That One Week

It’s been an exhausting week at our house. One of our younger daughters has been really struggling, and her struggles rose to a new level this week. 

She’s 11.  She’s been part of our family for 6 years.  In her early years she was exposed to significant trauma.  Damaging trauma.  And that trauma continues to torment her.

When she first came to our home she would injure herself.  She was frequently bruised and scraped.  One morning she came downstairs with long bloody scratches down her throat and neck and I had asked what had happened.  

“Oh, I just like to do this,” she said simply.   She was 6.

When she was 8 she threatened to kill herself one night.  She told her older sisters that she was going to die the next day.  That she was going to lie down behind a parked car where no one could see her and she would get run over.  The next morning she was found in the parking lot of her school, lying down behind a car that was idling.   

The nightmares have been an on-going, relentless, part of her life. We often find her in the morning sleeping with one of the other kids in their bunks.  Sometimes we’ll ask her if she had a nightmare.  Most of the time we don’t ask.  We know.  Our whole family knows.

Her first 3 years with us she would frequently scream out in her sleep in the middle of the night, “That’s not paint!  That’s not paint!”  Her screams would awaken the household.  And we would all know.  Another nightmare.  Forcing her to relive the trauma of a brutal death.  

Red paint.  Bloody noses. Split lips.  Lost teeth.  Stains on dinner plates from cooked beets.  All of these trigger other images in her mind.  Images of violence, and death, of murder.  That’s not paint.

And through it all she has grown.  Like a little flower growing up in the cracks of the sidewalk.  She developed a delightful sense of humor. She became a leader.  She discovered a love of dance, and the gift of singing.  Always athletic, she became skilled at soccer, basketball, and softball.  She loves to run, and to swim.  She always has a plan, which usually involves breaking a rule, or two.  She is rambunctious, and funny.  Full of laughter.  Full of life.

Last fall, at the age of 10, the nightmares returned.  Relentlessly.  And she started becoming agitated at bedtime.  We didn’t put it together initially.  Actually, it took her telling us why she was becoming agitated and aggressive at bedtime before we realized what was happening.  

“Because I’m scared to go to sleep and have the bad dreams again,” she blurted one night.

Last month, after one particularly enraged night, she ended up in a children’s psychiatric hospital.  She was scared.  We were heartbroken.  She felt she’d failed.  We felt we had failed her.  

This past Tuesday she completed the program and came home.  There was much celebrating in our house that night.  She got to choose what we had for dinner.  And she chose the dinner we all knew she would choose. She and the other kids played cards together at the table, and Geoff and I commented on how nice it was to hear all the giggles again.  Before bed she snuggled in next to me on the couch to watch part of a movie. I put my arm around her and kissed the top of her head.

“I love you, Mom,” she whispered.  “I missed you.”

I told her I love her, too.  And that I had missed her, too.  

An hour later she tried to kill herself.  And we knew that she needed to go back to the psychiatric hospital.  She was actually the one to say that she needed to go back.

We reassured her that this is not a punishment.  That this is not because she is “bad.”  And that she doesn’t have to earn the right to come home. 

She listened and said that she knows all that.  Then she promised to “work on stuff” so that “I can be okay.”  We hugged her again and again and told her that we know that she will.  And that we want her to be okay.  To be happy. And wonderful.  To thrive.  To have a really, really, really long, happy life.  We reminded her how very much we all love her.  And she told us that she loves all of us, too.  

And we sent her off.  To battle. To fight against things which never should have been a part of her life in the first place.  Experiences which horrified.  Which froze her body in fear and shock.  Memories which are now imbedded in her brain and which re-awaken at night-time, continuing to torment.  To the point that she fears sleep.  ‘

The cruelty of it isn’t lost on any of us.  That somehow it wasn’t enough that she survived horror at the age of 5. Now at 11 she has to actually go back to that space in time and reprocess the trauma so that she can move forward from it.  

I’ve had a hard time focusing this week.  I lose my train of thought.  I walk into a room, forgetting why I came in here.  I stop talking mid-sentence, suddenly blank on what I’d been saying.  

Our 14-year-old daughter tells us that she thinks there’s something really wrong with her.  “My chest aches.  I can’t catch my breath.  I can’t sleep.  I can’t stop crying.”

We explain that this is grief. And together we sit and look at the stars and talk about how things are, and how we hope they will be. 

Last night as I was heading up to bed I found a small scrap of notebook paper lying on the floor in the family room. I picked it up, inspecting it for just a second before tossing it in the garbage.

Five little words written in pencil.  In a child’s handwriting.  Our child’s handwriting.  

“I am about to die.”

I stared at the note, as the tears flooded in again.  And in an instant the heaviness returned to my chest.  And I fought again just to catch my breath.

She’s safe at the hospital today.  She sounds good when we talk on the phone.  We tell her that we love her.  And that she can do this.  She just needs to get better.  

She says she knows.  And that she’s working on it.  

And we remind her that she doesn’t have to earn the right to come home.  She just needs to get better so that she can SAFELY be home.  

She says she knows that.  And then we talk about what we did today, and she shares what she did today.

And we will continue to fight for her.  Fighting for her safety.  Against anything and everything that is unsafe for her.  

We will continue to love her, and reassure her, and remind her what a great kid she is.  

And we will continue to turn her over.  Every day.  To our gracious God.  Who loves her more than we do.  Who knows the hurts and the torment better than we do.  Who sees the nightmares.  Who keeps His arms around her at all times, keeping her safe and protected. We will continue to trust that it is so. 

And I kept that little note I found on the floor after she had left.  Because someday when I’m very old, and when she has grown to adulthood, I will show it to her.  We’ll talk about how hard we prayed for her back in those days.  When she was just a child.  We’ll talk about how hard she fought to get better.  We’ll smile together.  And probably shed a few tears.  

And together we will remember that one week.  That one really exhausting week.