Life Without Mother

I have heard all these small truths of “feelings are valid but not truth” or “feelings are valid but can’t always be trusted,” etc.—but I never knew where to go from there. Like, okay, they’re not truth, then what is truth? (Well, that’s an easier one to answer.) Or, when can they be trusted?

I started to see a counselor this past December, going every week (except for Christmas break). My counselor is also a pastor—not of my church, but for another church in Manhattan—and one thing I can count on is that he will bring scripture into every session. Which is exactly what I need and want. He’s taught me to find the deeper feeling and compare it with Truth. For example, if I feel hurt, is that “hurt” sadness or betrayal or something more specific? How does that deeper hurt line up with scripture? Is the feeling true or untrue? If it’s true, I can feel it. If it’s untrue, I’ve felt it and processed it and can intentionally put it away.

Learning this was an active exercise as a repressed emotion resurfaced: betrayal. It was well hidden, underneath many forms of valid but misleading hurts—grief, anxiety, fatigue, etc. But God revealed it and did not let me push it back down. About a month ago, I finally threw my arms up during my session and exclaimed, “I’m just so tired of crying all of the time!”

My counselor: “Tears are not bad, you know.”
Me: “I know. But I feel like all I do is cry nowadays.”
Counselor: “What is the emotion you feel when you cry?”
Me, after a pause: “Sadness, pain, frustration…”
Counselor: “Is there anger?”
Me: “Yes.” And more tears fell.

He went on to ask what I felt I was missing by Mom being gone, and gave me the homework of journaling the answer to that question the following week. But I also knew the answer even in that moment: a safe place.

But this “safe place” was not simply centered on the loss of my wonderful, though imperfect, mother. No, this “safe place” was utter and complete trust in the Lord. And, for four-plus years, I had been repressing this lack of trust in the Lord to hold me emotionally. I knew He provides for every need—but my mind kept Him relegated to providing my physical and even mental needs, but at a distance for the deepest emotional ones.

From that session, I left his office and walked. And walked. And walked.

I walked 50 blocks that afternoon, ambling up Broadway from 37th street to Columbus Circle, along the west side of Central Park, and back to Broadway where I hopped on the 86th street subway back home. Two hours of mindless wandering through my city. Two hours of numb movement, one foot in front of the other.

I think my goal had been to work some stuff out with the Lord during that walk. But, suppression is difficult to counteract when it has been done so long. I didn’t know where to even begin to unravel the tangled mess of emotions and thoughts. So, I finally just went home.

And then the Lord gave me help: one of my dearest friends. We talked on the phone and she gave me the space and encouragement to process, to unravel, to be angry, to be sad, to cry. And then she gave me the accountability and prayer to talk to the Lord immediately upon hanging up with her. And talk I did. Well, a little more silently—I journaled. All of the hurt from that week in April 2016—that day—that I had ignored and suppressed for the sake of enumerating the wonderful ways God was working and moving—which are all still unequivocally true and valid—all of that hurt I poured out in tears and ink onto the blank pages of a notebook inscribed with the words, “Walk by faith, not by sight.” (Doesn’t the Lord have a wonderful sense of humor?)

Processing Emotions:

What I felt: hurt and anger.
The deeper feeling: betrayal.
The truth of the feeling: I felt that God had let me down–and there was no amount of justifiable reasons for Him to take my mother so soon.
The Truth: God saw me. He saw me and asked Satan, “Have you considered my servant Hannah?” (Job 1-2) He had more faith in me than I had in Him. There is no quantifiable justification for Mom’s death. But there is a reason: to grow my faith.

There is so much more I could share from that weekend of processing, but this is the concise version.

God continues to amaze me with His gracious faithfulness. Since that week, I have been able to put away the anger without denying the pain of loss. Rather, instead of pushing Him out, I’ve been learning to lean on Him even more. True emotional freedom. Knowing how to process my (often misguided) emotions, I am free to feel without fearing a fall into unTruth.

To be clear, God is the only One who has sustained me through these past few years. I could not have made it a week without Him. But I’m learning a new intimacy with Him. Truly living in what it means for Him to “know me completely” (Psalm 139).