No Retreat, but Surrender

Today snuck up on me.  In years past, as the calendar creeps into late October, I start to feel a tightness in my chest, jitters in the pit of my stomach, and tears easily spring to my eyes.  Yet, those familiar feelings only hit me yesterday and I found myself scrambling to reflect upon the anniversary of Elena’s life-changing injury.  It’s not that there is less emotion around it or that this day feels easier now that so much time has passed, but rather it’s a reflection, I think, of this chaotic chapter in our lives and a specific pull I feel to begin letting go of what continues to keep me stagnant.

There have been several times along the way, where I told myself I had been through the worst of it, that things were only up from here, and it makes me laugh and shake my head at the incredulity that I ever thought the hardest days were behind me.  All this time later, I understand that, indeed, this road does not get easier, the burdens do not become lighter, the hardship does not ease.  Despite the weight of this knowledge, I can also see the immense value in all that we have endured together as each moment has been a building block, forging a foundation of strength and reliance on faith for what comes next and what I know is certain to lie ahead.  There is comfort in this understanding, a hope that floods my spirit when I look back to see the arc of all we have weathered together as a family, and it bolsters a well of courage that I know I will need in days ahead.  At times, I so easily can drift off my course into deep valleys of grief and hopelessness, feeling overwhelmed, often forgetting that there’s an entirely beautiful life we have rebuilt from the ashes of what happened that November day in 2011. 

This has been a particularly hard year.  The physical volatility that ravages Elena’s teenage body is unpredictable, frustrating, and above all else, heart-wrenching.  She has endured so much pain and suffering, and to be at her side feeling utterly helpless, making choices for excruciating surgeries and procedures breaks my mama-heart in more ways than I even can grasp.  I have been fighting for answers, for relief, for peace.  I have been constantly wrestling with the grief, the injustice, the fear and, honestly, after 14 years, I’m bone-weary.  I’m tired of white knuckling a wheel that I cannot control, just so I can pretend that I’m in control.

Over the past several months there’s been a word that keeps washing over me, a gentle reminding whisper.  Every time I hear it, it has felt like a key fitting into a lock I didn’t know I was holding, like a balm to a wound I didn’t know was there, a sense of rest for a weary soul.  Surrender.  Surrender, Emmalee.    

It’s the answer to a question I wasn’t aware I had been asking.  The answer to a prayer I didn’t know I had been praying, God’s loving and perfect response to my soul crying out for help. Every day of these last fourteen years has been a fight, a constant juggling act of being grateful for the goodness and acknowledging the immense hardship, celebrating the joy and letting myself be overcome by grief, the mental, physical and emotional fatigue and the drive to keep fighting for each step forward.  It is a constant battle of overcoming what threatens to steal my hope, to exhaust my rest, to derail my drive for advocacy.  The wrestling has been such an integral part of my healing process, a manifestation of my grief and I know…I KNOW that the surrender is a fulfillment of what I desire most…..peace.  I’m trying to teach myself that I don’t have to grind through the fight, wrestling my grief to exhaustion doesn’t make it any more or less valid.  Laying my fears, my trauma, my grief, my hard days, the problems that never seem to have any solutions, the unrelenting weariness that grinds the soul of a caregiver, down, surrendering them to God is the only feasible way to keep myself moving forward, to keep growing, to keep the darkness from closing in.  It’s my only hope of respite when my circumstances are unyielding, when the burdens feel too heavy draped around my shoulders. 

I’m certain there will be no retreat from the uncertainty and tumult of our current days or even in the days and years ahead, but clinging to these reminders from God, that even in surrender, especially in surrender, lies the respite my soul so deeply desires.  Fourteen years later, I’m still gleaning redemption from Elena’s tragedy.  I’m still being challenged and refined.  I’m still doing all that I can to shine Elena’s light into my own darkness and, reflect it out into this world.