Back in time
Is it possible to be injected with poison so deep that it takes over 20 years to discover the infected tissue? I'm watching Disney movies with my daughters on a Friday night, alone in the house with the kids. Aaron's on call. A scene comes up that I remember clearly, and suddenly I am 11 and seeing it for the first time.Most of you know the story: the princess gives away the one thing the prince loved - her voice - in exchange for her rebellious dream. When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child... (I Corinthians 13:11) I'm sure I'm not the only girl who identified herself with ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 16, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: childhood depression child abuse mothering with PTSD disgust anxiety sin flashbacks panic Source Type: blogs
Friends are the family you choose for yourself
We have known each other down to the marrow of our own grieving bones. We've known each hurt and heartbreak. Our tears have flown into a river together, yours and mine all mixed up. We've cried for sins, and depression, broken hearts, isolation, the broken Church, marriages and children and this whole broken world.The miraculous is in the joy shared when everything dictates otherwise. We've laughed with tears still in our eyes, the laughter choking off the last sob in the throat. We've marveled together at the offspring that somehow share our DNA but oh what people they are becoming on their own. We've loved deep, for gene...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 15, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: Beloved mystery friendship everyday miracles family old friends best friend Source Type: blogs
Safe to shore
We've walked the rocky shore, my hand in yours, and yours is steady and steadies mine. In your embrace, I climb up from the dark abyss to reality, rappelling up on your love and your brokenness over my despair. You've been my strong fortress in times of war, my adviser in times of conflict, my voice of reason in times of foggy confusion. You are my peace, my warrior, my prince, my passion, my pride, my constant source of those glittering glimpses of joy on a joyless landscape.It's the 11th Valentine's Day, and we've already given each other our gifts. Utilitarian givers we are, you give me wool and I give you a beard trimm...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 14, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: trust depression a husbands love mature love rescue marriage letters Aaron Source Type: blogs
What if we're doing it wrong?
A pastor stood with rope in his hands at our wedding. "A cord of three strands," he repeated from Ecclesiastes, "is not quickly broken." In his words I felt the birth of two covenants. Our marriage, and our relationship with this church..........................................The problem is we're doing it all wrong, and it's killing people. Matthew 18 seems so flawless you can just recite it out in monotone and it works. This kicking people to the curb. This cutting off of the bad branches, the pruning, the training. But everyone who reads it that way seems to be forgetting a key phrase at the very end of the passage: "an...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 13, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: emotions depression matthew 18 church discipline church pain PTSD consequences Source Type: blogs
The naked soul
My husband and I, we're bare together. He asks me what I'm thinking and I do my best to tell him. With the children, I keep a few clothes on depression. Try to minimize it. Make sure they know I am not sad because of something they've done. I go for counseling, and my therapist is one of those people you'd be best friends with if you weren't in a professional relationship. I try to be bare with her, but fear creeps in: what if she thinks I need to go to the hospital? What if she thinks I'm an unfit mother?I go to group therapy to learn how to cope with this mess. But here I'm wearing a long black cape. How does one ge...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 8, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: depression God's presence soul audit nakedness God's power bare marriage Source Type: blogs
Trust at the hitching post
Back and forth goes the brush, smoothing months of winter tangles on the back of a young horse. My friend is patient, gentle. The horse stands still at the post, soaking up the love.There is no "trust" that compares to the relationship between a girl and her horse. He is tamed by her affection. She is tamed by his willing heart.I have been the brute beast tangled in winter's coat, protecting myself from the cold. Softly, tenderly, you draw me out into the vulnerable places, the painful places. Brushing through all these tangles is hard work. But you are teaching me to stand still at the post, to feel your love in the brush...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 7, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: trust God's patience faithjam clinging friends God's promises old friends Source Type: blogs
Letters to Aaron: Unraveling
Some memories come fast and others slow. I remember times in prisons, times in chains, times of evil. You reel me in with your long, strong arms, and in the slow melting of two souls together that is our embrace, the good unravels inside me and coils there warm while you rock me just as you did when I bore our babies into this beautiful broken world. I remember this dance, strung on the guitar strings of sorrow, the first notes of a symphony of bittersweet joy.Worry frays the day like fingers picking at the string on a sweater, and some days you come to end with a ball of yarn in your hands and shivering bare shoulders. Ot...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 7, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: patience romance I am the Beloved letters to Aaron a husbands love marriage letters Source Type: blogs
Chronic
"Just think of it as a chronic disease - like lupus - which flares up, ebbs and flows." The young psychiatrist looks at me warmly, with that practiced "warmness" we all rehearsed to cover up shock, disgust, terror that became part of our everyday lives. I survey the new doctor, wondering if he felt disgust when he looked at me just now. Slowly, my thoughts snake there way back his comment is, the one that compares my depression with lupus. Who willingly submits to the idea that there is something debilitating and wrong with them for which there is no cure?On the other hand, I smiled at a baby today. Really smiled.Now...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 5, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: depression prayin illness PTSD disappointment chronic illness Source Type: blogs
I want to be
(Source: Turquoise Gates)
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 1, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: dreams Source Type: blogs
The dagger of the mind
I have two kinds of fear. The kind of fear that whispers what time I am afraid, I will trust in thee (Ps. 56:3). This kind comes when I have to hand over someone I love to Christ's care.I remember the many times I've wept for my third daughter. Through her brain infection, as we watched her fade away, and so many, many times as we've watched her creep back. Who knew a mom could feel fear teaching her baby the alphabet? But what if I can't?Throwing flowers on Teddy's grave in November, 2009There's a different kind of fear that attacks me out of the dark shadows. Fear of being swallowed up. Fear of fading away myself. Grief ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 1, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: salvation depression fear anxiety PTSD rescue Source Type: blogs
Going through the motions
It is dark and silent, this place I have descended to in the past weeks. Holy hushed, almost. Like church during a funeral. A cave for the soul to hide, perhaps? I pray hard, eyes squinted shut, that some spiritual growth is revealed under the raw places soon - some messenger that this is worth it all. One foot, then the other, I say "yes" everyday by little increments: taking my pills, eating when I'm supposed to, getting up out of bed in the morning, going to work and delivering a lecture. If only there were a way to say "no" to pain. (Source: Turquoise Gates)
Source: Turquoise Gates - January 31, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: depression Pain self-loathing repentance grief anxiety PTSD Source Type: blogs
Braiding rope
I know why the eyes are the windows of the soul. It's because all I love flows through these eyes. Images collected throughout the day are what make up the threads of the rope I'm hanging on to at the end.Faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. His back arches heavy over children late into the evening, after hours of wearing his lead apron at work. Love bending close to the ears of the son. His heart pushes away the frustration of living with someone like me, and instead he makes a funnel for love to pour forth.As Christ loves the church. The egotistical, stubborn, idolatrous, broken church. As Christ love...
Source: Turquoise Gates - January 30, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: depression reasons to keep on going coping pearls catching your breath God's not counting Christs bride a husbands love haven't I done this before? God's love Source Type: blogs
Revisiting confessions
Guilt, shame, despair, grief. Emotions entangle and threaten to drown out hope. Haven't I been here before? Haven't I confessed these sins?Yes, I have. And He says they're forgotten and washed white as snow. Why, then, does my heart still bleed dark red sin, spewing a history, a litany of unforgivable details onto the fresh snow of today's vista?But are you living with guilt that doesn't belong to you? You say, "Look at what I did! I deserve to feel guilty. I knew better, but I did it anyway." So you pound yourself with guilt and condemnation. It may be guilt for recent sins or for sins of the past. What does God say about...
Source: Turquoise Gates - January 29, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: confusion forgiveness emotions feeling freedom in Christ repentance God's truth confession God's grace Source Type: blogs
Standing still
If you stand still too long, the detritus of life begins to cling. Before too long, you look down and you can't see yourself any longer; only the barnacles of everything that's pulling you under the surface. Try to tear it off, and you'll bleed out.He asks us to abide: stay under. Trust Him for oxygen when sobs wrack. Trust Him for a relief from this insurmountable pain of life that will someday come. That day when tears are wiped away.But this year I asked for less. Revisionist that I am (aren't we all?), I want to say I want less of this. Less pain, less work, less abiding. But that's not what I meant by less. I meant le...
Source: Turquoise Gates - January 27, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: fullers soap going under Pain when God feels far away hupomeno choosing life PTSD on my face before the Throne the hard road spiritual battle depression disassociation oneword365 demons scars Source Type: blogs
Happiness and Joy are Different
I don't want to be here again. But life doesn't usually go the way you want it to. One of the main difficulties I have with depression is that I can't figure out if it's the Potter's chosen way of shaping me right now, or if it is because of my inability to stay focused on Him.But here we are. There's no denying that. Slowly, old coping skills are coming back, and for the majority of the day, I can ignore the rain cloud hovering over my head. One of the most successful ways for me to dig out of depression, get up out of my bed, and live normally in these seasons is something called Opposite Action. All you have to do is fi...
Source: Turquoise Gates - January 25, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: salvation joy depression happiness everyday miracles Bible hall of fame anxiety opposite action DBT ordinary joys Source Type: blogs
