Instead, I must secure my faith where it cannot be unmoored. In the one who controls the waves and whose peace runs so deep we can find a way to sleep in the storm. My faith belongs there, with him. That’s the secret sauce between panic and peace.
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. . . . So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”30
Faith is choosing the anchor of your focus. It’s about turning your eyes away from the questions that lead to fear, and instead locking eyes with the one who knows the answers.
Like a dive master who soothes a girl’s panic eighty feet under the ocean.
A part of me died that day, next to the Santa Rosa, deep in the Caribbean Ocean. Faced with my frailty and exhausted from fighting wind and waves of a life I hadn’t expected, I had to die to the self-sufficiency and arrogance that had fooled me into thinking I could do all, be all, without consequence. That I could anchor myself to my own boat and not pay the price.
Thank God. He looked me in the eye, and he refused to let me go.
CHAPTER 20
Lay It Down
Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you.
— TIMOTHY KELLER, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering
When I let God fight for me, He always wins.
— BO STERN, Ruthless: Knowing the God Who Fights for You
“I’M THINKING ABOUT TAKING THE KIDS SKIING TOMORROW.” HE announced it. Not a question up for discussion, but a statement of fact.
“What? Without me?” I’m a bit sensitive to rejection. You know, not a fan of being the lone girl not asked to the prom. I might have pouted.
My husband, bless him, scrambled to explain. “I thought you could have a whole day to yourself.”
An entire day? I didn’t expect that but liked the sound of it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a day to myself at home. Even when the littles went to school, I still had one or two big kids loitering on the premises. Apparently twelve noon is a perfectly acceptable time for a twenty-year-old to start his day.
I didn’t want to miss out on a family adventure, but the thought of a quiet day was a slice of goodness too sweet to pass up.
The following morning, Troy loaded kids and ski gear into the car and pulled out of the driveway before 7:00 a.m. Then, like a banker counting his coins, I catalogued the precious hours until their return. At least ten. Maybe twelve if he ran into traffic.
Dear God, bringeth traffic.
It didn’t take long to plot out my time. First, a rare indulgence. In yoga pants and a ball cap, I drove to Lamar’s Donuts to pick up a chocolate-covered, Bavarian-cream-filled long john. Go big or go home, I say. Taking my prize home, I poured a mug of Starbucks Caffe Verona (is there any more worthy roast?), snuggled in front of a dancing fireplace, and cracked the cover of a new book.
For almost two hours I didn’t move. Bliss, I tell you. Some of you believe the Feast of Heaven will involve grand dining-room tables, roasted turkeys and lamb shanks, and side dishes and chandeliers galore. But at my eternal feast, there will be platters of donuts, bottomless cups of dark-roast coffee, and loungers.
In typical form, the day passed too quickly. I read two different books. Took a short nap. Made dinner. Soaked in a bubble bath. A quiet, crisis-free day. Exactly what my overtired, overstressed self needed.
Which is why I wasn’t at all prepared for another panic attack.
It started midafternoon in the master bathroom. While looking in the mirror, I felt something underneath my tongue. A bump, no bigger than the head of a pencil, where all those blasted surgeries had taken place. Something where nothing had been before.
In the span of seconds, an alarm went off in my head.
No, please no. I stared at myself in the mirror. The pain had increased over the past two weeks. But I tried to shake free the worry, knowing pain didn’t always equate to cancer. In fact, a few weeks before, I’d had my two-year PET scan. The results had come back in a few days. Negative. No cancer.
This was big news. To get a NED two years post – oral cancer meant I’d passed the biggest mile marker. Five years was still the magic number, but most recurrences happened within the first two. I had every reason to celebrate. So why the panic?
My heart pounded out of my chest. I could see my hands shaking as I brushed my hair and tried to continue with the day. As if I wasn’t losing my mind.
Get ahold of yourself, Michele.
Against all reason, I was losing my grip on reality. But what about the bump, and the low-level pain that had grown worse over the previous weeks? Maybe there really was something going on. Maybe the cancer had come back.
My heart continued to race. Nausea cramped my insides. I could hear the pounding in my ears, feel the tightness in my throat.
I looked at the clock. A little past three. It would still be a few hours until Troy and the kids came home. I was spiraling fast, didn’t know if I could make it. Like watching myself on a movie screen, I could see it happening but could do nothing to make it stop. I tried praying, but I couldn’t seem to focus my words or thoughts. Instead, I paced from room to room, searching for a big enough diversion to interrupt the panic. Nothing.
I needed Troy. He could talk me off my ledge.
I found my phone and dialed his number. By some miracle, he picked up.
“Hey, babe.”
At the sound of his voice, I burst into tears. The familiarity of him, the safety, released the anxiety and pressure that threatened to split me in two.
“I need you,” I cried. “I don’t know what’s happening. But it feels like that day in Mexico. Under the ocean. I’m afraid.”
My words came out in staccato beats, between breaths and sobs. Did he think I was crazy? Was I?
“I’m sorry, hon — what happened?”
I told him about the bump in my mouth, about the way it broke open and bled and my fear that the cancer had come back.
“I can’t do it again. I just can’t do another surgery.” I continued to cry into the phone, borrowing trouble from the what-ifs of tomorrow. Of course, if I had to do it all over again, I would. We don’t have a choice about these things. But in that moment, on the phone, I exposed my deepest fear: that I’d have to endure the pain and fear and unknowns all over again.
“You’re going to be okay, Michele.” He said it with such confidence, such unwavering belief. I wanted to believe him.
“Tell me again. Please. I need to hear it.” Again he whispered reassurances to me. Not promises that everything would turn out exactly like I wanted it. But assurances that, regardless of what was to come, I would be okay. And he’d be with me. Then he prayed, I prayed, and I turned the fear and unknown back over to God. For the millionth time.
Minutes later, we hung up. For the two hours until he pulled back into the driveway, it was enough.
This wasn’t the last time my anxiety interfered with my living.
It happened once more, only two weeks later. This time I traveled out-of-state for a speaking engagement. At night, after I’d settled in a hotel room eight hundred miles away from home, anxiety ripped me awake and wouldn’t let me alone for almost two hours.
In forty years, I’d never experienced anything like it. Divorce had brought a measure of grief and depression. To be expected. But never a strangling anxiety that kept me from ordinary life. It hit without warning, escalating in minutes and incapacitating for much longer. My body no longer felt my own.
As long as I’m confessing, I’ll make one more shameful admission: I’d typically assumed that those who claimed anxiety and panic attacks fabricated their experiences. It seemed more a shortcut for attention than an authentic event. Can’t control
your thoughts? Get more sleep. Feeling anxious, agitated? Go for a walk or run, maybe take a nap or chat with a counselor. Don’t let a diagnosis become a cop-out for poor coping skills, I thought.
Until I couldn’t “skill” my way through. Me, a type-A, in-control go-getter who rarely met a challenge she couldn’t beat. Except for this. I couldn’t beat it.
My years in the medical field wired me up to take a more holistic approach to physical and mental health. For almost twenty years, I ran or biked a minimum of four or five times a week. I went to Pilates and yoga classes and took long walks in Colorado’s open space. I avoided fast food and processed food and cooked almost all our meals at home with fresh ingredients. From a spiritual standpoint, I read my Bible daily, completed countless studies, participated in a handful of small groups, and attended church every weekend.
Check. Check. Check. I’d done all the critical to-do’s.
I do believe healthy lifestyle habits have a huge impact on mental health and quality of life. Food, exercise, spirituality, positive self-talk, and quality relationships impact our emotional and physical health far more than we realize. In many cases, these lifestyle habits can elevate mood, change perspective, and renew energy.
But I also learned, the hard way, that sometimes trauma grows beyond a long walk’s ability to cure. The losses, crises, transitions, and upheavals extend beyond the arms’ capacity to hold. At times, even when your belief in and love of God run strong and true, your body just can’t take any more of the trauma.
This is what I saw in my littles. Dinner, a good night’s sleep, and consistent Sunday school attendance weren’t going to cure them of their attachment wounds, their loss of a mom and dad. They needed years of therapy, agonizing work in building trust relationships, and maybe medical intervention. Time would tell.
Though I was reluctant to admit it, I started to see that the same could be said of me. After the joint traumas of cancer, struggling adolescents, and addition of three special-needs children, my forty-year-old body began to shut down. Physiologically, I’d pushed myself to the very edge of capacity. A long nap or vacation wasn’t going to solve the problem. In fact, only when I slowed down and stopped moving did the lurking brokenness get my undivided attention.
On vacation with my husband.
During a full day of quiet in my house.
And sleeping alone in a hotel room.
When the cacophony of my life silenced, my body screamed.
“It’s simply been too much, Michele.”
Bev, the counselor and leadership mentor I’d seen off and on for two years, sat across from me with nothing but empathy lighting her features.
“But I have a good life!” I protested. “It’s not like I’m depressed or sad. I love my life!”
“I believe you,” she reassured. “But it’s a full life. You’ve had more than your share of stress over the past two years. And your brain is maxed out.”
Her words made sense, but still I resisted. This seemed one more in a never-ending string of personal failures.
“Everyone has stuff to deal with. I’m not the only one. So why does it seem like everyone else manages it okay and I can’t? What’s wrong with me?”
That, right there, was the question I’d been asking myself for two years. What did I do to cause cancer? Why didn’t the cyst go away? Why were my boys struggling? Why couldn’t I figure out how to help my littles heal?
What’s wrong with me?
“Did you hear what you just said?” she asked, stopping me in my self-talk.
“What?”
“You just said, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ ” She waited, let that sink in. “You expect a lot of yourself.”
I did. But I thought I was supposed to. That’s what a good, hardworking, Jesus-loving girl does. She gets her act together and pushes herself to be the best she can be. Holiness requires high expectations, right?
“Maybe you’re not supposed to manage all this. Maybe, instead, you’re supposed to experience it. Walk through it. Do the best you can.”
There’s a thought. I didn’t know what to say.
“Allowing yourself frailty is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself.” Again she waited, allowed me to absorb her words.
“Before the cancer and children, you already had a full life. A husband, three boys, a career. Plenty of opportunities for crises right there.”
She took a breath, continued.
“Then cancer. Followed closely by three high-needs children. You layered those right on top of your already full life and expected yourself to function just the same.”
True. I’d done that. Because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.
“But you can’t do it all. You can do more than most, I’ll give you that. But even you have your limits.”
Why did that last part sound like a personal flaw? Limits sounded like lackings.
“You need to let some things go. And not feel guilty about it.”
Was she reading my mind?
“And one more thing. You’re not going to like it.”
She caught my eye, made sure I met hers. I braced myself.
“I want you to call your doctor. I think you need a prescription, something for anxiety. Your brain needs help to heal from all this.”
And the final nail in my coffin of self-loathing sank into place.
Within hours of leaving her office, I contacted my primary doctor. But it took weeks for me to relinquish my shame.
I couldn’t deny I’d reached the end of myself. I had no more tricks up my sleeve, no special powers I could pull from my red cape. The stress and exhaustion had taken every last bit of me. A vacation or an afternoon nap wasn’t going to fix what was broken.
I’d been beaten. Utterly and completely. I couldn’t strap on hiking boots and conquer this mountain. Couldn’t Bible study my way into an energy boost. Couldn’t overcome my exhaustion with increased church attendance. I still ran, ate healthy, slept seven or eight hours at night. But like emptying a thimble of water in desert sand, it wasn’t nearly enough to make new life grow.
I kept thinking a better woman wouldn’t have spiraled so easily. Someone who really loves Jesus — whose faith runs authentic and deep — would’ve faced cancer with courage and without fear. A selfless and sacrificial mother would’ve poured herself out on behalf of three hurting children, day after day, without wanting to run away.
And a strong woman, a worthy one, wouldn’t need a pill to cope with ordinary life.
At least, this is what I kept telling myself. The reason I kept berating myself. Until God delivered absolution in an unexpected place.
In the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles sits the story of King Jehoshaphat. I usually skip over any biblical accounts with names I can’t pronounce. But this one hid a jewel.
“Some people came and told Jehoshaphat, ‘A vast army is coming against you from Edom. . . .’ Alarmed, Jehoshaphat resolved to inquire of the LORD, and he proclaimed a fast for all Judah.”31
That caught my attention for two reasons. First, the words “vast army.” I knew a thing or two about circumstances of cosmic proportions. “Alarmed” about sums it up. And second, he prayed. “Jehoshaphat resolved to inquire of the LORD,” before digging into his stash of chocolate, getting a pedicure, or going back to bed. A man who faced a vast army and fell to his knees deserved my attention.
His prayer, recorded in the verses that follow, is exquisite. I love his boldness and honesty. The way he acknowledges God’s authority while simultaneously recounting the unfortunate details of his predicament. But what I love most is the humility that ends his petition: “For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.”32
In two sentences, the King of Judah looks outside himself for help. He takes the crown off his own head and puts it squarely on the only one who deserves to wear it.
It’s beautiful. One of the most powerful p
ictures in the Bible, in my humble opinion.
On cue, a prophet comes forward to deliver a message, God’s response to Jehoshaphat’s prayer.
“Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s.”33
These verses became my rescue, far more than the medication or counsel. You see, I’d been fighting a battle that wasn’t mine to fight. Alarmed by my vast army, I raised my shield and wielded my sword, assuming all responsibility for victory. I tried to be warrior, mother, manager, scheduler, and deity. It’s no surprise I came undone.
I’ve long held unrealistic expectations for myself, inhuman standards, and then judged myself according to how I met — or didn’t meet — them. Performance is a load far too heavy to carry, I know that now. A load I was never meant to bear.
Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”34
It was as if he said the words for me, as if Matthew penned them two thousand years ago so one day, the road-weary twenty-first-century Michele who spent a lifetime trying to meet impossible expectations would finally realize she carried an unnecessary burden.
Time to lay it down. Like Jehoshaphat with his face and crown to the ground, I relinquished the battle. It wasn’t mine to fight; all along, it’d been his.
Would the cancer come back? Only he knew. But he’d be with me.
Would my boys grow up to be responsible men of integrity? Time would tell. But even now, God was on it. I didn’t need to worry; I needed only to let go.
Would my littles, the children I never expected but now couldn’t imagine my life without, find healing? Would they learn to trust me and overcome the trauma that had marked their past? And would they remain with our family forever?
Undone Page 17
