After 14 years, we are looking at life turning right side up again. It is not a quick process but something that we’ll probably be walking out over the next several months, at least.
I’ve struggled with how (and how much) to share about this because even though it is such a huge part of our lives, it is also our son’s life and I’ve stepped back from writing about it. It was easier when he was little, when all the kids were younger, when their adulthood loomed far ahead in a nebulous someday that felt eons away.
But now most of our kids are adults. In a year we’ll only have two under 18, and I don’t want to compromise their privacy or share as much of their childhoods as I used to. File this under When we know better, we do better. In the last post I mentioned that intercessors can’t talk about everything, and that’s true with parenting, writing, and other ministry, as well.
You and I navigate situations that are none of the internet’s business, so suffice it to say that all of the parents and ministers around us need prayer. Including us. And we’re praying for you, too.
I planted a couple dozen sunflowers in June but this is the only one that bloomed, and it wasn’t even one of mine. The chickadees and finches are snobs about their birdseed, eating all the small bits and rejecting the crushed sunflower seeds which they leave all over the deck so it looks like mouse detritus (not really the aesthetic we go for around here). But several of those seed bits landed in pots and sprouted, and this one is to their credit.
Once it bloomed, instead of looking outward at the sun like a normal sunflower, it just stared into the house all day.
I can’t tell if it’s friendly or creepy, spying or just curious, but it is very much how I’ve felt in recent years about sharing life online. I’ll let you figure out what that means because I’m not sure I’ve decided yet, even though I started blogging eighteen years ago. Most readers are great (bless you) but occasionally there’ll be someone who feels entitled to judge or assume or presume something that’s none of their business, simply because they’ve read about our family for a year or a decade or whatever.
I’m telling you this because it’s very much a part of what God has been speaking to me about how we mistake the holy for the common, and forget to hold what is sacred with the care and reverence we’re called to – both as a reader of other people, and a writer with my own people. Both are holy.
Unfortunately, the internet tends to be an environment rife with treating everyone on it like a reality show, while the worst of the audience is like those in the stands of the Colosseum shouting for people to die for their own entertainment. Some others just tend to be armchair quarterbacks and captious critics. (For example, it’s a special form of gaslighting to tell a person who has lived with trauma that they aren’t “trauma informed” because they don’t promote a particular brand of training…but I digress.)
So over the years I’ve shifted many things here, and one of the main ones is protecting how we keep certain events and memories sacred rather than casually strewing them about everywhere for anyone to make shallow commentary on that costs them nothing but comes at our expense.
With that said, here is where we are at in one major area.
We’ve had a ton of growth, and last year it finally looked like we had “arrived” to some extent. We saw healing, joy, repentance, and wholeness blooming in our son who had formerly dug in his heels against all those things.
Then spring came around, and with it the knowledge that things would change: his last year of school, and after that a job and who knows what else. And change has always been scary – no, terrifying. Slam on the brakes. Avoid it at all costs, even if it costs everything.
So the heels dug in again, and to make his world small and comfortable he refused the most basic of things that would move him forward.
I don’t like sharing this with you and I hope someday he’ll be at a place where he’s both intellectually and spiritually able to read my writings. I don’t want him to feel shame from them, and I hope readers will walk a wide path of grace instead of ignorant judgment and superiority. But as we’ll discuss, each person is responsible for their own maturity.
So without giving gory details, I’ll just say that his hard choices have put us in a place where we’ve had to make some hard choices because we still have young ones in the home. And he himself is not a kid anymore, having passed that milestone a couple years ago.
Vigilance has become muscle memory.
The mental exhaustion of always scanning for triggers. Scanning for objects that could become unsafe.
Living in a home like this keeps the body on alert. We scan tones of voice. We track proximity. Muscles stay tight. Sleep stays light. Even when the house is quiet, our bodies don’t trust the quiet.
There’s a phrase for this: battle weary—the kind of fatigue soldiers feel when the fighting doesn’t end.
We had a good conversation last week that I thought might indicate breakthrough. The cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face can really only go on for so long; consequences and counseling can only do so much, because repentance is really what moves the needle. I thought maybe, finally, he was ready. This is what we all need when we find ourselves facing the heat of our own poor decisions.
But twice later that day he made it clear that he wasn’t there yet. Loud and clear, in our faces, up your nose with a rubber hose. No way.
Okay.
And just so you know, that’s more than I’ve told the sunflower.
What friends and family outside our home couldn’t see was this wasn’t a temporary crisis. Trauma had reshaped the architecture of our daily life. Ordinary moments required calculation. Leaving the house meant anticipating triggers. Transitions meant preparing nervous systems. We could never plan for it all. The weight wasn’t occasional; it was constant.
Crisis became the ecosystem we lived in. So our questions were no longer: how do we get through this. It was: how do we find (and trust) God inside this new reality?
We are again, for the zillionth time, faced with our own choices in the midst of his. But having seen how it’s played out for 14 years and still having other kids here who are impacted by how those choices accumulate, we’re making them differently now.
For weeks I’ve been in 1 John 4 and Proverbs 2 and the first half of 3. Normally I’m not a lingerer and tend more toward plowing through, but this is another way the Lord is shifting and growing me. It’s a good sign because so many things are still too close and blurry to make sense of. So I’ve been a willing captive in those chapters while He does work in me that I cannot.
Yesterday I was released and finally moved on, to be smacked upside the head by the end of Proverbs 3:
The wise will inherit honor,
but stubborn fools, disgrace.– Proverbs 3:35
After I read it a few times, the Lord said, Go talk to him about that. Not like one of those horrid Bible thumping moments so many of us grew up with, but in trepidatious hope that he would have ears to hear and act accordingly. (But I did hold my Bible, keeping a finger in that spot because I didn’t want to ad lib.)
We talked about honor, and what it means to him: being looked up to, respected. It’s what he longs for; he revels in being the big brother and the kid who has answers, regardless of how reliable those answers are. It has long been a source of aggravation to Vin and I that he likes to be the town crier with all sorts of gossip, from announcements about the UPS truck in the driveway to ruined surprises and overheard information that is usually less reliable than a game of Telephone with 38 participants.
Then we talked about wisdom, how it’s not just being smart, but more about knowing and doing the right thing. Often the wise choice is the hardest one to make.
Convinced that he understood that much, I moved on the other half of the verse. He knew all the words except disgrace, so we talked about that, too: Basically, it’s the opposite of what he wants, or what any of us want. No one wants to be a person that no one else trusts, believes, or relies on. None of us want to be looked down upon.
Then we talked about the summer, the whole summer, and all the days that slipped by without his participation. Not a confrontation, just a calm observation of how he’s chosen to not do this, that, and the other because he refused basic responsibilities. That refusal cost him so much because nothing else seemed as important. Seemed like he wanted to dig in his heels more than he wanted anything else.
“I wanted to do those things, though,” he corrected me.
“Yeah,” I affirmed. “You wanted your cake, and to eat it, too.” Pause. “Do you know what that means?” No, he didn’t.
“It means you wanted honor even though you were making choices like a stubborn fool. But honor doesn’t go with those choices, you only get honor by making wise choices. Just like you only get to do those other things you wanted to do by being responsible and trustworthy.”
His eye faintly twitched but he wasn’t glaring, which is generally followed by rage, so this was a good sign. Maybe the message penetrated.
But also, I’ve learned that all the love and time and patience and teaching in the world can’t make a person’s choices for them.
“I know you can be wise,” I said. “I hope you’ll choose to be. Every day you can make that choice, and you’ve had all summer to make it. But the time might come when other people start making choices for you.”
I went inside and shut the door.
Honestly, I wonder if that’s what he’s waiting for – someone to make the choice for him. Because when they do that, we don’t have to take responsibility, and we can blame someone else for our situation. Not really of course, but the gaslighter gaslights themselves first in the process of lying to others…like so:
He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it.
Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it, and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Ah, I am warm by the fire!” The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god!”
They do not know, nor do they comprehend, for their eyes are shut, so that they cannot see, and their minds as well, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. Now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?”
He feeds on ashes; a deluded mind has led him astray, and he cannot save himself or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?”
– Isaiah 44:14b-20
We have to be willing to face reality, which includes the impact of our decisions…and the decisions of others that we can’t control.
And for the Christian that can be an odd walk because we know that there’s more to reality than what we see.
We are asked to believe things that defy our senses, but not things that defy God.
We’re pushing 2000 words already and I’m running out of room here for both your patience and mine. But real quick, there’s one more thing I want to touch on that has been blowing my mind in this situation.
Last week in Bible study, our pastor talked about ruling in the midst of our enemies. And of course we know flesh and blood are not our enemies, but let’s be honest because they act and feel like it sometimes.
The big question is: Can we walk in the midst of hostility (or hatred, reviling, gossip, or whatever) with the same amount of authority (read: love, confidence, favor, kindness, joy, and all the fruit of the Spirit) as we do when we are around our friends?
Can we live as though we are loved even when we are around those who do not treat us lovingly?
There is so much more I want to say about this (notes and notes, which will hopefully probably possibly become the next post) but for now, I just want those questions to bother and encourage you as much as they bother and encourage me.
We are battle weary. But also hopeful. Also, more vigilant to protect those who’ve been cut in the process of loving the broken, including ourselves.
Thank you for praying for us. We’re praying for you, too.
Shannon
P.S. Emily’s full post is here.
P.P.S. Our schedule has shifted again (!) and we currently have a few openings for coaching, either for individuals or marriages. Info and sign up here. If you do not need coaching but would like to give toward scholarships for those who do, our give page is here and it will allow you to note that accordingly. Thanks!