Struggling

Having a hard time getting through this thing. Calling the man who demeaned my mother at 2:19 a.m., just to hang up on him if he answers. You can find anyone on the Internet – scary. Still wide-awake. I would say I’m not doing as well as I’d like. It’s a good thing that he doesn’t live around here, because I have an entire carton of eggs, and I’m not feeling enormously stable.

I will say this, God is working in amazing ways. I was shaking like a leaf, cruising through white pages on the web, perusing the State of Nevada employee listing, and zeroing in on my desired target. I was imagining all the things I would cry and say to Alan if I got a chance. I used to think I was tougher and actually, I used to be tougher. I won’t lie. I’ve been in a couple of bar fights, but only one was a guy –sissy. Some guys scream like little girls. Makes me just roll my eyes and wonder where that wimp is now.

Anyhoo, I could not imagine doing anything more than articulating my hurt, pain, loss, upset, anger, and furor at this boss who found joy in deriding my mother. I did not want to hurt him, really. Eggs in the face are not hurtful, unless you’re allergic to the eggs and big boils and welts appear and then your skin starts peeling and oozing off in grotesque strips, like a snake shedding its skin. OK, so I thought of inducing some pain upon this man. I imagined I would get maced. I figured against it, since I am a mother, and no less, a lover of Christ: Must be more dignified these days.

I have met with a torrent of emotions. I am dealing with a torrent of emotions. I don’t imagine I will ever get over these emotions. I will never ever get over losing my mother in this way. She did not just die. Sometimes when I say it aloud, I whisper it, as though it will lighten the load, but it doesn’t. “My mother killed herself.” My mother who knew, held, kissed, and loved on my three children killed herself.

I would say that I am shocked and I am, but not for the reasons you think. I am shocked, because I thought for sure, my mother of all people, knew her worth. How many people relied on that woman? Too many to count. I am shocked, because her worth, her value, her beauty seemed implicitly obvious. How could she negate it all by that final violent act? How?

You see, I’m not at all surprised that she killed herself for the aspect of suicide, because just days before my mother shot herself in the head, I was contemplating it too. I had been contemplating it for a long time. Spoken to no one, but my husband who cried pleadingly through a face of tears for me to feel differently, I could not. I felt the same way my mother did: I felt worthless.

At about the age of ten or eleven I began to have insomnia. My aunt who lived with us at the time slipped me her secret antidote, a saucy little hush-hush way of falling asleep. She told me that when she could not sleep, she would wish dream herself dead, wrists slit – length-wise, not side-to-side, as is done in movies, so that you bleed faster. She would dream herself into a deep sleep when insomnia came.

I was just ten or eleven when I began dreaming myself dead when times were worrisome, and in my home, times were oftentimes worrisome.

Well, the last three years for Rick and I have been worrisome. That’s when I began dreaming myself dead to fall asleep again. Can I tell you the problem with this? It is the spiritual equivalent of laying out your best towels, putting out the better welcome mat, and opening the door for some horrifying spiritual warfare: Satan has had a stronghold on me and it was getting eerily frightening.

A week before my mother killed herself, I took a stool into the closet, stood on it, and rummaged across the top of Rick’s side of the closet. Fingering under pillows and blankets, I tried to find the handgun. It was nowhere. Frustrated, but not deterred, I went into the office closet where I looked for somewhere he may have hidden it. Finally frustrated, I gave up knowing that it was just a matter of time.

Then, the Wednesday before my mother killed herself, I fasted and prayed. God gave me a vision. He was pulling me over an obstacle, not as big as a boulder, but more like a mound, a speed bump. I could have gotten over it myself, but refused. In my vision of what he was doing with me, my feet were planted stubbornly in the dirt, unmoving, but effortlessly, he dragged me over the mound of dirt and seemed to dust me off.

The next day, Friday, I lay in bed looking at the Bible on my nightstand. I remember thinking that very moment with dread in my heart that suicide would never seem like an act of selfishness, but rather, an act of bravery. I really believed that Rick and my children would be better without me. I believed it in my heart – to my core.

I rallied as best I could. I did not eat. I was miserable, more miserable than I’d been in weeks. The dread that cast a cloud on me was tangible. Finally, I decided that I would work out. I dressed and tried, but then the phone rang. It was Rick. I will never forget his words, “Michelle, something really awful has happened.” He was crying or out of breath, I was trying to figure out.

“Really?” “Yeah,” he was somber as a stone. “How bad?” I asked. “Bad.” “Rick, how bad?” Finally, he said, “Michelle, your mom is dead. She shot herself in the head.” I do not remember everything after that. I do not remember standing. I do not remember how many times I screamed “No!” I do not remember hearing anything else from Rick. I do not remember opening the front door, but I remember running across the front lawn to my neighbors. I must have told the kids to stay, because they did not follow. I remember having thrown the phone just before I ran. I remember falling on her porch, being on my knees and sobbing.

Finally another neighbor came and trying to console me. I was inconsolable. I then tried to regain my composure, because when I looked back at my own home, I saw three faces peering out the big glass window at me. I told the neighbor I was all right and went back to the house.

I sat on the porch and talked to Rick and sobbed. When I finally went back into the house, my poor children were dismayed, to say the least. When they asked me what was wrong, I said, “Nothing.” I could not tell them. Let them have one more day thinking that everything is normal, I thought: Let them be happy.

I finally told them, hours later that Grandma had died. No details. Some details will never be disclosed. They don’t need to be. All they needed to know was that their Grandma was dead. Sophie was suddenly tired and wanted to go to bed. As we tucked her in, she began to cry, “What will I do without my Grandma?” Silver streams glistened down her smooth, porcelain cheeks.

Austin put his handsome face into his big boy hands and cried. Austin is never sad. It broke my heart. And, Chloe, the one who had a strange intense connection to my mother let tears flow like streams. “I dreamt Grandma died last night,” she said. We held and comforted our children, giving them whatever, and as much as they needed. It was no longer about me, but entirely about them. How had I ever imagined doing something that would hurt them even more? What was wrong with me?

They slept on our bedroom floor in mounds of blankets. As we all drifted off to sleep, I realized that I could not get enough of them. In dark purple night I said, “Rick, I know we don’t usually sleep all touchy, but tonight I need touchy. I need to know you’re there.” He wrapped me in his arms and I tried to sleep.

Sleep did not come. I finally stopped struggling at 2 a.m. I texted some of my friends of my heartbreak, so that when they awoke in the morning, they would know I needed them. Suddenly there was the chime of a text coming back to me, but who’s awake at 2 a.m.? I’ll tell you who, a fireman’s wife!

Kristen texted back wanting to know if I was awake: I texted, “yes.” She called. Telling her my heartbreak until my heart could break no more I said, “Kris, I can’t talk about this anymore. Please talk. Say anything. I want to know something else.” Kristen asked me what time Rick was getting up, and then, she began talking. She talked to me from 2 a.m. until 6 a.m. That is a friend. She was my angel that night.

That entire day I was broken, but in such a different way. It was as though I had fought something intense and won. I floated through that day, as we drove hours to get to my father. Suddenly, the things that had been a fog of confusion about suicide, about its definitive wrongness were as clear as crystal. I felt as though I had emerged from some other person. Who was that girl who thought that way? Who was she? Where did she come from? Those thoughts were as foreign to me suddenly, as speaking Russian. How did I justify it? I cannot even comprehend.

Throughout this pain, I have still been awake all night. I am awake right now and it’s 3:31 in the morning. I have cried so hard my eyes hurt. My face has hurt. I have thought so intensely about what my mother did, I have vomited. I don’t know how loudly I screamed, but my throat was hoarse.

What I know for sure is that God was fighting for my life. God has won. When my mother took her own life, she saved mine, because I could not have seen how painful, how strange, how sad, how shortsighted, how selfish suicide is.

Since my mother’s death, Satan has poked at me, trying to call me back out into a mud-slinging contest. I win, though, because my God has already overcome the grave. I have called Satan some dandy names in the last few weeks, and he has told me through hissing lies that I am the reason my mother killed herself; “Do not feel guilty,” he hissed. “Do not feel guilty, though your relationship is not what it should have been. Everyone knows…By the way, what was your relationship with your mother, Michelle?” The hissing still resounds. “Hiss at someone else who believes your lies!” I have yelled. I’m pretty sure Rick thinks I’m going crazy. Maybe he’s right.

The same lies that killed my mother seek to devour me. The only thing I want to be known for when I am long gone is that I was strong. Nothing else will matter to me, since strength will keep me far from such devouring lies, people, words, beliefs, and repetitive patterns. The person who has whispered in a darkened corner that it is all my fault would be the same person to deny it all. I call him out right here and now, because in his pathetic weakness, I am made strong through my Lord, Jesus Christ. Go pick on someone weaker, someone who does not have the strength of the Living God. I am done with you.

All along, I have been consciously trying to break patterns of generational sin, those things I did not want to hand to my children. I cast out alcohol. I cast off medicinal addictions, but I could not see that my dance with these dream-to-death images were letting in a pattern of self harm that was just what I’d been trying desperately to keep out of my home. Who was I kidding? A little bit leads to a lot: Satan does not take just a little. He wants the whole thing. He was coming for it.

I do not know how or why I was spared. I cannot judge my mother, though I have been angry with her. Really, I’m just angry she didn’t understand her worth, but how often do we forget what we are worth, and that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). When I woke this morning that simple verse, the first one every Christian learns was on my lips. It is as though God is starting anew with me, teaching me the beginning of what I need to know. Girding up the foundation that got shaky when I gave into my sin of self-hate.

All I know is that when the God who created every star, every blade of grass, and knows the number of every hair on your head is willing to die for you, you are valuable, you have worth, no matter what you or anyone else thinks – no matter what you think. Because Christ is in us, we are bigger than our problems, bigger than this faulty world. We are worth more than we know when God intervenes on our behalf, so that we can live eternally with Him.