Month: August 2015

I’m Messy

Knock, knock….

Hello?

I answer the door and the church people chime right in “You are beautiful on the inside is what God says about you”.

Being as polite as I can, I say thank you, and excuse myself. I need to finish getting ready. He said he’d be here at 4.

As I stand looking in the mirror, make-up: check
Hair: check
Low cut, tight shirt: check

Sex….The world says that there’s no better way to show love, to feel love. Laying here, trying to feel….. He says it’ll be OK, I’ll be right here.

It’s over. He’s gone. Now I have another baby growing inside. Maybe this time it will be different.

As the months go by, he is gone and now there are 3. I still feel the same; maybe the next one will be different, he says he will stay.

On the outside you adorn yourself with hair, make-up, even nice clothes….but the ugliness, the dirtiness, the worthless feelings… you feel on the inside, they are still there.

You show no emotion.

You are detached from the emotions of the world.

You take cues from others when to laugh or smile, but your face, your face when the world isn’t watching shows hurt, anger and being scared.

A scared little four-year-old who has a four-year-old of her own.

What happened little girl when you were four?

Who are you still protecting little girl?

It’s OK, you’re safe now, they can’t hurt you.

Its what they say, but you don’t believe them.

How do you undo 20 years of secrets, shame and guilt because somehow you think this was your fault.

Going through the motions of day to day life, are you even trying?

Do you even care?

The church people ask.

But truth be told I don’t know how to stay alive, keep it together if I allowed one, just one secret out. And if you really knew me, church people….you would run. Run away just like everyone else, because I’m messy.

If I just let one secret out they may guess the rest. I’ve been told for so long it was just my imagination, it really didn’t happen. No one would believe you, they would say; so if you know what’s best, keep your mouth shut.

So keep my mouth shut I have.

***If this is your story, please know there are people who truly want to help you break free and enjoy life full of emotion. You can also email me at meredithsagekendall@gmail.com

Surviving Church with PTSD and Anxiety

The last month or so I have left church with almost this panic attack, anxiety feeling.

My inner most being has said “suck it up cupcake, it’s church you are secure.”

Even as I am writing this the tears are flowing and the anxiety I feel is about a 9.5 on a 10 scale and I have been home from church for an hour.

I don’t like feeling like this~ the girl who loves serving~ who loves to teach~ is floundering trying to figure out how to get involved and subside this emotional roller coaster of anxiety and panic attacks.

As I talked with my amazing husband, we decided we would first try a different service time. The 9am service is not as packed and maybe the overflowing service has triggered something. So today we attended the 9am service. I did well, but as the service let out, and we were leaving the anxiety started to fill me again.

We head home,but first we need to stop at Kroger. My husband realizes that my arms are folded and I am walking with much more of a purpose. “I’m fine”, is my reply. All the while my inner being is saying: “as long as you don’t say much, keep busy, you won’t lose it.”

Yeah, I make it through Kroger. Now home. My husband comes over to me, wraps his loving arms around me and starts to pray, I start to cry.

I am so tired of feeling like this. This cloud. This anxiety. This very easy could become a dark depression if I let it.

So I sit down and start writing, the tears flowing as I pray “God, something’s gotta give, and I am afraid it’s going to be me.”

I start to let my mind wander.

These are the words I come up with:

The accident

The man who didn’t fit in

The bathroom

No more happy place

So the first word: Accident (totaling the motorcycle on June 28)

Adding additional Trauma to someone who already deals with PTSD, and their go to behavior is to stay busy so you don’t have to feel…is not a recipe for a beautiful wedding cake, but a recipe for disaster.image

I have realized that growing up, when things were bad at home, I kept myself busy. I figured if I just locked myself in my room, the bad would happen, and I would just walk out when things were done blowing up. Again not a healthy way to cope with real life and feelings.

Second word was: Man who didn’t fit in

Right aconquering PTSDfter the accident and right after the Chattanooga shootings, there was a gentleman who came to our church services. I did not recognize him. His clothing choices, did not fit the 90 degree weather we were having, and seeing we are in the suburbs, having this person being someone of the homeless population that I minister to in the Nashville area, wasn’t even on my radar. The whole service long my anxiety was heightened, again to the panic attack mode. I wasn’t even safe in the church building, was my thought.

During this time, I had started using a different set of bathrooms that were off the beaten path. There was never a waiting line before or after church. Here is where the issue was, this was the bathroom, in which right after the attack (January 2011) I found myself in when I started bleeding from my nose and it was so bad that we had to call the doctor to make sure everything was ok. So, now every time I walked into this bathroom, I immediately went back to that night, which went back to the attack.

And then my happy place.

My happy place was destroyed through words of discouragement.

So why did I write about this. First because my therapy is writing. It may not fix all my anxiety and panic attacks today but getting it out and verbalizing it allows for satan to not take up any more residence in my thoughts.

Secondly, I know I am not the only person who deals with PTSD, anxiety and panic attacks. Not everyone has such an amazing spouse who is in-tune to your feelings and can give you a safe place to think, vent and strategize. If you are that person who does not have a special someone where your feelings are safe, please do not let this anxiety, panic attacks become a deep dark depression please, please talk to someone. Don’t let it engulf you.

And thirdly, even though church is supposed to be a safe place, it can also hold a lot of triggers for people.
My question to myself is how am I going to work through this? How am I going to control it verses letting it control me?

You see having these issues don’t define you unless you give them permission to.

The Blessing of a Bad Day

imageJune 28th was a B E A U ti-Ful day for a motorcycle ride. As we were ending the ride, still not quite sure what happened, but we ended up in the ditch, with a totaled motorcycle.image

Even as I am writing this, I am reliving the scene and can feel the anxiety filling my body from my toes all the way up to my head. I can still see my husband laying in the ditch lifeless. I am screaming and screaming trying to get him to answer. I call 9-1-1. Rob is still lifeless. Finally, he starts to moan, my body just wants to scream, don’t leave me. The moans were so death like, I thought he was taking his last breaths.

Rob has a dislocated collar bone, a sprained shoulder and a concussion. I have bumps and bruises.

Fast forward to the last few weeks of a new normal for our lives

Because of Robs limited use of his arm (we find out later that he had tears in the muscles around his rotator cuff), I drive him a majority of the time. The concussion though, is another story. He is sleeping most of the days away. He can’t get on the computer to work. When we do think he is ready to venture out, he can’t even make it 1/2 a day without tiring. Up until this week, all evening outings were put on hold. And I become a full-time care giver.

This is just the physical aspects of what has happened.

Rob is not 100% yet, but he at least has better movement in his shoulder and his “smart butt” attitude is coming back.

The wreck 6 weeks ago, created another trauma in my life. The anxiety has been so great that it created a depression that was so heavy, that many times, I would want to cry, but my body wouldn’t let me because I needed to be strong.

My husband needed me to care for him.

I needed to stay strong, because my husband was in no shape to care for a wife who was losing it.

During a recent trip downtown Rob said, “I hope you are ok with walking down here, because I won’t be able to defend you if anything happens”.

I did not realize how much the reality of that statement along with the anxiety I was feeling started a spiral downward into a deep depression because I was NOT strong and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Now for the reason for my blog

Rob and I have talked about our deaths and what we would do if the other one died and we survived. I have always said, “well, I know where you would be, so I would be happy for you and I would NOT get remarried but throw myself in to the ministry and keep going”.
What God has shown me through this wreck is that I have not waited for Rob to die, to act as if he was. For many months God has been reminding me about how much I used to be the wife who kept the house clean, I was always cooking breakfast and bringing it to my husband in bed. Over the years, I have become a very focused person, which can be good and bad. Good in the business world, but bad because I have realized how much I get focused on the “busy-ness” of life that I have neglected my husband and his need to be appreciated and loved like I used to.

So God used a motorcycle wreck to show me how much I love my husband and how weak I am and there are things I need to change.