This past March--when spring was breaking through the winter soil--I found myself descending into the darkness of winter. After spending so much of my effort and time on trying to fix my problems--namely Noah's eczema--without relief, I began to experience despair and anxiety. I had gone all out trying to figure out how to heal Noah's skin. I didn't want to use steroid cream, so we pursued natural alternatives. We were eating gluten free, dairy free, processed free...basically everything free. It was such an extreme way of eating that it made it hard (impossible) to eat out or even at other people's homes. It was exhausting, but I did it because I truly believed it was going to heal Noah of his eczema. Instead, we watched his skin get worse and worse. We pressed on because I thought it was detox...and that soon it would heal. But then Noah got impetigo from a classmate. Impetigo for most children is minor...but not for skin compromised by eczema. This began the downwards spiral for both Noah's skin, and my emotional stability. Even after the impetigo was treated, Noah's skin was looking worse. He would scream when water touched his skin, making showers nearly impossible. Finally, we succumbed to the steroid cream that I had been so fearful of. By this time I was desperate for relief...yet still fearful of all the worst case scenarios I had read about surrounding steroid cream. But it seemed we had little choice...so I made my first step towards surrender and letting go of control.
Who likes to feel out of control? Me, me!! (yeah, right!) Life feels like it's flowing and smooth when it seems all is under control. When disruptions occur we scurry to bring things back in alignment--to get things under control again. But what happens when things don't "get back under control" easily? When life feels out of control and we really don't know how to fix it? It's unpleasant to live in that space where things aren't as we want them to be. To let go and let be. To choose life despite the fact that life isn't as we imagined or idealized. For me this took the shape of health issues that wouldn't resolve quickly. Facing my inability to "heal" my son's skin felt like failure. It also presented itself as an immovable obstacle to our family's ability to enjoy life and move forward (sans eczema). I had obsessed over the perfect diet to heal my son's eczema, and pictured life happily ever after once it was healed. I had imagined everything working out well, and counted on it. But when my plan backfired and we found ourselves making dermatologist appointments, driving three hours to Miami to see a specialist, and rubbing steroid cream all over Noah as thick as peanut butter...I was at the end of myself. "I couldn't heal Noah. My plan didn't work. What went wrong?!!" How could this be a part of the plan? I had prayed that God would heal Noah, I had prayed for wisdom on how to help Noah get better, but I had not been ready to accept that his skin might not be healed...or that the healing could come from a more traditional approach (steroid cream). Because things didn't go as I had imagined, I felt stuck. How would we ever get to that "happily ever after" part of life? I sunk into a sea of despair and anxiety. I guess you could say that anxiety is my default when I feel out of control and I don't know how to fix it.
Well, since it's highly improbable that anxiety just sprouts up out of nowhere, I think it's fair to say that I was finally facing the seeds of fear and worry that were deeply rooted in my life. Life mantras that I had built my belief system on were baring themselves. My sense of failure was rooted in a (mis) belief that it was all up to me to heal Noah so that we could move on to the "happily ever after" part of our lives. I had this idea that I needed to fix all that was wrong in my life so that I could be happy and free.
Remember that verse my friend shared with me a few years back? (see soul seasons part 1)
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."
Enter the dark night of the soul (or the winter of the soul).
Easter was on the horizon and I thought to myself "well, maybe I will have a resurrection experience in my life this Easter." That was me hoping that I would pull up and out of my depression quickly. Easter came, Easter went, but the darkness did not dissipate. It became obvious that this was not a quick fix sort of crisis. It wasn't going to be one of those times that a bandaid solution could lift me out of the pit of despair. May came, May went. June came, June went... I have to say that I was beginning to wonder just how long this "winter" was going to last. Two months? Three months? Meanwhile, I was searching for a counselor that could help me--but this was no easy task having just moved to Florida. Even finding a few friends whom I could lean on proved difficult--who likes to make new friends when they're in the midst of a dark season?! Ha!!! (The good news is that you know they're real friends if they like you when you're at your lowest point!)
In the past few months I finally sense a slow creeping up and out of the pit of darkness, but I have still not found myself standing on top of a hill in the summer of my soul. I would say that I'm somewhere between the end of winter and early spring--when the two seasons blur and you're still not sure if spring is breaking forth or winter is still unrelenting. There are days when I see glimpses of new sprouts, places where death has happened and new life is finally making its way through the winter soil. But there are days when all I see are the bare branches of a winter tree--wondering when I will feel the glory of leaves covering my tree once again. When I will feel the warmth of the summer sun on my back, and hear the songs of the birds as they perch on my strong (weathered) branches.
I am seeing that death really is necessary for new life to spring up. And just like we experience the four seasons over and over again each year, soul seasons come and go and are not merely a one time event. Sometimes the death might be small and barely noticeable. A small realization that opens our blind eyes to see something we hadn't seen before. A chance to let go of something in our lives that was holding us back. Other times the winter is grander and longer, and we truly wonder if spring will ever come. But even far north in Mongolia and Alaska, summer arrives every year--no matter how long, cold and dark the winter was. Spring always comes.
And so as I live in the midst of a long winter, I am finding that my way forward is to surrender to the death and rest of winter. In the winter time a seed is resting in the cold winter soil, waiting for when the temperature is right for it to break through the soil. But the seed cannot force this process to happen any faster than nature will allow it. And so really, winter is about learning to surrender, learning to rest, and learning that it's not about the seed's effort to sprout--but about the timing. If the seed did not let go and die, making its way into the cold winter soil, it would not experience the spring when life begins to flow from it once again.
And so I wait. Can I feel the nourishment of the winter soil, healing me so that I can bloom when tis time? Can I allow myself to be but a small seed, fertilized by the nutrients I need in order to grow once again? Can I trust that spring will come?
While it's so much easier to say yes to spring and summer, may I say yes to winter and all that it is doing in my life. May I let go and stop resisting the necessity of death and rest so that I can grow and produce life when it's time.
...and surely, spring will come...because it always does!
No comments:
Post a Comment