Content Warning: This entry contains references to sexual assault. I would like to clarify that while I am referring to sexual assault, what happened to me was not rape. However, I choose to still use the term “sexual assault” because it is the legal definition of what happened. It was important to my healing to learn and accept that what happened to me was serious and by legal definition, sexual assault. I don't want the term I use to seem misleading; however, at the same time, I want the audience to understand that sexual assault has a wide definition and leaves a lasting impact in all of its forms. Thank you.

Reflective

August 23, 2020

I’m coming up on my sixth brain surgery anniversary. It’s just a couple of weeks away and it’s always around this time of year that I get a little more introspective. Well, more introspective than normal.

This year I’ve been reflecting on the last six years and, on the whole, two words come to mind: grateful and hard.

As I think back to where I was this time six years ago, two weeks before I’d lost the use of my right arm and, through a series of fortunate events, discovered the Chiari Malformation and Syrinx that were threatening my life.

I was a mess. Not outwardly a mess, per se, but internally a disaster.

I was entering my sophomore year of college, on the speech and debate team, a resident advisor in the freshman girl’s dorm at the University of Alabama, taking too many credits to move through my degree in secondary education language arts as quickly as possible, and working hard to maintain my full academic scholarship. I was also not processing a sexual assault that had impacted me pretty deeply, filling my time with people and tv and movies and books and noise to drown out the parts of me that were hurting, and pretty seriously neglecting my relationship with God. I also felt horrible physically, because of my soon-to-be-uncovered health issues, but brushed that off as the results of my college diet of a spoonful of peanut butter with M&Ms sprinkled on top and my exercise of Netflix marathons.

I didn’t like who I was and instead of confronting that, I ran from it.

Brain surgery and the continuous health concerns and conditions that have made themselves known over the last six years forced me to acknowledge that fact and reckon with it. And I did, I continue still. Today I do like myself and I have a solid relationship with God. For that, for these last six years, I’m grateful.

That being said, and that being true, it was hard. These last six years have been incredibly, decidedly, hard. Difficult. The physical toll, the emotional toll, the mental toll, the spiritual toll, the relational toll, if there’s been a toll on this road then I’ve paid it in full and didn’t get any change back.

For so long, it felt like the hits just kept coming. Inexplicable hits from an attack you can’t anticipate and can’t prepare. One after the other after the other after the other, it’s gone far past the point of reason or logic. With health, with work, with other traumas, it’s been vastly and simply hard.

There’s been one six-month period, in this entire six years, that I can point to where I’ve been in an “easier” season of life. This six-month period was when my medical stuff was progressing toward a goal, my work life was manageable and balanced, I was working toward healing in the traumatic events of my life not fielding new ones and developing new friendships. Six months in the last six years where I could say, “Yeah, okay, I’m in a good season of life after a long hard one.”

That, of course, didn’t last and I’d argue I’m in a difficult season of life once again, though only a moderate one. I’d like to think I’m bracing myself a little better, gaining firmness in my stance yet bending when needed so as not to break. I’m at least learning contentment and improving my bandwidth for struggle and difficulty.

As I think on these words, grateful and hard, and reflect on the last six years, I come to one conclusion. We’re not owed good seasons or easy seasons after hard ones. I always thought that after dealing with something difficult I had the right to a break. That after going through something that was hard, or even traumatic, God would give me a season of rest or ease. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and it’s not even biblical, come to find out.

As Jeremiah the prophet was complaining to God that God was asking too much of him, demanding too much, giving him too hard of a time, and asking him to suffer much, God responds to Jeremiah saying, “If racing against mere men makes you tired, how will you race against horses? If you stumble and fall on open ground, what will you do in the thickets near the Jordan?” (Jeremiah 12:5, NLT)

I mean, it’s a good point.

1 Peter 4:12-13, “Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad - for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world.”

God is more likely to ask me to suffer than he is to ask me to remain at ease. There’s a movement to suffering, a momentum. That doesn’t exist in comfort - a word often synonymous with complacent. God says to his people in Isaiah 48:10, “I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.”

A furnace isn’t a comfortable or desirable place to be, but it creates something that is desirable and usable. A furnace, a kiln, is where an unfinished piece is placed and when it is brought out, it’s both functional and beautiful. Unfortunately, we aren’t really brought out of the furnace on this side of heaven. My entire life will be filled with suffering, with refining.

I look back on these last six years and I know that I haven’t “made it.” I know that however many days, weeks, months, years, or decades I have left I’ll experience the vast majority of them in some degree of suffering in some or multiple arenas of my life. It doesn’t mean God doesn’t love me, it actually means he loves me a great deal, and whatever plans he has for me for eternity are going to be completely wonderful.

I think that’s also what I’m grateful for, the understanding that suffering will come and rather than a disruption, is a fixture of life. I think the belief that suffering is temporary, that life is about the moments we aren’t suffering and suffering is only a tangent away from the story rather than the inciting action into it, has made it more difficult for me to live a life dependent on God. To be content, to develop deep relationships, to be kind to myself and others, and to live a full life.  I’m not excited or thrilled about suffering, but I’m confident in God’s ability to console, to correct, and to control all aspects of myself, my situation, and my suffering. I’m confident in his provision along with the suffering he either causes or allows. It still totally sucks sometimes (a lot of the times), but suffering doesn’t detract from the life I was supposed to have, it builds the life I am to live.

I write these words not only as a reflection on these past six years but as a reminder for the next six.  I’ve got a short memory for wisdom and thankfully a long-lasting cloud backup account for storing it. 

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