It was after 9 p.m. on a cold winter night, and my son’s basketball practice was nearly over. Freezing rain fell from the sky as I attempted to drive through one last country road to get to his school.
The roads were slick and my tires, not so great, but I was only a few minutes away…almost there.
An oncoming car had just passed me driving in the opposite direction when I felt my vehicle begin to glide. It felt like I had just unknowingly driven onto an ice rink. I felt zero traction with the ground beneath me.
Whenever my body perceives a threat, I’m usually pretty good at staying calm, optimistic, and decisive. I do my best to keep the dangerous circumstances from clouding my judgment.
“I can do this.”
“I’m fine.”
I’d normally be able to coach myself out of fear. But with the road being a narrow two-lane highway, I didn’t have time or space to think positively. Another car could approach me at any moment, which was a big problem because my car refused to stay on my side of the road.
Every time I accelerated, my vehicle pulled off to the right, the tires crossing over the solid line notifying me that I was outside my lane’s limits. When I pushed the brakes the back end of my minivan began to tailspin counterclockwise. How was I supposed to drive my minivan when I could not push the gas or brakes without serious consequences?
I started hyperventilating for the first time in my life. I squinted my eyes while my hands spun quickly back and forth attempting to steer the wheel in a way that kept me on the road. There was no sense of assurance. No “I got this” attitude. Instead, I muttered short, frantic prayers in between my staccato breaths, pleading with God for help.
At one point, I was finally able to slow my car to a stop only to notice that I had just ascended a small hill. A complete halt could prove even more treacherous if I couldn’t pick up momentum to move forward again or if my car started to backslide.
The impossible situation forced me to attempt to move forward, but I still could not get control.
Within minutes, my brain began to accept that I was going to crash. My eyes darted from side to side looking for the “best” possible place for my vehicle to land.
But I was in the middle of a forest.
In the daytime, it was a beautiful drive filled with towering trees crowding around the narrow road. Now, all I could see were massive trunks lit up by my dim headlights. I struggled to envision the best way to drive into a tree. My mind jumped to the next threat, what if the tree fell on my car?
No, not a tree. Let’s not hit a tree…as if I could decide.
My only other option was driving off into a potential ditch. At some points, the landscape around the asphalt looked even, but there were spaces where it would drop off. Would I flip over? Would I be able to get out?
Panic began to fully set in while I contemplated the unpredictability of what would happen next.
There was no right move.
The only possibilities seemed to end with a collision, entrapment, and even possible death.
By God’s grace, I arrived at my son’s middle school that frigid night with my car still intact, but I was completely unhinged. As soon as I pulled up to the building and put my car in park, I began to cry. I had “made” it, but it had been about a mile stretch of being completely terrified about my fate.
On the way home, I changed routes. I took the long way home on big city roads which were more likely to be salted. I drove about 10 mph the entire time and I reminded my son how to communicate to first responders about our whereabouts if we were to get into a serious accident.
I was operating out of what I had just experienced. I didn’t trust my brakes and I didn’t trust accelerating the entire way home. I was convinced that there was no good way to drive in freezing rain, but that there was also no other way to get home but to drive there.
The parallels between what I experienced in that scary encounter and our family’s recovery from spiritual abuse have felt eerily similar.
Any stagnation in my walk with God caused me to feel far from Him. When I didn’t have the strength or motivation to seek Him, praying, Bible reading, and worship, were almost nonexistent.
And I felt it.
I felt the hollowness of not being filled up in my spirit. I couldn’t feel His love or His presence. Mentally, I was struggling. I was hopeless, fearful, and depressed. I was drowning in a sea of survival. And I was convinced that extending my hand to a Lifesaver that had lured me out to such murky waters would most likely move again as soon as I reached for it.
Plus, did I really want to hold onto a faith that my former community claimed for themselves? I did not want to be like them. So what sense did it make to be holding onto this commonality?
But if God is who He said is. And if He does love me as much as He says He does, then I wasn’t ready to abandon my faith altogether.
I was treading water while wrestling with these questions, but it was inevitable that my strength would run out. I had to attempt to reach one more time before I fully went under. In potentially my very last prayer, I asked for God to show me that He cared about me. And if you’ve read this post, you know that he responded with an avalanche of affection.
But that’s not the end of the story. Just because I have a floatation device, doesn’t mean it’s been smooth sailing. No, holding onto my faith has been a grueling process. I am not healing from spiritual abuse in a vacuum. My husband and children all have to figure out how to move forward after their trust has been demolished.
Trust with the church.
Trust with God’s people.
Trust with church leaders.
Trust with God.
I cannot repair that for them(let alone repair it for myself).
While I have chosen to once again take hold of my faith, that is not the case for my entire family. This road back to God causes distance and deep pain between us. Any of the movements I make toward God pulls me further from the members of my family who are not ready to trust Him again. My relationship with God has created a not-so-subtle chasm with the individuals I love most on this earth.
An entire church had drawn a clear line between “us” and “them”. We had been treated like the enemy, the enemy of other Christ followers, so what did that make me if I still chose to follow Christ? The enemy of my husband and children? Surely not, but what story will the trauma in their bodies tell them?
My family’s pain and distrust is valid. And if I truly did not believe that there is a loving God who deserves my devotion, then I would absolutely bow down to my spouse and children’s comfort. They have been through so much. It makes sense that they don’t trust a God or people that would allow what happened to us.
Moving forward with God and leaving Him behind both cause me to ache, but I cannot lose sight of what I believe is true, because clinging to the truth is not only what’s best for me, but ultimately for my family too. I can’t pretend to be someone else and I wouldn’t want them to do that either. I will always prefer the discomfort of authenticity to the false comfort of a facade.
While living in this tension, I needed a healthy way to cope with this seemingly impossible situation. I learned to combine intentional breathing and prayer in Chuck DeGroat’s book, Healing What’s Within; Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You’re Wounded, Weary & Wandering. Chuck explains this calming practice,
”When we’re disconnected, we’re not grounded—in our breath, in our bodies. Ancient Christians understood this embodied reality and believed the breath to be an access point to God, a place of reconnection. God breathed life into us in Eden(Genesis 2:7), and when the storms of life overwhelm us and the fog devours us, our breathing often becomes shallow. We lose connection to our home. We may even hold our breath. So when we find our way back to our breath, that can also help us find our way back to ourselves, even to God.”
He proceeds to explain this process of reconnection.
”…find a quiet space where you can sit down with your feet flat on the floor and your back straight. Take a long, deep breath—in through your nose—then hold it for a few seconds before exhaling slowly through your mouth(as if you’re fogging a mirror in front of you, even exhaling audibly with a haaaahhhhhh). At the end of your exhale, pause before beginning again. Try this for five to ten minutes at first.”
Once I went through the breathing exercises, I worked on merging them with my petitions. I created a prayer derived from scriptural truths that I needed to be reminded of. Only I know the demons I fight in my head regularly, so pulling on someone else’s generic prayer was not as helpful to me in this season. I needed it to be personalized. I’ll share a portion of it here.
I trust you(in-breath)
You watch over my family(out-breath)
You will not forget us(in-breath)
In our affliction(out-breath)
My pain is important to you(in-breath)
I am loved by you(out-breath)
You see it all(in-breath)
You sustain me in the wilderness(out-breath)
You are strong enough(in-breath)
To overcome wounds(out-breath)
You give repentance(in-breath)
You will give me the strength I need(out-breath)
Using these breathing exercises and prayers really helps to ground me when it feels like the ground has dropped out from underneath me. It refocuses my eyes on a sovereign God while I inhale(and exhale) what I know to be true.
I can’t know for sure that my family’s faith journeys are going to safely make it out of the icy forest. All I can do is pray and hope that they do, and maybe, like that one dark, winter night, they’ll also miraculously emerge on the other side, confident of God’s love for them.
How about you? How do you cope with life circumstances that seem impossible? How do you remind yourself of God’s truth?
Thank you for sharing this exercise.