Finding Me - Part 4 of 4

August 2006 - June 2011
The Rest of the Story

I’ve found that the healing of an emotional wound is not so different than the healing of a physical one. As a teenager, I stepped into a hole and scraped a three-inch-long by half-inch-wide section of skin off the middle of my shinbone. The doctors were only able to stitch up the worst of it – a ¼ inch section at the top of the wound. The rest, they said, did not have enough skin left around it to stitch back together and would have to heal on its own. You can imagine the care that was needed as we nursed this open wound. Deep enough to see the bone, wide enough to stick your finger into, the risk of infection was great if we did not treat it properly. Likewise, my emotional wound needed gentle care at first, and I cleaned it out often by talking through my feelings with friends and family. As I scraped the edges of my wound the raw pain was severe but, once the bandages were carefully replaced, it felt a little better than it had before; a little cleaner.

But, of course, neither wound can heal back to what it was before, because scar tissue is not skin. If you run your finger up along my physical scar, you can feel how papery thin it is, and if you push gently you can feel the divot where my bone was chipped. The scar is tender, and it takes a surprisingly soft blow to break through. Similarly, I have been surprised at my tears after a seemingly soft bump to the scar in my emotions.

Another commonality is that initially, I was embarrassed by the scar on my leg but, over the years I have grown comfortable with it, and have even grown to love it. The feelings about my emotional scar seem to be following the same path; I am getting more comfortable with it, I appreciate it, accept it, and am even beginning to love the person it has made me into.

The difference is that it has always been very easy to see the borders of my physical scar, whereas my emotional scar is obviously much more abstract. I see now that there really are no borders to it at all. It's effect has permeated into all of me... Perhaps that's why it's taken so long to find myself again.

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I find personalities to be a bit like jigsaw puzzles. I spend a lot of time staring at pieces from mine that seem to make no sense on their own, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of placing those pieces and seeing the bigger picture they are a part of. There are times when I feel I’ve just placed the very last piece, and as I step back to look at the complete picture, I feel good and calm and comfortable. I feel I know exactly who I am and feel confident in my skin. But, after a seemingly brief time of stability, something always happens to throw my puzzle up into the air and I watch as it crumbles back to the table in front of me in hundreds of pieces. It’s during this crumbling phase that I think the Lord throws in a handful of new pieces. New pieces that make it impossible to fit the puzzle back together the way it was before, but pieces that will make my completed puzzle look a little more like my Savior’s in the end.

I felt like a mountain of puzzle pieces was dumped into my lap when I lost Jess; so many that it took almost five years to piece back together the main images that make me me. Some of my personality traits are the same as they’ve always been: pensive, stubborn, analytical, quick to observe. Some of my personality traits are similar to what they were previously, only enriched with added colors and more pieces: faith in God, love for others, empathy, seeing the world with an eternal perspective.

But, some of my personality traits have changed completely. I spent the first five years waiting to ‘snap out of’ these traits. I’ve spent the last year learning to accept them. None of these changed traits are more noticeable than my hypersensitive (to me) ability to feel. As a college student, I sat in my little Honda Civic holding a graded test that I had not done very well on. Tears streamed down my face in response to the frustration I felt inside. I threw the test onto the passenger seat, wiped my tears and put the car in gear. As I drove out of the parking lot I wondered what I would ever cry about once school was over. There wasn’t much, other than a poor grade, that could make me cry.

This is not true anymore.

Little moments touch my heart deeply. Songs, commercials, quotes, and tender phrases often leave me with tearful eyes. Gratitude runs so deep it feels painful at times. Hurtful comments cut me like a knife. Frustrating days, overwhelming thoughts, sad stories; joyful reunions, sweet moments with my children, love for my husband. Through it all, I cry. This has brought a challenge with it, for I never really learned how to bridle my tears. Before Jess, if I felt like crying I would with no hesitation, and it has been difficult for me to learn how to stop the tears when I feel them coming. I realize now that I may always have to control my emotions and that I need to learn how to deal with this new part of me…this sensitive, vulnerable side.

Another change has been the subtle, but noticeable, shift into more of a realist and less of an optimist. Sometimes it’s hard for me to focus on the good in a given situation, where that was rarely the case previously.

I am also now much more reserved and thoughtful before I speak. This has been one of the most frustrating things to adjust to. I had enjoyed the ease of jumping into conversations and the comfort I felt when sharing my own opinions and thoughts. But now I find the opposite is true in that it is often hard for me to work my way into a conversation, and even when I’m involved in it, I often still don’t say much.

My puzzle is still so small and insignificant when I compare it to my Savior. But, even though I can’t quite see it yet, I think these pieces are all working together to get me a little closer to being like Him. And so I’ll take them. I’ll take the hard ones and the confusing ones; I’ll try to fit them in and I’ll exercise my faith in this hope that I am becoming more like Him.

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Every day my feet have taken me a little further up on this mountain of healing. And, as I've climbed, an occasional lesson will make itself clear. These lessons are very meaningful to me, and seem to have a depth to them that convinces me that I would not have learned them without traveling through a difficult trial:

*It takes a long time to heal. And, sadly, you can’t really speed it up. People told me this in the very beginning, but my mistake was in not understanding their interpretation of what a long time is. One month, maybe two? By three months I felt there was something wrong with me and in a tearful conversation with my mom over the phone I said, “But it’s been three months, Mom! Why am I still crying all the time?” Her reply began with a gentle laugh, “Oh, Linds. Three months is not a long time.” I disagreed. Ninety days of sadness? I felt that qualified as ‘a long time’. Today my perspective is different.

*People are almost always acting through a good heart. It’s hard to know what to say to someone who is grieving. People want to help. They want to say something that will provide some healing or peace to the troubled heart. But, unfortunately, there is no magical thing to say because nothing you can say will take the pain away. This can make the situation awkward at times, and a well meaning comment can come off sounding hurtful. For example, after I explained to one sweet woman that Jess had died because he had a genetic disorder called Trisomy 9, she tried to cheer me up by telling me I should be grateful things ended the way they did because I might have had to raise a handicapped child. I was astronomically offended at this for a few days. I would have traded my situation in a heartbeat to hold that little boy again – handicapped or not. And, I still would. But there came a point in time where I saw the situation through her eyes and, though I still disagreed, I knew that she had shared her comment out of love for me. I have learned to take each comment or gesture, even if it hurt initially, with a generous grain of salt and try to remember, first and foremost, that the person sharing the comment cares about me. I don’t recall a single experience where a comment has been said about Jess with the intent to offend. In fact, a wrong word or gesture given from a good heart meant so much more to me than someone who offered no words or gestures at all.

*When someone you love is going through a difficult time, pray for guidance. I have been grateful for many phone calls, visits, and e-mails from friends who have a loved one going through a similar situation, and their question to me is always the same: what can I do to help? My first and most important piece of advice is to pray for guidance. A grieving heart is a tricky thing to navigate and, in my own grieving, I had no idea what I needed. Sincere friends would ask me to let them know if there was anything they could do to help, but I never knew what to ask. I would spend a week ignoring my phone, and would then suddenly feel a surge of courage (or divine strength) one day as the third ring sang through the house. Twice, those answered phone calls turned out to be exactly what I needed. Thank heavens for the people who felt inspired to call at that moment. Sometimes a grieving heart needs your listening ear. Sometimes it needs to be left alone for a time. Sometimes it needs a kind note or e-mail. Sometimes it needs a milkshake. The surest way to help is by asking our Heavenly Father - He is, after all, the only one who sees clearly through the chaos.

*When someone you love is going through a difficult time, just do something. This is my second piece of advice. It generally doesn’t matter what is done; only that it is done. One of the most meaningful memories I have is of a chocolate cake a friend had made for her own family. Halfway through it they started thinking of us, wrapped up the leftovers, drove to our house, handed the half-eaten cake to Brian with a quick, ‘we’re thinking of you’ and drove away. That cake meant the world to me. I felt loved, cared about, thought of, and it was so comfortable to accept because it had caused the givers almost no extra trouble. I've learned that people often feel that they want to do something big to show how much they care, but no gesture is too small... in fact, they may appreciate the two line e-mail that doesn't need a response, or the small candy bar left anonymously in the mailbox that doesn't need a thank you, or the message on their machine saying you're thinking of them, or the gallon of milk from your fridge that has an expiration date approaching too soon. Chances are that knowing you are thinking about them will mean much more to them than whatever is done. Our family doesn’t even really like chocolate cake.

*Trust in the power of priesthood blessings. I often think back to that first blessing I received in the beginning of this journey. It has brought me so much peace because it has kept me focused on the big picture. Just as the blessing promised, I have been strengthened, I now know of God’s deep and personal love for me, and I have learned many invaluable lessons. In the blessing I was also told that this was planned from the beginning…this is a little harder to interpret because I’m not sure what the definition of ‘the beginning’ is, but the genetic counselors are sure that it was at least planned from the moment of conception. Perhaps it was planned long before.

*You can’t predict how you will feel in a given situation. And, what’s more is that you can’t choose how you’ll feel, either. You can only wait to see how you feel, and then choose how you will react to that feeling. I would have never predicted the healing process would be so long and complicated for me after delivering a stillborn baby. In fact, when I was about three months pregnant with McKenzie, I stood looking out of my living room window and wondered what the big deal with miscarriages was. I felt that if I lost the baby I was carrying that day, I wouldn’t be too devastated. After all, I thought, I’ve never even met this baby. I’m young; I’d just try again. This moment has played itself over and over again in my mind through the years. And though my experience with Jess was different than a miscarriage, I have to admit that I probably would have felt the same way had the hypothetical situation of a stillborn baby been presented. I have sometimes been embarrassed by my feelings and have wasted a lot of time trying to logically convince myself that it’s silly to let this affect me so deeply and for so long.

I’m getting better at accepting this idea that I can’t change the way I feel. It’s given me a new level of empathy, and helped me understand that it is not up to me to decide what circumstances should elicit sorrow from another. Sorrow is sorrow, and regardless of what stimulates the emotion, the feeling is the same. I still don’t have all the answers to why this has been such a life-changing experience for me. But it has. I can’t deny the beautiful, unique love glistening in my heart just for Jess, and no matter how many times I pretend that losing him was no big deal, it was. There is something about the bond between my soul and his that makes it so.

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The tricky thing with writing this story is that it gives the illusion of completeness. As if once it’s written it can no longer be modified or added to. However, this is not the end of my story. There are more things to work through, harder things to learn.

But,

I have found myself now. I have finally stopped waiting to return back to normal and accepted the fact that I am normal. I have learned a dozen lessons that have changed me, I have acknowledged the baggage that has come along with them as necessary parts of the trade, and I have accepted the idea that all these things together might make me a better person in the long run.

I think back to that lost girl of April 2006 who, nearly one year after Jess was born, wrote:

Do you think that an experience like one such as Jess has to change your entire life? I mean – like change your personality? I feel like I can’t get back to “the old me.” But maybe the old me doesn’t exist anymore.

I finally have an answer for her. Yes, it will. It will change your life, right down to your personality. But you know what? It'll be alright, because little by little you will piece yourself back together. The journey will be long, but you'll make it.

In the end you’ll find yourself again.