Life is a colorful journey to say the least, isn't it? The thing that has struck me as the most strange, though, is how some things, despite the record of chronology, seem to not just be timeless but transcend time. It is an idea so complex that men have devoted years of their lives to finding a way to quantify and understand exactly what "time" is. One of those people happens to be my husband.
The thing that I find most striking in its transcendence of time is the versions of ourselves. We are each one person - yes. But I have spoken in times past about performing a therapeutic exercise during which you intentionally mentally go back and revisit the "you" of a different time and lend something to that person. For me in the past, I went back to the "me of 11", and I comforted a very confused kid who felt alone while my poor grieving mom cradled her own mother's body while the soul left the body and my grandmother breathed her last. My grandmother held my mother when she breathed her first breath. My mother held her own mother when she breathed her last breath. What is more intensely beautiful and sorrowful all at the same time? That year was so difficult for me and parts of my soul got, understandably, lost in the shuffle. Well the shuffle didn't last forever. Life marched on and continued to change. I grieved hard for the loss of my grandmother, but it took me more than 20 years to realize that I had never grieved the loss of myself and that I needed to do that. So I wrote a letter. I still have it. That experience was insane, but it taught me how to do that for the "Sarahs" of the past.
I was able to go back and rescue and comfort the "Sarah" that got raped who felt she needed forgiveness for something that was never her fault. I learned a good skill that I have used to go back and wrap loving, now momma, arms around the versions of myself that happened in this weird thing of time that we use to measure our experiences. Let me just tell you, if you ever do this, you will understand what I mean when I describe it as transcendent. If you perform the exercise correctly....you guys...it's like you actually go back. I am not talking about some weird delusion of time travel or alter universe. I'm not implying something like Back to the Future. It's....it's its own thing, but know this. You can go back within your soul...and you can address things. So, under the watchful eye of a clinical therapist and my loving (then) fiance and with an attitude of prayer and protection, I have performed this exercise multiple times for several different versions of myself.
There are several versions representing several years to which I could not bring myself to go back. My (now) husband and a close friend trained in this field have encouraged me to do so.
I just couldn't....
until tonight.
There is something to say for relationships that are genuinely safe. You really don't ever get a whole bunch of those in life. Most relationships aren't bad - they just remain on the surface, and so they can't be described as a safe place or an emotional bunker. They're just repeated salutations and some shared experiences, but the other parties aren't ones that would offer sacrifice or safety. It's not that they're bad - they're just shallow. But then you find a few that are exactly what every heart needs. They are a harbor of protection and a bed of renewal. Those relationships are important. Those are the ones you hold onto. Those are the ones wherein is revealed the most truth. One of those relationships for me is with my husband. He has been a rock of truth and love for my heart since I was 20 years old, and that part of who he is has only grown more beautiful with time.
I spent some much needed time with him tonight. It was one of those evenings where you talk things out because you find yourselves being more and more in sync with each other rather than talking things out to clear air from a fight. It was a time of feeling like the thread that knit our hearts together got pulled a little tighter.
The safety.
Dan left the room, and I stayed just staring up at the ceiling...and then it happened. A "Sarah" from another year sprang to the front of my soul. A lot of "Sarahs" in my past have needed help because they have been very, very afraid. I spent more of my life than I care to admit feeling so horrified every day, and while this particular "Sarah" had also spent a lot of time feeling so scared, the thing she needed help with from "Sarah now" was because she was just heartbrokenly sad. Just so sad.
There were a few key points of loss for my story. I value my loves so fiercely that losing anyone is earth shattering to me. I have buried people in my immediate family. That loss is just awful...but then there are people who have not ceased to live. They walked away...sometimes with their feet and everytime with their hearts, and the "Sarah" that needed some loving arms tonight was sad over someone that walked away. After this person took their exit, life spun in circles so fast that I was just trying to survive, and their exit felt like such a slap-in-the-face betrayel that allowing myself to feel loss almost felt like I was extending a value to them that they didn't deserve. I never deserved to be emotionally abandoned by this person. I had tried to be their friend through thick and thin. They were important and absolutely precious to me, so their choice to betray what my heart offered was just excrutiating for me. And the interesting dynamic is when someone's heart leaves your heart, it doesn't always happen that they logistically leave your life. You may continue spending as much time around them as you always had. That was the case here. The regular life that had included both of us continued for a while, and, as there is in life, there was some frenzy at times that never allowed the "me" of then to ever just sit down and weep for what had just ripped out my heart.
Honestly, time marched on.
Part of me remained stuck there with that poor "Sarah" of that time crumpled in a heap on my bed trying to make myself cry but not being able to. I had children at that point so laying in bed for days to actually grieve wasn't realistic. So that "Sarah about to cry" stayed right there....until tonight.
I have no idea what the catalyst was that pulled this "Sarah" to the front of my soul, but as I lay in this house on this night, she came to "me" and the tears just started to well up in my eyes. I guess I feel like maybe it was the growing feeling of safety in the arms and heart of my husband that made both of us "Sarahs" feel like we would be safe enough to be vulnerable in our heartbreak. "You know....I never even just let myself feel sad about that..." and as soon as my brain silently spoke the words, my heart gave both of us "Sarahs" permission to go ahead and "drown".
I use drowning as an analogy because if someone is in distress in a body of water, the rescue personnel will not offer them aid while they are still flailing their arms or forcing their body up into the air with every bit of strength they have remaining. The reason the rescuer waits is because the victim can actually continue to damage themselves and the rescue effort can be fruitless and catastrophic. It is only when the victim - the hurting, scared person - loses all strength of their own and has no way to fight that the rescuer can reach down and scoop them up to safety. It is, in fact, the letting go and abandoning the effort to someone else that results in the actual rescue. You sacrifice all control. You relinquish it.
That is what the "Sarah" of now did as I went back with the "Sarah" of then, and "we" (you guys, I know it was not two people but two VERSIONS of the same) just sat and wept together as our collective heart ached for the loss of the one who walked away. The one we loved and valued and rooted for and placed as precious. We let go of all the hurt from the one who walked away and then abandoned the vigilance over my soul that kept me forcing myself to just take the next step during what has now become years of sort of robotic persistence to survive. We two "Sarahs" cried all the tears my heart needed to cry, and "we" embraced the sorrow into every corner of my soul that needed to light of the truth that it really existed.
And then it was done.
Here's the weird thing I have had happen. My brain thinks of everything as metaphorical or analogous so as I think about these previous versions of me that are still in distress for their various reason, I mentally picture them as crying or wringing their hands or with a frightened look on their faces upon every remembrance I have of them. But when I go back to them and sit and embrace them and offer them hope and comfort, all that distress ceases to exist.
It. Is. Finished.
They are permanently rescued. That happened for this "Sarah" from that time - that one particular time. That happened for her tonight. So she's never again the crying, broken hearted one. I have laid her down with her puffy eyes and wet cheeks, and I have smoothed her hair back off of her face so that she can now rest. Forever.
That "Sarah" is now laid to rest.
And this "Sarah" - the "Sarah" of now - gets to live.
There are a few more "Sarahs". I nearly see them with my mind's eye waiting their turn in a spiritual line.
I'm coming girls. Just let me catch my breath.
No comments:
Post a Comment