail, but suffice it to say, after surgery to remove fourteen inches of my colon and correct some of the other more life-threatening issues, nothing in my lower abdomen was in a natural position anymore,* resulting in permanent damage that cannot be remedied.
I Will Love You Forever Page 11
