Into the Night

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

“Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.” LaoTzu

We were married on July 2nd. Like any other bride, I had hopes and dreams of my life with my husband based on the model of my parent’s marriage. I didn’t see how hugely different the dynamics were until much later. Now it is easy to see. Letting go of dreams when you’ve lost the ability to dream a new one is difficult. So you live in the dream you had, no matter it changed from your original version and became distorted and unrecognizable.

He was in my dreams again. But he is not berating me, or ignoring me, pushing me, yelling at me. Shooting me. He is loving me. He did that, treated me tenderly and affectionately in between. Normal would resume. Unaware, I allowed myself to be lulled into a sense of security, and the hope that we would be okay. I held on to those times as some validation our life together was not an entire lie.

I once saw a girl hit from behind by a big wave. It hit her so hard it knocked her out. The rescue squad carried her out of the water and off the beach on a backboard, suspecting the wave broke her neck.

I am reeling from the force and power of the unexpected wave of my nighttime dream; a wave that hit while I was looking away and beginning to relax and live my life. It reminds me of life with him. Floating on the water until seemingly from nowhere, a wave would crash over me and drag me under, disoriented and trying to find the surface again.

I tell the children, when they have bad dreams, it was just a dream. I have no broken back or neck. There is no rescue squad to pull me out of the water in these early morning hours, to assess my injuries, tend to me. It is my spirit that is broken. The dream is not just a dream, it is real. I am alone in this ocean.

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Important Days

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

‘Mom, this is the most important day in my life so far.’

I am crying as I attempt to tie his tie, closely following the directions I’ve noted, with no success. Finally frustrated because we are running out of time, I send him to my neighbor, who with Parkinson’s struggles to help. 

Fifth grade graduation. Six years, lives entwined, bound by friendship and hardship, tragedy and triumph, the ripple of our life reaching these children and parents. It is impossible not to remember. Just two years ago we sat in these same chairs, proud of our oldest child’s accomplishments. Though everything was lost for us, we had at least done something right together.

  A second ago, a lifetime ago.

 I am in awe at the resilience of the human spirit to bounce back, rise above, to reach out to touch, to celebrate the little things, be grateful. To love even when unloved, to continue on. The unfairness precariously balanced by this victory. It is a gift.    

 A young man, undaunted, ready to face the future with the enthusiasm to live a life fully. Our new normal. A new beginning, a new chapter, full of grace in acceptance.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes…for the former things are passed away.” – Revelation 21:3-4

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The Unbearable Weight Of Being

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

 I have a friend who feels called to carry God’s message. As I struggle with writing this blog, my book, and public speaking I keep thinking about that. He feels God chose him. He’s accepted the challenge with such grace. I don’t see him arguing, throwing it back to God saying he doesn’t want the job.

 I, too, feel God chose me with and for a purpose. However, I am angry He chose me. Someone else should tell this ugly, nasty tale. After all, I’ve lived it. I survived it.

I’ve cursed Him. Geez God, did you really have to give me a story that includes feeling like I was at the bottom of a river for the last ten years, amidst the murky water, struggling against an anchor-like weight, always trying to rise to the surface for a breath of air before being pulled down again? A story with a chapter of two collapsed lungs, a shattered diaphragm, breathing being a literal stuggle; complete with a fancy starburst wound to my liver including a bullet, complimented by 10 units of Richmond’s bluest blood, and some lovely scars here, there and everywhere as souvenirs?

Shouldn’t that be enough? I mean come on God, give me a break here. Now you are calling me to help other women? Other children? Enough already! Choose someone else.

Really, God, you gave me the wrong story.  I’m saddled with this horrific story, so vastly different than any story I should be in. I’m light hearted and funny, and would just as soon skip merrily through life. I love to laugh and make other people laugh. Shouldn’t I be writing about something fun to match my personality?

Like finally breaking away from that anchor, and floating freely to the surface as if in a time machine that threw me into dating 25 years after my last date?

Goldilocks at the oatmeal bowl, saying this one is too hot, this one is too cold; too short, too tall, too talkative, too quiet.

A Whitman Sampler box of assorted men, most very sweet; pinched and returned to their place in search of the one that is solid.

Shoe in hand, trying it on every man who attended the ball, seeking my prince charming, my Cinderfella.

Flying, on the fringe, refueling mid-air; behind me a vapor trail littered with the remnants of possibilities and impossibilities. Colorful personalities like the hues of a rainbow, abandoned after a few dates whilst I forge ahead boldly going where no (wo)man, at least this one, has gone before.

Scottie, I’ll need warp speed in three minutes or we’re all dead. Oh, wait! That is the other story. That story of that other woman. Surely not mine.

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Hidden

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

I’m pulled into another memory that emerges seemingly from nowhere. An unidentified visual or sound triggers an image of M and I arguing in the kitchen. I want to go to the store for a yellow onion. We have a red onion but for the recipe, I prefer a yellow onion. We argue about my going to the store and I acquiesce, using the red onion we have.

I am at the stove. He reaches over and pinches my arm and holds the pinch until I cringe in pain. With my free hand, I try to slap his hand away and pull free. I escape into the hall bathroom, the closest place to get away.

He follows me. He always followed me. I try to quickly close and lock the door behind me but he forces it open. It is narrow. Trying to ignore him, I move away, further into the bathroom. He shoves me against the linen closet door, pinning me, his hand pressing on my chest.

I think, “I’m a big woman; he cannot hurt me”. But he is hurting me. Out of the corner of my eye I see Natalie in the hallway, a wide-eyed toddler, observing curiously. I don’t move. I am absolutely still, and silent. I don’t fight back because I don’t want to upset her. My eyes turn back to stare defiantly into his.

Then his hands move to my throat and he begins to strangle me, I maintain eye contact with him. I refuse to look away, thinking, “you will know who I am and my beloved daughter will be watching when you kill me”. I worry who will take care of her and Graham who is still a baby; the children I share with this stranger who is strangling me. And I begin to fight back.  I reach up around his arm and dig my nails into his skin, drawing blood, my eyes locked into his, still silent. Years later in marriage counseling, he recalls only his injuries, nothing in the context of me defending myself.

He finally releases. I push by him and sweep a still quiet but clearly fearful child into my arms and swiftly go down the hall to the phone to call the police.

He screams at me, “You would have your children watch their father be arrested?” I bark back, “Do you realize what your children have just witnessed?” He regains his composure and dismissively says, “Go ahead and call, it’s my word against yours. No one will believe you,” as he holds up wrists and arms I have bloodied trying to break free.

I, the smart, successful, spunky woman he used to love, put the phone down. No one will believe me. He, the likable friendly guy who would help anyone and everyone but us, respected and thought of highly. He is right. No one will believe me.

There are no tears. I’d exchanged the ability to cry for the strength to survive. I did not have the luxury to mourn with two children who needed their mother. I would not give him the satisfaction of my tears even if I could have conjured them.

Now a lifetime of tears stands ready to tumble at any given moment. As I awake this morning, maybe having dreamed of him, this scene plays over in my head. Those unshed tears, the acuity of a premonition our daughter would watch as he tried to kill me, begin to flood.

I get out of bed, again grateful for a merciful God who has given me another chance. I write. I tell my secret.

‘Leave all your love and your longing behind you can’t carry it with you if you want to survive.’ Florence Welsh

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Comfort

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Lisette d. Johnson

Sunday, May 22, 2011 Comfort Zone Camp

She smiled. I left her Friday quiet and sullen, and when she saw me today, she smiled. Her beautiful soul out in plain view again. I want to embrace her and say stay, and it is my hope she will. Right now though, I drink her in as if finally quenched from a long trek in a desert. I have my child back.

Friday, May 20, 2011

I met Lynn Hughes, founder of Comfort Zone Camp, at Lowe’s while waiting in line. As I am apt to do, I started a conversation with a total stranger and asked what her Comfort Zone t-shirt was about.  She told me it was a camp for grieving children. Still not certain what she meant, I inquired further. She told me her story. In the line at Lowe’s she told me about losing her mother, and then her father.  The effect it had on her life, the motivation to create a place for children to grieve and heal.

I was so affected by her story, I cried in the car on the way home. I’m not sure if my son had been born, but I know my daughter was just a young toddler and I remember wondering how horrific it would be to lose not one, but both parents.   Lynn’s story and the camp would stick with me for years and I would think of it often.

Many theologians would argue that God does not intervene in our lives, that He does not ‘make’ things happen or ‘put’ people in our lives. I will argue show me the proof.  I’m sorry, I cannot believe my meeting Lynn all those many years ago was simply coincidence. Is providence not divine coincidence?

I lie in my hammock on this chilly spring night in May and wonder how my children are doing at Comfort Zone Camp right now.  Are they clicking with their big buddies? Were they screaming with joy and laughing in the ice breaker activities? Did they share their stories, their grief, their challenges in their healing circles tonight?  Can they communicate how they have processed our last year, complete with the first anniversary, and moving forward to yet another birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter without their father. Will they be able to talk about him without feeling conflicted?

Will they provide comfort and reassurance for other new campers now that they are camp veterans this 2nd year? Will I notice as profound a change in them this year as last when I pick them up?

Sunday, May 22, 2011

I tear up in anticipation of the memorial service. The healing circle leaders, volunteer professional clinicians, share the names of the children they had in their healing circles and what the children worked on, how they worked through things.  More than one had a faltering voice and tears.

The kids and their buddies come in and the energy in the room ramps up. The memorial begins and healing circle groups come and share with us, the outsiders looking into their protected camp bubble, a glimpse of their weekend journey.  Parts are so poignant, so emotional, that there is almost a unified choir of tears in the room. Stories, songs, shared memories of loved ones.  Perhaps the most moving was a little 8 yr old girl who courageously stood before a room crowded with campers, volunteers, grieving families and sang a song to her father; struggling through her own tears but sharing her strength with the rest of us – young and old alike.

At the balloon release, hundreds of balloons with notes tied onto them are released simultaneously heavenward.

I speak to the children’s buddies and their healing circle leaders.  My son bravely relived his trauma by sharing all of the details. Struggling to understand his unique loss, the other children asked many of the same questions over and over. His buddy and leader said he was kind and compassionate, and was an active listener when they shared their stories.

My daughter is filled with anger. Still struggling to make some sense of anything. Her healing circle leader offers her perspective the final weeks or hours or minutes of a person’s life do not define who they are, in an effort to allow her to find some memories that are good and let some of the more painful memories sift out.

How can I thank someone who had a dream and didn’t let it die? How can I thank all the volunteers, from big buddies to floaters to cooks to healing circle leaders, and the new leaders propelling Comfort Zone forward?  Not just for giving their time, but giving themselves through their dedication to changing children’s lives in such a positive way?

I’ll leave it up to you, my readers, to help me do that with this appeal to keep making it possible for them to give. Please consider coordinating a workplace or church sponsorship of a camp.

http://www.comfortzonecamp.org/giving/corporate-sponsorship

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