I recently self-diagnosed my illness. Well, one of them. And it didn't involve a trip down the WebMD rabbit hole. I was listening to a podcast when I heard the interviewer name my sickness: Worst-Case Scenario Disease.
Yes and amen.
I have all of the symptoms. For instance, if there exists one five minute time period where I am not able to reach any of my people on the phone? Well. Please. It can only mean The Worst Things, and within 4.2 seconds, I have imagined out my frantic drive to the hospital, and the tearful hand-holding and emergency surgeries and heart transplants and brain transfusions (Wait. Is that a thing? Hold on. I need to check WebMD after all). If I get word in my real life that a routine medical test I’ve taken needs to be repeated, I have instantly imagined and choreographed my funeral, a service which includes an epic, immediately-viral eulogy, bunches of gorgeous hydrangeas, John-Williamsesque overtures, and a packed stadium of mourners. My imagination has excellent taste, thank you so much for noticing.
I know that, over and over, when I share my worries and fears, I've been on the receiving end of the dreaded and unhelpful words, the ones people love to throw around. Perhaps you've had them lobbed at your head as well: The ones about how 99.999% of the things you worry about won't ever come true.
After I (usually successfully) resist the urge to take them out at the knees for such useless advice, I would like to tell them just what I think. I don't, because I don’t have time to correct them what with the planning of my imaginary funeral, so I just smile. But I want to sweetly scream: Well yes, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE 83 MILLION THINGS I NEVER THOUGHT TO WORRY ABOUT THAT DID HAPPEN? Hmmmm?
Most of the deepest heartaches of my life were things I never imagined out in all of my mind's wanderings, and I have had enough honest conversations with girlfriends to know that this is a truth for so many of us.
We never imagined the agonizing pain our child would spill out of his heart into our own; or the betrayal that would leave deep scars crisscrossing our story; or the illness that would drain our energy and make each day a battle. We never imagined the challenges a difficult kid would cause us; or how some days motherhood seemed like the worst idea we'd ever had and why, with all of our baggage and bondage, did we ever think we would be good at it? We never imagined the loss of love in our lives, the brokenness of relationships and the shattering of trust in ourselves and in others.
But what I’ve also realized is that fear, running like a dark, underground river through my days, takes away any chance I have at peace. The only way I’ll have peace is through remembering that the pain I have experienced before and the pain I experience again is like an ocean wave. I can take a breath and practice the art of surrender, which is the only way the wave will pull me to shore rather than pull me under. Sometimes the wave is one small event, over in a moment, and sometimes it is unrelenting in its grasp, one wave after another, after another, unending.
Sometimes we can still ourselves, our minds and our souls; we can take a walk and have a conversation with ourselves as we would a trusted friend, offering the comfort we would to another. Sometimes we can choose to believe for ourselves the words we would say to someone else, the hopes and promises. We can open our hands to accept the gift that we so often give away. Sometimes our worries and anxieties take a vise-grip hold on our brains, and our thoughts stop lining up with what is real, and we need to seek help, medication and therapy, and not feel an ounce of shame for that.
I know I’ll still wait up for my teenage drivers to come through the door at night, even when they tell me not to, and I’ll breathe out a prayer of thanks when they do. I’ll still worry about those I love coming into harm or hurt, in ways that I see happen to people all around every day. I’ll still fight against the dark, unspoken fears that the painful events of my past will come back again to try to defeat me.
Yet if I...if we...are still here, if we are still fighting, then we recognize the power of those fears to hold us under the waves but we, instead, choose the greater power of surrender and peace to pull us safely home.
