Making Friends With The Beast

This past weekend an unexpected turn of events requiring a jump start, a borrowed phone, and eventually a tow truck earned us an extra day of vacation and we ended up at the Olympic Game Farm in Sequim, WA. The farm was started by a man who trained animals for Disney productions including bears, Bobcats and elk. It's now a wildlife preserve where they allow you to feed wheat bread to some of the wild life. Where else in the world do they let you feed the bears!?! We drove through the first area with llamas and yak, the llama were friendly and at one point one of them stuck its head into the car through the window looking for more bread. 

The look on my eleven-year-old's face was priceless. The yak were a bit more intimidating being rather muscular in build but were eye level with us in our Subaru Impreza and that was fun. The Kodiak bears were next and one of them even put on a little show for us so we would feed him. I couldn't help but wonder about his history. Next was the "no feeding zone". This area had black bears, tigers, lions, Bobcats, wolves, raccoon and several others. 

The intense part came when we entered the elk and bison zone. They use a type of cattle guard to keep them in (they can't walk across it but you can drive through) and the signs say not to stop your vehicle in the area as damage will occur to your vehicle. I was amazed at the size of these animals. They walked right over looking for bread. When they headed our way I had the kids roll the windows half way up. As the first elk attempted to put his head into our little car I was a little bit terrified. We had a horse growing up and I knew how strong she was so having anything larger than that and not super tame that close to my family seemed cause for concern. The boys held pieces of bread out the window and it tried to catch them before the boys got intimidated and dropped it.  Then the bison came over. If the elk was intimidating the bison was down right scary! They were huge! For a moment I questioned my judgement in driving into this situation. In the end we enjoyed it so much that we drove through one more time before heading home. We got a little braver the second time and really enjoyed it. We also got to watch an elk stick its head into a Ford truck behind us as we slowly drove through. So funny to watch. 

As I've been thinking about this experience I see some parallels with grief and other ongoing challenges in our lives. We see it from a distance and it looks doable but when we get up close it's downright scary. There are times when we need to take a break from thinking about and dealing with our challenges before coming back to them. When we do we'll get a better look at them and have more of an opportunity to examine them up close and maybe even marvel at the intricacies of our situation as we would marvel at the long black tongue of the bison that just slobbered on our car window. (Yep, that happened.) We can, in time, make friends with the beasts that are life's greatest challenges and find the beauty and joy in life between the moments of uncertainty. As scary as it is sometimes we must learn to make friends with the beast.

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In Which I Perfect The Pity Party and End It Early

Written January 2018

I cannot count the number of miserable moments I've had in the past five years. If you'd asked me during my husband's cancer journey if I knew what it was to face hard things I'd have told you I was an expert. Little did I know that my journey into difficult things was only just beginning. If someone told me a single event could cause a person to hurt so deeply for so long I wouldn't have believed them. My grief has taken me places I never wanted to go and when I chose to stay in the darkness I experienced what I called, "going down the rabbit hole." This is when one negative thought leads to another and before you know it you're in deep, so deep that you can't see the light of day.

In Jerry Sittser's book, A Grace Disguised, he talks about grief being a darkness we must choose to walk into. There are things that need to be felt to heal and we must work through those feelings. I completely agree it needs to be felt but what I often forget while walking through the darkness is YOU MUST KEEP MOVING. If you enter the darkness and set up camp your healing stops, your progress stops. Niel A Maxwell explains that, "...all crosses are easier to carry when we keep moving. (Ensign, Nov 1976)"

Six months after my spouse passed suddenly I had a friend challenge me to make grieving a priority. I felt that wasn't possible with my responsibilities of running a household and caring for my three young children (then 9, 7, and 2). She suggested making a list of the things that needed done and asking God to send someone to take care of them so I could grieve. It sounded a little bit crazy but it struck a chord so I gave it a try.  The flood of support that came was astonishing. We had people from church, school, preschool, and family helping with yard work, decorating for Christmas, making meals, cleaning house, and entertaining children. The most amazing part is that it didn't come all at once in an overwhelming wave, it came in bits and pieces here and there when it was most needed. We were out of town at Christmas and I had an especially thoughtful friend call and ask if she could come take down my Christmas decorations as that might be difficult, she was SO right.

I spent SO much time worrying about getting through that first year and was quite concerned about how I would get through the many years to come but with each act of love my fear subsided. One of my favorite scriptures is 1 John 4:18 "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear..." Like light and darkness, fear and love cannot coexist. As each person showed up for me the fear subsided. That year I made a Facebook live video instead of sending out Christmas cards. It was far easier and I'm so glad I did as I had forgotten how blessed my life had been. Here I am 2 1/2 years later still trying to make sense of my loss and my life post-loss being reminded that God really does answer prayers and He really does send help when we ask and are humble enough to receive it (which is really difficult for me). 

I echo what I said in this video so long ago, "we feel so blessed  to be part of your lives when it wasn't  (and isn't) easy for us to be part of others' lives...we're doing so well because of your love, your prayers, and your service." I will hold onto that when the days get long, as they often do knowing that it is your love, and God's love, that will get me through one more day.

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When We Get Knocked Down

Oct 1, 2013

Lessons In Grief - When The Dust Clears

Shock. Denial. Anger. Acceptance. Healing.

Grief cycles.  So they say...

What they don't say is that it ebbs and flows, surges and floods and sometimes emotions are just too tangled to understand. Then comes the anxiety of dealing with people's well intentioned advice. There were SO many days when I just needed someone to sit with me, not try to fix me or talk it out but just be... but I was too ashamed of everything I was feeling to let someone do that. Slowly I pushed people away, it got easier to tell people off. It hurt to keep them at distance but not as much as seeing the look in their eyes when I let the really see what I was going through. I was a shell of the person I was. I bounced back and forth between being completely numb and completely overwhelmed by everything I was feeling. (I didn't fully understand how hard it was on my friends to watch my pain until I had someone open up to me about their spouse passing and it is difficult to be on the other side of that too.  I truly have some ROCK STAR friends.)

One of the most important things I learned during this time was that there is no such thing as a "bad emotion". My whole life I had this perception that I wasn't supposed to feel angry or sad or frustrated about things but in reality it wasn't the emotions I was needing to regulate but how I reacted to those emotions. Emotions themselves aren't inherently good or bad, they just are (this TED talk explains this concept so well). From a spiritual perspective I came to understand that a divine creator, with infinite wisdom, gave us the ability to feel for a purpose. With this realization my focus changed from trying to control my emotions to recognizing what I was feeling, acknowledging the feeling (naming it if needed), and allowing myself to work through the emotion hopefully allowing it to serve whatever purpose it might have and then let it go.

I started seeing my mind and body as a super highway for emotions. When I used the recognize, feel, release method I functioned okay. When I would avoid an emotion I wasn't ready to feel or held on to an emotion that had already served its purpose (like anger) it caused traffic jams and I could feel the stress of the congestion. When I recognized how my emotions could build up and cause tension in my body learning tools for emotional release became a high priority. (I also recognized that when the tension built up it often manifested in angry outbursts.)

Here are some ideas for dealing with emotional back ups:

Hot baths- heat forces tension out of muscles, massage also does this

Distraction- engaging your mind in another task so you get a break from current stressors (I call this "shelving" the issue to be dealt with later) Kent Allen teaches a similar method for training our brains to move back into a space from grieving to joy (listen to his remarks HERE).
Brain Dump- writing out what you're feeling in a journal and getting it out of your head
Walk It Out- by physically moving forward we show our brain that we can move forward emotionally as well (Martha, Hickman explains this in Healing After Loss).
Aromatherapy- Citrus oils lift mood, Wood oils help in feeling supported, and Florals aid in relaxation (I like to do Lavendar and Cedarwood in my hot bath)
Get Moving- Physical activity has been great for helping me burn off frustration and anger. Hitting a ball, digging, scrubbing, running, anything that gets your heart pumping can have this effect.
Music- Singing can be a great emotional outlet as well as playing an instrument or just listening.
Cry it Out-I have learned that tears can be healing. Fighting it tends to back up the emotional highway.
Hydrate- For some reason my body (including mind and emotions) functions better with proper hydration.

Read More Here:

The Girl Who Hides In The Bathtub

Making Friends With The Man In The Glass

What Was God Thinking

Falling Apart