Thoughts on Forgiveness in the Journey

St Jacobs (Ontario) Millrace trail

Being the proud recipent of a "deranged mind", my thoughts can go anywhere and everywhere.  Sometimes going off on different tangets in completely opposite directions at the same time.  From TV shows and personality traits to ... well ... the issue I'm struggling with (again) today:  forgiveness.

Forgiveness keeps cropping up in my journey.  I can't seem to escape it - no matter how hard I try.  Every particle of my being screams for justice.  I want justice.  Like a two-year old pounding his fists on the table or feet on the floor repeating the same phrase over and over in a loud voice.  A voice that will not be denied.  I WANT JUSTICE.

BUT....

There's always a but, isn't there?  Besides the one we sit on, I mean.

As a faith-based woman, the teachings in the Bible are my rulebook.  They're simple; just not easy.

The concept of forgiveness is simple.  Forgive those who have hurt you.  Those who have despitefuly used you.

BUT ... it's not easy.

Forgiveness goes against everything we believe in.

Again, we want justice.  Sometimes we want revenge.  We want the person punished for the hurt they have given us.

Whether it was spreading gossip leading to slander leading to defamation of character or something else, we want the person confronted with their wrongdoing.

Over and over in my mind, the scenario inflicted on me plays out.  The scenario that caused two back-to-back stress breakdowns with subsequent psychiatric injury.  Workplace abuse.  Verbal abuse.  You name it, it probably happened.  Although I was told that this was all in  my imagination and that it never happened.  I was accused of having perceptions and assumptions.  Eventually, I was forced to resign.

Every step forward seems to entail two - or more - backwards.  Little ones forward.  Gigantic ones backward.  Or so it seems.

The current step forward - learning about and how to use Social Media effectively through an on-line course is a case in point.  Exploring what I'm learning, I find people from different parts of my journey on the net.  Accidentally.  And that brings everything back to the forefront of my mind once again.  It feels as though it just happened yesterday although several years have passed.  It feels like it will never go away.  That I will never be able to leave the past behind and go forward into the future - a future that does not contain any of the people involved.

This is where forgiveness comes in.  The only way I can ever hope to leave the past behind is to leave it on the altar of forgiveness.  To forgive each and every person involved for their part in what happened:  bully and bystander alike.

Sometimes it feels like a grocery list of people to forgive should be tacked up on my refrigerator.  Sometimes when I'm praying, I feel like I'm merely reciting a list.

 Sometimes it feels like an impossible task.  Sometimes it feels like an unfair task.  Why should I forgive these people?  They're the wrong doers!  Which is exactly why they need to be forgiven.  Because they did wrong.  We don't need to forgive the one who blesses us.  Who supports us and holds us up.  They don't need my forgiveness.  Gratitude, definitely.  It's the ones who hurt me who need to be forgiven by me.  Not because they deserve it.  They don't.   They need it because I need to let go of what happened, to let go of any control over the situation.  Not to see them free.  But to set me free.

For my well-being.  For my sanity. For my eventual recovery.

I like the way Belleruth Naparstek in her book Invisible Heroes:  Survivors of Trauma and How they Heal describes the benefits of forgiveness.  Coming from a purely practical, psychological framework, she writes:  "The point for the survivor is to forgive in order to free up the energy that has been bound up in anger and resentment, and has therefore been inaccessible.  The goal of forgiveness is to gain a fuller, more vibrant life.  It is a form of kindness to the self" (page 263).

She writes concisely in one and a half pages what has taken me years to internalize in my process.

Once again, I surrender my right for justice.  My (perceived) rights for revenge.  I surrender them to the One who has walked with me through every step, every incident, every gut-wrenching step of the way.

The One who knows me intimately - and loves me anyway.

Forgiveness is usually not a one-time deal.  Often, it is a process with the accompanying forward and backward movements inherent in the journey.

But I am convinced that one day it will come.

Until then, I continue to choose to follow the path of forgiveness.

The path of most resistance.

For my sake.

Same day - same path
Further along

Lean into the pain...

Many years ago, at a writers' conference, the keynote speaker told us to "lean into the pain" as we went through life.  Especially through life as writers where to know pain is to write about it.  Life is painful.  By it's very definition.  No one gets out of it ... well ... alive.

In this address, the speaker's example was about a phone call she'd had with her teen age son.  Something nasty had happened at school which had hurt him badly.  These four words, "lean into the pain", were her advice to him.

Boardwalk at Murrell's Inlet, SC - my path in life one day this January

Frankly, it puzzled me.  What did she mean by "lean into the pain"?  Why would this be helpful?  After all, our culture is all about alleviating  not feeling, pain.  We're bombarded with advertisements for this pain killer and that.  For this condition or that.  It would seem that our entire focus is on ways to avoid pain, or even potential pain at all costs.

But pain, although painful, is not all bad.  Pain gives you limitations which need to be heeded i.e. don't walk on a leg when it's broken.  Don't ignore the pain from a burn or wound, but rather treat it - appropriately.  Keep your bare skin away from open flames lest you get burned.  Pain makes you aware that something is wrong.  Pain needs to be heeded in order to be healed properly.

I forgot about that keynote speaker for almost two decades.  If you ask me now, I can't tell you who she was or what she spoke on, but I do remember those four words:  lean into the pain.

In 2011 after several years of remarkable recovery and progress through all the past debris that coated my life, things went downhill big time.  Fast.  I had two stress breakdowns back to back.  I lost my job.

A couple of weeks later - my path beside the Grand River in Kitchener, ON

based on a petition submitted to management and HR by my (now former) co-workers while on a protracted leave due to the damage caused by the stress breakdowns.  Accused of many things.  Unsubstantiated allegations.  No one, not even the union, defended me.  Like the log being thrust by the heavy current down the river to places unknown and unwanted in the picture above, I was caught, trapped, in a free-flowing situation which I could not control.  By currents too powerful to escape from.  Unable to protect myself against allegations and reprisals.  Defenseless.

Several months passed in which I worked on healing.  Continually assaulted by emotions, thoughts.  Battered.  Bruised emotionally.  The situation although now in the, not so distant, past was continually with me.  Haunting me.  Tormenting my mind.  Even in sleep it was always there.  Nightmares.  First thing on my mind when I woke up in the morning.  Always in front of me.  I could not escape it, no matter how hard I tried.  No matter what techniques I used.  No matter how many times I went to counselling sessions.  Always in the forefront of my mind.

One day during our regular appointment, I asked my counsellor why these thoughts and images wouldn't go away.  Wouldn't be silenced.  Why, even months later, they were still with me all the time.  Awake or asleep.

Her answer?  You have to face the horror of what you went through before you can put it to rest.

I realized at that moment that there is a difference between a nightmare and horror.  A nightmare you wake up from.  Horror you don't.  You have to work through it.  Slowly.  Painstakingly.

You have to lean into the pain.  Experience it fully.  Face it.  Stare it in the eye.  And don't be the first to back down.

The same path as above - less than two weeks later
Completely different

Then, and only then, can healing begin to take place.

Words/Labels

I've learned a lot of new words as I've walked through this period of my life.  My favorite being the euphemism "in transition".  In plain language:  unemployed.  But hey! it sounds positive, so let's go for it!

No purpose for this picture - except to brighten your reading pleasure

And while we're at it:  I was not fired, I was terminated - or dismissed.  Two euphemisms for the price of one.

Words to make something unpalatable look, sound or feel better.

While we're at it, there are other terms, not euphemisms, which I've recently learned which describe my situation:  stress breakdown, psychiatric injury, hypervigilence, reactive depression, complex PTSD - to name a few.

Then there's the terms the original specialist (another euphemism - this one for psychiatrist) used to diagnose my condition during the crisis phase from the stressful situation:  bi-polar disorder and mixed personality disorder.

Words.  Labels.  In our world, in our minds, we need to put things into neat, little boxes and label them.  We want the world to make sense.  We want everything to fall into order.

In short we want to make things that we cannot understand, understandable.

We want to make sense out of the senseless.  Put order into the disordered.

As I walk through this journey of recovery, I keep trying to make sense of the non-sensical.  I want the why questions to be answered.  But there are no answers.  None that can take away the pain anyway.

If I'm to be labelled by those involved in the former stressful situation, by the medical community, by those who faithfully walk with and beside me and, ultimately, by myself, I would pick the terms stress breakdown, psychiatric injury and reactive depression to describe what happened to me as a result of the severely stressful situation, where I'm at now and what I'm recovering from.  What I'm dealing with on a daily basis.  These terms are for conditions which are not mental illnesses.  Rather, they are cause and effect situations.  Cause (severely stressful situation) = Effect (stress breakdown, psychiatric injury, et al).  Simple.  And they don't have the negative connotations of bi-polar, etc.  Ironically, I never had the symptoms of bi-polar.

Yet these conditions are not always that easy to recognize.  Especially when one is in an overtaxed, overused and understaffed medical system.  Where it takes months to see a specialist and then the specialist is so overburdened and overworked that he spends as little time with the patient as it takes to "diagnose" the problem and prescribe medication.

So it all boils down to words.  Semantics.  Sometimes euphemisms.  Assumptions.  Perceptions.  Based on who we are, how we think.

This is an interesting blog for me because as I write it, my mind wanders all over the map.  Never staying at one place or one topic for long.  In short, it mirrors the path I've been walking through since early 2011.  All over the map.   Never in one place, at once thought, for long.  Always changing.  As research uncovers something else.  As therapy progresses.  As life events unfold and intrude - sometimes like a bomb exploding and causing re-injury to the fragile soul.  Always changing.

An "all-over-the-map-journey".  Kind of like a round the world trip - except you don't get to board a plane or boat and go to exotic locales.

The On-going Journey Towards Recovery

After coping with and learning from a bad experience which lasted over four years, I finally hit the brick wall.  I could no longer go on.  I realized the futility of even trying.  I had a stress breakdown.  I suffered psychiatric injury.  Now, a year or so later, I cope daily with the physical affects of latent stress on a daily basis.

My on-going journey comes with no easy, 1-2-3 instructions for healing.  It's a progressive, in-my-face, daily journey.

As far as depression goes, there are two theories for healing.  One is to do absolutely nothing.  Lie in bed all day if you want to.  Play solitaire in your room if you want to.   Etc.  The other theory is to try to keep to life as normal as possible.  Wake up at the usual time.  Perform the usual tasks.  Do the usual activities.

I always ascribed to the second theory.  Until I hit the brick wall this past fall - about six months or more after the original stress breakdown.

At the time, I was cognizant that I'd had a breakdown of sorts.

Stress breakdowns, psychiatric injury, reactive depression, complex PTSD do not come with manuals.  There are no simple instructions to follow.  No magic wands to wave.  No pills to make it all better.   To make it go away.

Does this mean there is no hope for the victim?  Recovery not possible?

No!

It simply means that each victim's path is unique to that individual.  Only with strong support can the individual even hope to make it through.

With a nightmare, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Waking up.  With a horror story, there is no tunnel.  No light at the end of it.  It's more like a quagmire in which the victim is sinking deeper and deeper.  Past the ankles.  Making walking hard.  The quagmire appears endless.  Totally engulfing.  Hope is in short supply.

I remember a moment in an Olympic games many years ago which has stood out in my memory.  An athlete had sustained an injury but was determined to run again.  He started off with the others.  All eyes on him.  Running.  Would he make it?  Would he complete the race?  At first, it seemed like he would.  Then he fell.  He picked himself up.  Tried again.  Fell again.  Picked himself up.  Could no longer run.  Tried walking.  Determined to cross the finish line.  His face showed both his struggle and his determination.  His father and his coach witnessed this man, picking himself up.  Saw his determination.  First one, then the other, left the sidelines and approached the runner.  The father on one side.  The coach on the other. Their arms around the athlete, the three completed the race and crossed the finish line.  Not the way he wanted to.  Not on a sprint, arms waving in the arm, huge smile on his face to cheers of adulation.  Yet, he attained a greater victory.  By not giving up.  By continuing on in the face of great adversity.

From here my (deranged) mind flits to a more recent memory of a man I've never met nor talked to.  Whose name I don't know.  Yet as he ran past me on a beach a few years ago, he created an indelible imprint in my mind.  A jogger.  There are many of those on the beach.  What caused this one jogger to impact me so much?  The answer.  He was running with a prosthesis.  To me, he has become a visual image for me to keep on.  To face the challenges.  To continue on the race.  It can be done.


This is you and me, my fellow journeyer, on the path of recovery.  We can do this.

Pushing the Envelope

"Pastor" Karl

Recently, in this blog, I've been exploring the reality of the extent of the damage/injury I sustained during the severely stressful situation in 2011.  Of the on-going challenges I cope with on a daily basis.  How there are no instructions to follow to navigate through the physical morass I find myself saddled with.  How I wish there was an emotional GPS to guide me through this.  At the next intersection, turn right.  Etc.  But then would I learn anything?  Or would the GPS to emotional health become a crutch?  An enabler?

And so, this week, I was faced with a challenge.  One I could accept.  Or deny.  The choice was mine.  What decision was I going to make?  Was I up to this challenge?

The challenge?  Driving to Niagara Falls, NY to see a good friend (and encourager during this rough time) whom I hadn't seen in approximately 25 years.  Someone who knows me well.  Someone who's seen me when I was angry, unloveable, and was still willing to come alongside me.

The problem?  Niagara Falls, while a good deal closer than northern California, where Pastor Karl and his wife now live, was still a far drive from the "Golden Triangle" where I live.  About 1 1/2 to 2 hours using expressways.  More using back roads.  Expressways are still beyond me.  

To complicate matters, Pastor Karl was only going to be in the area for three days.  Three weekdays - which meant that Papa Bear could not accompany me - unless he took time off work.

I enquired of several encouragers who have gone the extra mile in the past.  None were able to come with me this time.

Social isolation is part and parcel of the road I travel.  My outside network is limited.  Especially when asking someone to give up an entire day.

In my present state of constantly fluctuating disabilities/altered abilities, I figured that I could probably make it there on my own.  But could I make it back?  What if I started out and then was unable to make it home?  What if I got too tired to drive home?  Too foggy in the mind?  Not alert enough?  What if?  What if?

What should I do.  Should I try?  Or should I stay home in my safe den?  

I had decided no.  I would pass.  Stay in the safety zone.  Not push the envelope.  And then Pastor Karl arrived in Buffalo and called me.  Something in me said "make one more effort to try to find someone."  Just one more effort.  If you don't, you may well be passing up a once in a lifetime chance to see Pastor Karl in the flesh up close and personal.  The opportunity may never happen again.

Who could I ask?  I put my thinking cap on.  (Helps to have a thinking cap!)  Running mentally through my limited inventory of friends and (mostly) family, my sister-in-love's name popped out.  Another encourager at times during this journey.  She wasn't able to come BUT she offered the assistance of her daughter who has her learner's permit.  In Canada we have the graduated licensing system, which means in practical terms for this trip that "A" could not drive on limited access highways.  However, since I'm not up to driving those roads - yet - and would have had to drive the back way anyway,  I jumped at the offer.

During the last hour while working on this blog, I have become very tired.  Too tired to continue writing.  To continue thinking.  Mentally still buoyed up by yesterday's trip.  Physically, needing to crash.  Therefore, I will finish today's blog, not with words, but with pictures.

Thank you for accompanying me on my journey through recovery.

Instructions Not Included

Ever tried to assemble something?  Looking at 52 pages of small print instructions - in the dark of night with only a flashlight for illumination?  A flashlight with weak batteries.  Add a strong wind which blows the sheets of paper about like leaves in the fall.  The letters swim about on the paper changing shape and form.  For all the good, they're doing, they could be written in another script entirely.

A nightmare?  Your worst nightmare?

You ask yourself:  Is this a dream or is it real?  Am I going to wake up from this?

In my experience with trauma, especially the latest trauma in 2011, I learned the difference between a nightmare and a horror story.  A nightmare you wake up from.  Horror you don't.

Most importantly, I learned that recovery from severe stress, etc. does not come with any instructions.  No doctor, no counsellor can give you exact directions to follow to get well.  There are too many variables in the equation.  In fact, in my journey, I've been the one researching, problem-solving, describing symptoms to my health care team.  It's been a trial and error process.

I've been blessed that my counsellor not only is well-versed in trauma but has experienced it in her own life, thus enabling her to walk beside me step by painful step.  It was my counsellor who first described my experience as "horror" and suggested that until I faced the horror, it would not magically go away.  It was my counsellor who told me a piece of her journey through trauma and how she learned that after the acute phase settles, the physical body starts to act up some six to 12 months after the trauma.  It was my counsellor who give me a huge piece of wisdom:  when the victim is experiencing both emotional and physical symptoms, taking care of the physical symptoms comes first.

Even then she couldn't tell me what to do.  She could only support me as I stumbled and bumbled my way through the morass.  She could - and did - provide a safe place for me to tell my story - over and over again from this viewpoint and from that viewpoint - ad nauseum and to work through all the complications of recovery from severe stress and trauma.

My doctor, likewise, has provided a support system through regularly following up with me re: medications, emotions, etc.

Both have provided a lifeline.

Both have allowed me to direct my own journey towards healing.

Both have affirmed me as a human being in this journey.

Both have helped restore my sense of self worth, that there really is some value left in this old bear, by repeatedly affirming the conclusions I am drawing and the way I'm directing my healing journey.

Recovery doesn't come with easy instructions.

But it is possible.

I'll be exploring this issue of recovery minus instructions in later posts.  Until then, keep reading and keep healing.

Life is what happens ...

...when we have others plans.

As I originally thought about the idea for this post, I was thinking of all the times I've been  heading in one direction.  Only to have life intervene in a way where I'm forced into another, totally unexpected direction.  Being asked to resign from a position as a children's home in the 1970s was one such example.  Because of that I ended up finding a really good church in my home community, went to Bible school and, eventually, became a missionary/teacher in Texas.  That eventually led to a path which took me first to language school in south Texas and then to a mission on the Texas/US border where I was a missionary/teacher for two years.  Which led to another incident when life intervened with my plans.  During my second year, a lone Canadian male came down for the winter who said he'd had a dream in which I became his wife.  We were married that summer. Resulting in 2.5 children who might never have been born if I hadn't initially been asked to resign from that job in the children's home.

Life is indeed what happens when you have other plans.

Life has been intervening big time in my story for more than a year now.  It's caused a lot of pain, frustration, yet also growth and learning.

I cope daily with the latent affects of severe stress:  itching which at times is so bad that I can't bear to have anything touch my body.  Sometimes I'm close to screaming with the discomfort.  So uncomfortable that words won't come.  Fatigue.  So bad that I lie in bed unable to move, to read, to do anything other than prayer.  But at least I can pray.  Weakness.  My body feels like rubber.  One weekend last fast when this fast starting taking over my life, the sun was shining outside my window.  A gorgeous fall day.  There wouldn't be many others like it.  I wanted to go outside.  Enjoy the sunshine.  But too weak to sit up, I had to content myself with lying on my bed letting the sun stream in through the window.  Other affects come and go:  balance issues, inertia, inability to enjoy things I used to.  Impaired cognitive skills.  There have been times when the balance has been so off kilter that I've had to grab something, anything, to stay upright.

Life ... intervened when I had other plans.

My plans?  What where they?  To stay at my job another 3 1/2 years until the magic age of 65.  To take a long-delayed vacation with Papa Bear to British Columbia - our original honeymoon destination which never happened because life ....

Life happened in 2011 in the form of a stress breakdown, psychiatric injury.  Already coping and dealing with lifelong complex PTSD, I found myself floundering in a turbulent sea of emotions.  Violent waves crashing in over me again and again.  Unrelenting.  Until finally, emotionally I went under.  Drowning.  Crushed.

Life ...

Yet I still hung on like a drowning person to a log.  Trying to survive.  To keep my head above the water that was engulfing me.

I knew I could not go back into that situation.  It would kill me.  I had Papa Bear and the cubs to live for.

Life ...

What do you do when it intervenes?  Go back into the den, curl up, lie down and hibernate?  If so, for how long?  Just for a season?  Or for longer?

What do you do when the big world outside the den suddenly feels unsafe.  Terrifying.  Other bears are lurking out there somewhere.  Hostile bears.  How will I know if they are friend or foe?  Do I even want to?

Life ...  is not only what happens when you have other plans, but how you handle the interruption.

More in another post.