Rochelle began writing about freedom in Christ on May 1. She had intended to just write herself a journal every day. It didn't end up being that way. She began it, but there came a point in time where I became affected by what she was writing. If you haven't read her portion of it yet, you can do so by clicking on her name above. My portion picks up where hers leaves off.
My name is Cara. I feel like I should explain how I came to be here in this mind before I talk at all about why I came to the fire tonight. Quite honestly, I don't feel a lot of hope that writing this will be helpful at all, but I'm going to do it anyway. In the beginning, there was one whole person, an infant. I do not know consciously what happened. I know what I've seen as I've gone to places in the mind where those very young children reside, but I myself do not remember much before age 3. Last night I tried to piece together some kind of chart in my mind with listings of memories and where they are stored. Many are stored in some kind of central bank where almost everyone can access them. Some are stored in places where only one or two of us can access them. Some people manage their own accounts, and other accounts are managed by one of us who operates in some kind of hierarchical structure that I don't need to explain right now.
The key to my story involves the central memory bank. The mind, initially, was one mind. The child was a person, growing up like a tree. When the separation of pieces of the mind began, it was almost as if branches grew from the tree. This is not really a good analogy as a general rule, but I'm using it to illustrate what happened to me. At a certain time in life, there was a series of events, much like a storm, which pummeled the tree. There was a lot of branching out at the time, and the trunk split in half. I remained fixed at age 19, the age of Sarah when she liked herself. She went on with life.
I occasionally tried to assist with life, but I was not happy at all in the environment we lived in after the 20th birthday. I let the others go on and held onto an image of who she had once been, a little on the unhappy side but spiritually strong and determined to survive anything and to reach out my hand in ministry to others. I lived to commit myself to serving God, to listening to Him and doing whatever He led me to do. I trusted Him completely with all of my needs, unlike after the 20th birthday.
Eventually life for the whole person fell apart. She had tried to form friendships which failed too many times. Each time, she tried again only to become involved in a friendship which was more dysfunctional than the previous one. Abandonment fears were rampant, and today this is the strongest issue that any of us face.
In 1996, she became fully aware of the existance of a few of us. I was one of those. Meredith had given up her attempt to get a teaching certificate, and career interests were running low. Elaina, one of those who was still trying to be active in music at the church, knew about me and knew that part of my interest was in counseling as a ministry. She called on me to show myself with the others about whom Sarah was learning. I did. Sarah immediately began setting up an organizational structure, and she wanted me to assist with this and with processing of memories. She also wanted my help with schoolwork, as she had decided to try psychology as a major. Perhaps I should have made her do it herself. Perhaps we all should have.
Amber, Meredith, and I all shared in the responsibility of ensuring success in school because Sarah would not take notes or keep herself alert in class. She was more focused on making the kids grow up so that she would appear normal. She wanted Chelle to be less angry and Tasha to be less clingy. She was ashamed to admit that these were pieces of herself. She felt that she should swallow up the childishness and act like the adult that she was.
Finally, this became too much for her. I remember that day like it was yesterday. We were sitting in the history of psychology class. She was controlling the most conscious part of the mind. Instead of taking notes, she was writing a journal. She wrote: "I can't deal with life. Maybe Cara can." I remember that when she wrote it she looked at me for one moment, and I saw a lot of things. On some level I could see where she was so desperate to go on but didn't know how and that she wanted to be able to go on as she had in 1992, the image that I represented. And the only way she knew to achieve that was to put things into my hands.
But she also shot me a look of pure hatred, and I knew there would be conflict between me and her. I knew that I would be always aware of her bitterness and pain and rage and hatred of who she was. She vacated her position immediately, and I was simply appointed to go on because I was who she had once been. I supposedly had all the resources necessary to survive.
But I didn't have them. If I had had them--if she had had them--that split never would have happened. I stepped into position because my nature is to survive and to trust God in all situations. But I was stepping into an environment so vastly different from the one I had last known when I had any form of hostness! The girl of 1992 was who she was because of a number of things. For the first time in life, she was developing identity and self-confidence. For the first time in her life, she was receiving adequate spiritual guidance and beginning to enquire into the Bible on her own initiative because she knew where to go for support and help in interpreting and learning to interpret. For the first time in her life, she had solid friendships in which she was accepted in spite of blindness. She was treated as a completely equal participant in the give and take of the friendships.
Normally, adults do not depend quite so much on these things--their sense of self is strong enough that they can endure loss by some process called "normal grief". But her sense of self was not strong. Because of the lack of congruity of opinions of significant others when she was growing up, because of the passivity and dependence she had learned, and because of the isolation and need for approval, she was still at the stage of needing stable and mature friendships and guidance. I think that if she had had them for a while she would have matured and continued to heal.
But those supports were all yanked out from under her within the span of one year! All of them were gone. Not only was she grieving losses upon losses, but she was also grieving the loss of the very supports upon which she would have relied for assistance in maintaining her selfhood through that grieving process.
I am no better than she is. All I am is an image of who she was working on becoming! I had no abilities or strength that she did not have. But here I was with the responsibility of stepping in to take care of responsibilities both inside and out in circumstances for which I was never prepared. It was like a time warp. Dealing with internal affairs was easy for me. Most of the people I was dealing with were people who had either been around the last time I had been active or had been "created" within a time frame that some other strong person (Meredith) could help me come to know. But I hadn't made the transition to "now". I had sometimes been called out to try to explain internal structure to our husband or, more often than not, to accept criticism and to try to convince her that it wasn't meant cruelly or that it was valid. But I was not considered a person. I was a figment of her imagination, a game she played because she didn't want to accept responsibility or be criticized.
But now I was left in charge. Even if I had not been valued by her husband, I had been valued by her. She had chosen me to help with structuring the system and helping the ones who had been most deeply hurt with their healing! But now I was no longer the valued assistant. I was the executive, responsible for every aspect of functioning, inside and out--except when things got to be a little too crazy. Then she stepped in like the retired past president who just didn't think I could do the job well enough. She would strip control from me if she feared not appearing "normal" enough, shutting the entire system down, denying us all any form of self-expression or knowledge of what had gone on. I ran things because it was convenient for her for me to run them. But I could obviously never run them as well as she could. I was only a substitute. I was given the responsibilities and even the rights of the executive, but I was never ever to assume that my name was anything other than Cara. My purpose was to maintain appearance only. I was the executive, and I was despised by the past president.
The moment I took on this role, I inherited a mess. Instead of the potential that I had had in 1992, I inherited a load of shame and self-hatred. I inherited an insatiable need for approval. I inherited all the connections to everyone who had been "created" since 1992. I inherited the roots of their pain in addition to carrying all of the memories I had carried up until 1992. I inherited all of the injuries to the spirit which had caused her and me to become separated. This particular inheritance made it awfully hard for me to hold onto any potential for spiritual growth or leadership I carried into the task with me on that day in 1997.
Since then, I have done my job faithfully and to the best of my ability. But because of the things I inherited, I am much weaker than I thought I was. Where I did not need human approval before because I had been learning to trust in God, I struggle daily with needing to be reminded that I am loved and accepted. Because of the inheritance combined with the pressure from the still persistent part of the mind who bears the legal name of the body, I struggle daily with the need to appear normal. Because of the inherited pain of loss combined with the fact that I do not have access to the guidance and friendships which were teaching me to step out in faith, I feel thrown backwards into a pit of doubt out of which I cannot climb.
I feel that I am required to have a measure of faith which I do not possess. Whereas a child in normal circumstances learns to walk by standing, then by holding both hands of an adult, then by holding one hand, and finally by walking on her own, I feel that I am required to move from holding both hands to walking independently--even running--and I cannot do it. I feel that there is some kind of double standard going on where I am required to have no attachment to people and to trust solely in God to meet my needs for affection and approval, but I am supposed to reach out and be His hands to others. Meanwhile no one did this for me. The balance is not in place.
Something in my heart tells me that this is not how things are supposed to work. But I don't know how they work. Where am I to go to receive ministry? The church does not reach out to me. They rarely have. In 1992 I had friends who ministered to me, friends with whom I was on an equal wavelength, and friends to whom I ministered. The balance is tipped now, and I am confused because it does not even seem to stay tipped in one direction.
When the losses occurred, Sarah pushed them inside because she was told that her unhappiness would drive potential friends away. This theory has been reinforced by people who initially tried to support her but who tired and blamed her for refusing to heal or for being too clingy. I do not have the confidence or trust in myself to evaluate how much self-disclosure is too much or when we have crossed the line between interdependency and codependency or just pure dependency. I fear leading the system into friendships at all because of the potential for more losses, but I cannot survive--I, Cara, cannot survive-- without them.
I envy Rochelle's ability to rest in the freedom of Christ. When I first met her and really looked at her, I was flooded with the memories of the reason for her creation. I immediately assumed because of her disabilities and the memories that she held pain. I thought that she needed to work through those memories. But the truth is that it's her strength I need to draw on. But sometimes I am still so afraid that God will require me to continue this pattern of not discussing traumas at all unless it is to discuss them as if they are healed and life is fine. I am afraid that freedom in Christ is an illusion meant to pacify me and convince me to stop thinking about my needs and start thinking about other people's needs. After all, the cure for depression is getting away from myself and focusing on others.
I don't like to write any of this, but I have to. I can feel the bitterness rising up in me. I can feel the hopelessness there, and I have lost sight of my own self. And all this time I've held onto the idea that I'm still Cara. Even if I couldn't be the host, I kept trying not to lose sight of my potential to remain Cara. Even when I have shattered into many little images of my own when stress became too much, I always worked so hard to put them back together so that I could remain Cara. But something is either missing or much less dominant now in me than it was back then. My face looks different. I don't know how to describe it. More worried. Less confident. More absorbed in daily life and less in knowing God. More childish and fearful and less mature and trusting. Occasionally I get a glimpse of my face as it was, but that is very occasionally. I don't know how to get to the point where I can see it more often. I don't suppose it's something I can do. God has to do it. But why won't He make it last? Or am I doing something wrong that is preventing it from lasting?
I'm still thinking about all of this. I realize what Rochelle and the others who have reached that level of faith would tell me. They would tell me that freedom in Christ isn't about unhealthy selflessness but about trusting in His care for our every need and His ultimate promise to dry every tear from our eyes. But there is some turmoil inside of me that I cannot understand. There is some need that I don't know the source of or understand.
Something has happened. I do not understand how, but I finally entered once again into that place of trust. There is a concept that I want to put into words but do not have the words for. I have known that I needed to surrender my will, to trust God with my pain and needs. But I have been locked in a prison of some kind of misunderstanding. Too often other people have spoken words of condemnation to me because of what they perceived as my failure to trust God. Too often, I believed they were correct. Their spiritual logic seemed to make sense. They quoted Scripture. They said they were Christians. They even claimed to believe all the right things. But believing their logic caused me to spend years condemning myself and feeling as though I needed to take the blame for all the problems in my life. This went right down to my inability to trust my friends.
One of the things I have been sorting through for the past year or two is a repeated cycle of attachment problems. This person as a whole tends to develop deep relationships very quickly. She is a thinker, a dreamer. She is also very social. She attaches to others who are deep thinkers and who also are social--and often they are other troubled individuals. In these friendships, there is potential for much healthy caring for one another. Often, however, there is also potential for pathological caring for one another. When the friendships take this turn, they generally end if one party is in fair emotional health and the other is not. But if both parties are very troubled, the friendship can develop into something very unhealthy. I've heard it called enmeshment. I've heard it called codependency. This is the pattern of friendships we have been developing for some time.
Only within the last year have any of us made an effort to learn to develop healthy friendships. It has been a strong and often successful effort, but the fears that promote unhealthy attachments still run very high sometimes.
It was these fears which led me into a particular discussion with a friend last night, and it was that discussion which pushed me through the door to the place where I could give my needs for companionship to Christ. My friend and I were discussing an incident which had triggered my fears of abandonment. The incident involved something she had done which she had every right to do and had needed desperately to do. I was very happy, but my happiness was overshadowed by an intense fear that my friendship would cease to be of value to her.
"That's my issue, not yours," I said when I realized that my confession was causing her to feel guilt. "When I'm free to feel it, then I'm also free to let it go."
When I made that statement, I felt as if someone had flung open the prison doors inside my heart. This was the key: allowing myself to feel the feelings that needed to be confessed! I had been spending my days trying to make the feelings go away on my own because I knew how wrong and immature they were. But how can I trust Christ to heal what I am trying to heal on my own? It isn't possible!
Immediately, the fear and hurt were stripped from me. I cannot say that they won't return, but I feel as if I've made a huge step in the right direction and am free to move on. Perhaps now I can give the book back to Rochelle and we can move on.
Note: This is actually Rochelle's entry, but she chose for me to place it here because the majority of it is a transcript of a conversation I had with Trianna.
There is no room for resting in the peace that comes after these steps in healing. This is what I wanted to allow Cara to do, to rest in her newly discovered peace. But life does not stop there. It is as though life is a hurricane, always moving, and the peace which was found last week is the eye of the storm. Last night we watched a show on TV about pilots flying into the eye of hurricanes in order to measure the storm and how they must continue flying their planes to stay in the center of the storm. So we must continue pressing on within the peace.
Cara is standing nearby, accompanied by Trianna, one of the owners of the retreat center down by the river. I can hear their conversation, though I do not listen intentionally.
"I don't understand," Cara says. "Why did I not want to go on from that place?"
"You were deceived, child," Trianna answers, her voice firm but very soothing. "You were deceived into being comfortable there."
"I'm back to this friendship dilemma again. Why does that always come up?"
"There is nothing wrong with friendships, Cara. Nothing at all. But when you let the friendships take up more time than you are spending with your Heavenly Father, you have crossed into the realm of idolatry. The truth is never that God doesn't want you to have friends. This is a lie that Satan will use to keep you from trusting in God to meet your need for friends."
Cara sighs deeply, her face resting in her hands. "I thought I was set free."
Trianna touches her shoulder gently. "You were, and you are. You are set free to choose the recipient of your attention and your service. No one in this world is free as people think of freedom. Each person is bound to something. Some people are even bound to an illusion of being free--but this illusion causes them much anxiety as they struggle with the moral and legal structure of good and evil imposed by human opinion of good and evil. The only alternative is an anarchist society. Such a society would not last long. Sooner or later, someone would cry out for justice because he had been hurt; and, of course, there would be no room for justice because no law was in place to dictate right from wrong.
"You see, Cara, your struggle is nothing more than the age-old struggle between choosing to live within the place where there is no need for law because you are naturally living within the will of your Creator and living within the knowledge of the difference between good and evil, doing things your own way, without His guidance. Of course, the moment humankind was separated from that garden where they had lived so freely, they cried out for reconciliation with God. His answer was to show them just how difficult it was to live in such purity on their own.
"But He also promised a Messiah, one who would set them free by bearing the stains of their guilt--His only son, God in human form living in purity on this earth and dying the death of a criminal, enduring spiritual separation from a God whom he had never offended, on behalf of God's creation, and being raised from that place of physical death and spiritual separation to prove to those who saw him and all who would believe their testimony that God is alive and loves His creation."
"I know all this," Cara says sadly. "I've known it since childhood. Why does it not stay with me?"
"You are often deceived, too confident," Trianna replies gently. "You live in a society where independence is prized. To make your own way is the norm. The American dream is to have your cake and eat it too. You believe that it is your right to want for nothing. But the only One who can enable you to want for nothing is the Lord, your God! He will never leave you; nor will He foresake you. But neither will He force you into submission. He simply stands at the door and knocks. Every moment that your mind wanders from Him is a moment that He is shut outside your heart and must knock again, a moment that you, his sheep, have wandered astray and He must go and find you."
Tears fill Cara's eyes as she looks into the fire. "I never meant to ..." Her words trail off.
"He knows, dear Cara. He knows your heart."
"What if I'm just ashamed of getting caught?"
"His command, Cara, is repent! A broken heart and a contrite spirit He will not deny! While it is still today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart to Him! You are His precious child, the very image of Himself. He could never turn you away if you turn to Him. Forgiveness is not a one-time affair. That is why the instruction is given to work out your salvation with fear and trembling."
Trianna turns from where she is standing and walks a few yards away from the fire. Cara kneels, tears streaming down her face. I cannot hear the words of her prayer. They are not mine to hear. They are between herself and God.