A Do-Over Of Sorts

Posted on May 25, 2013 by linda.h

In last week’s post, All the World Wide Web’s A Stage, I came to the end of the story of my life so far. I’m sure that there are still adventures ahead.

I received a message from someone on LinkedIn this morning. She is another therapist. We are not “linked in,” and I do not know who she is. She chastised me (after reading which post?) for bragging about my drug abuse online because addiction affects many people. She started it out with “how could you?” I was a little bit taken aback, and I can only hope and pray that most people understand I would never brag about something that destroyed my family…I mean literally destroyed my family. It took the lives of my brother and my father in the form of suicide. It almost took my life as well. Brag? I have thought of it more as a warning to others.

So, with that little tidbit out of the way, I am going to begin posting my memoir over again from the beginning. I will re-read each post and attempt to tighten up the writing. I hope writing this blog for a year has strengthened it, so I will attempt to improve the posts I have written. I am also going to be posting some articles about emotional health, mindfulness, and how to use radical acceptance to get through crises. I hope to have some guest posts as well.

For those of you who are following this blog via email or RSS feed, if you would like to opt-out, now would be the time, for sure. I will miss you! You are very welcome to continue on with me.

I hope those of you who have been on this journey with me understand why I have written this story of my life. It is an example of how people get themselves into trouble and how, with perseverance, hope, and patience, they can still live the life of their dreams, no matter how old they are when they begin.

Finally, I am testing a new app called “My Book Table” so you will see a new link on the top navigation bar. I will be posting books I have read and love, and there will be links for you to buy straight from my site if you wish. At this beta testing stage, I am not an affiliate.

Thank you so much for stopping by. It would mean the world to me if you would leave a comment and tell me who you are, and your over-all impressions of this work. Thanks!

It’s Never Too Late Too Become What You Might Have Been.

All the World Wide Web’s A Stage

Posted on May 20, 2013 by linda.h

I was pumped to the max. An IV drew a heavy-duty dose of steroids from a plastic bag and into my veins so my brain wouldn’t swell too much. I felt my thoughts levitating while my body beneath lie there, unable to move at all. But my mind…whew whoooo! Look out world! I imagined myself on stages all over the world regaling folks with the miracle God had done.

After spending four days in ICU, I flew home with my head stapled and wrapped in gauze. I wore a pair of glasses nurses had repurposed with a piece of frosty plastic taped over one lens to help me see one of everything instead of two. I was in a wheelchair. God’s grace was with me, and I almost enjoyed the trip. After all, I was alive!

The next few months I slept almost upright while the swelling in my brain went down. Insomnia from the steroids gave me plenty of time to think and plan my next move. But I had no idea if I would ever recover, or if I did, how much. The roaring waterfall had not left my head. I could not walk. Everything seemed weird, like I had experimented with some sort of psychedelic. I just wanted to come down, but for all I knew, there would be no end to this trip. My doctor kept warning me I would be going into a depressive episode soon, but it never came. A strong sense of purpose kept hope alive.

Six months later, not a lot had changed. I had graduated from a walker but could not walk without hanging onto my husband for support. My vision was no better and the waterfall had turned into an alarm clock buzzer that sounded off in my head many times a night. When I mentioned it to my neurosurgeon he remarked, “People commit suicide over that!” (Thanks for that, by the way). So, I thought that as long as I was just laying there doing nothing, I might as well work on my masters degree.

I applied to Capella University, a mostly online school headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They had a three-year long CACREP accredited program (a must for state licensing) in Mental Health Counseling. Perfect. The program would require a couple of week-long residencies and both a practicum and an internship, but what the hey? I had nothing else to do.

For the first year I lay in bed with a laptop on a pillow and a pirate’s patch over my left eye. I held my textbooks about five inches from my good eye to read the tiny text. During the second year, the first week-long residency came up. I flew to Phoenix, AZ and tooled around in a power chair to get between the conference room, my hotel room and the dining room. By this time I could walk, but my balance was horrendous and my fatigue level was so bad that walking to my room would have used the next 24-hours of energy I had to spare.

I continued with my courses, and the following year I attended my second residency in Minneapolis. I ordered the power chair, but found when I got there that I didn’t need it as long as I really paced myself. My eyesight was a little better, and I was able to wear glasses with prism lenses to correct the double vision. The tinnitus was much better too. I was really starting to enjoy my life again.

Then I had to do a 10-hour a week practicum. I chose to work for Florence Crittenton Home for Pregnant and Parenting Teens. I loved my work with teen girls and their babies. I watched a birth for the first time. But that 10 hours exhausted me. Still, I persevered.

Later that year, things stopped seeming so off-kilter to my brain and I was even able to drive again. I finished up more courses and then needed a 30-hour a week internship for four quarters. I got a great internship in the college counseling center and had the opportunity to co-teach a college course in emotional intelligence. I worked with students who presented with various problems and diagnoses. I also sat under a private practice therapist.

Finally I graduated, having earned a solid 4.0…twenty-two courses in counseling under my belt and many hours of practicum and internship. My energy level grew slowly, and it seemed I had just enough energy for each challenge.

After graduation, I worked for two years for a community agency working with abused, neglected, and mentally ill teens and children. I earned my 3000 hours for licensing, and then went into private practice. In the meantime, I became certified in a very specific type of therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). I now run an adult and a teen DBT group and have a full practice of individual clients.

As I write all this, I know it probably sounds as if I’m bragging about what “I” was able to accomplish. But that is not at all what is in my heart. I know that without the help of the Lord in my life, I would not have had the perseverance, the patience, the sense of purpose, or the strength to do any of it. There were many times I wanted to quit. But, as I’ve told many people, I could have no more quit as I could have stopped the process of giving birth to any of my three children. I believe I received a “gift” of perseverance.

I still have many more ideas and things I want to do. But mainly, I wanted to share my story with you, dear readers. If anyone has been tossed around by the storms of life and believes it’s too late to make a difference in this world, believe me when I say, “It’s Never Too Late to Become What You Might Have Been.” Thank you all for sharing this journey with me.

“It’s never too late to become what you might have been.”

~ Attributed, possibly erroneously, to George Eliot

God bless,

Linda Lochridge Hoenigsberg, MS, NCC, LCPC, LMFT, DBTC (I know, ridiculous, right?)

PS: My plan is to start this blog over again at the beginning. This blog has been viewed over 8000 times by folks in over 40 countries. My list is tiny but if my story changes one life or gives one person hope to keep going, the hours I have written this have been worth it to me. Please leave a comment below and let me know if you have any questions or just to give me a quick shout out…and take advantage of the free e-book on the right. You can always cancel your subscription afterwards. ;o)

When Peace Makes No Sense

Posted on May 14, 2013 by linda.h

NOTE: This post is a continuation of an incident I relate in last week’s post, “An Incidental Finding.”

I had received the diagnosis and the prognosis. Two neurosurgeons told me that the brain tumor was in the worst place a person can get one, and I was given approximately one year to live. I still remember the ride home from Missoula, Montana after getting this news. For an hour and forty-five minutes I stared out the passenger side window. Look at all this beauty! I told myself. I tried to appreciate the view of the Rocky Mountains and the wide-open sky more than I usually did. I had heard stories of people for whom life became more meaningful after receiving a death sentence. I could only hope I would feel that way sometime soon. Right now I just wasn’t buying it.

I went home and re-read “Through the Dark Night,” a piece that had been written by my friend, Lucy Brown. Even though she sent it to me to encourage me about my shoulder surgery, the words it contained were so much more apropos to the diagnosis I was facing now. It gave me hope, and hope is definitely what I needed.

I was getting a lot of advice from well-meaning friends and family. They were all trying to help but I felt confused, so I blocked out all the noise and isolated myself. And I prayed…hard. I kept remembering those words…”its removal was paramount to this time and place,” so I elected to find someone who would do brain surgery, even after two neurosurgeons had told me it was “inoperable.”

In my search I found an online forum and began to piece together the “who’s who” in the land of brain surgeons. Dr. Shahinian from Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles seemed top notch. He had appeared on Ellen and The Today Show after saving the life of a young boy no other brain surgeon would touch, so I called his office.

After sending Dr. Shahinian my MRI and talking to him on the phone, I became convinced that if anyone could save my life, it was he. I scheduled surgery for October 6, 2006.

I would have had to have been crazy not to feel any fear, but there was also this sense of peace that didn’t make any sense considering. And it would come at odd moments throughout the days leading up to brain surgery. I was convinced I was going to make it through an extremely risky operation. In fact, I would say I had no doubts at all about that. I absolutely knew I would live.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Phillippians 4:7).

There was something that was bothering me though. In “Through the Dark Night,” the following words kept haunting me…

Seek Me above all. Feel after Me when your sight and hearing are gone. Fumble toward Me if you must, but move TOWARD ME…not away…when your peace is gone, when the joy is gone, when all that seems left is your breathing.*

I couldn’t imagine what that meant. Why would God save my life if I would be without sight, hearing, and only have my breathing left? At the very least, why would he tell me about it ahead of time? But at this point, the tumor at reached critical mass and was growing at an alarming rate. I had no other option.

My husband and I flew into Los Angeles a couple of days before surgery. Our five grown children flew in to be with us, and some of the grandchildren were there as well. A very close friend flew into Salt Lake City to see me for twenty minutes during a layover on the way. None of this was lost on me. I knew everyone was worried whether I would make it through the surgery and whether they would ever have a chance to see me again.

The morning of surgery I felt nervous but peaceful at the same time. We all kissed and hugged one more time and I was sedated before being rolled into the operating room. Dr. Shahinian seemed confident. But twenty minutes into brain surgery, he called my husband on his cell phone and asked to meet him in a conference room next to the operating room downstairs.

Tom walked towards the elevator without telling family members where he was going. My daughter happened to be walking towards him on her way back from the cafeteria. She took one look at his face and followed him onto the elevator. They rode down together in silence.

“Don’t worry…she’s fine,” Dr. Shahinian began. He continued to explain that the operation was more complicated that he realized. The optic, auditory, and facial nerves were all wrapped around the tumor and it was very close to the brain stem. He could remove half of it now but I would be back in five years for another surgery. The other option was continuing a very risky surgery to try to get as much of it out as possible. The risks included death, blindness, deafness, facial paralysis…loss of the ability to walk or swallow.

Tom looked into my daughter’s eyes and they both nodded. He couldn’t imagine putting me through this again in five years. “Try to get it all now,” he said.

Six hours later, when I awoke from brain surgery, I could hear my breath twice for each one breath I drew. And it was loud, like the roaring of a waterfall. The first time I heard it, I was actually taking a breath. A couple of seconds later, I could hear it again…in between breaths. I thought, That’s odd.

My optic, auditory, and facial nerves had been damaged in surgery and everything looked and seemed weird. For one thing, I saw two of everything, and each image seemed four feet apart and a little up to the left. The pupil of my left eye had moved all the way over towards my nose. My perception made everything seem strange, and it would take several years before the feeling of everything being “off-kilter” would pass. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear anything out of my left ear. And it seemed all I had was my breathing. So I did what I read in “Through the Dark Night.” I moved TOWARDS Him, and not away.*

Stay tuned for what I did next!

An Incidental Finding?

Posted on May 5, 2013 by linda.h

That last semester at college seemed the longest one of all. Senioritis hit me just as hard as it hit all the eighteen to twenty-somethings aching to be done and on their way to the next big adventure. And it seemed I had saved some of my hardest courses for last.

A professor who had received a head injury from a car accident was teaching the most difficult class I had taken so far. One day, after spending twenty minutes teaching us how to solve a formula, he turned to the class and said, “Oh, that won’t work. Well, see you Thursday.” I crumpled up twenty minutes of frantic note-taking and tossed them in the trashcan on the way out. I had pushed myself to get a 4.0, just to see if I could do it, and in that class I just couldn’t quite reach that golden ticket. I was also pushing myself to complete an honor’s thesis. I was driven, pursued by the demon of self-imposed perfectionism. Somehow, I needed to make up for getting kicked out of high school when I was fifteen-years-old.

But there was something else frustrating me. Pain was certainly no stranger. After breaking my neck six years prior, carrying books and sitting in tiny desks was not the smartest thing I could be doing for myself. But this semester had been different. My pain level ramped up to an eight on a scale of zero to ten. Nothing I did seem to help.

Finally, on May 6, 2006, I graduated Maxima cum Laude with a 3.96 GPA, and I felt like I had climbed Mt. Everest. I applied to the Masters of Social Work program at the University of Montana, and I got accepted…one of twenty-five out of many applicants. I was on my way to fulfilling my dream of becoming a psychotherapist. But the pain was really bugging me.

One day, early that summer while visiting my daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, my littlest grandson came running towards me while I sat on the couch. I knew if I lifted him straight up, I could get seriously hurt, so I scooped him up and swung him sideways onto the couch. I cried out as pain shot through my left shoulder, but I quickly covered it up and laughed at my grandson. My husband glanced over with a look of concern, but I shook my head and smiled, not wanting to tip him off to the pain I felt.

Once home from the visit, my summer was filled with appointments to try to help me with the pain. I began physical therapy, but the treatments seemed worse than the injury itself. Finally I had an MRI. Diagnosis: Torn rotator cuff. Need surgery to repair. Ugh.

One day, as the surgery date approached, a friend back east sent me something she had written years prior. It was written as if from the mouth of God Himself. Titled “Through the Dark Night,” * it begins with a prayer:

“It’s OK, Jesus. Restore my soul. Oh, Lord, I submit to Your cutting away of the ‘something’ deep within me that is hurting me. I don’t even know what it is … but You do. I will ‘go to sleep’ within Your arms, knowing I am safe with you…but there are things that ‘go bump’ in the night!”

“Shhh…I am here. All is well. Don’t be afraid. Let loose your understanding and ‘go under’ in the anesthesia of my Spirit. I am at work, very deeply within you. I ferret out the offending matter swiftly and accurately. I am a skilled surgeon and you can trust My expertise. With precision I dislodge the usurper of your strength and allow the rest of you to go free. It was not a grievous thing in size, but its placement pressed upon vital organs to thwart My purposes in you. Its removal was paramount to this time and place.”

I know, crazy stuff, huh? I mean, it was only shoulder surgery!

The night before the surgery I was thinking about the writing from my friend, and it made me think of the “real” anesthesiologist, and how he could inadvertently hurt my neck. The next morning, I remembered to tell him to be careful with me while I was under. He showed me the flexible scope he would be using and promised not to move my head around too much.

“Linda…Linda!”

I opened my eyes and tried to force the double image of the anesthesiologist back into a single frame.

“I need to tell you something, Linda. I saw something in your throat. I’ve never seen anything like that in twenty-five years…a mass. You need to get a CT scan done right away!” He walked out, leaving me shocked and anxious, half-awake and helpless on the gurney. I was alone in the recovery room. I weakly called for a nurse and asked her if I could have something to calm me down.

“Because of the news?” she said. So I wasn’t dreaming. There is a mass in my throat?

Within two days my primary care physician got me in for a scan. Soon I received a call to come into his office. Usually he would have called with the results.

“Well, we found absolutely nothing at all in your throat! I have no idea what your anesthesiologist thought he saw. There is just nothing there at all.” Relief flooded through me and I smiled. “But at the very top of the CT scan we can see something else. You have a brain tumor at the base of your brain. This is the worst place you could possibly have one. I am sending you out of town to a neurosurgeon right away.”

Just in case there was a saber-tooth tiger nearby, adrenaline rushed into my body, and blood filled the muscles in my legs to help me flee the scene, but I sat there and smiled. “Oh, good, so it’s not my throat!”

The following week found me sitting across from the relatively young, blond, and extremely blunt neurosurgeon as she picked up a plastic model of a skull and explained why an operation was impossible.

“Where would we go in…through the eyes? The nose? It’s impossible.”

“I was just about ready to start grad school,” I said.

She was quick and to the point. “Well you should not put off anything you want to do.”

We made eye contact and I looked away. I thanked her, got up, and walked out. I walked through the waiting room, out the door and down a long hallway. I passed other waiting rooms and wondered if other people were being told they were going to die. I almost made it to the truck before the sobs I had held in so tightly in the elevator gave way and echoed through the vast cavernous space of the underground parking garage.

Then I remembered my friend’s words. And I chose to believe them. And I chose not to believe the neurosurgeons, and in the following days and weeks, months, and even years, I held onto those words with everything I had.

Fulfilling Dreams

Posted on April 27, 2013 by linda.h

It was May of 2001. A full year had gone by since I had fallen down the stairs, broken my neck, and gotten addicted to pain medication. I had spent so much time at home in bed that I felt isolated from friends and from participating in any kind of life. One night I tossed and turned due to pain and depressive thoughts. I finally fell into a fitful sleep…and dreamt.

There were the three of us, seated alone in the stands overlooking a huge Olympic-like running track. My mother was seated next to me on my left, and a close friend of mine on my right. Below us, walking along the dirt lanes of the track as if in a parade of some sort, were thousands of people, all dressed in Biblical costumes. I knew that they were portraying the history of man, from the beginning to the end of time. The “end of time” was going to be portrayed way off to my right, farther than our eyes could see. I felt comforted by my mom’s presence. In the back of my mind, I remembered that she had died of cancer at 56-years-old in 1986.

“Were you in the processional last year?” my friend asked.

“No, last year I broke my neck,” I answered.

“I was in it last year,” she responded. I already knew this, because when I picked up the flat crystal pendant attached to the gold chain around my neck, the circle of glass, the size of a fifty-cent piece, afforded me a glimpse into last year’s parade. I picked it up and watched it again, and there she was, walking the track, just as she had said.

I glanced over to her to say something and noticed she had a bouquet of “Lily of the Valley” in her hands.

“Can I smell your bouquet?” I asked.

“Sure.” She handed me the bouquet and I buried my nose in the tiny fragrant white blossoms, inhaling deeply.

“Ah, that smells intoxicating,” I said as I handed the flowers back to her.

My eyes flew open and I realized I was flat on my back and staring at the ceiling. What a dream! It seemed significant, but I had no idea what it could mean or if I had just eaten too much pizza the night before.

A few days later, thoughts about the dream returned as I was worked around the house.

Last year you could not participate (in life) because you broke your neck. This year you cannot participate (in life) because you are still recovering. But in a year, things are going to change.

I thought about the comforting presence of my mother in the dream and the bouquet of flowers. I remembered the lyrics of a hymn by William Charles Fry written for the Salvation Army long ago, “He is the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star.” I thought about how I could inhale the fragrance of His presence and it was sustaining me in this time of healing. I wondered if I was right in thinking that the dream meant something was going to change in a year.

A year is a long time to wait for something to change, and as weeks crept into months, I really stopped expecting anything to change much at all. Then came another May, with summertime just around the corner. Lily of the Valley grows rampant next to my backyard fence, so as usual, I picked one or two tiny white flowers and crushed them between my thumb and forefinger, bringing them to my nose before I dropped the petals back into the flowerbed.

Later that day, a friend of mine, a therapist, stopped by for a visit. She had a surprising agenda.

“Linda, I want to ask you something. I believe that you have a real gift for counseling others and if you would go to college and get your degree, I would love to take you into my practice.”

“That would take me ten years!” I answered.

“No it wouldn’t, and even if it did, so what?” was her retort.

As if on cue, the dream of the procession of the history of man seemed to have been pulled out of a file cabinet in my brain and placed into a Blu Ray player. My heart skipped a beat.

Later on, I relayed my friend’s suggestion to my husband.

“You should go for it,” he said.

Since I had been kicked out of high school years ago, my first wobbly steps were to enroll in an adult education self-paced class to relearn high school math. Then I took a course on “how to study.” I thought I was as ready as I would ever be.

Four years later, at almost 55-years-old, I graduated Maxima cum Laude with a B.A. in Psychology from one of the top ten best four-year colleges in the western United States (according to US News and World Report). I proudly “walked” on graduation day and threw my mortarboard in the air with the rest of the young graduates. I had had my “do-over,” and now I was on my way to grad school. I had been one of twenty-five who had been accepted into a Masters of Social Work program at the University of Montana.

But look at that picture above again…because unbeknownst to me when I was smiling for the camera, something insidious was lying in wait, lurking in the deep recesses of my brain. Soon God was going to have change the plans of two neurosurgeons who told me I had one year to live if I was ever going to fulfill my dream.

“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. II Corinthians 2:14″

Just One Word

Posted on April 19, 2013 by linda.h

On May 5, 2000, I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my neck. I wrote about that in my last post. Here is the rest of the story.

How many times do I have to say it?

I woke with a start. My body was screaming with pain from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I moaned, and reached for the two Oxycontin tablets I had laid on my nightstand the night before so I wouldn’t have to waste time opening the bottle and digging them out. Shaking, I gulped them down with a glass of water and gingerly lay back down, holding myself as I rocked and waited for the pain to subside.

This had been my morning routine for months. I was seeing my doctor every few days and he was worried. He was sure that my body had produced pain pathways throughout my body in response to the chronic pain. But I noticed something strange and began to doubt that this was true.

One day, about four hours after taking the narcotic pain pills, I ventured out to a favorite store. It was rare I felt well enough to go out. As I walked about, trying to enjoy myself, nausea and apprehension hit me in quick succession. I felt helpless and wanted to burst into tears. I was tempted to sit down on the floor and bawl like a baby, but quickly left the store and drove home. I took another pill and soon felt much better. Was I addicted?

I put off telling the doctor my fears for a few months. I was pretty sure that going through withdrawal from an opiate was not going to be fun. Not going to be fun? I will say with all honesty that someone could offer me $1,000,000 to purposely go through this torture again. I would turn that million dollars down in a heartbeat. I don’t think I would survive opiate withdrawal again, and I wouldn’t want to test it out.

I lay on my living room floor day after day, rocking back and forth. The muscles in my legs jerked every few seconds. The ice water running through my veins made me want to take a hot bath several times a day. I felt panicky and desperate. One day, lying in the bathtub attempting to warm up I cried out to God to take my life.

“Please Lord, just kill me off somehow, but don’t do it until after the holidays so my children will not have sad Christmases.” Needless to say, He didn’t take me up on my offer.

Within about six weeks I was doing better except for one thing. Now I was in excruciating pain. I couldn’t lift my head up without feeling like my back was broken. My arms ached and went numb. I was off opiates but I still hoped God would take me out somehow. I wanted a reprieve from this life-sentence of unrelenting pain.

I had tried many things early on after I broke my neck. I had gone to a chiropractor, and after he took my neck in his hands and quickly twisted my head back and forth, he put me into even more pain. I never went back. I had tried acupuncture, steroid injections, massage therapy, ice, heat…nothing had helped.

One day as I was wandering around the house, the word “chiropractor” popped into my mind. “I’ll never do that again,” I thought. The next day, the word popped into my mind again. It almost seemed like a whisper. I thought of my neck getting cracked and shoved the thought aside.

Over the next two weeks, the word, “chiropractor” flowed in and out of my mind at odd times during the day, sometimes more than once. I continued to ignore these thoughts, as it was the last thing I thought I would do. I hadn’t even been to my massage therapist in months as the massages hadn’t really helped me long term either.

One day, sitting at the dark antique secretary in my living room, I poured my desperation out to God. I mean I literally sobbed and begged Him to help me. I told him I needed Him to tell me what to do about the pain because I no longer wanted to live. I didn’t expect an answer, but the tears had been a long time coming.

Then, I got up and walked over to my living room window and looked out.

“Chiropractor!” This one word returned to my thoughts again, seemingly louder than ever.

“I wonder if the Lord is trying to tell me to go to a chiropractor?!” I thought. It didn’t make sense to me. I had gone to one, and he had put me in worse pain. I didn’t trust chiropractors. Huh.

Two hours later my phone rang.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hi! This is Betsey. Remember me? I was your massage therapist? Well, you have been on my mind so much lately, and I wanted to tell you that I think you should go to a chiropractor I know.” Okay Lord, you’ve got my undivided attention now.

She gave me his name and I thanked her profusely. I called his office as soon as I hung up the phone. I was able to get in to see him the following day. I was scared to go but even more scared not to.

My fear was groundless. Bryan was a wonderful chiropractor. He was gentle and explained what he was doing and why. He understood my fears and helped me through them. Within four visits, I was out of 85% of the pain!

My level of joy went up 1000%. I was doing cartwheels in my front yard. I was stopping strangers on the street and telling them what happened to me. I felt my heart beat faster for weeks just from the sheer relief of it all. Life became precious to me again and my heart filled with gratitude for a God who would not give up.

I cannot say that I was miraculously totally healed of all pain. I have to be careful about what I do. But I have never experienced anywhere near the level of pain I had ever again. Since then, when I begin to hurt, I ask, “what should I do now, Lord?” And I try to listen to that still, small voice. Because sometimes the answer is exactly what I need to hear.

Two Steps to Getting Knocked Off Your Feet

Posted on April 15, 2013 by linda.h

Most of the time, the thing that changes your life forever is not even something you spent any time worrying about. One small step can lead to a disaster.

Thirteen years ago, on a particularly beautiful spring day in early May, I attended a community-wide tea for ladies. I took along a teenage “gangbanger,” a young mother I was mentoring for an agency in our small town in the middle of the Rocky Mountains of Montana. On the way home we stopped at a greenhouse and bought two flats of Marigolds. We decided we would plant them in my backyard after church the next morning. I told my teen charge I would pick her up in the morning and headed home.

I pulled into my driveway and opened my back gate, anxious to set my new yellow and orange starts onto the patio table on my back porch. In Montana, it’s still rather risky to plop things in the ground in early May, but we were going to try it anyway. After opening the back door leading into my kitchen, I let out my bearded collie Annie and headed upstairs to change my clothes.

Those ugly stairs had been the “bane of my existence” since we had moved in two years earlier. We had methodically gone through the 135-year-old Victorian cottage with paint, wallpaper, and carpet, starting with rooms visitors would see. The stairs had waited their turn. That very weekend, my husband took decade old carpet samples off of each stair tread, and yanked out commercial staples from each one. He also took the banister off the wall. But his work had been interrupted when he got an emergency call from his mom in California requesting he drive out there after she had fallen and broke her hip.

Upstairs in our bedroom, I changed into a velvet velour sweat suit and socks. I planned on cuddling up on the couch back downstairs with popcorn and a movie. I heard Annie scratching at the kitchen door, so began to hurry.

I took two steps down from the top of the slick wood of the staircase and instantly began to fall down the stairs. I hit feet first about two stair treads down and slipped right off again. I remember thinking, “I’m falling down the stairs!” I kept expecting to start tumbling, like a movie stunt person, but that’s not how it happened. Every stair or so, I landed again on my stocking feet and then slipped again as I headed down. I got about four treads from the bottom, when momentum pitched me forward. I hit my head hard on the door frame opposite the stairs and crumpled to the floor.

Without even a thought I immediately stood to my feet. My first thought was that I had broken my right arm. It dangled uselessly, and the entire right side of my body felt like I had been shocked by a jolt of electricity. Annie, who must have heard the fall or sensed something was wrong, was barking frantically at the back door. I stumbled over and let her in, and then looked around for the phone. I thought I was going to pass out.

Within seconds, my portable phone began to ring, so I followed the sound and found it on the couch. My sister from California was on the line.

“I just fell down the stairs!” I said.

She tried to talk me into calling an ambulance, but I thought that was overkill, so I stumbled next door to a neighbor’s home with my sister still on the other line. I remember being surprised that I could still talk to her even from inside my neighbor’s living room.

My neighbor eventually bundled me into the car and drove me to our nearest emergency room. First an x-ray was taken. Then a CT scan.

“I hate to tell you this, but you broke your neck,” the young ER doctor told me.

The next day I was given a prescription for Oxycontin and sent home to recuperate, only I never did really recover. I became horribly addicted to Oxycontin and eventually had to survive opiate withdrawals. I prayed for the Lord to kill me. I was filled from head to toe with chronic pain. It seemed all my dreams for my future broke right along with my neck. I started thinking of a way out. I didn’t want to kill myself, but I didn’t want to live and hoped it would be taken out of my hands somehow.

Then I began to hear a voice in my mind, sometimes once or twice a day. It was just one word, and at first I tried to ignore it. But it just kept coming. And when I finally listened, everything began to change.

Stay tuned!

Posers

Posted on April 2, 2013 by linda.h

Have you ever tried to fit in by changing something about yourself? I have been reflecting on my perpetual state of loneliness lately. Most of the time I do not recognize it. When I am with people, no matter whom or no matter where, I do not experience it. I’m a “people person.” Being with people can make me forget about chronic pain, heartache, or fear. But when I’m alone, and experiencing loneliness in all its glory, I realize that I have never felt like I fit in.

Back in 1975, I began going to a little white church in a suburb of Los Angeles. I came in the front doors one sunny Sunday morning in October, but my heart was not filled with sunshine. I had lost my much-loved brother to suicide two months before. I was mentally ill myself. I had been living a hippie lifestyle and thought people who played by the rules of “the establishment” were just plain ignorant. But I was grabbing onto a lifeline.

Within a very short period of time, I got myself a Dorothy Hamill haircut (Dorothy was an ice skater whose short shiny locks literally skated across her face with each toss of her head). I bought dresses and high heels. I began wearing makeup and I even shaved under my arms. I saw a picture of myself from back then the other day and I looked older than I do now! I had a huge mother of pearl cross on the chest of my blue turtleneck sweater and a stern look on my face. But, although I tried to fit in with the ladies, I was asked to not return to a prayer group because I did not have enough faith to “name it and claim it.” They needed real believers!

A few years later we moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico, and I began attending a somewhat large church there, full of ladies I hoped would befriend me. I had long, curly hair and wore bell-bottomed jeans. Again, in desperation to fit in, I cut my hair and bleached it. I wore bandanas around my forehead like Olivia Newton John. “Let’s Get Physical” played on my stereo at home almost daily. I put on darker lipstick…did my nails. And soon I was accepted. This time I noticed it though, and it made me angry, so I grew my hair back out and took my own self out of their prayer group. I took my toys and went home.

We went to Fox Island, Washington for a couple of years and began attending a large church there. Same thing. I attended a women’s retreat (again, in desperation) and sat there alone and anxious. A woman said to me, “with you, what you see is what you get.” She was referring to my personality, and I hoped it was true, but judging by how hard I worked to fit in, I knew I was not being authentic. I couldn’t figure out how to navigate the system.

I’ve lived in Helena, Montana for over 15 years now. I have felt that same sort of “left out” feeling that I had in 1975. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never felt part of a church fellowship. There have been two or three times I’ve felt at home. But it’s been rare…and it is not happening for me here. I have some wonderful women friends that do not go to my church though. They pray for me and we are committed to our relationship. We remember each other’s birthdays and spend many holidays together. It’s enough, because it is true community in heart.

One day I was walking through a park. There was a group of older teenagers. One of the boys had on a pink chiffon prom dress and painted fingernails.

“Hi there,” I said. “What are you guys doing, putting on a play or something?”

“No,” the young man answered. “We’re just fooling around.”

“Oh, well you look pretty!” I answered, laughing. There was a part of me that wanted to stay and hang out with them. “No,” I told myself. You need to get home and feed the fish.”

I walked to my car and thought, “Most people wouldn’t have said that, Linda. Most people would think he was “weird,” and should be shunned or made to straighten up his act.”

One day during an election cycle I walked into my polling precinct and told them I wanted to quit the Republican party. “We don’t have formal parties in Montana,” I was told.

“Oh,” I said, turning away. I felt stupid…and disappointed…different from almost every Christian I knew, and getting a little worried about myself.I’ve always believed that being a hippie ruined me from being a Christian. I can’t seem to conform in my mind.

I just finished Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz. I thought, that’s me! I’m Donald Miller in drag! It’s not that anyone is shutting me out. It’s that I have a hard time relating. I sort of walk to the beat of a different drummer. There’s a part of me, even at 61-years-old, that would dye my hair purple, get a nose stud, and more tattoos, if I was really trying to express the weirdness of how I think. But there’s another part of me that just wants to fit in…attract rather than repel. I’m glad God knows me well and loves me the way I am. What I want to do, more than get more friends is to be a better friend, no matter how different people are from me or how different I am from them. That’s the quickest cure for loneliness I know. That and knowing there’s a Donald Miller walking around on the planet.

My Herb Farm on Fox Island

Posted on March 30, 2013 by linda.h

Tom and I had been married for two years already. We had spent those first two years in the wild mountains of Montana, exploring ghost towns and abandoned gold mines, pressing wildflowers and learning to fly fish. It was heaven on the weekends, but Tom’s new job was not going as well. He had been hired to come in and turn a small company around. None of his ideas went over well with the sales team and one morning he called, his voice hushed, his breathing quickened.

“Guess what I found on my desk this morning?” he asked. “A bumper sticker that says, “We don’t care how they do it in California.” That explained a lot about the opposition to his ideas.

After a year of struggling to win hearts and minds, and watching that little company go on “credit hold” more times than anyone should be comfortable with, he made the hard decision to swallow his pride and go back to the company he had left in California…only this time, he would be helping out the Seattle office.

I was excited about the move, especially after I took one look at our new town, Gig Harbor, Washington, a picturesque New England whaling town look-alike with a view of the sound, a harbor, and a view of Mount Rainier that was to die for.

Within a year we were ensconced in a reproduction Victorian farmhouse on five wooded acres on Fox Island, about 50 miles from Seattle. It had a “barn” like building that had been designed to hold a small plane, a chicken coop, and a goat the owner attempted to persuade us to keep as a lawnmower. We had never been farmers, and did not keep the goat, but I fell in love with the property. I immediately put in a formal herb garden and set up shop in the barn. I painted it, hung herbs from the rafters to dry, and set it up as a school for women who wanted to learn how to make wreaths and topiaries from dried flowers and herbs. I called it “Little Fox Farm ~ Herbs and Flowers.” I took classes in market gardening and watercolor painting. I jumped on the ferry and went up to Seattle to wholesalers, buying things for my business. Life was good and I was living on my own little piece of heaven.

Unfortunately for Tom, his drive of two hours up and back in the rain from Seattle to Fox Island (traffic and weather), was not his little piece of heaven at all. That was back in Montana and he was not a happy camper. One year later, when the company arbitrarily decided they wanted us to move to Bend, Oregon, we moved back to Montana to start our own business instead. Never again would Tom be under someone’s thumb. But life back in Montana would take a series of turns that would both horrify us and fill us with joy. Stay tuned!

That Big Expanse of Sky Called Montana

Posted on March 17, 2013 by linda.h

Adventure had never been a part of my life. While some of my childhood friends had come home from trips to the World’s Fair or from far away mystery places like “back east” to see their grandparents, my only claim to fame was that we had stayed at the Motel Fresno (located in farming country in Fresno, California) six years in a row. It was a halfway point between Los Angeles, where we lived, and Oakland, where my grandmother resided, so my parents and my grandmother met there each summer. And it had a great bar. My parents could get pleasantly drunk while hanging out at the pool, watching us kids get blistery sunburns the first day out.

So, when Tom asked me to marry him and move to Montana, you can bet I was ready for an adventure. Tom described Montana to me the weeks before he left to start a new job there.

“It’s a land full of mountains, rivers, streams, and waterfalls. And there’s animals, almost everywhere you look. Bears and deer, antelope and elk, moose and mountain goats, everywhere! And the sky, well you can breathe in that huge expanse of sky all day long.” So I packed up my meager belongings and flew out to Montana that June. And he was right about Montana. I’ve seen all those animals and more, sometimes all in one day. I’ve fly-fished those rivers and streams, watched eagles dive for fish on a sunny summer day, while wearing waders in the middle of a premier trout stream, and I’ve viewed some spectacular waterfalls.

Tom had bought a house for us on a street that sounded intriguing to me…Upper Miller Creek Road. He told me to always call it “Upper Miller Crick” if anyone wanted to know where I lived. Me, being me, refused, and I’ve said “creek” when I mean “creek,” for the last nineteen years, but I digress.

Tom and I were both a little skittish about getting married. We had only dated for eight months, and I knew less about Tom than he knew about me. I only knew that I was going to commit the rest of my life to him unless one of four things happened, and he knew what those four things were. On his part, most of what he knew about me was the stuff I told him early on when I was trying to scare him away.

Tom and I were staying in a campground for a few days until the house closed and the inhabitants moved out, which was supposed to be on Wednesday of that week. Since Tom had to travel about four hours north for his new job, it was up to me to take some of our things over to the new house and meet Tom there in a couple of days. I got up early, grabbed a cup of coffee to tide me over, and headed over to my new home. When I arrived, I saw that boxes and furniture filled the two-car garage from floor to rafters, and people were running in and out of the house carrying lamps, boxes, and more pieces of furniture to a rental truck.

Disappointed, I drove past. It was legally our house as of that day and it didn’t look like they were in any hurry to vacate. I also noticed that the gorgeous ¾ acre bright green lawn was now yellow and parched. Apparently once it was sold they decided they wouldn’t bother spending any more money on water. My stomach dropped, thinking about Tom and what he would say about this. I had never seen him angry, but I figured there had to be a temper hidden down in there somewhere. All men get angry easily, right?

I didn’t have a cell phone back then, and I knew Tom would be calling me on the phone we had already hooked up in the new house. I was in a new town, two states away from my home, family, and friends. I did not know one soul there, and I felt frightened, alone, and intimidated. I could not go to that house until those people were gone.

So, several times during that long day I drove back up Upper Miller Creek Road to peek at my new home. Each time, people were still there, carrying boxes and furniture to the rental truck. I explored the town, and finally, I decided to kill some time by taking myself to the movies.

Once the movie let out, I climbed back up Upper Miller Creek Road one more time, unsure of what I would do if they were still there. It was six o’clock at night now, getting dark, and I was sure Tom had been trying to call me all day.

As I rounded the last curve and saw the empty driveway, I let out let out a sigh of relief. I drove up my new driveway and ran up to the house, used my new key to turn the lock, and opened the door. I did a quick glance around but then headed straight to our new phone. I saw the light was blinking on the phone telling me there were six messages. As I listened to each one, I heard Tom’s voice sounding more and more worried. The sixth message sounded frantic. “If I don’t hear from you in fifteen minutes or so I’m going to drive back to Missoula,” he said.

I dialed the phone with shaking fingers. I knew how angry he would be. Who wouldn’t be angry? I probably did something stupid. I deserved his wrath. I should have marched into “my” house and told those people to hurry up and leave! I should have demanded to use my phone and let Tom know what was going on. Of course he’ll be mad…and he should be. Leave it up to me to cause a problem.

“Hello Tom? What happened was…” I reiterated the story, hoping he wasn’t regretting trusting me with something that should have been so easy.

“Oh, I’m so sorry that happened,” he said. “You must have felt so worried that you couldn’t call me and tell me what was going on. How about if I come pick you up and you can stay up here with me. We’ll drive down to the new house together in a couple of days.”

It’s been almost nineteen years since that first day in my new home in Montana. Over and over again, Tom has proven himself to be that kind, gentle man who was willing to drive four hours to come get me just so I’d be more comfortable. He has taught me more about God’s unconditional love than anyone I have ever known. And he’s never ever done one of the four things. Ah, I can finally breathe, and that big expanse of sky is a great place to catch your breath.