When you write a book with a memoir feel and cover a season of your life, you tend to go back through your notes, journals, and any writings from that season—all for material and to remember.
Not too long into my sabbatical last summer, a friend and others began encouraging me to write about what someone (I am not even sure who anymore) said to me was my “transition season.”1
It is funny; the word felt new and fresh to me then.
It wasn’t, as I found out this past week.
On July 25, 2016, I wrote the following:
//
Transitions.
We all have times of transition in our lives when a door closes, and another one opens.
When a door closes, you might find yourself alone in a hallway.
When a door closes, it might leave only a window with the smallest crack showing daylight on the other side.
Transitions are hard.
There is a reason someone created a list of the changes one can go through and the impact on someone’s health—death, moves, job changes, building a home, etc.
In the past, I have been a big fan of framing my ‘transitions’ in the best light to protect my ego and others’ egos—painting the picture, etc.
I'm not going to do that from now on. There is no learning in that - for me or anyone else.
Transitions are messy—even the best ones.
Transitions can teach us (me/myself/I) and others a better way to do something in the future.
Last night, I took this photo from the plane flying back to Arkansas. I then typed a "book" to my Sis to text/send to her when I landed (and off of Airplane Mode).
I had just finished writing a chapter for a book proposal I had been working on, unintentionally.
God just moved that pen, word after word, line after line, on that yellow legal pad.
I needed to document with Sis the line in the sand I felt God was giving me.
I needed to entrust the reminder to her in writing in case I forgot that there had been a sea-change moment.
*Deep Sigh*
When you look out over the horizon, you notice that below is dark with only flickers of light here and there, but when you pull yourself up above the horizon (say in an airplane), you see the light more fully...you can see all the colors.
I needed that ‘above the horizon’ moment last night.
Thriving in transition means lifting your head above the horizon...otherwise, the dark will drown you.
There is beauty in transition; for a moment, God reminded me of that simple but critical fact.
So here is to the brave act of owning our transitions in all their messy, complicated, and beautiful aspects.
//
The rest of that story.
I had been in therapy for only four months when I flew to attend my first-ever writing conference over that long weekend. I combined the trip with a visit to see friends I had made in Haiti two years before. I recall being out of the office for three business days plus the weekend. Back in those days, I only took long weekends to minimize my time away from the office - whether a four or five (max) trip to Haiti or a two-day conference that I made into a long weekend - I intentionally tried to keep my time away brief, and I always remained available when away. I remember reviewing and approving payroll once from a mountaintop in Haiti. No. I am not kidding.
I remember my therapist, before that trip, encouraged me to work on setting some boundaries and try to be “away” while at the writing conference. I was hesitant, but I nervously agreed. When I say that disaster struck, I mean it. To protect both the guilty and the innocent, I will not share the details of what happened, but what I will share is that if I had a gun to my head demanding I tell when the real tipping point struck me that my lifestyle was untenable, it was that weekend. Only my Sis and therapist knew the details as I had to call Sis from the conference to calm me down. I was in my therapist’s office within a day or two of landing back in Arkansas. What I did not know then was that I was completely codependent2 and without people in key areas of my life around to call out to my better angels, as I had been lucky to have in my life since college, I had slid into a season of relationships and dynamics that played right into every bit of trauma I had ignored for thirty years.
Of course, at the time, I did not know or understand any of that.
I don’t know how to explain what it is like to feel be trapped in a life of one’s own making, but I had never experienced such hell. Being trapped brought up from the depths of me both fear and anger, and as both started percolating, they found their victim not in those hurting me, but in ME. The language I would sit and tell myself, audibly or in my head, was atrocious. I was cruel to myself. What happened to me that weekend, and even more what it brought up in me, wrecked those brand-spanking new first four months of therapy while adding at least an extra year onto my therapy. And if I am really, REALLY honest - only in the past fourteen months have I begun to heal the last of the wounds from that weekend.
The truth is that when I wrote those words back in 2016, I was spit-balling. I didn’t know if any of that was true about transitions. I was still in shock, trying to understand what happened, processing, grasping for answers, blaming myself, and the only thing I knew to do was write.
That is the real irony, and maybe just another invisible string going back to 2016: (because) something in me knew then that I was beginning a transition. Of course, I didn’t know that it would take seven years.
*Deep Sigh*
The overarching lesson here is that transitions are, in fact, messy. There is no nice, neat timetable or to-do list to follow. I do not recommend marinating in them, which is code for don’t go slow, to go slow. There are parts of this one that could and should have gone faster. The fact that they/it didn’t. Well, that is on me.
At the beginning of this transition (in 2016), I had zero tools in my toolbox, but I am ending it with an arsenal.
That is the lasting gift of therapy and healing. Through it, you are adding to your own personal toolbox and can access it at any time in the future you should need it - whether for yourself or to help someone else.
That is why I knew I had to write a chapter on therapy in Facedown. There is no story without it. Certainly, there is no happy ending, and I am a girl smitten with happy endings. I knew that my embarrassing stories and my work to heal might help someone else. Whether they do or not, true freedom, I have learned, comes when you release everything (including your story) and everyone that has ever hurt you; sometimes, that includes releasing and forgiving yourself and taking responsibility for the role you played.
This story has a happy ending. Endings. Plural.
The Book Idea? The one that led me to that writing conference and the book proposal I worked on during that flight. Well, I finished Facedown while on my sabbatical last year.
Therapy? I would go for four years solid before moving to maintenance (aka as needed), and I believe it was the best time/money/energy I ever spent.
Transitions? I finally found the door, landed on my ass in a hallway (I was guessing back in 2016, but they are really a thing - LOL), and am peering behind every door before barreling through any new ones.
Even a year ago, I could not think about the story above without feeling guilty and ashamed, but today, writing about it, I realize just how far I have come, how much I have healed, how much I have learned, and how much I have let go of.
In Christianity, there is a belief that you can never get too far or be too broken or screw up too much to be outside of the grace of God.
I believe that, too.
I also believe that you cannot get so far or so broken or screw up so much that you cannot find your way back to who and what you were designed for…who you were meant to be.
…and it is all connected, and it all matters. The red string that is our one life.
I might sound a little Pollyanna, but I promise you that my life is a testament to this silly red string3 theory of mine.
I am still walking out the design for me and my one life. I am still learning who I am, what I love, what I do not love, what I was designed for, and who I was designed for.
…and I hope I am learning for the rest of my days.
This is simply me taking responsibility for my own story.
I am in the middle of writing a book called The Best Is Yet to Come (working title) about my transition season. A few who have read parts describe it as a possible “sister book” to Facedown (the book I completed last summer). Only time will tell.
For the official definition of codependency: Codependency | Psychology Today
In Facedown, Chapter 1, I describe how it felt in January 2012 when the first domino of failure occurred as if someone had pulled a string in the red sweater that was my life, and I stood there frozen for twelve months, watching it all unravel around me. The red string became a metaphor for my life pre- and post-Facedown, including the circumstances leading up to that first snag, the utter confusion around the unraveling, and all the lessons afterward.
Great writing as usual