“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” In so many ways, this seemed to be 2020’s tagline. I witnessed those thriving more than ever before, and those struggling more than ever to survive. It was a both/and kind of year. And as it drew to a close, I thought back with deep gratitude, realizing that for me, it was a deeply healing year. But it began by emerging from survival mode.
My Mom always told me the story about how, not long after my second birthday, I turned in my pink security blanket and told her I wouldn’t need it anymore because I was grown up now and to prove how much of a big girl I was, I would stop sucking my thumb too. Mom kept the blanket at the ready for when I changed my mind. But as days turned to weeks and then months, and I never again mentioned my blanket and never again sucked my thumb, she reluctantly accepted that her little girl had indeed grown up. This iron resolve of mine, or if I’m being honest in my labelling, my stubbornness, has never flagged. And, as my favorite neurotic detective (Monk) is known to say, “It’s a blessing and a curse.”
During 2018 and 2019, my stubbornness was a blessing and essential. It was two years of white-knuckle resolve for survival. 2018 had also been stressful, but 2019 made 2018 look like a frolic in the meadow. But—and here’s where it’s a curse—my stubbornness that was imperative for those years suddenly became a hindrance in 2020. I couldn’t seem to relax from my constant vigilance and ridiculous amounts of stress.
There were no more late night paranoid phone calls about hallucinatory homeless people trying to break in. No more meetings with lawyers. No more filing endless reports and paperwork in every spare moment. No more driving all over the face of the earth to and from therapy appointments. No more counting the minutes until bedtime. No more steady stream of kid-noise or making silly faces to get easy laughs. No more pretending that the newly conjured knock-knock jokes made sense and were TOTALLY funny. The end of January 2020 (which was the conclusion of 2019) was a jolt, a falling-into-frigid-water shock. I was caregiver to 3 young kids and one young adult, and then suddenly, I wasn’t. The quiet I had yearned for so long now just felt like an empty void. And yet, I couldn’t enjoy the stillness because my body was stuck in stubborn-resolve mode.
So I kept myself busy with home renovations and reconnecting with people I hadn’t seen in a long time. I thought to myself, if only the world would just stop for a minute so that I would be forced to catch my breath. And then exactly that happened. The world ground to a halt and overnight, became a place barely recognizable. That was not what I was hoping for, but it did strip away the distractions, and that helped me to begin healing.
For me, healing usually looks like getting sick, which is exactly what happened. First it was a several month CFS flare up then something else happened. Although there are still no definite answers, the best guess is that I had appendicitis and something else unknown. And much to the shock of my gastroenterologist, after my colonoscopy, my IBS seems to be completely gone. I’ve had it for most of my life and I’ve had no problems for nearly 7 months. I wrote about praying for miracles back in June, and although this was not an option on my radar, I’ll take it! Thank you, Lord. There is still one unsolved painful mystery, but that requires surgery that is deemed “elective” and no hospitals are doing those, so I’ll just wait.
I was able to take time to grieve when and how I needed to. I hiked often and I started learning Spanish. I read a lot. I composed. I wrote. I helped Ethan with tons of renovations/construction. I tended our lovely garden and I was conscripted to work for our church’s streaming/audio/visual team that Ethan spear-headed (because Catholic churches are operating in the dark-ages, technologically speaking). I spent a couple days a month getting my mind off of me and onto others (this is something I’ve found is really important for me to help me stay grounded) by packing and delivering food to needy families in rougher sections of town, and making bi-weekly phone calls to elderly shut-ins. But by far, the most healing and wonderful part of 2020 was spending Thursday’s with God in the perpetual adoration chapel. For my non-Catholic friends, perpetual adoration is where the Host (the literal body of Christ) is placed upon the alter, and as the name implies, people sign up for 1 hour time slots to sit in the literal presence of Christ and adore Him so that prayers are being offered 24 hours of every day. There a several things that I wanted to share with you from some of those times.
At some point during the summer, as we grew closer to opening up our home once more to children, and I sat telling Jesus about my fear of fostering again, Jesus brought to mind Peter. “You’re like him sometimes, you know.”
“Ew, no thanks,” I thought. Of all the disciples, I wanted to be like the beloved John or the practical James, not Peter. Peter was always shooting his mouth off in an ignorant and brash kind of way. He was ridiculously stubborn. Okay, okay, I can see that one. And Peter also took more risks than anyone else, thinking he was ready when he clearly wasn’t.
“Yes,” Jesus reminded me, “but he was the only one willing to step out of the boat into the storm. You can’t always feel ready for that first step onto the water. You just have to trust me that I’ll pick you up as I did Peter, when your strength is used up and you’re sinking.”
I looked over at a picture that hangs to one side of the altar, and realized for the first time, the artist probably had that very moment in mind when he painted Hippie Jesus. I call it Hippie Jesus because he’s got a feathery 70’s Fara Fawcett hairdo. He is smiling compassionately and extending his nailed-scarred hands toward the viewer. It’s the same look that a parent gives their child when they’ve told them it’s a bad idea because they’re not ready, but allows it because said child is stubborn and going to do it anyway, and then when the child inevitably hurts himself, the parent compassionately smiles with a hint of I-told-you-so, but picks the child up anyway and encourages him to try again. “You trusted me last year to hold you up when you were drowning in what seemed like an impossible task. I was there for you then and will be always. Trust me. I have good things for you.” And I saw myself as a scared child reaching out a tentative hand. I felt deeply the Psalm that says, “I will give thanks to your name because of your kindness and your truth. When I called, you answered me; you built up strength within me.”
At another time, as I prayed about all of the hatred that seems to be so pervasive right now, I had to own up to some anger I was holding onto. And then I sat, trying to still myself enough to listen. “It’s hard to hate up close,” Jesus gently reminded me. “Get closer.” And Jesus, as always, was right. So, I went and spent some time with the people that had hurt me (don’t worry, outside and properly distanced), and you know what? It’s true. I’ve never been able to stay mad when I’m looking someone in the eye and they’re sharing their hardships with me. And then it hit me.
The collective behavior I’ve seen during 2020 brings me back to the greatest challenge of foster-parenting. Each moment of my day is spent calming children’s central nervous systems so that they are no longer living in a constant primal state of fight/flight/freeze. It’s hard sometimes too because these fearful kids just seem angry, have control issues and temper tantrums. They live in a perpetual state of victimhood because they feel out of control. And victimhood is the ultimate empathy killer.
But it’s not kids acting that way. In 2020, it’s all of us adults. It’s been shocking to observe the many smart, rational people become these angry, completely unrecognizable and irrational people. It is a natural, physiological response for us to act angry and irrational when we are living in fearful, out-of-control survival mode. The problem is, that state of being makes it completely impossible for us to have empathy for others. And empathy is what we need most right now; that ability to rejoice with those rejoicing, while simultaneously mourning with those who mourn.
These realizations helped me to look at people differently and instead of desiring a verbal sparring match on social media or getting frustrated, it helped me realize I need to pray more for others, and perhaps pass on some of the things I’ve learned as a foster parent, as a reader of holocaust memoirs, and as one who has spent plenty of time in survival mode. So here goes…
- Own your feelings and actions, name your fears, and work to stop being the victim in your own mind. When you are able to verbalize your fears, they lose their power over you, and you don’t have to keep being the victim. Remember: you are responsible for your reactions and choices. No one else.
- Narrow your focus to right here, right now. Not the past, not the future, not others, just you.here.now. I picture all of the times I was so sick and had to focus on one step at a time and that’s it.
- Find something that gives you a sense of control. Whether it’s taking control of your inner thought life (praying or meditating), or an outward physical action (gardening, cleaning, working out, turning off the news or social media), find something that gives you a sense of contribution. It can be tiny. On my worst days, I write a to-do list filled with things I wouldn’t think of not doing, just so I can cross it off and feel productive: wake up, make coffee, etc…
- Find something to be grateful for each day. Most people in survival mode struggle with this because they are always on the lookout for the bad and have trained their brain’s receptive pathways to be alert for the bad, so practicing gratitude is really important to retrain your brain. Being grateful also makes you happier.
- Find a purpose or a way to feel useful or to give back. Again, even tiny things can make a HUGE difference.
- Find something/someone to hope in or for. Every Holocaust survivor has someone or something that they said helped them stay alive, no matter how bad things became. Whether it was their belief in God, the importance of their work, or a loved one.
- Remember that now is not forever and this is not normal. One thing that gave me inestimable comfort and joy was being able to go outside where life was “normal.” The birds still sang, the trees still gave their shade, and the flowers still bloomed. Holocaust survivors also mention how strange and yet comforting it was that the earth continued along its normal seasonal path, despite their feeling that their personal world was ending.
- If you can’t feel empathy for someone, then go through the motions of it. That’s right, fake it ’til you make it. With our foster kids, we taught them to consider how someone else feels, knowing that they’d be parroting this behavior for years before internalizing any of it. And that’s okay because the practice of it is what matters. Feelings are fickle, it’s your mind that you’re training. And with enough time and practice, maybe you’ll be able to actually feel empathy as well.
So as 2020 closed out, and 2021 has begun, I encourage you to keep on keeping on and give a little more grace as you can, because frankly, we’re all just a bunch of scared children desiring some measure of control.
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