Oh hey friends.
Let’s check in for a minute :
Chloe and Lydia turned three this week. (Today is Lydia’s birthday, actually, but we celebrated them both yesterday. Twins having different birthdays is the strangest thing.) They also had their IEP evaluations and both qualified, so we’re in the process of getting them registered for preschool and processing all that that is going to change for our family.
I recorded two UK radio interviews about Even if He Doesn’t and the hosts had such great questions! So if you’re in the UK, listen for my interviews on UCB - the This is My Story show and The Supplement on TWR. Not sure on the release dates for those, but should be sometime soon!
If you preordered Even if He Doesn’t and signed up for the preorder gifts, look for an email from me next week about the zoom book club! We’re getting it on the calendar, I have a resource ready for you to use, and I’m so excited to chat about this book and hear your stories face to face. If you didn’t add your name to the preorder list, you can still join the book club! Drop a comment on this post if you’re interested and I’ll make sure you get the details!
On that note, being off social media has given me so much more emotional and mental space for the aspect of my work and writing that matters the most. I am so proud of my book and so excited to give you a few more resources to accompany it, but what matters isn’t the writing and the selling of a book. What matters is bearing witness to pain and offering comfort and presence in it. My work, my ministry, my life … it all exists in the space between two people making eye contact. Social media demands that you move fast, that you move with the brightest colors, the best ideas, and to be the first and the best always. It’s a competition and it always will be and I’m not wired that way and neither is the Kingdom of God. I want what I do to be relational before it’s relevant or viral or whatever is the “best” thing to be at the moment.
So I’m gonna keep doing what I do and carving out space for us to talk about human things with nuance, grace, and compassion, even if it comes at some expense.
The past few weeks, I’ve found it easier and easier to make eye contact with my own reality. Things I’ve been avoiding or that trauma has touched in some way that I hadn’t realized had been affected by what we’ve gone through. Simple things like a monthly auto payment that was going to a credit card and not coming out of our bank account. How does that happen? How do you miss that? Life. Chaos. Trauma. You forget. You stop paying attention to one thing so you can pay attention to the other and then eventually, you sort it all out. We’re in the sorting out. And it is good.
The fog is lifting and I’m realizing I haven’t been fully out of survival mode in the way that I thought. But, I have noticed that this week (the girls’ birth week) hasn’t triggered any bad mental health days like it did last year and the year before. Trauma creates memories inside your body and your mind and the body keeps the score, as they say. But this year, the trauma memory is more of a faint echo than a blaring siren and I’m grateful for that.
I talked a bit in my book about my battle with anxiety and depression and although they don’t control my life like they used to, they are chronic. They’re frequent visitors in my life and I never really know when they’ll show up. I have to be constantly aware of my emotions and my nervous system so that I can address it and do what I need to do to redirect it or … at the bare minimum … just survive the day. It’s hard. And on my hardest days, I still wonder why God hasn’t healed me yet.
I often feel really helpless. I can’t change the chemistry of my body. I can’t add genes that are missing in my gene expression, and I can’t pack up my family and move somewhere cheaper and sunnier (which is what my bloodwork and genetic results tell me I need to do!). So if I’m stuck in this body and I’m stuck in this cold and cloudy New England state (that I do actually love most of the time), I have to be in constant awareness of my body, my emotions, and my mind - even when I’m doing ok. Which I am, at the moment. But, I have to stay attuned. It’s my thorn in the flesh, I guess. But to be honest, I’m really tired of it, and I’d like the zero thorn kind of life if that’s an option. Where does one sign up for that?
Anyway - we’ve had weeks and weeks of rain over here, so when I checked the weather and saw we had one singular sunny day in a two week forecast, I loaded the kids in the car and took them to the beach. The water was freezing, but the sun was hot and that’s all that matters.
Over the next couple of weeks on here, I'll be writing a bit more about mental health and the intersection of faith. A little about the tension of believing in a God who can heal, but hasn’t yet, and the reality of living in the “Doesn’t” side of the “Even If.”
I hope you’re having a great week. Thank you for your patience with me as I sort out my life and get the ground under my feet again. I appreciate you so much. 🤍
I can't thank you enough for always being so honest about the reality of life and trauma and mental health. I feel like I'm the only one struggling in my church community, but reading your words always reminds me that I'm not alone.
I preordered and *think* I should be on the list, but imma gonna comment here anyway cause I don’t want to miss the book club! And also… sooo much of the same things going on. Different situations, but so same. I feel like we’re in sorting out phase, too.