Thursday, November 1, 2018

Overcoming Trauma: To Jesus Through Mary

I hoisted my tired body over the railing of the rickety pack-n-play which shifted and groaned beneath my weight.  Dropping down to lay my number seven on the thin mattress and curling around her, I settled into the familiar - albeit uncomfortable - routine we have had for nap-time since she started crawling: nursing to sleep in the safe confines of the tiny cage.  After a little bit of gymnurstics and other shenanigans, my sweet baby finally succumbed to her sleepy rhythm, grasping at my scapular as she slipped into dreamland. And I began my rosary.

This habit of saying a rosary at nap time has only recently become my routine.  I usually say one each time I lay her down.  It has been a means of drawing closer to our lady, and through her, our Lord, obtaining so many graces as well as consolation and encouragement for my vocation.  Additionally, lately it's been my lifeline as I approach my baby's first birthday, which has seemingly been a time-trigger for remembering the trauma surrounding her birth.  For the past month or so, I realized I was struggling a bit more and became convicted of the idea that I need to be extra purposeful in my efforts to make my way through the after-effects of that trauma. Over the last year, I've tried to use the word "trauma" loosely, careful not to put too much importance on the event or myself, pushing myself to move on and be grateful that I am alive, grateful for the beautiful new little life I was blessed to add to my keep.   But I guess I should just call it what it is.  One doesn't go unexpectedly to the hospital 3 1/2 weeks ahead of a planned homebirth because one is all of the sudden very sick, face the prospect of a c-section after 24 hours of induced labor, almost die from magnesium overdose, and then spend weeks recovering from a rare life-threatening syndrome and whatever damage sustained from the overdose, while her husband spends a week in the hospital being near-death himself, and not be given permission to call a spade a spade....right?

It was traumatic.  And that's ok.

Incidentally, I recently read a quote that said, "other people don't get to decide when you move on from your pain or trauma."  This is profoundly true.  No one should be forcing anyone to just get over something that they've experienced that has impacted their life in a negative way.   People need time to process. They need space to adjust.  They need to be allowed to feel steady on their feet again, be comfortable and certain in their own skin, most especially when something or someone has betrayed them, or they've had a loss, or have faced their own mortality.  They need encouragement, support, love.  I bet there is not one person on this planet who hasn't suffered something traumatic- big or small- in their lifetime, and yet I wonder how many people were afforded the opportunity to walk their path of grief and pain unencumbered by the people in their life, let alone supported by them?  More still, how many gave themselves the permission to do so?

Trauma and grief are topics people don't like to approach, at least not without apprehension.  They are messy, uncontrollable, nonlinear, and- let's be honest- they can be downright scary.   Unaddressed feelings fizzle below the surface of our ordinary lives as we motor about from one thing to the next, surrounded by the blaring message that finding our happiness is what life is all about.  The truth is, that is just one big lie.  It's dishonest.  It glosses over the fact that as broken human beings living in a fallen world, we are subject to much more than the passing phenomenon of "happiness," and are called to much more than its pursuit.  The reality is, we aren't guaranteed happiness.  Those of us who have a propensity toward melancholy or angst are supremely aware of this fact.  No matter how many pills the medical world wants to throw at us to give us the false impression that we are happy, the fact actually is, sometimes- maybe a lot of the time- we just aren't.  Sometimes, what's in our arsenal to battle the darkness cannot be given by prescription or found in a medical journal.

I once wrote about the feeling of standing on the brink of insanity.  A young mother of four small children, I was always at war with myself, battling the darkness that followed me since adolescence, unable to just figure out how to manage my family life, live out my vocation, love my children and husband without constantly feeling like the darkness was going to swallow me whole.  I had a good grasp on my knowledge of God and His love, was on a decent path to deepening my faith, but was not aware of all the many tools at my disposal.  I look back on that person and hardly recognize her.  My Catholic faith has been such a beautiful gift to me in this walk because it encompasses the fullness of God's truth which offers so many graces rich with His mercy.  I no longer stand teetering on the brink of insanity, and when I find myself possibly inching closer to it, I know without a doubt that I can pick up my rosary and immerse myself in the love afforded to me by a most gracious and generous God, through Mary His mother, by meditating on Jesus' life, death and resurrection.  The promises contained in all the beautiful prayers are such a strong source of tethering myself to the Lord, so that I'm never very far from Him.

I only wish I had thought of adding in a few extra rosaries a day at nap times years ago. Because... I fail all the time in this vocation and often get sidetracked by the trappings of this fallen world, distracted away from my path to holiness, and I need all the extra graces I can get.

One last note....In this longest labor, I have come across a lot of women- mothers- who are struggling just as much as I am with the weight of the many souls we carry through this life.  All of us are at varying stages in our journey, but one thing remains constant at every turn, and that is our ardent desire to not mess up, to do everything we possibly can to have no child left behind as we make our way through this valley of tears.  If you relate to this, I encourage you to pick up your rosary as often as you can; call on Christ to strengthen you, ask His mother, whom He so lovingly and generously offered to us, to guide you on your path to Him.  And pray for your kiddos as well!  Our lady will not fail you.  Deo Gratias!



PS. If you are a non-Catholic, a new Catholic, or even a cradle Catholic struggling with the idea of the rosary, I want to clarify a couple things:

The rosary is a gift given to us as one of many ways in which we can appeal to Christ for His strength and guidance.  The words to the prayers can be found in the Bible.  Just as Christ on the cross told his disciple to take His mother as his own, so, too, do we.  Mary is not dead, so we are not talking to a dead person. She is much more alive than we are, and just like we would ask our sister or friend or own mother for prayers and guidance, we can ask Mary the same. For many, Mary is the only mother they can truly rely on. We can never love Mary more than we love Jesus, and what's more, we can never love her more than He does.  We do not place her above Him, we do not worship her and we do not 'pray' to her the same way we 'pray' to God. In her humility, Mary said herself that she is the handmaid of the Lord, so as such, she is in the position to serve Him by serving us in our daily needs.  Further info and explanations can be found here and here.  Devotion to Mary is NOT required of Catholics, but I believe from my own experience we are sorely missing out if we don't cultivate it. On a more personal note, I didn't used to have any sort of devotion to Mary and in fact felt sort of strange about the high place she held within the Church. However, as I've grown to understand the exact belief (which is widely misunderstood as people do not feel the need to look for the truth), and have developed a devotion, I have witnessed many miracles that God has allowed through her intercession, including the miracles which occurred almost one year ago, on the birthday of my youngest, which happened to be the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  To HIM be all glory.