Anger, Fear and Sadness

I am thankful for the writing skills my daughter uses to express her thoughts and feelings. She shares way more on paper than she does in person, even in therapy. She would rather write.

In school, she was recently asked to write a bioglyph. She's been reading biographies. 

From studying the life of Lucille Ball, a comedian who stole the hearts of many as a woman who experienced many "firsts" on the big screen down the line to Malala Yousafzai, a girl who stood up for her rights to be educated. My daughter does not fail to mention every time she talks about Malala, that she was shot by a member of the Taliban as she fought for equality. Sometimes I fear she knows too much.

I wish I could paint everyone to be nice for my children. I can I guess, but the truth will come out eventually. Not everyone is nice. Not everyone cares about the best interests of others.

Which leads me to... my daughter's bioglyph. She actually typed this herself. 

Reading this was eye opening for me, as is, just about everything my daughter writes.

I know every child feels anger, fear and sadness, but I just can't help to think that this goes deeper for my daughter.

Frustrations begin to arise within me as I read, that she "has experienced anger, fear and sadness". Why couldn't she mention happy, more hopeful feelings? 

I want so badly to reverse the wrong in her life and make it all right. But, that would be easy now, wouldn't it?

As I sat in church today, I wept. 

I listened to that still small voice, a whisper, while the band sang, "What can make me whole again? Nothing but the love of Jesus. What can heal my brokenness? Nothing but the blood of Jesus." I wept because I recognize my own brokenness in our story.

After over an hour of tantruming last night, I messaged a close friend saying, "She has disorders. I am not okay with those. I'm just not. I'm done with them." This, while she is repeating herself over and over again in her baby voice for longer than anyone should have to hear it (and longer than anyone should feel what she is feeling while this is happening).

For those of you who have praised me for my transparency in the past... here you go.

I totally lost my cool to the point of my husband saying, "Let me take over." Thank God for my amazingly patient husband, and I am not just saying that because he may, by a slight chance, read this post at some point when he awakes from his blissful rest. (I totally massaged his feet tonight until he fell asleep. That is my stress relief sometimes. Lucky him, right?)

Last night, he didn't say "Let me take over" with his words, he pointed at me, and pointed at our bedroom, where our son was trying to be distracted and begin his bedtime routine. Which wasn't going to happen through the ridiculousness of our daughter being completely out of control upstairs. The noise. It's so loud. Echos through our home. Sometimes my hands shake. My heart races. My son hides. We turn on a cartoon. We raise the volume. We hate that he hears these awful rage fits and pray they do not create traumatic experiences for him.

I wept today in church because I'm not The Potter. I cannot shape this earthen vessel that I call my daughter. I cannot even shape myself the way I want to, despite how hard I try. I really try. Jeremiah 18:1-4 says, "The LORD gave another message to Jeremiah. He said, “Go down to the potter’s shop, and I will speak to you there.”So I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him."

As I listened to "Nothing but the love of Jesus" with tears streaming down my face, I could see how I was trying to put this piece of clay over here, adding this and that, making it look this way or that way. I envisioned pieces breaking off of the pottery I worked so hard to make. It was so ugly. The colors were off. It was embarrassing. I wept more. Nearly sobbing. The love. It's the love of Jesus, that heals our brokenness. Not me. I cannot heal my daughter. But, we can be made whole together in Christ. 

I can do what I know is right, to help her continue down her healing path. Recognizing my own need for God's love and seeing myself as He sees me, as an earthen vessel that He sometimes needs to reshape, as it seems best to Him, is really challenging. 

Just like He shapes me. He shapes her. He is making something beautiful. Again.