Growing up I had a romanticized perspective on fatherhood.

Not because of my own father.

He was less than ideal and because of this, I spent a great deal of time painting pictures in my mind of what a father should be. I took copious notes from my observations of the other fathers I was around and believed that if I worked hard at it, I could do one or all of the following:

1. Teach my father how to be a father.
2. Make up for the lack in my father by taking the helm in the family as much as possible.
3. Cultivate relationships with father-figures to try to fill the father void in my life.

I have a ridiculously strong work ethic but, friends, these were impossible expectations.

First of all, clearly a daughter cannot teach her father how to father. I can say this with confidence since I spent much of my life attempting to do this. It does not work.

Second, a daughter cannot be the father of a family. Neither can a son, for that matter. I have some experience in this area as well since more than once I have nearly destroyed myself in my attempts to accomplish this impossible task.

Third, father figure relationships can be a good and healthy thing – I know – but they cannot undo the pain of an absent and disconnected father. And they cannot erase the shame that is a by-product of abuse. Father figures can sometimes help soothe and heal parts of us, but the impossible ask is that they might erase the reality that the bad father existed. Plus, often those of us who have not experienced the faithfulness of a good father don’t really know how to pick trustworthy father figures. Again, speaking from experience here. Some of the greatest devastation in my life has come as a result of the expectations I put upon someone who was as human as we all are, and so I was deeply disappointed when he was unable to live his life any more successfully than my father.

But I didn’t know these things as a child. And, truthfully, I haven’t known them very long as an adult.

It’s crazy how the things we know and believe as children can be so hard-wired into us that it takes a lifetime of intention and hard work to disconnect from them.

And you have to become aware of them in order to do the work necessary to be free of them. That is in itself a great challenge. Hence, #allthetherapy

For my part, awareness has only come after periods of great desolation and devastation. Which sucks.

I guess I’m just super stubborn.

A few months before he died, I took my father to MD Anderson in Houston, TX so he could be considered for an extensive surgery to remove a tumor from his neck as well as the source of the tumor – metastatic melanoma of the ear. These were the days when I was still embracing those beliefs listed above, so I was extra irritated and exhausted by the ongoing challenges of life with dad.

It’s much harder to be present with someone when still stuck in the muck and mire of the pain they cause.

Thankfully, my people know this about me, so Keek, my best friend from college, traveled to Houston with dad and me.

I have the best friends ever.

We spent a full week in Houston as my dad went through test after test (and Keek and I learned to crochet). Finally, in a meeting with the surgeon’s PA to go over some of his medical history, my father was caught in a lie that threatened to change the course of the medical care he believed would extend his life (it did not, btw). When asked by the PA whether or not he consumed alcohol, my dad – without batting an eye – looked that doctor right in the eyes and said, “Oh no. I haven’t had alcohol in a very long time.”

This happened while I – the daughter who had talked him out of another drunken, suicidal mood swing just two days earlier – was SITTING RIGHT THERE NEXT TO HIM.

I looked at him with incredulity. He caught my eye, and though his cheeks flushed a bit, he remained quiet when I blurted out a “Oh hell, no. Seriously, Dad?”

That poor PA.

His eyes darted from me to my dad and then back to me. Bless him. But I didn’t allow silence to linger long before I followed up with, “Dad, seriously? You were drunk two days ago! You drink every day and all day.”

Then I looked at the PA and said, “My father is an alcoholic. It’s a problem.”

What followed was a string of questions and a full psych eval… before the team there still approved dad for the surgery. Honestly, I think they were jazzed to experiment on a willing subject and weren’t all that concerned about the wealth of addictions contributing in no small way to his overall health.

But what do I know? #eyeroll

After that particular appointment, as we stood in the lobby of the hospital waiting to hear what we were to do next, my father hung his head before me and said, “I’ve been a horrible father.”

I didn’t try to talk him out of this. Sometimes it’s necessary to let the truth – however ugly – just be there.

And somehow letting that truth just be there allowed me to loosen my grip on whatever remained of my hope that I could change my father… or that he would ever really father me.

—————–

Growing up I wasn’t taught about God as Father.

At least not as a Father to me.

I knew him as the Father of Jesus – the One who sent His Son to save me from my sinful state; the One who sent His Son to die to make sure I had access to heaven; the One who loved me but was mostly unapproachable from this broken planet; the One who wouldn’t fully embrace me until we see each other face-to-face… because that is when He will make me whole and worthy of His embrace; the One I should turn to for help in my times of need, but also the One who didn’t seem to show up in those times much more than my dad did.

Harsh, I know.

I’m not saying I was right. It’s just what I knew and believed as a child. These beliefs then did their work of shaping my way in the world.

And they have set me up to be endlessly disappointed and devastated.

But here’s the thing: It’s taken devastation to do the work of stripping away the mistaken beliefs and the faulty wiring before truth is able to make its way into my heart and mind.

And maybe what actually happens is that the strength of these mistaken beliefs is diminished rather than that they totally go away, while the truth gets louder and drowns out the noise of brokenness.

Because I don’t really think those deep-seated beliefs ever fully disappear when they were established at such a young age.

Yes, this is discouraging.

But then there are the moments where truth breaks in and gives me the strength to keep going. And the more I lean in to truth, the more Father-like God becomes to me.

He is present.

He is faithful.

He is kind and compassionate.

He is love.

My earthly father died less than six months after that trip to Houston.

And honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more fathered than I did during those last brutal hours caring for my dad.

Not by him.

Instead, by the One who has always been present for me as Father even when I was unaware of it.

And now when God fathers me and shows me the truth of who He is, I try to sit with this awareness – to tell my broken beliefs that they are just that… broken – and then to just let the truth be there with us.

To let Him love me. To let Him father me.

Yesterday, as David and I were taking a bit of a walk around the neighborhood, we came upon a front lawn covered in dandelions. Now, I know that the dandelion is considered a pesky weed by those who spend a lot of time and money cultivating pristine landscapes, but…

You guys, dandelions make me smile.

I have many warm childhood memories of sitting on a grassy expanse of yard, surrounded by those little puffs of white on the dandelion stems. My friends and I spent many a lovely afternoon laying on the grass – reveling in the approach of spring – and pulling dandelions up so we could blow the seeds into the sky.

And, yes, this made my father crazy as the dandelions spread and their yellow heads popped up all over the lawn that somehow was a measure of success and class for him.

We did it anyway.

Those weed flowers called to us as we ran barefoot in the grass after a winter of forced confinement for our feet. My mom’s rule allowed me to forego shoes as soon as the grass began to turn green, and from that time until the return to school in the fall, shoes were worn only when going to church or the store.

We also loved to pick the yellow dandelions, hold them between thumb and forefinger, and then pop the heads off in an attempt to hit one another in the eye with them.

Don’t ask me to explain this.

Boredom can be the breeding ground for works of genius.

It can also inspire epic dandelion wars.

I taught my older children (the Big Three that are now 22, 20, and 19) about all the wonders of weeds as playthings. We spent a lot of time wandering, exploring the woods, camping, playing and just being outside, so there were plenty of opportunities for dandelion wars.

And dandelion wishes.

But David, our youngest by eight years, has grown up during a period of my life that has been full of surgeries, illness, long recoveries, diagnoses, lots of therapy, great loss, and a necessary shift in the way we live as a family. Unfortunately, this has meant less time outside for David.

And zero opportunities for learning about dandelions.

So the dandelion-covered lawn was a great curiosity for him.

I showed him how to pop the heads off (he thought that was ridiculous), and I showed him how to make a wish and blow the seeds off the stem (shhhhh.. don’t tell the neighbors).

He was fascinated. We both made wishes as white fluff floated all around us. It was a lovely moment.

As we walked back home, he said, “Mom, if I make a dandelion wish for coronavirus to go away, would that work?”

Ugh.

“No, buddy. That won’t work,” I replied with more than a hint of sadness.

“I wish it would work,” Davy replied.

“Me too, buddy.”

And then, after more silence than I like to admit (because I always have to fight pessimism before I can move into faith), I added, “But we can always pray.”

“Yeah. We can do that,” Davy agreed, and I could hear in his voice the sober acknowledgement of a truth that can be hard to swallow.

We can pray. We can ask God to miraculously take this pandemic away.

But God isn’t likely to do that.

Could He? Sure. History is full of accounts describing miraculous events.

So He could.

But history mostly shows us that in the midst of great suffering, God is near.

And that is actually the greatest miracle.

Many fellow sojourners in the Christian faith won’t agree with me here, and that’s okay. I don’t think we need to see eye-to-eye on this in order to both love and follow Jesus.

But for me, faith increases when I focus on my hope that He will meet me in my pain. And since faith is a gift from God, I figure He’s got a hand in that process.

So I’m going to continue to teach Davy, and model for all of my children – as well as for anyone else who cares to watch, that God is just as big when He helps me trust Him in my pain as He is when he takes that pain away.

I’m also going to continue making dandelion wishes – finding beauty and happiness in what is so often seen as flawed and unwanted.

I’m a good nurse. Maybe not so much the warm and cozy kind of nurse, but certainly a comforting one. And I really excel at taking charge of the crisis at hand.

This may or may not always be appreciated. Personally, I think my instincts are pretty good, but you’d have to ask my children to know for sure. Lord knows I’ve spent many an hour and #allthemoney at our nearby urgent care, so I’ve had plenty of opportunities to practice. Hopefully, my kids have (mostly) experienced me as a comfort to them when they are hurting.

A safe place to run to when knees are scraped or tummies are upset or body temperatures rise with fever.

I’m confident I haven’t walked this out perfectly, but I think I have managed to be (mostly) present for them when they are hurting and unwell.

It’s okay. You can ask them. They all know their first therapist is on me.

Here’s the deal, though: I do much better with their physical injuries or illnesses than I do with their emotional pain. If one of them is angry, withdrawn, sullen, sad, lonely, bored, or whiny…well, my patience for meeting them in those places can be pretty thin.

The truth is, when it comes to emotional pain, I am often only as good at comforting my children as they are willing to be comforted.

I’m not putting this dilemma on them. It’s my issue, not theirs.

Okay, I’ll admit, I have at times put this on them.

We had our fair share of “Go to your room until you’re calm, dry-eyed and done whining, and THEN we can snuggle and I’ll comfort you and all will be well again” moments.

I’m not proud of this.

I also see how my own childhood shaped my perspective on pain, the expression of pain, and the resolution of pain…in turn causing me to repress my pain and attempt to repress theirs.

I’ve worked hard at noticing this in myself and then – when I do notice it – shifting to a different posture for them. A posture of love, compassion and kindness. One that allows them space for what they are experiencing.

I know what I’m supposed to do to do this. I’ve read all the books. I’ve sat under all the teachers. I’ve done SO MUCH freaking therapy.

But those damn feelings often still scare all the good sense out of me.

It’s very difficult to hold in my awareness my own fear and discomfort while also opening myself up to warmth, presence and patience on behalf of my children. I am still prone to lean hard into thinking and to push away emotion. It often feels like my arms aren’t big enough or strong enough to hold #allthethings at the same time.

But I’m getting better at it.

It’s tricky stuff. It’s like working out…only with your heart.

A feelings workout, if you will.

And I hate working out.

But parenting is not for the faint of heart.

I think the crux of the matter – at least for me – is that I often feel threatened in the presence of emotional pain – mine or someone else’s. And when I feel threatened, I tend to shut down.

Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that when I feel threatened, I tend to use one easy-to- access emotion to contain all the other much more intimidating and difficult-for-me-to-hold emotions.

Anger.

Now, when life is fairly balanced and I’m managing #allthethings pretty well, I can move through anger and into some of the other emotions associated with the moment. I can be sad. I can be excited. I can be frustrated. I can be disappointed.

But when I’m stretched and tired and struggling extra hard with chronic pain – or when I’m trying to wrap my head around a global crisis unlike anything I’ve experienced before (Yes, I’m talking to YOU, COVID-19) – well, then it is much more challenging for me to identify, embrace and move through all the big feelings that are surging within me.

Interestingly enough, our ten-year old son, David, also expresses all of his difficult emotions by summing them up into one, easy-to-access emotion.

Anger.

Bless him. He may have inherited this from his mother.

I’m not saying that he did. But maybe.

When he’s frustrated, he’s mad.

When he’s disgusted, he’s mad.

When he’s disappointed, he’s mad.

When he’s sad and hurting, he’s mad.

And while – if I work very hard – I can have some success containing my anger within my own self, David is (yet) unable to do that. Instead, he spills his anger all over whoever might be closest to him.

That’s usually me.

And guess what? When #allthethings get to be too much for me, my anger rises to meet his anger… and it’s not pretty.

It has been ridiculously hard to teach my child how to move through anger to the myriad of other emotions available to him when it has never been a skill I had for myself.

David is also autistic, which often makes it that much more difficult for him to communicate what’s actually going on within him. So instead, all that he is experiencing comes pouring out as unbridled rage.

It’s taken ten years, a whole lot of therapy for both of us, and so much practice for me to be able to help him identify and express a wider range of emotions. He’s come very far. We both have. And we are grateful – HE is grateful – but we also know that autism will likely always color his emotional expressions. We can’t therapize this out of him (nor do we want to). Instead, we can teach him how to access the array of emotions available to him and then how to communicate them to safe others.

Of course, doing this has required me to expand my own thinking and understanding around these very-hard-to-wrap-my-head-around emotional complexities. It’s also required a great deal of intentionality.

Isn’t it interesting how God takes #allthethings that are hard and painful in our lives and uses them to heal other hard and painful things in our lives?

I’ll give you an example from last night.

As part of our shelter-at-home coping strategy, our family is having a Steele Family Film Festival – Quarantine Edition. We’ve enjoyed many film festivals over the years – held during the kids’ spring breaks, summer breaks, or even in the fall leading up to the holiday season. We take great care with our film choices and have shared many films that have great meaning for us, as well as ones that are just super fun.

Story is the language of our family, and film can be an extraordinary story-telling device.

To start off the quarantine film festival, we introduced David to The Dark Knight series.

I know, I know…It’s dark for a ten-year old. It’s dark for me. But David has a fascination with all the dark things, so we’re trying to steer that as well as we know how.

Did I mention parenting is super hard?

Anyhoo, we started the movie kind of late so we made sure David understood we would only be able to watch part of it before bedtime, but we would finish the rest the following evening.

Despite this prep, he became angry when it was time to turn it off. Of course he did. It’s hard when someone tells you you can’t do what you want to do. That’ll make anyone mad.

But, because David had been shoving down all the feelings he was having about the pandemic, the Dark Knight anger became bigger and bad(der) than what was warranted for the situation.

Like, he began refusing to start his bedtime routine, throwing blankets and couch pillows, writhing on the couch and floor, and growing more furious by the second.

It was more annoying than anything. We’re all pretty much over #allthethings.

This Shelter at Home stuff is no joke.

His frustration over the limits we placed on him collided with his fear over the possibility that he or someone he loved would contract the virus, and then those very intense feelings attached themselves to the great sadness in his heart over the abrupt end to the school year and the loss of connection with his friends.

(Side note: this is my personal perspective on what was happening, for sure; but it comes from years of studying my son, immersing myself in his world and in how he thinks and feels things. I’m a Davy Detective, if you will. It’s quite the gig.)

But despite my awareness of what was really going on with the meltdown, no amount of coaching, directing, soothing (don’t you dare try) or coaxing was changing the situation. Instead, Mark and I found ourselves becoming more and more agitated…and feeling big angry feelings as well.

Thankfully, we managed to stay calm and firm. But David was unable to, and he refused to be comforted or soothed in any way.

This is our normal, friends.

Good times.

“So what do you do to help him then?” you might ask.

Well, therein lies the problem.

Because the thing is, you can’t really do anything.

It’s a very helpless feeling to be the adult in the room with a hurting child and have nothing to offer that will soothe the child’s pain.

It’s helpless and it’s frightening and it’s very humbling.

Thankfully, I’ve been learning another way.

It’s super hard, though. Like, so very hard.

Because this other way has nothing to do with helping him solve his problem (I can’t) or coming to him with words of encouragement or a comforting touch (Dear God, NO. Do not do this).

This other way is to just “be” with him.

To just be with him in the midst of whatever yuck he is experiencing.

So, I’m learning to sit with him. I’m learning to sit with him as he moves through anger to sadness to grief (which actually feels so much harder than just plain ol’ anger), and then eventually to acceptance.

I don’t know about you, but the metaphor here is screaming at me.

When I can sit down with David in the hard spaces that are thick with emotion – when I can give my presence fully over to him in that moment – that’s when the calm comes.

I mean, not immediately.

It takes time – usually more time than I want to give.

But the calm does come.

And in that moment, I get a glimpse of how good God is to sit with me in my darkest, most confusing and most overwhelming moments – when all feels lost and so far beyond my reach.

And suddenly – when I remember that I am not alone – the calm comes.

I was nine months pregnant with David in May of 2009 when Jackson tested positive for swine flu (H1N1 – the pandemic at the time).

Morgan came down with it a couple of days later.

The rest of the world was on alert, but most were still able to go on with their lives. Our family, though, was quarantined for the better part of two weeks. Then, when I (FINALLY) went into labor with David, the kids weren’t allowed to come see us – to meet their new baby brother. Our doctors kept us in the hospital for a few extra days to try to protect Baby David from exposure to H1N1 since that particular pandemic was especially hard on youngsters. It didn’t help that the little guy had some initial challenges managing his blood sugars and so was admitted into the NICU for a time.

It’s still kind of a sensitive subject for the kids that they have friends and cousins who met their new brother DAYS before they did. I guess we didn’t think that one through very well. Oops. The truth is I was pretty much white knuckling my way through #allthethings at that time. I kept at a distance all the anxiety, fear, and pain that were very reasonable responses to the situation. It was too much for me to embrace, so I pushed it away and did what I had to do to get through.

It’s my tendency to tackle life this way and, even though it’s not really effective for the long haul, this approach has often bought me time when I needed it.

The swine flu incident wasn’t our first family quaratine.

When Charlie was five, he was swimming at a local water park, got kicked in the eye by a fellow swimmer…and contracted herpes.

In his eyes.

I’ve not even kidding.

It turns out chorine doesn’t kill #allthethings.

And it turns out that herpes in the eyes is serious…and seriously contagious.

No one wanted to be anywhere near us – especially when they heard little Charlie had tiny blisters all around the rims of his eyes, on his eyes, and inside them – on the retinae. We understood the need to stay away from all the people because we were experiencing the impact of the disease firsthand. But it was still hard. And lonely.

It was kind of scary, too. Doctors were concerned he would lose his sight, so we hit this particular virus with everything available to us. He took oral anti-viral meds for weeks, and three times a day we had to treat his already owie eyes with burning, stinging eye drops. Two different kinds. It was all-consuming, very scary and isolating for all of us, and extremely painful for Charlie.

Except for the daily visits to the ophthalmologist (seven days a week for two weeks), the kids and I spent a solid month stuck at home, and I spent most of my time cleaning every surface of our house while keeping Charlie completely secluded from everyone else. We had friends bring us groceries and sanitizer, leave them on our front porch, and wave to us from a safe distance.

Sound familiar?

Again – like I do – I put my head down and charged through the crisis.

These are crazy days we are living in. I read somewhere today that the human race averages about three pandemics per every one hundred years. That seems like a lot, doesn’t it? I guess it’s hard for the collective consciousness to hold on to that historical statistic when the last pandemic was over a decade ago and really didn’t do more than inconvenience some of us a bit. It did, however, impact the lives of the 60 million+ that contracted the illness in that year – and that was just in the United States. And even more so, it impacted the families of the near half a million people worldwide the CDC estimates died from H1N1 that year.

Thankfully, my kids weathered swine flu well, and we were able to keep it contained between the two of them. Charlie recovered from the herpes-in-the-eyes incident without any lingering issues and without spreading it to anyone else.

And both experiences just mixed in with all of the crazy and fairly regular catastrophic-ish events that happen to our family on a frighteningly frequent basis.

Like the time Charlie was hospitalized during a serious battle with pneumonia, then shut away for a few weeks to protect his still-compromised immune system. And like Morgan’s similar battle with pneumonia (and later, with mono) that kept us shut in for what seemed like forever. And Charlie’s broken leg. And my countless surgeries. And the prolonged illnesses of both my parents before they passed away.

And the ongoing limits of my journey with chronic pain.

#allthethings

This is my ride, and I’m kind of used to it. But the posture I’ve held to get through it all over the years doesn’t work for me anymore. I can’t just put my head down and charge through like I could even ten years ago.

I have been doing a LOT of work in recent years learning how to relax into my journey a bit more – how to release my hands from that white-knuckled death grip I like to hold on life – how to remember that God’s got me when I’m on the smooth and straight path as well as when I’m on the twisting and turning roundabouts that make us all crazy – and, just as important, how to be okay with the very natural responses I have to those really scary parts of my journey.

This last week, as we began to try to adjust to the ways COVID-19 is impacting our lives, I noticed my knuckles turning white once again. I felt the all-too-familiar urge to dig in and push through this season wrap itself around me and begin to take me down. And I felt sure I would go under from the weight of it.

But I noticed.

I saw the familiar patterns, and I named them.

Fear. Anxiety. Grief. Selfishness. Loneliness.

And then I realized that I actually know how to do this.

I know how to see these parts of me that rise up in times of crisis, and I know how to take care of them. I’m not great at it (yet – this is for my therapist), but I know what to do.

I have learned how important it is to make space for the loneliness, the grief and the disappointments that come when life shuts down because of things like illness, chronic pain, or a worldwide pandemic.

Because life doesn’t really shut down, does it? And if I don’t loosen my hold and allow myself the space to move through those feelings, then the living that continues around me will be inaccessible to me…and worse, I will be inaccessible to others.

Despite COVID-10, a lot of living is currently happening within these four walls that we call home. Both of my college boys – like college students everywhere – had to move home mid-semester with little warning. They even brought a bonus boy or two home with them.

#somuchmale #helpmeLord

David, who thrives within the structure of school, is now about to experience (very light) homeschooling for the first time. #Godhelpme

I’m no stranger to homeschooling after 15 years of doing it with the older kiddos, but homeschooling David will be a whole ‘nother level…especially when he’s dealing with the anxiety and dysregulation caused by the disruption and upheaval of his day-to-day expectations. Navigating the coronavirus while supporting a child on the autism spectrum is bound to take us on an interesting ride, don’t you think?

#prayformeplease

I have a lot of daily practices going on at all times to help me manage #allthethings.

Solitude. Embroidery. Prayer. Writing. FaceTime with my people. Crochet. Reading. Group chats with other mamas in the trenches. Naps. More solitude. And then more naps.

And maybe a bit of Netflix binging on the side.

But, you see, this is my normal. This social distancing thing was already pretty much my jam. And I’m feeling pretty grateful for that right now. That’s an interesting place for me to be. It’s not often that I am able to reflect on this part of my life – the limits, the aloneness, the boundaries – with an attitude of thankfulness. I’ve become accustomed to it, but that’s not at all the same thing as being at peace with it. The work that I’ve done in therapy has been largely about coming to terms with this narrow space I live in.

The Psalmist, David, in a song of gratitude to God, expressed wonder and amazement at how good God was to “hem (me) in behind and before” (Psalm 139:5). I’ve tried to use this image to frame my journey so that instead of seeing my life as full of limitations and can’ts, I can see it more like a safe place God has created just for me.

So the narrow space my body lives and struggles in becomes a wide-open space for my spirit and my soul.

The current situation with COVID-19 is far-reaching in its impact around the world and unprecedented in our time…and its impact on myself and those I care about is very real.

Just as it is for most everyone on the planet.

I think we have to give ourselves the space to feel #allthethings as they rise up within us.

When I do this I see that #allthethings are really useful to me if my goal is to know God.

Now, honestly, that’s not always my goal. And when it’s not, #allthethings really cramp my style. I don’t want to stay home. I don’t want to be chronically ill and in pain. I don’t want my children to be sick and shut away. I don’t want to be left out of an event or gathering because my body isn’t able to manage the activity. I don’t want to struggle with anxiety and depression. I don’t want the discomforts of isolation and quarantine. I don’t want to live in a narrow space.

I don’t want #allthethings.

But when I want to know Him – really know Him – then I have to come to terms with the reality that this kind of knowing only happens when we’re living in the narrow places.

They called me a gifted child.

I’m not sure exactly what that means. At the time, it just meant that I was lucky enough to get pulled out of the boring regular classroom to participate in a small group “extra” learning environment.

I’m pretty sure gifted curriculum has come a long way since then.

I sure hope so.

In fourth grade, one of the weirder projects our little gifted class did was a unit study on holes.

Yep. You heard me right.

Holes.

I’m not even kidding.

I guess if you really think about it, you can come up with all kinds of things relative to the subject of holes that have application to our lives.

But who’s going to think about it?

Well, us for one.

As part of our unit, our teacher asked us to create something with a holes theme: a story, a poem, a painting… an original creation about the ever-elusive hole.

Although I roll my eyes HARD at the thought of this now, the truth is that as a fourth-grader I was pretty gung-ho with this assignment. Truly inspired. My observations (as well as my thoughts) on holes were deep, and I decided there was only one way I could really capture the essence of the hole.

I would write a song.

When I sang my song for the class on presentation day, the teacher got so excited about it that she convinced the music teacher to write accompaniment so that the school’s entire fourth grade could perform this song on parents’ night. Percussion sticks, xylophones, and triangles were added as orchestration so that the performance was pretty much just a confused cacophony of sound.

I doubt anyone could even really hear the lyrics, which is too bad because they were deep (I was gifted) and meant to just barely touch on the more complex characteristics of a hole.

Have you ever heard about holes?

Have you ever heard about them?

They may be tall.

They may be small.

They may be long.

They may be long.

Have you ever heard about holes?

Have you ever heard about them?

Nailed it.

My teacher was maybe able to see something metaphoric in my complex lyrics, but c’mon… I was nine years old. Gifted or not, to me holes were simply that.

Holes.

But now I see that holes are as complex as my teacher thought they were.

In my fifty years of living, I have been an asshole, stuck in a hole, a round peg in a square hole, living in a hellhole, a mouse with only one hole, in the hole, and out of the hole.

I have a whole lot of experience with holes. #smirk

This last week my therapist and I had an impromptu discussion over the proverbial hole and my experiences with it. She had noticed and pointed my attention to how much I’d grown in a particular area we’ve been working on for FOREVER, when I inadvertently (as I think I am prone to do) said something snarky about the depth of the hole in which I had plummeted.

Now, in conversation with most people, I can get away with these little jabs at myself. They’re usually pretty subtle and meant to ease my discomfort with whatever praise has been bestowed upon me. I often don’t even recognize I’m doing it until it’s out of my mouth and way too late to take back.

And that usually happens at the exact same time that Melissa calls me out on it.

She’s quick to the draw, that one.

This is both my favorite and my least favorite thing about her.

And even though I’m not likely to admit it to her face, it’s probably the reason I continue to submit myself to therapy with her.

When I responded to her compliment with a subtly self-deprecating remark about the immense depth of the hole I have been in, she asked me to consider whether or not I think this negates the better mental and emotional health I am experiencing now.

These are the moments when I have to work just real hard not to set my jaw, clinch my fists, and stomp my feet in frustration in response to this woman’s ability to know things about me I do not know about myself.

Because she’s right.

I feel like my journey is tainted because it has more holes in it than a slice of Swiss cheese… because it has been fraught with #allthethings.

I don’t know that there’s a way to avoid grief over time spent in the hole. I don’t think that I’ll ever again write songs in celebration of the hole. But I can stand on the edge of the hole, look down, and experience immense gratitude because I’m no longer in there.

The moments in time that stand out to me as the darkest and most fragile – the time I have spent in the scariest metaphorical holes – the rescues, support and triage it has taken to get me out… these moments do not diminish this journey to wholeness I am on.

I feel emotional today. Like, tears-brimming-in-my-eyes-all-of-the-time kind of emotional.

I’m not typically one to engage these kinds of big feelings days.

I do not like them.

But when my body joins the parade and adds increased physical pain to the mix (as it is currently doing), it becomes so much more difficult to steer clear of all the feelings.

Emotion can feel like a distraction to me from all the things that I need to get done. Honestly, I’ll clean all the toilets if it means I can avoid legit crying. True story.

But now my body won’t let me clean the toilets. #eyeroll

Engaging emotion can also feel like standing on the edge of a bottomless chasm – feeling like if I step off, I’ll never find my footing again.

It’s kind of terrifying for me.

I have spent a lifetime perfecting my unhealthy habits in an effort to mute the voices of my feelings.

I have skills, ya’ll.

My skills are so good that I often find myself living in a house of my own making – a house with closed and blinded windows and very little circulating air. Even though living in this house is isolating and suffocating, it feels necessary in order to keep me safe.

I mean, of course it’s not actually safe. But there’s a part of me that feels so much more comfortable living in this house. This part would much rather be alone, starved for affection and nourishment, than be exposed to whatever scary-feelings monsters might be lurking outside.

Imagine a horde of zombies creeping around outside, peering into your house – looking for weak spots and vulnerabilities that would allow them entrance.

That’s what it often feels like.

#feelingszombieapocalypse

But I’m learning that those aren’t really zombies outside. And if I just open the blinds of a window and peek outside, I can see that, really, it’s just the rejected, burdened, and lonely parts of me – desperate to be known.

Ya’ll, perspective is everything.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, my therapist has been gently coaxing (and sometimes firmly pushing) me to leave my metaphorical house. She’s teaching me to wear sunglasses if the light is too bright, bundle up if it’s cold, let myself breathe in the fresh air, and even let whatever rain comes fall on me without fear of getting soaked to the skin.

Because I can always change clothes and dry off later.

And instead of weaponizing myself against those feelings that frighten me so, I’m learning to take a deep, courage-building breath, giving them a shy “hello” and a chance to tell me a bit about themselves… and what it is they need from me.

Really, this metaphor is about being a good neighbor to the outlier parts of myself that have been exiled and left exposed to all the elements outside the safety of my inner house.

Practically speaking, it’s about learning to first notice what’s going on in my body, then to notice the feelings beneath the surface of my body, then to honor those feelings by letting myself sit with them and feel them until they fade away.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It’s harder than it sounds.

This week my desire to withdraw into the safety of the four walls of my house has returned.

My body hurts. I’m edgy. I need the sun to shine again.

And I miss my mom.

It’s been two years this week since cancer claimed her life – a loss that left me huddling in the darkest corners of the most inner rooms of my inner house. It’s been a very slow warming to a sense of safe-enough that has helped me muster the courage to inch my way out of the darkness in this house I built. To pull back the blinds and let the light in. To give my Self permission to first peek through the peephole before opening the door to the parts outside, so I know who or what I’m facing.

But I’m getting braver.

Practices like writing, meditation and silence, sticking with therapy even when it sucks, and finding ways to cultivate the new relationships I have with the parts of myself that carry such heavy burdens on my behalf. Compassion for them is growing. A desire to really know them, without fear or shame coming between us, is growing.

I know this may sound like I have multiple personalities. It certainly does to me. But my therapist, when talking me off that ledge of insanity, likes to say that we refer to parts of ourselves all the time. Everyone does. We’ll say, “A part of me wants to go, but another part really would prefer to stay home.”

See?

So if I have multiple personalities, then you do, too. #samesies

As the deep ache of losing my mom has resurged in the last couple of weeks, I have been focusing my efforts on pushing my “I can be brave” button as often as is necessary to listen to and to support the part of me that walked my mother through her last month here on this earth. That part of me is profoundly lonely. She holds memories that are hard for me to revisit – keeping them safe until I’m ready. The loneliness she feels is part of a bigger sense that she has become untethered to the world now that both of her parents are gone. As I sit with her and listen to her, instead of becoming burdened by her pain, I find that my Self is able to tell her that she is still very much tethered to this world. The relationships she has helped to create with her husband, daughter and three sons, a son-in-law and a beautiful, absolutely delightful grandson are what now hold her securely to this world.

And with that realization we share a moment of gratitude and hold each other until the fullness of grief abates.

Early one morning in late June of 1985, my family squeezed into the cab of a U-Haul truck, all four of us packed in like sweaty, slimy sardines, and began the long trek from Huntsville, Alabama to Vallejo, California. This was yet another move in a series of moves we made over the course of my high school years that total so many my brother and I struggle to keep an accurate count. We’re going with somewhere between eight and ten.

During the previous two years when we lived in Huntsville, we spent a chain of about eighteen months as a homeless family relying on the kindness of friends, a few family members, and people we barely knew to keep a roof over our heads. This wasn’t a well-known fact within our community there, but it was our reality. We moved from house to house, living in the empty homes of travelers while they were away.

We spent those months in a kind of weird quasi-homeless state – paring down our belongings with each move – so that by the time that hot summer day in June rolled around, everything our family of four owned fit in the 15′ U-Haul truck my father rented for moving day.

I really struggled with this move.

Silently struggled.

But really, really struggled.

But I had learned the hard way two years earlier when we moved from Tennessee to Alabama that struggling to adapt was not an option and would be met with a heavy hand by my father, so I put on my game face and got to it.

Once we were loaded, with our creamy yellow sedan hooked to the back of the truck and my dad’s lawnmower tied to the top of the car, the four of us – my father, my mother, my brother and me – piled into the cab of the U-haul and off we went.

It was starting to really warm up in the South.

Southern heat creates its own special kind of suffering. The air is thick with humidity and this oppressive moisture only increases with the rising temperatures, so there is a melty, sticky, wetness about you that is the definition of gross.

Did I mention that my father decided to shave a few pennies off the cost of the U-Haul rental by opting out of AIR-CONDITIONING?

And did I mention that we were driving from Alabama to northern California by way of the entire Southwest region of the United States?

In summer?

Yep. It was a grand ‘ol time.

The trip was meant to take about two-and-a-half days – driving hard.

It took us twice that.

My 10-year old brother and I played the hell out of the one cassette tape we had between us – Petra’s Beat the System – passing the Walkman we also shared back and forth as we took turns listening to the whole album before passing the Walkman over to the other to listen. Sometimes we mixed things up, and I only listened to one side of the tape before passing it to Patton for him to do the same.

We had a lot of hours to fill, ya’ll.

Boredom is hard, but boredom while you are squeezed into the cab of a U-Haul truck with no air-conditioning and nothing but desert to stare at for hours on end is mind-bending.

And not in a good way.

Actually, the boredom was often welcome since there was plenty going on that I wanted to avoid inside the close quarters in the cab of that truck. After two years of getting dragged behind Dad as he drank his way out of jobs and out of all the good graces we, or anyone, had to give him, we were barely tolerant of his presence. The tension that existed within the bodies of the four people in that truck was palpable, and it was my job to find a way to turn this trip into a fun, family adventure instead of the devastating loss that it really was.

But c’mon… you can only play the Alphabet Game so many times. And when you play I Spy in the desert you really only have like three things to “spy.” The game is over before you’ve hardly started.

About an hour into the drive, it became clear that my father had failed to think through all the details involved in moving a family across the country. In fact, it was clear that he’d done no planning at all. We had a route mapped out thanks to our handy Rand McNally Atlas, but he’d spent much of the money given us for the move on God knows what, so we were going to be short on what we needed for gas, for food and for our nightly stops to sleep along the way. Every time one of us needed something that cost real, actual money as we traveled, Dad became more sullen and resentful of our presence on this road to nowhere.

I’m a pretty creative person, but even I was running out of decent fodder for distraction when, at dawn on our third travel day – just outside Tucumcari, New Mexico, our U-haul truck broke down. Our little family of four found ourselves stranded on a deserted highway in the legit middle-of-nowhere New Mexico.

Sorry, Tucumcari – but, wow.

Dad popped the hood like he knew what he was doing (he did not), checked the oil stick (he loved doing this), and fiddled around with a screw here and there before announcing that the truck was dead (it actually was). He then handed Patton and me orange flags and set us on the side of the highway to hitch a ride back to town.

I was no longer bored.

It actually didn’t take too long before someone pulled over to help us out. I’m guessing we made for a pretty pitiful sight. My 140 lb., 5’8″ tall father smoking cigarettes next to a broken-down U-Haul with his two young kids and wife standing on the side of the road waving those orange flags like our lives depended on it.

Our lives did kind of depend on it. Stranded in the desert in the middle of the summer is no joke.

Eventually a nice, old gentleman in a blue pickup pulled over, tinkered a bit with the truck, then offered to drive us back to Tucumcari to the U-Haul lot there. After spending two long days in the cab of a truck, it was thrilling to be placed, along with my brother, in the back of this man’s pickup. We held on to the sides and grinned while the desert wind washed over us.

Well before my brother and I had had our fill of riding in the back of the old man’s pickup, we arrived at the U-Haul lot. We sat in the shabby, little U-Haul office while dad drove out to the stalled truck with a couple of mechanics. They were back more quickly than anticipated, but only to switch over to a tow truck since they’d determined our truck was out of commission.

They weren’t happy.

Turns out my father had cut a few more corners than we thought in order to save on the costs of the move.

He’d rented a truck one-size down from what had been recommended figuring we’d just fill it to the rim and toss what didn’t fit.

We did that, and we tossed what didn’t fit, but the truck was still overloaded.

He broke the truck.

U-haul wanted to hold my father responsible for the truck. As the men discussed the situation with my parents, the increasing agitation in all of their voices made me feel nervous and embarrassed so I grabbed my brother’s hand and we darted outside to explore the parking lot.

We wandered through the parked trucks, weaving in and out as we tried to create new games to distract from the fear that threatened to grab us and take us down.

It’s difficult to describe the nature of the fear that wove its tentacles around us.

For sure we were afraid of our father’s rage.

And embarrassment fueled his anger like little else.

But more than his anger, we were afraid of the chaos that gathered around him.

We were familiar with it, but afraid of it.

And sick of it.

The “Who broke the truck?” argument didn’t last long, and somehow my father found a way out of culpability. He really had a knack for this. He was giddy when he found us amidst all those trucks, which felt out-of-sync with the frustrating news he had to give us.

He had “arranged” for a bigger truck.

But U-haul would have nothing to do with the transfer of all of our things.

Shocker.

This meant that we had to move it all ourselves.

All. Of. Our. Things.

And there was a piano in that truck. My piano. An old, but fully restored upright piano given to me by my grandmother.

A piano weighing about 500 lbs.

Did I mention that my little family consisted of four small humans? My father was 5’8″ and weighed maybe all of 140 lbs. My baby brother was just ten years old. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say I was likely the strongest of the four of us.

Physical strength was not on our side.

It was easily 110 degrees in Tucumcari that day. Dad pulled the new truck next to the broken one, we set up the ramps, and then began the process of moving the boxes…ignoring the furniture – particularly the intimidating upright piano that had been difficult for the six grown men who had loaded it onto the truck just a few days before.

I whispered to my mom, “How are we going to do this?” as sweat dripped off our faces instead of the tears that we knew could not be released.

I honestly don’t remember what, if anything, she said in response. I have the sense that she just kept on moving since we both knew that if we couldn’t move the little furniture we still owned, we’d have to leave it behind… including my treasured piano. That felt unthinkable.

But as she was apt to do, it wasn’t long before Mom was chatting with various other travelers stranded in Tucumcari, New Mexico. Mom was quick to make friends with every stranger she encountered. And not just a “Hey, how are you today?” kind of friend. No, she was on a first-name basis with you the second the two of you made eye-contact for the first time. Within five minutes, her new friend was tearfully telling Mom the story of her life… and they were likely both tearing up if they continued talking for another five.

Mom had a way with people like no one else I’ve ever known. Honestly, without this way that she had, I’m not sure we would have been as generously embraced by each new community we landed in as we really were. She was something.

So on that hot, miserable, the-world-is-ending afternoon, Mom became friends with the mom from another family stuck at U-haul for the day.

I guess getting stranded in Tucumcari was a thing?

So weird.

And then, without meaning to, Mom so charmed her way into the hearts of this family that they willingly rolled up their sleeves and got to work helping us move to the new truck.

Total strangers.

Total strangers who happened to have two strapping tweener boys in the family. Once they got involved we were able to make short work of moving what remained in the truck.

We were back on the road by late afternoon. I watched the sun set on the horizon as I geared up for a long night. We had to make up for the time we’d lost, and there was exactly zero dollars for an extra night in a motel. In fact, early the following morning we pulled into a gas station and waited while Dad called his soon-to-be new employer to ask for an advance on his wages.

I don’t know how Dad’s employer responded to that request. But I do know that while they were on the phone, he delivered some bad news to my father.

The house we planned to live in for the year or so we would be in northern California was no longer available to us.

We had nowhere to land when we arrived.

And even though this turn of events wasn’t exactly my father’s fault, I decided in that moment to let go of the childish notion that my dad could ever be counted on for anything.

Harsh, I know.

I wasn’t wrong, though. He never became a reliable, consistent or faithful father.

But being right can feel really wrong, and I’m still untangling the web of confusion and despair this decision created for me. My road to wholeness is continually made more challenging with its own broken down trucks, stolen items and crappy motel rooms.

And yet the journey continues.

After another long day of driving, we finally pulled into Fresno, California in the late afternoon of the fourth day. We were absolutely exhausted, but the end was in our line of sight, and truthfully, we were getting kind of excited now that we were actually in California.

Come to think of it, Dad must have been given that advance – or was promised it, because that night we parked the truck behind the motel and went out for a proper dinner.

The next morning, as we approached the truck to load up for the last stretch of the trip, we noticed two things: 1) the aforementioned lawn mower which had been strapped to the top of the car was gone; and 2) whoever took the lawnmower also tried really hard to take our car.

For the love.

Welcome to California.

When we finally arrived at our destination – Vallejo, California – we moved into a cottage of sorts that someone arranged for us to stay in until we found an apartment. It was a tiny one-bedroom house that we filled to overflowing with ourselves and all of our things. We quite literally stepped on each other trying to navigate our way through the house.

But it felt a whole lot better than the cab of the truck where we’d spent the previous five days.

At least we were somewhere.

Long distance relationships are hard.

Connection is crucial for intimacy to develop, and that’s hard to do when you’re hundreds of miles (literally or figuratively) away from the person you want to grow close to.

My husband, Mark, and I spent the first eight months of our relationship/engagement falling in love every night after work, talking on the phone for hours – he in Oklahoma and I in Colorado. We managed to see each other face-to-face five times in those first eight months, but it never felt like enough.

On New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1993, we were especially piney for one another.

We’d just spent ten whole days together in pure bliss, visiting his family for Christmas. It was my first visit to Mark’s hometown of Roswell, Georgia, and his parents’ white leather sectional sofa was huge and cozy. We snuggled up close throughout those days, savoring the time together. We thought it would be three whole months before we saw each other again, so we made every second count. Before I boarded my flight back home to Colorado, we made a plan to connect on the phone at 11:59PM on New Year’s Eve.

We wanted to be able to hear one another’s voice when the clock struck midnight.

We were adorable.

Today a plan to connect with someone on the phone at a certain time is relatively simple.

But in 1993, before we carried phones with us everywhere we went, it could be quite complex.

Mark was to be the entertainment at a party in Oklahoma and I was to be in Idaho Springs, Colorado preparing for a day of skiing on January 1, so we needed careful planning and services to make the phone connection work.

Enter Matt Olsen.

Matt and his wife, Molly, are two of our dearest friends. Molly and I became friends on her visits to Colorado Springs to see family during her breaks from school at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We attended the same church in the Springs and got to know one another through the college and career events planned by the church community. Coincidentally, Mark knew both Matt and Molly from his years at ORU, and when Matt and Molly married in August, 1993, Mark and I both missed the wedding because we were falling in love in Mexico at the exact same time.

Small world. And fodder for another post at another time.

Since Matt and Molly were visiting Colorado Springs for the holidays that year, we made plans for a day of skiing to get the New Year off to a good start. My brother, who had lived in Colorado for eight years and never gone skiing (scaredy cat), joined us on our little adventure.

Matt was in charge of the overnight accommodations.

This was a mistake.

After arriving in Idaho Springs, we drove into the parking lot of the motel Matt had selected and booked for us.

The Peoriana was its name.

Being fancy was not its game.

It was a run down strip of rooms facing the parking lot. The office was located in a separate building in the center of the parking lot, which, by the way, was covered in a thick layer of ice.

Our room was made up of two double beds facing a tiny black and white TV with hazy reception. If I remember correctly, we listened to reruns of Gilligan’s Island while trying to focus on the blurry images moving behind the haze of static. Of course, we weren’t really there to watch TV. We went to dinner and hung out in the room talking, laughing, playing cards and harnessing the crazy amount of static electricity in the room by making sparks with our blankets (you had to be there) until it was time to call Mark.

This was when our plan kind of fell apart.

Because, you see, there wasn’t a phone in our motel room.

Turns out if one wanted to make a call while staying at the luxurious Peoriana, one had to cross the parking lot and use the lobby phone there.

So that’s what one did.

Not a big deal.

Except one had to navigate a field of glaciers in order to make it safely to the lobby.

SO MUCH ICE.

These were the days before I had some sense in me.

Before I had children.

For some reason I see my pre-mom self as my pre-sense self…as if the act of giving birth somehow pushed my common sense button and after that I had all kinds of good sense.

But before that?

Zero sense.

Pre-sense Kaysie was a lot of fun.

And pre-sense Kaysie had all kinds of adventures.

But post-sense Kaysie continues to reap what pre-sense Kaysie sowed.

That night I was wearing the ever-stylish pair of white sweatpants along with my favorite Air Force Academy sweatshirt and a pair of boots. I didn’t bother tying the boots because…pre-sense.

I moved like a ninja across that icy terrain – a ninja in white sweatpants.

But despite the careful placement of each and every step, there came an inevitable moment when I hit a sheer, glassy patch and fell.

Hard.

On my right knee.

Guess which thing is going to give when a knee and a block of ice slam into one another?

I’ll give you a hint – it won’t be the block of ice.

I know this now because my post-sense self is alive and well.

As I struggled to stand up, I slipped again, slamming my butt hard into the ice.

A lady, sitting in her car near me as I struggled to get back on my feet, rolled down her window with a look of pure horror on her face and asked, “Hon, are you okay?”

No, lady. I am not okay. #worstquestionever

I pulled myself precariously to my feet and made my way to the door of our room by holding on to car door handles, antennas, bumpers, license plates…whatever I could get my frozen fingers around for stability.

I stumbled into the room a bloody mess.

Like, I was literally a bloody mess.

My white sweatpants were soaked in blood from a gash on my knee.

It probably needed stitches, but remember…pre-sense. And we didn’t have band-aids for the same reason, so Matt ran to the drug store, and then my friends patched me up as best they could.

Then guess what I did?

Yep. I pulled myself together and traversed back across the frozen parking lot to call my man.

The things we do for love.

The skiing the following day was pretty amazing despite the drama of the night before.

Despite my brother’s unwillingness to take a beginner class before hitting the slopes, which meant I spent half the day hiking back up every single slope in order to pull his sorry ass out of the snow.

And despite the open wound on my knee that bled through everything we wrapped around it. The bleeding finally stopped when the steady stream of blood throughout the day sealed my long underwear to my leg and served as the perfect mode of compression.

Thank God for our post-sense selves. Without the wisdom that comes as we grow and mature into some sense about life – who we are and what we want – we’d be a bloody mess (literally and figuratively, for me at least) of a self trying to navigate valley glaciers or descend icy glacial masses from mountaintops.

But there’s something, too, about the pre-sense space – the lived-in state of heart and mind that gives us the courage to do the daring, bold acts that get us across the ice and allow us to connect with the One we long for.

Here’s to finding a way to access the wisdom of the post-sense self with the courage and daring of the pre-sense self as we connect with the One in whom we find our whole being in 2020.