Walking up the stairs towards the 4th grade classroom I take in the architecture and the smells of this old place, the large staircase with it’s carved handrail and the wooden door to the classroom feel like they belong in an old movie. It is Katy’s 9th birthday.
Ms. Mildenberger welcomes me, and invites me in to hand out the ice cream. She circles the class up as I hand out the treats. Katy is placed in the center of the circle and the kids are invited to ask her any question they want.
The questions begin and she answers them easily, “What’s your favorite color?” “How many places have you lived?” A girl asks who her favorite music group is and she replies, “Point of Grace” to which someone says, “Who’s that?” and Katy responds, “They’re a Christian group.”
As the questions are winding down a boy asks, “If you could be anyone in the class who would you be?” I watch Katy’s expression of confusion, “What do you mean?” she asks him with her head slightly tilted. “If you could be anyone else in the class who would you be?” he repeats.
She sits quietly pondering the question. “I don’t want to be anyone else” she replies. He does not back down, “You have to answer, you have to pick someone.”
I look over at Ms. Mildenberger who has one eyebrow raised and is watching carefully. I want to stop this boy, but Katy sits up on her chair and looks him square in the eye and says, “I don’t want to be anyone else, if I can’t be me I don’t want to be in the class.”
I remember feeling amazed by her poise and confidence. She answered their questions staying true to her self and when she was pressed to comply she sat up and spoke clearly. She demonstrated bravery that seemed beyond her years.
This scene would have unfolded very differently for me at that age, I did not have that kind of steady confidence.
Knowing who I am with sustaining, peaceful confidence continues to mature within me.
One of my brave choices has been to step back into therapy, inviting someone who isn’t a friend to help me narrate my story. The scenes where I needed help are not way in the past, they are more current, and yet I had already constructed a way of making sense of them that had left me more distanced from myself, and mostly angry with God. My way of making sense of my story has, at times, stemmed from mimicking bravery. Sucking the pain up into some distant place in my head where I squeeze it down tight so I can swallow, be brave, and do whatever hard thing I determine must be done in order to move forward.
I’ve felt the emptiness that comes on the backside of trauma as I’ve entered the scenes and named truths that I wanted to avoid, because they were more than I wanted to bear. At times it has felt like being sucked down to the bottom of the ocean, vast, dark and cold. There is a desperation born in the powerlessness of not being able to control or make sense of what has happened that I hate feeling.
It leaves me feeling lost and like I don’t know who I am anymore; it is something I fiercely resist feeling. In his book Surviving A Shipwreck Jonathan Martin describes it well, “The life you lived before is the life you live no longer; the world you knew before is under water now. Your life feels like a funeral, because there is a part of you that is actually dying. There are things you are losing now that you won’t get back. The shipwreck is upon you. And there is no going back to the life you had.”
The truth that without death there can be no resurrection is not something I easily appropriate for myself wholeheartedly. It is just too real and too scary; to be perfectly honest I want resurrection without death.
Choosing to face death and let it be death invites me to stop mimicking bravery and wait to be seized by hope again in the true resurrection.
Resurrection has come in quiet and deeply personal ways; it’s come tied to my tears, which are lost when I choose mimicked bravery.
“Our worst moments tend to be repressed and denied. When that happens, we begin to lie to ourselves; and when we lie, the very fabric of life falls apart. The gift of tears is concerned with living in and with the truth and with the new life that the truth always brings.”
-Alan Jones
Soul Making
Being brave for me has meant returning to truth, feeling deeply again and allowing my tears to bring new life for my soul.
Tracy Johnson is a lover of stories and a reluctant dreamer, living by faith that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick but when dreams come true there is a life and joy” (Pro. 13:12). She is the Founder of Red Tent Living. Married for 29 years, she is mother to five kids. After a half century of life, she’s feeling like she may know who she is.
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Thank you for your honest bravery which, in turn, helps others to be brave in their season of needing to let go, lose control, trust, and die. These words sink in deeply and remind me, yet again, of why you are one who inspires me to keep walking through the wasteland while waiting and hoping for new life. Every Blessing on the journey, Dear One.
I love the idea that bravery can beget bravery. ❤️
This is deeply personal. Of course this path of feeling lost and unraveling and welcoming tears would be brutal. What a lot of courage it requires. The choice to invite new eyes is bold. You have given me much to chew on today.
I love that Katy didn’t want to be anyone but herself!
You named it well, the unraveling and welcoming of the tears feeling brutal. Thank you for adding to the narrative for me. Grateful for your presence in my life.
“waiting to be seized by hope again…” is a hard, familiar, and beautiful kind of waiting. Thank you for your words and the encouragement of your bravery…
A beautiful kind of waiting, I will be holding those words. Thank you.
Dear Tracy, thank you for your vulnerable entry. How amazing for Katy to have stood her ground with wanting to be herself and no one else in the classroom. You are an amazing mother. It causes me to pause and realize how brave you were to know that you would have answered differently. It seems like you were raised to be compliant to others and put your feelings behind everyone else. How cool and brave to step into therapy to see why. You have given me much to ponder today with my own story. Your writing invites bravery and kindness and introspection. Thank you again.
You have read my childhood well and it feels good to be seen and known there Becky. Thank you for your kind eyes.
Love your vulnerability and tenderness! And I am so with you on wanting resurrection without death, when death is naming and walking into those realities that feel like more than we can bear. I hear your genuine courage. Love you!
Thanks Janet, and you’ve been a good friend to help me notice and name the death for real.
Oh my goodness Tracy. Your words beautifully and accurately describe my own present journey, and reading them brings clarity of the process, the emotions, and the hope. Katy’s words as a child are arresting: ““I don’t want to be anyone else, if I can’t be me I don’t want to be in the class.” To have that courage …then or now – wow!
Susan, my heart is heavy for where you are sharing this kind of space with me. Sending you heartfelt courage as you face and name things for yourself. ❤️
Thank you. I didn’t know I needed to hear this. I thought I have lived with courage. But I think I mostly mimic courage because it feels better than the alternative. I’m afraid of death and shipwrecks. Thank you for defining courage in a way that will help my heart be true.
Sounds like we may be kindred spirits Jill, good to know we are not alone. Thanks for your honesty and vulnerability to say “me too”.
I was introduced to this site very recently. It’s been a true gift. Thank you for sharing so honestly. This post resonates with me. I continue to wonder when the mourning for something gone will be over …Trying to understand it and how to move on. Knowing I can’t go back and thinking I’ve moved past only for something to remind me of it and the loss is new again.
Thank you!
Welcome Lori, glad to have you in our Red Tent Living community. Honestly, for me, it seems that the mourning is never really gone. I find it returning again and again. Blessings to you as you keep walking forward one day at a time.