I have the worst concentration lately. It feels like my ADHD brain is working in overdrive. Between this past Monday and tomorrow I will have had nine appointments and a number of little errand stops before and after those appointments and this is how it has been for the last three weeks, non-stop save for Saturday and Sundays. Today was so nice, I got a text from todays appointment to let me know that they were understaffed, they asked if I wanted to keep the appointment as a telehealth and I asked if we could just cancel it and resume our normal schedule next week. I was so excited to get to do laundry! This afternoon I got a call from my husband to tell me that his work was looking for me about an application I had filed months ago for a part time weekend clerk position, they sent me an email so now I have an appointment tomorrow which makes nine this week.
One of my appointments this week was a mentor appointment. We are utilizing the services of an organization in our city that does a bit of everything for mental health. My son gets a mentor to teach him life skills and help him with daily activities and school and I get a parent support mentor. This is a new program for the organization. I met with my mentor this week and it was so nice to have adult conversation. We did six laps on the walking path around the nursing home next to my house and just talked. I don't think I have gone walking with anyone since Christmas mall walking with my ex-coworker three years ago and he is so much younger than me and a man. This mentor is a woman just a few months older than me and her son is also Autistic so she totally understands me when I complain about Gideons complaints. The more I talk about my struggles, the more I notice people responding, not all good responses but the ones that are, really are. People who have similar struggles with themselves or a loved one but are too afraid to talk about it. The fear is the stigma, the labels, the assumptions that other people make about us and our families. It is such an amazing blessing that we live in a day and age where mentor programs like this are available to help both parents and children navigate mental health challenges.
Something I learned, long ago, when my husband got sick with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is that a decision is between 2 choices and both choices come at different prices, we don't decide between a right and wrong choice, we decide which price we are willing to pay. The right decision may be the one with the higher price tag but we choose it because it's the right way to go in the situation. Sometimes the price is just too high so we chose the lower cost and often make the wrong decision. Sometimes the right decision is right because the cost is low. So many variables. I have made choices in my life that were the right choices but the cost was so high that I was left broken of heart and soul. If the prices were dollars and cents we would simply take out a credit card but these costs are not so easy as money, not so tangible. The price is a part of your being, your inner self, what makes you, you, a piece of your spirit. The choice often falls to the worth of the other person in your inner most soul. What is your husband worth to you, what is your child worth to you, your wife, your boy/girl friend, sibling, parent, etc?
More often than not, the price of doing the right thing by your loved one who is struggling cuts you deep, affects you in a way you never dreamed possible and it always, always hurts. That piece that gets cut out of you, aches. Sometimes it does grow back but never in the same shape that was cut. Nothing stays the same, burned bridges can be rebuilt but the integrity changes.
In the last 16 years I have been cut in almost every way a person can be cut. My body bears both physical and hidden scars from all the pieces taken from my spirit over the years, all the decisions, all the consequences, all the prices of those decisions. I hurt all the time and until these past few months, there has been no antiseptic, no sweet balm to ease the pain.
Gods people should not have to endure these things alone!
I hope someone learns from my story. There is absolutely no reason why I should have struggled as badly as I have these past 16 years, none. For a very long time I took the blame for my husbands PTSD, I took the blame for my childrens oddities, for their "episodes" I had myself convinced that I was a terrible wife, a horrible mother, a failure, that God was punishing me for being so bad at my job of being a good wife and mother. I believed this so much that in the last 16 years I grew so depressed that I not only attempted suicide at least a dozen times but also had an episode that was very stroke like. I masked, I put on a smile in front of everyone, I did the things, went the places, put my kids in the "right" places, activities, I did everything that was expected of a good Christian wife and mother regardless of the stabbing pain in my soul. The pain was conviction, I was lying through my teeth and eventually I couldn't keep it up, my body grew weary. This is not the weary that comes from well-doing, its the weary of trying to be everything for everyone but neglecting your own spiritual and mental well being. So, I took the advice of others and read my Bible more, I studied more, I participated more, I prayed more and you know what happened.....I was miserable. On top of being miserable I felt guilty for being miserable, like I was failing God and the guilt depressed me.
One day I was sitting at my desk, I had read my Bible perhaps for the first time in months, I was just so depressed and I came to this sad but freeing conclusion.....
.........NO ONE CARES......
No one cares if I pray, no one cares how much I read my Bible, no one cares how much I am in church or not, no one cares about my husband, no one cares about my kids, no one cares about our daily lives, the people I thought cared about me, about us....Don't... Then a another new thought, do I care about them and if so, what is the extent? I sat down with a pen and paper and listed everyone I actually cared about, everyone I check on, every one I write a note to, pray for, think about daily and you know what happened, it was a very short list. If my list is that short then so are the lists of other people and thats OK, I had to reconcile in my mind that its OK. In fact, its better than OK because if the lists of others is also short than they are concentrating on their own families, their own sphere of influence. Its a good thing. Sort of, we have to be careful that we don't become so self centered that we care not at all for the feelings and lives of others. Beware of extremes.
...MIND....BLOWN....
So, I stopped for a few months. I stopped caring so much, I limited my field of care to those in my house. I stopped caring about all the "Karens" all the "Chads" the government, whats happening in the world, the people in the church, the people at work, the residents at work were residents at work, not family, I needed to stop caring about them because loving them was hurting me, the school, the neighborhood, what people thought about my family, how they treated us, I just quit. Talk about FREEDOM!
Bob Newheart said it best, "STOP IT!"
Only after I quit things started falling into place. I stopped actively trying to make things better, rather I let events unfold in their natural way. My husband saw the damage his PTSD did to us over the years, I stopped hiding it from him. My oldest son saw that he has anger issues over those PTSD years, I stopped talking him down from his anger moments. My middle son, he needed help, I stopped trying to give it to himself and I asked for help from people who could actually help, I stopped leaning on church, stopped using church as a crutch and I am not ashamed that I went to the world for help, I was drowning and the secular world threw me a lifeline, I took it. There is an old joke about a man in a flash flood sitting on his roof praying to the Lord for help and the Lord sent him a helicopter, a boat and a another means, I forget what it was and as he is drowning he asked God, "why didnt you help me!" God replied, "I tried but you never accepted" I realized, I was the man in that joke.
Another lesson I learned is that I have to stop being what I think other people want me to be and I have to be myself. I love 80s music, I like secular books but I still hate cuss words and sex in books, I like movies with a good romance scene because PTSD has made the romance disappear from my life and those scenes keep me from turning to stone, I despise gossip, I have tried other versions of the Bible and I still think KJV is the best translation but I dont care what you read. I dont care who you sleep with, I just dont want to hear about it. I like tattoos, I want one, a phoenix because I die daily and rise from the ashes. I hate it when people talk to me but I let them because some people don't feel good about themselves until they cut a smaller person down, I make them feel strong by being weak and frankly, I dont care if people yell at me, I am so used to being talked down to, my husband has PTSD, humiliation is a friend of mine. I will cry but that just a bodily reaction. Most women cry when they are being yelled at. Believe it or not, I get lectured and "corrected" A LOT, in one ear and out the other now-a-days. I just dont care anymore. Here is a fun one-All of my kids know "Jennys number...867-5309"
My kids are not saved, they are not pretending to be either. They are not perfect little church kids and the reason for that is because, thats how I was raised and it is stifling. I was raised IFB in the strictest sense and thats not the life I want for my kids. I want a relationship with them and when they do come to Christ, everyone will know because they will see the changes. My kids see me read my Bible, they see me pray, they see how I dress, they see how calm I am in a pinch, they watch me and I pray for them. I will not force religion on them though, I want them to want Christ for themselves and I want them to have Christ the way I do, I want them to know liberty, to know what freedom is, to live a life unbound by liberalism.
It is OK to ask for help. It is OK to seek someone outside of your church for help. It is OK to take care of yourself. It is OK to let go of other peoples expectations...
It is OK to Learn as you Go
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