Who are we now?

Tears streaked down rosy cheeks, flowing freely from her beautiful hazel eyes as she asked me recently, “When will I be back to normal?”  Oh, how I wish that were an easy question to answer.   And as she said it, I could feel the pleading that has led me to ask the same question of my therapist and dear friend over and over this last 19 months.  Each time he has gently and kindly replied, “Dear one, you won’t ever be back to normal.  Because you are different now than you were.”   And there it is.  We are different than before that night.  The normal we used to have no longer exists.  Which isn’t entirely all bad, actually there are many beautiful parts to our new normal.  Yet, when I am asked these days for an update on how we are, how she is, what we are doing these days I often feel my heart longing for the normal we used to have, simply because it was comfortable.  So this weekend while I walked our dusty rural Montana road I have contemplated who we are now.  How are we doing?  What’s so different from the normal we used to thrive in and enjoy?  And the answer isn’t a short one.  So I pray that you, our dear friends and family, will indulge me a little longer post this time around.  And just as a heads up, if you make it all the way to the end, there’s a special treat.

We are:

Together.  For the last five months The Stick Together Stewarts, have been scattered; some combination of us together in part, but only briefly together as a whole unit.  As a large family our individual identities are strengthened and solidified by the role we play in each other’s lives.  Our cacophony of life lived in a single space with eight people may be overwhelming to a visitor, but for us, it is the background track to the life we live.  It’s messy and loud and often goes in multiple directions all at one time, but it feels solid and safe.  And when even one of us is gone, there is a vacancy that leaves the rest somewhat disoriented.  Naomi has for several years been like a third parent, and her absence left a gaping hole in our home.  I cannot even begin to tell you the joy of our lives back in one state.  In fact, in these months the biggest stride that beautiful girl made in her rehabilitation was while she was home for a short reprieve between therapy sessions.  We continued her treatments here, in the midst of together, and God catapulted her forward in healing.  Now we are all back in one place again, and hopefully this time she’s here for the long haul. Her doctor felt confident that in the middle of her people, her core, she would just continue to improve, and so far, each week that has been the case. 

Healing.  What a beautiful word.  We are healing.  All of us are.  Does it surprise you that we all needed to be healed?  It has surprised me.   Even the three who were not in the wreck. Even the two who didn’t break any bones.   Even my parents who were safely at home that night.  Broken bones.  Destroyed ligaments.  Stretched and scarred skin.  Nights disturbed by nightmares.  Flashbacks of lifeless children, screaming babies and a feared dying husband.  Fear of losing everything and everyone who ever mattered.  Fear of being abandoned.  I believe the night of our wreck, each member of our family was devastated in different ways.  And from the ashes of that devastation, God has been bringing about beauty.  He is healing our bodies, hearts and minds.  I wish that all rates of healing were the same.  I wish that each of our broken parts would be made whole right now.  But we are given the gift of learning to celebrate and recognize the victories of each other; and extend grace and encouragement while the rest continue to heal.  Jacob often does his sister’s water therapy sessions these days.  Able bodied and whole, he gently applies warm towels time and time again to help his sister until she is able bodied too.  That’s beauty from ashes.  She recognizes her brother standing up and standing in for a man.  She encourages his growth.  We all give lots of hugs and have to remember that fear of abandonment can only ever heal with lots of presence and love.   Healing is beautiful, but it only comes after brokenness, which is the messy part.   Recognizing brokenness in all its forms has become a new part of who we are now. 

Breathing.  Part of Naomi’s treatment includes deep breathing exercises to help expand her rib cage and improve her posture, while strengthening her chest wall muscles.  While breathing deeply, the muscles are forced to work and gain strength, and then hopefully they will begin to help support her thoracic spine, which will in turn help support her neck.  And just this week in my therapy session, James told me that one of my assignments is to breathe.  He is not recommending said exercise to help support my neck.  Rather, this is now to be a tool to help me emerge from the paralyzing, vocal cord gripping panic that occasionally rises up in my being.   James has listened time and again to my tearful retellings of the terror that rises without warning and robs me of speech or any clear thought.  Last week he lovingly said, “You need to take a deep breath when that happens again, let the air fill up your chest, and with that filling of air, allow the words to come out proclaiming your fear.  These are your people.  They are not judging you, as harshly as you are judging yourself.  Breathe in.  Speak out.  Do not run away.”   I so want to run when the ice cold terror comes upon me.  Like an Arctic chill has swept over me, I feel like I will turn into glacial ice if I do not run and fight.  But if I can fill my lungs, and speak, either my loves, or my Savior can enter in and carry me through to the warmth of security.  So Naomi is breathing to strengthen her neck, and I am breathing so that I can face fear that is so real it threatens to suffocate me.  As I type this I am drawn to remember Genesis.  God the Father, Son and Spirit huddled together seeing their creation; all that they created through their words.  Then they held up their prize and perfect creation, Adam; their favorite masterpiece.  And to bring him to life, they breathed into him.   No words.  Just breath…direct from the lips of heaven.

Lingering:  As a woman in medicine, I have come to this place in my life and career through driven focus and strict time management.  But all of that drive and focus to detail did absolutely nothing for me when I believed my daughter and husband were dead, or that I would die in front of my babies.  And since we have arisen from our miraculous rescue, I want to linger in lovely and real moments.  Longer conversations.  Taking in laughter and humor in the mundane.  Leaning in to listen to the heart of the people right in front of me.  Kit is the same.  He was always more likely to linger before we met, but six children, medical school and residency, house building, home schooling five children and a slightly neurotic wife made him linger less since we joined our lives together.  Since that night, we linger.  Dinner doesn’t need to end quickly.  Dishes are not as important.  A messy house does not trump radiant hearts and time playing games or swimming or hiking, or really just about anything together.  Cleaning?  Let’s do it together.  Costco?  No need to separate for the sake of speed, if we just stay together we enjoy the trip more.  (However, we do still utilize two carts!)  New friends more quickly feel like old ones, because we don’t have anywhere else to be.  Learning about whomever God places in our path is most important.  I like the lingering Stewarts.  In this way we are more whole now than we ever were before.

Grateful:   We were not a family lacking gratitude previously.  But the depth of gratitude that we experience now is beyond my ability to describe.  How and why God chose to save us for more time together, more service, more… everything, we cannot fathom.  But that He did has left us adrift in an oceans depth of His love and kindness.  He has never once left us without the next direction or step into wherever we are heading now.  There has not been a single dead end in our healing…only closed doors that led to the next open one.  We have experienced God’s love expressed through human kindness over and over and over again.  Complete strangers giving to keep us afloat in these uncertain times.  Dear friends and families sacrificing for us in the most personal ways.  There are not enough “Thank You” notes to send and so we approach our days with full hearts and open hands.  All that we have been given, we want to use to bless; those who are close to us as well as strangers.    If you are reading this, you are likely someone who has been the direct hands of God in our lives.  THANK YOU.  We love you.

Loved and Loving:  “Look at my eyeballs,” said to all my babes to get their attention.  They quickly learn why I want their attention. “I love you.”  After a few times they respond to my request for attention with “I love you” before I can even say it.  The rescues on March 31, 2017, were some of God’s most beautiful, “I love you” proclamations we have ever heard.  Even if we hadn’t all made it, He would have still been proclaiming His love just as He always has since that very first kiss of breath into mankind.  He has shown us over and again how much He loves and how personal His love is in all this time since.  With every personal reminder our well is filled to overflowing.  And I pray that above all things that will be said of the legacy of our family, it will be that we loved well.  A life filled up with love sees others differently.  Each person we meet is another heart that we can embrace, and give to out of the overflow of all that God has given to us.   Would I still be overflowing with love and gratitude if my husband was gone, or the last thing I said to Naomi was “goodbye” on a dark cold night?  Thankfully, I don’t have to live that answer every day, because that is not my reality…but if it were I believe that I would have a much deeper need, and God would be filling that up to overflowing as well.  

    

Cheering.  We all need cheerleaders in our lives.  Those people who call out our strengths and see our potential.  Some days are drudgery in the healing process.  Some days are still very dark.  And so we have learned how to be great cheerleaders for each other.  Part of that has required that we learn about each other’s unspoken signs of fatigue and strain.  Naomi’s struggle is so physically painful, that it is quite obvious when she is struggling.  And as her mom I want to take all her pain on myself; make her struggle mine.  But it is not mine.  I can only come along side her, and tell her that she is doing such an amazing job.  She is blowing physical rehabilitation out of the park.  She is a rock star among those who strive to heal.  Almost continuously I pray for her, and I believe that God is more encouraging than I ever can be.  We are learning as a family that when someone is in a season of difficulty encouragement can be the difference between a day that feels like drowning and one that feels like victory.  Maybe we need to get a family cheerleading uniform?  Even just the thought of Kit in a tight cheer sweater with pom poms brightens up my day!

Laughing.  The old adage is “laughter is the best medicine.”  I’m not sure that it is always the best medicine, but I believe it to be some of the sweetest.  There are days in the midst of wherever we are that we want to cry; and we often do.  But the relief that comes from laughing is so spectacular.  The night before Naomi left to return to Providence, she and I cried, huge, big gulping for air ugly tears.  We did not want to be apart again, but knew that she needed to continue therapy.  So we cried, and cried and cried.  Then we burst into laughter at the GIGANTIC black mascara stain that was all over her freshly changed pillow case; poured freely from my puffy eyes.  “Well, at least I won’t feel like you aren’t with me.  Your face ran down on my pillow.  So really a part of you is coming with me!”   We continue to seek for the humor in the depths.  We are learning the art of laughing at ourselves.  Life is serious.  Pain is serious.  Trauma is serious.  Laughing is often a gulp of water in the middle of the desert.  We like to laugh more now than ever.  And really, after nearly dying, there isn’t much in our day to day lives that is so serious we can’t laugh at least a little.

Singing and Making Music.  I saw a plaque recently that read, ‘when words fail, music speaks.”  That may be one of the truest statements I have ever read.  Yes, we are a musical family, with a long lineage of singers and musicians.  Naomi is becoming more and more accomplished at the piano every year.  Her younger siblings who play are as well.  Teags can learn a song he has only ever heard one time, and teaches himself.  For months, the ardor of sitting and holding her head aright and playing piano was more than Naomi could bear.  Some days she would push through, and play anyway;  songs she was making up as she went along.  And on the hard days the music sounded like tears and dark clouds.  On the days she felt better the notes were light and cheery and felt like sunshine.  But for long stretches of time no notes were being played by our oldest girl.   Longing to hear her has risen up at times to the point that I could almost not breath…missing the sounds of her heart.  In Providence she started to play again.  When she would sing in her therapy sessions, her pain levels would drop to zero more quickly.  Since she is home she is learning new music and making new music.  And I haven’t heard dark clouds or tears in a while.  I sing every week at church, leading our little church family in worship.  Never before in my life have the words of those songs meant more to me.  “Glory, glory. Hallelujah, Jesus you are Good.”  “All these pieces, broken and scattered.  In mercy gathered, mended and whole….”  “You don’t belittle our pain and our suffering.  And you comfort us in our greatest unraveling…”  “You split the sea so I could walk right through it.  My fears are drowned in perfect love.  You rescued me and I will stand and sing, I am a child of God….”  “Even when I cannot see, You are moving.  Even when I cannot hear, You are singing over me.  Even when I can’t hold on, You won’t let me go.  You are faithful.”   “You are in control, you hold everything, so I am letting go. Releasing all my fears, surrendering my heart, to You and You alone.”  Our words have failed a lot these last 19 months, but music has not.

Surrendered.  Kit and I are both logical people.  What happened on March 31, 2017, does not fit within the context of our logic…mathematically, medically, or otherwise.  As we review the events and details of that night, our logic, and everyone else’s adds up to our death; at least one of us dying.  But NONE of us died that night.  Not a single person of the seven people in those 3 vehicles.  We all lived.  Luck, whatever that actually is, could have saved one of us, or a few of us.  But not a single person died.  So when logical minds come face to face with a completely illogical outcome that usually requires some reassessing of priorities.  We have trusted God, at least in part, for many years.  But seeing His glory and miraculous rescue of our lives has caused us to worry much less about what makes sense to our logical minds.  If God leads us, we are not afraid to say yes.  We trust in a different way now.  We are no longer trying to help Him out.  Our quick answer is “Yes” when he prompts our hearts.  This does not mean we are saying yes to every request for our time.  Quite the contrary, we pray much more about each request, and when we are prompted by our great Rescuer to move forward we say yes and worry not about the logic.  Surrender has given us freedom to operate as a family trusting that God will provide every need that arises on the road that He calls us to.  He certainly has met us on a road before...   

 

Shining Bright.  “Those who gaze upon the Lord are radiant, shame can never cover their face.” Psalms 34:5.  We are gazing upon the One who rescued us. We believe He rescued us for a purpose.  Our pain has a purpose.  These months of therapy and treatment and sacrifice will all be used towards beautiful ends.  What happened to us and the pain that has followed is profoundly dark.  A brief read through the headlines in the news today confirms we are all living in dark times.  Broken hearts and bodies and lives are abundant.  And while we struggle with the effects of unjust circumstances, we are absolutely convinced that a loving God is fighting for us.  We are holding all our brokenness up to Him, and choosing to focus on His healing.  I’ve never been a particularly optimistic person.  I have very little tolerance for “putting on a brave face”.  I prefer real and raw and truth, no matter how messy.  And here is the truth…..we are in process.  Wherever we are right now isn’t where I hope we will be in another year.  I long for how our lives used to be.  I miss quiet and predictable.  But I cannot make any of those things my reality.  Who we were is gone.  Who we are going to become I haven’t met yet.  But I believe that God knew us then and knows who we will be and He is completely aware of where we are now.  So rather than putting on a brave face, we are raising our brokenness up to the One who can and is healing us.  There is no shame found in His love.   I pray that those who meet us now see light even in the darkness as we gaze upon the One who is making us whole. 

That all may seem vague, for which I apologize.  Every day is a new adventure around the Stewart house these days.  Progress is forward and some days progress is really quick, while other days it inches along.   We have met beautiful friends on this broken road.  We’ve grown to love the friends and family we’ve always had in our cheering section even more.  Over all and under all is a deep sense of belonging and love.  Thank you for being our people.  Thank you for crying with us, praying with and for us, cheering for us and mostly for putting up with us. 

This lovely video is compliments of Skye Porter.  A beautiful and talented young woman we have met while on this journey to wholeness.  She is a gift to our family.  She sees the world so beautifully, and translates that so very well.  This is glimpse into the joy we shared spending a week with their family visiting our corner of the world.  Enjoy!