PREDEPLOYMENT: CONSOLIDATING GAINS
I have learned a lot over the past few months. What is so interesting about logging my experiences on the blog is that I can identify clear stages over time as I process the deployment. Each post is a step on a sometimes steep and jagged staircase - a step, whether inching forward a smidge or leaping up three at a time. I have gone from feeling uncertain and overwhelmed at times to reaching a new normal and doing well for several weeks, feeling ready (as ready as can be), feeling prepared, knowing impending difficulty is on its way in the next deployment stage, yet feeling peace.
First, there was a palpable change from something far off to think about objectively into the immediate realm of my reality. I felt fragile, unsteady, vulnerable, and emotional. This is the beginning of the pre-deployment phase, when it first truly hit me. I had cried when I first found out he was deploying - he was deploying, not deploying, and then we found out he was deploying again right before Christmas - but it hadn't settled over me in earnest until this point. It was like a cloud I couldn't shake and hadn't processed, and it was tremendously uncomfortable.
As I began to process through it, I started this blog, I spoke with friends, and it took very little to bring me to tears. The instability and fragility I was feeling clashed with my perfectionism and craving for control like a semi plowing into a smart car. I always thought I was good at being vulnerable. I prided myself on being aware of my feelings and being able to express myself when necessary. But this...this was a whole new level of vulnerable. This was a level I had not had opportunity to practice with others. I discovered I held a double standard for myself - I would never think less of anyone who came to me in a low place and needed support; on the contrary, I feel honored that the person trusts me enough to be a part of their story at that moment. When it came to my own story, however, I found that I had misgivings about dumping all my stuff on someone else. I didn't want to overburden anyone, I didn't want anyone to feel sorry for me, but I wanted people to be there with me, and I was upset that I needed it. I envisioned my professional and academic lives suffer in my mind's eye as a result of unpredictable waves of emotion hitting me at inopportune times. My independence felt threatened, and I wanted to be capable and professional and able to be okay. In fact, I was frustrated that I wasn't okay and that I needed the amount of support I felt I would need both in that moment and in the coming year over deployment. I grappled with whether or not independence and emotional support were opposites or whether they could somehow live together in harmony.
I learned that independence and emotional support can live together, and that emotional support is in fact the mark of an independent and capable person taking care of themselves. Needing people doesn't make you "needy," or "dependent." It's a continuum, and too much of either is bad for you. I knew all of this already, and would have told you so before, but I didn't know it until I realized I did indeed have a problem with this and it was rooted in my abiding in the throes of perfectionism and people-pleasing tendencies.
I am a planner, and chronically so. Planning is not evil. God is a planner. But the next thing I learned was the importance of taking one day at a time. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis explains how every bad thing is in fact a good thing that has been turned askew: "To be bad, he [the Bad Power/Satan] must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. Therefore he must be getting them from the Good Power: even to be bad he must borrow or steal from his opponent. And do you now begin to see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel? That is not a mere story for the children. It is a real recognition of the fact that evil is a parasite, not an original thing. The powers which enable evil to carry on are powers given it by goodness. All the things which enable a bad man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things-resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself.
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In other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled. We called sadism a sexual perversion; but you must first have the idea of a normal sexuality before you can talk of its being perverted; and you can see which is the perversion, because you can explain the perverted from the normal, and cannot explain the normal from the perverted."
C.S. Lewis is writing this to argue a theological point regarding Dualism, but I can view independence or planning or any of the good things I have taken too far in the same manner. Planning is not bad, but is in fact what we are instructed to do in Scripture. At the same time, however, we are to trust God, surrender worry, and acknowledge that we are not in control. This frees us to take life one day at a time. The other option is absolutely exhausting, which I ascertained firsthand.
This progression naturally lead me to the next stage in my personal journey through predeployment: learning to be okay with not being okay. This was perhaps the most profound of the lessons I learned. I realized I didn't have to be okay. It was okay not to be okay, and maybe even the best way to handle such times. When my goal was to accept and sit in whatever emotions and stages came my way, it helped. When I was focused on being better, being proud of myself for "good" days, and being hard on myself for "bad" days, I slid down the stairs a couple of steps and chained myself to an ever elusive sense of control and a pile of worry. So, a huge reason I am "okay" today is because I was okay with not being okay then. Confusing? Yeah...give it a couple minutes. Additionally, my interactions with others lead me to reflect on what a massive impact expectations have on contentment through the way we experience events.
Through blogging, opening up to trusted friends, accepting moments as they come, and spending time with Jesus and using my prayer journal, I have come to appreciate these new experiences on quite a new level. The most notable of these was a critical moment a month or so ago when I had a hard day in the middle of a grad class. A couple friends knew I was having a hard time and waited for me after class, walked me to the parking lot, and then spent 45 minutes with me in the car sitting with me while I cried and then taking me to Chick-fil-a. In that moment, a number of fascinating things happened. First, I felt a physical release from letting out what I was desperately trying to told together to the end of class (rather unsuccessfully, I might add). Second, I felt an incredible sense of love and support from friends. Third, it hit me like a ton of bricks that Jesus was quietly whispering that He knows what I need, always has, and will always be there to provide for me. He called me tenderly and told me He is close to the brokenhearted, close to the meek, close to the contrite in spirit. He showed me great love through my friends, and experience was one that I often become emotional thinking or talking about and one that I urgently desire for everyone I encounter. Friends of mine, even the friends that were there with me that day - especially the friends with me that day - I want them to experience the depth of vulnerability I experienced and have it met with acceptance, relief, and peace.
I absolutely love C.S. Lewis and the way he writes. He says this of vulnerability: "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
I have now successfully navigated the predeployment phase. Our predeployment days are numbered and few, and I hang in the balance between predeployment and deployment phases, both physically and psychologically. Over the course of several months, I experienced a disorganization, or disequilibrium, in which I was thrown off from my normal and given the opportunity to learn more in this short amount of time than I have learned in two years. I was able to process and experience this stage, and moved from uncertainty, worry, control, and hurt to surrender and a peaceful hurt. Peace is something everyone wants and few people reach - and, I'm convinced, even fewer can maintain. As I said in my post about how to be okay with not being okay, peace is something God promises us through a relationship with Him. I found that my hurt didn't go away, it didn't lessen, but it did change. Somehow the peace came alongside the hurt in equal measure, not reducing the hurt per se, but changing it, and this has made all the difference.
All my life I have had to contend with my desire for control and my tendency to have anxiety. When I plan in order to be smart and timely, good; unfortunately, most often my planning goes into overdrive because it stems from a motive to fend off anxiety through employing it. Through this process, I have been afforded an incredible gift: freedom from control and anxiety. Here is a photo of what I had in my journal trying to depict the progression. Clearly I will not be making millions as an artist, but hopefully the idea will get across.
At the top, you see a hand with a balloon called Control. It could be that it means letting go of Control was like a thoughtful, dignified adult releasing a balloon and wistfully watching it float away into the sky. This was not the case. Letting go of Control was like a small child whose balloon accidentally slips from grasp, and the child desperately clutches for the end of the string. He grabs it briefly, with the hope that perhaps it has almost gotten away but he can hold it for a moment longer; then, the moment is gone, and it is carried away on the same wind that carries the sound of the child's wailing.
Next, you see a figure carrying a burden of Worry. Worry gets heavier and heavier, bearing down on the figure's knees and back until the weight becomes too great, inevitably causing the person to collapse, falling to the ground. The burden falls to the ground at the same time, but not because the person released it. Instead, it simply tumbled off on its own when the person became too exhausted to carry it any more. I didn't give it up because I wanted to. I gave it up because I carried it to the point of exhaustion where I no longer had a choice. What I learned there on the floor was rather miraculous. I had tried so hard to keep it, without really fully realizing I was doing it, and mentally knowing that I couldn't and shouldn't. I found immense relief and gratitude that the weight was gone. What?? Gasp. I know. You are utterly shocked. Well, it seems that when such a weight falls off my shoulders, and I feel that much relief, I am loathe to pick it up again.
I didn't give up control and worry because I wanted to. I gave it up because I carried it to the point of exhaustion where I no longer had a choice.
My pattern up to this point has always been to pick it up again, but not this time. My shoulders were still raw and I was too tired to carry it any further. I know that my shoulders will heal and I will eventually pick up another weight, whether it is worry over a job, over children, over another deployment, or over a family or friend situation. For today, though, my shoulders are still a little raw, and as a result I have breathed deeper, felt freer, and enjoyed peace longer than at any other point in my life to date.
It is important to consolidate gains at the end of a phase, taking a moment to reflect and be encouraged before taking the dive into the next one. I have looked back on the last few months with gratitude at the growth that has occurred, and look forward to being able to do so again after deployment. I have navigated predeployment successfully, and moved from disorganization to stabilization again. This is particularly uplifting because if predeployment was like a demo for deployment itself, I know I can conquer deployment and eventually move from destabilization to stabilization as time goes on. To learn more about the deployment cycle for what to expect, click here.
Again, I don't know what you believe, but the single greatest thing influencing my ability to face deployment has been my relationship with God. Jeremiah 2:25 says not to run until your feet are bare and your throat is dry. I did, and have before. Skip that step, and give up whatever it is you're carrying before exhaustion takes it from you by force. Carefully examine yourself to find out what it is you're carrying, because you might not even know you're carrying it. Jesus is waiting to take it from you, but won't wrestle it away. He will wait until you offer it to Him.