Where Did She Go?

 

When I look at this photo, I see a Mum enjoying her baby girl and her life.   She looks tired, but she seems happy enough.  Mother of two, a boy and a girl.   Where did she go, that happy person?

She was good at looking picture perfect, in the early years.   Being English, appearance was important.  Being neat and tidy, hair done, it was important.   Even if you were crumbling, you made sure you looked right.   But being English, her mindset was that you didn’t ask for help until you got your Ts crossed and your Is dotted.   You didn’t admit to faults or failures. And she was pretty sure you had to measure up before you came to God.    Perfectionism is no way to live.  It just stops us from being honest with ourselves and God, stops us from healing and growing.    The cracks were already showing.   

Not long after this photo was taken, she and I went to England for six months to see her parents.  Things were obviously already difficult because they begged her to stay, to not go home to her difficult marriage.  But she had left behind her three-year-old son, so she was compelled to return. 

By the time she returned, my brother was already showing signs of deep trauma, from the bits I've gleaned since, from people who knew us in those early years.   To this day, I don't know why and I'm afraid to ask.  Perhaps he remembers, perhaps not.    And our parents’ marriage was struggling but neither of them asked for help.

Where did she go, that pretty lady who had caught his attention in New Zealand? 

Where did she go, that happy wife? 

I think as we lost our baby-ness and grew more tiresome, her exhaustion kicked in, emotional and physical.   I think we were a constant reminder of how trapped she felt.    She went to work every day, one of the few mothers who worked full time.   She wanted to earn money so she could get away.  But she never had the confidence to do that, to believe she could survive without him.   She believed the lies that he constantly told her.   ‘Hopeless.  Useless.  Ugly.   Nuisance.  Never survive.  I will not let you go.’   Those words became her truth.  

Her words for us started to change too - dirty, disgusting, damn nuisance, noisy, pest....

Where did she go, that Mum who had delighted in us, her babies?

I remember being about three when the fights started, Pete and I sitting on their big bed, holding each other while they railed against each other in another room.   That's when the chronic asthma started for both of us too.  I daresay it was a load that weighed heavily on her insecurities about motherhood.    She felt guilty about whatever was wrong with us.  The asthma was a major guilt factor for her, along with some other chronic and obvious health issues Pete and I struggled with.    I know she was blamed for a lot of it.   

In the mix, there were some good days, some good memories, some peaceful times.  There was a Mum who was trying to love these children when she had been given little to work with.   Her own tank was empty.    Her own childhood had been one of neglect and rejection and abuse.      

Her own identity was shaky and built on falsehood and surviving constants attacks from a husband who was supposed to be loving and cherishing her.   

This is me, I was about one in this photo.  In just a few short years, that blissfully happy child was struggling.   Where did she go?   

 

When I was six, Mum discovered she was pregnant and didn't want to be.  She was getting a lot of pressure to have an abortion.  She didn't.  I'm grateful for that.  But the Mum who had managed to keep going, for us, even in the midst of her own internal struggles, was barely there any more.  Where did she go?   I think she was drowning in all the future fear, loaded on top of the weight she was already carrying, alone.  

Mum had always made a big deal about birthdays.  I think it was her way of making up for what she perceived as her failures, perhaps making up for what she missed out on as a child.  She spent money she didn't have on birthday presents.  But I remember coming home from school on my 8th birthday, to find her in bed, my baby brother asleep in his cradle.  She had forgotten my birthday.  Where did she go, the Mum who always remembered birthdays?  I'm almost certain she was suffering from postnatal depression but of course, I didn't know that then.  I came to resent that little brother, but it wasn't his fault.  He didn't choose it. 

Things didn't improve.  She became more withdrawn, less able to cope, more volatile.  As I got older, I was given more responsibility, mostly with the baby brother, who was turning into a difficult toddler.   And he became yet more evidence of her failures.   He was much less pliable than my older brother and I apparently were.   Every parenting failure caused her to withdraw even more. 

The happy, well-dressed lady almost disappeared.  Some days we caught glimpses of her.  Mostly she was just sad and vague, or violently angry.   She was suffering from manic depression and hypothyroidism, both untreated. 

I remember being deliberately happy as a child.  Perhaps I was trying to convince myself it would be okay if I pretended it was.  I was an extrovert and worked hard at being happy.   I had a strong personality and I was often angry, and it took over the sadness.   My older brother was an introvert, and just became more and more withdrawn.  

In all of this, my view of myself was becoming more and more distorted.    I was full of shame and believed many things about myself that were simply not true, but were being reflected back to me as truths, were spoken as though they were.    They were the lies I came to believe, but they weren’t the truth.  My identity was being formed by broken people.  As they say, hurt people hurt people.     

My granddaughters often ask their mother, as my own children have asked, 'Where was I before I was in your belly, Mummy?'.  

And I have replied to them, 'You were on Daddy God's drawing board'. 

Image courtesy of https://free.clipartof.com/details/2085-Free-Clipart-Of-Someone-At-A-Drawing-Board

And we were.   We all were on Daddy God's drawing board, before we were born into this broken space.

On Daddy God's drawing board, I was His workmanship, His beautiful daughter, His unique person, His delight, His design and His desire.   That was His blueprint.   That was who I was made to be.     

Where did she go?   Where did THAT person go?   Where did that person disappear to?

THAT person got lost in the environment of the sin, abuse, rejection and brokenness of not just her own childhood, but what was brought into her family from her parents’ separate childhoods and the generations before them.

The foundations of my parents’ identities were shaky and faulty.   The foundations of their marriage were shaky and faulty.   The foundations and framework of our family were shaky and faulty and damaging for all of us. 

So, where did she go?   The person on Daddy God's drawing board?    I want the identity I started with, even before I became theirs, the person I was meant to be.

I am His workmanship, His artwork, His design.  I want that identity, not the one they shaped. 

Where did she go?  How do I find her?   Who is she?  

‘Who are you, Kath?’   I’ve had two pastoral people ask me that recently, both while they were praying for me.   Independently of each other, those were the words given to them by the Lord.   It’s a really confronting question, straight from the Holy Spirit.     

And both times, I’ve replied, ‘I don’t know’.   I’ve mumbled something about being someone’s daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend, grandmother, helper, neighbour.......  

But before I was any of those things, even a daughter, who was I?    

Outside of all those roles, who am I?  

Do I have an identity and an intrinsic value outside of the roles I play? 

Apparently, I do. 

For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvellous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skilfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.

Ps 139:13-18

 

For now, I’m going to leave it there.   There’s so much more to say, so much more to ponder on.  There’s so much more for me to learn before I can even write about it.   

I need time to sit with this question, ‘Who are you, Kath?’   I need time to sit with the above truths and others beside, to let them soak in deep and displace the lies and the shame and the guilt.    I can’t just know it in my head; I’ve done that for years.   It’s simply not enough.    It has to penetrate well beyond there, or I'm going to continue to live out of that brokenness.    

I have to let His healing oil pour into those deep crevices, because that’s where the lies and shame are hiding.   And that’s the painful part.   When the oil soaks in, the pain comes to the surface.   That’s the bit I’ve always held back.  Well, no more.   As hard as it is, the truth has to reach into those deep, painful places.  

He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.  Ps 147:3

So, my heart is open before Him, as much as I am capable of doing that at any given point. 

I love these lyrics from Mack Brock.   Heart Wide Open.   Dangerous lyrics, but that’s the only way I know to move forward.  

My heart before You
I know You see me as I am
I'm met with kindness
That knows no end

You pull me closer
Oh, there is freedom all around
Here in Your presence
My walls come down
My walls come down

So I'm gonna worship
With my heart wide open
I don't wanna miss a thing
'Cause You take what was broken
And make it new
I'm gonna trust You
With my heart, with my heart wide open

There’s a Part 2 to this blog post, I just don't understand it yet.   Please come back for more.