Porter James Ulysses Simon: Year 3.

Dearest Porter Pie-

It was difficult for me to sit down to write you your birthday letter this year. I've spent weeks mulling over how to explain to you what happened in the last year. At first my heart and my mind instantly went to the heartbreak, the struggle, the betrayal,  the time that I spent across the country from you gaining my life back, the anger, the hours I have lost parenting because of joint custody, and the scars that at times still hurt like they are new. I've written you a journal entry now for over 300 days and those pages are pages of mourning and rejoicing. They are the stories that you will someday need to know because they are the story of a breaking of my heart and spirit so bad that I had no choice but to conquer my mental illness. Of all the beautiful, stubborn, broken things you have inherited from me I hope this is a gene that does not touch you but I cannot be sure. After weeks of staling, procrastinating and thinking maybe I would forgo this years letter and let the journals stand on their own, I realized there is something I wanted to tell you about this year. It is the story that is bigger than all the pain and mess. It is the simple story of love.

Porter, you have been loved and protected since the moment I knew you existed. I still remember that it was January 7, 2014 at 7:09 pm. Your dad was in Chicago. At the time we lived with your Godfather in a little house on the Westside of Buffalo. He was the first to know I was pregnant and he probably told me I was an idiot (because that's an Uncle Mikey thing to do). The love and protection that started at that moment didn't end or even skip a beat in the year between your second and third birthday. You were thought about in each moment and each decision. When your dad and I failed each other in all the ways our vows said that we never would, we never broke the vows or visions that we had for you. We have joint custody because neither one of us would ever dream of losing a single minute with you. Neither of us would dream of taking an extra minute from the other because we know the deep love and joy we have for you. There isn't a week that goes by that your dad and I don't thank each other for being good parents and loving you in the unique ways that we each do. The way that your dad and I are able to move forward together as strong co-parents is because your health and well-being hang in the balance. Neither of us are willing to sacrifice any piece of your heart or happiness for the disagreements and hurts that sometimes threaten to end all kindness between us.

It may be obvious that your dad and I love you and will choose time and time again to put your little life first but that isn't where it ends, Porter. There is a family who has stood faithfully with us and for us for three years. When I felt like I had nowhere to go, no one to be loved by, they opened their home to us with 3 sweet boys of their own. They didn't offer out of pity or necessity but because they wanted to walk this road with us, they wanted to be your shelter from the storm. They didn't just make room for us in their home but also in their hearts. They held our story, prayed with us and for us. They let me breakdown over and over again on their couch, disciplined you with the sweetest of loves, and picked up responsibilities for me, and in turn us, when I simply couldn't.

I never wanted you to have siblings but for 5 months you had the best brother-friends. They didn't ask for you to come and take their crib, take their toys, take some of the attention from their mommy or daddy, but they took it in stride. They didn't know that they were blessing our hearts by just being themselves. On days when you weren't with me, they would simply ask me to play games or watch television with them. I never once saw that as a benefit to them but to me who was missing you with all my heart. I still have no dreams of biological siblings for you but I am so thankful that the boy squad exists to fill the hole in your little heart that longs to have buddies to play with, to fight with, and to feel safe to be wholly yourself with.

There is a woman who took over when I couldn't physically be with you for a period. I don't know if by the time you're old enough to read this she will still be a part of your life, but when I needed to selfishly step away in order to be able to rebuild something beautiful for us, she picked up responsibilities that should have never put on her plate. She picked you up from school and watched you while your dad was out of town. She invited you into her family without missing a beat and loved you when you were missing me. Porter, we will always live our lives based on a model of community, and as much as it pains me at times, it will never harm you to be loved by one more person. I will always be thankful of her care of you this Spring.

The greatest story of love throughout this year is of a God who has called us redeemed and wanted and held. I thought for a long time that the best redemption story for you, Porter, was a Mom and a Dad living in one home. That is not the redemption story that God has chosen for us. The redemption story God has called us into is one of two separate, but healthier, homes. He has put our Gospel Community in our life to serve as your anchor. The families who have chosen to walk with us and invest in us over the last 3 years were there to love you, to encourage you (and me), to hold you, to rock you to sleep, to watch you when I worked, and to be there day in and day out, brutal hour after brutal hour. All the broken that they held you in has turned into something beautiful. Beauty is you asking for Lincoln and Asher as continued staples in your life. Beauty is you running up to Aaron and giving him a hug. Beauty is you asking if you can go to church each Sunday morning. Beauty is you never being shy when you walk into a party, knowing that each face is a safety zone for you. Beauty is you grabbing Grace's hand after not seeing her for a few weeks because she has invested in you. Beauty is your place in our community reminding me that I have a place in this community too, even on days that I feel alone.

We live a life of great adventure, Porter. It is what makes your soul shine. I want to be able to feed that every moment I can. We live in a less than ideal home, in a more than shady neighborhood. We don't buy things but we daily step into simple experiences. Fancy is not something that I can do for you but nature, and art, and dancing, and joy, and community, and love, that's what I have to offer you. I have decided that we would minimize our life in order to grow these things exponentially. I don't know that this is always something that you will value but right now it seems like you love this life we lead just as much as I do.

You are still standing so bright and beautiful because you are loved, you are wanted, you are cherished, you are imperfect but washed clean. You are a blessing and a miracle. You are stubborn and moody and can be outright defiant but that can never make you less than my heart beating outside of my body.

I love you, Porter James Ulysses. Thank you for loving me back.

Mom

September 2016

October 2016

November 2016

December 2016

January 2017

February 2017

March 2017

April 2017

May 2017

June 2017

July 2017

August 2017

September 2017

memories.

There was one night I truly believed I would die. We were sleeping in the Bird's Nest, a 150 square foot cabin in the backwoods of Guelph, ON, and I had heard a bump in the night. You pulled me closer and told me that I was being silly. Now thinking back on it I smile but on that night I was up for hours, shivering in fear that our lack of reception and distance from the next human would lead to our demise. It's funny the way memory works. The bad can somehow seem so small and the good can be magnified into a giant. I don't know if it's that our minds want to hide from the pain or if distance from a situation gives us better sight on the important bits. 

I've been going through my possessions. Editing my life down to the things which are important and those that I can live without. Being without half of your belongs for 9 months makes you realize how little Things mean. My memory box has been looming, waiting for me to be able to take off the lid and peer into a life that I used to have. At the bottom of the box of happy memories and significant moments from the last two decades, I found a journal from what I would consider the happiest years of my life. 

When I flipped open the first page I was surprised by an entry that said "two sad people staring at a screen pretending this is living". As I continued to turn the pages I realized how distance I felt from this person writing on this page. How distant my memories and emotions feel from this person who seems so ungrateful. For hundreds of pages, the story continued on the same. The story of my world colored through my lens of depression and sabotaging anxiety. As I looked at the dates on each page, I could find a love letter or celebratory letter from a friend or a race bib that matched that day. This process of matching reality with my perception left me with the heartbreaking feeling that depression had stole my life. Not just the large thing that is happening now but each moment of every day for decades of life.

I talk about my mental illness and depression a lot. Not to glamorize it or use it as an excuse for bad and awkward behavior but because it truly is probably one of the largest parts of who I am and I am still trying to understand how it impacts me. Yesterday's realization that the past 6 months are the first 6 months of my adult life that I haven't been significantly impacted by depression was difficult to face. The reality is in days and weeks that I thought I was happy, I wasn't able to even receive and understand the beauty of my own life. It's probably why I now say I don't care about being happy and cringe when people use the word. Happy is such a flimsy, surface emotion. I care about finding joy and purpose. I care about finding calling and direction. I care about garnering growth in myself and others. 

The question always comes "what has changed in the last 6 months?" "Are you on medication?" I found shame in the idea of medication for a long time and it is what stopped me many times from trying to get help for a problem that I have identified to others for 18 years now. I no longer find shame in them but it is not the solution that I chose. When (not if, it's a when, depression does not just disappear) I relapse into darkness, they will be the first tool I reach for. So what has changed this all for me? I could say that it's my community who allows me to be a mess. It's my running that keeps my endorphins in check. I could say it's the diagnosis of PCOS and the many methods I have tried to get my pain, hormones, and body under control (mostly to very frustrating results). I could say that it was hitting rock bottom and realizing that my depression finally ruined the most important thing I have ever been given, my sweet family. Possibly it's a straight up miracle.  I think they all play a part but the reality is that if I had to pick a tangible reason, it has been my own perspective change.

For 18 years I leaned into my depression rather than trying to find solution or get help. As a teenager growing up in the church (and I can only speak from my singular experience) there was a belief that if you truly have faith, Depression could not possibly effect you. It was not viewed as a medical condition. In my own home I was told that "I had nothing to be depressed about" and so, I didn't know how to receive help. My first husband didn't believe in anti-depressants, eventually making his girlfriend after me go off of hers, so at 21 when I felt like I had reached the peak of my self-harm, him often coming home to scenes of bloodied wrists, I was denied help I asked for. I appreciate my friend, Ericka, who always says that she doesn't understand depression. She's never had it a day in her life but is always so empathetic of my pain when I talk to her. What I see in her is someone who understands that depression is not just sadness, someone who doesn't make it less than it is. She may be the first person who ever gave me the space to be broken in a deeper way by not pretending to understand. 

The reason I talk about Depression so much now is because I am trying to understand it. I'm trying to talk it out with people who have possibly never experienced it. It's a glimpse into a brain that has been given the gift of a period of mental and emotional clarity and can now see how many moments of beauty I have missed because I was too proud or I was told Depression isn't a real thing. I won't sit by and let life be anything but a beautiful adventure anymore. I refuse to waste moments of my life not being grateful and blown away by every perfect gift and grace that I have been given from above. This is a journey. This is the bigger journey that is coming from the current chapter of my life. Even in the pain, I want to be grateful for this new life that is growing in my mind, body and soul. It is perhaps really life for the first time.

shattered.

After 2 hours and 27 minutes of running, the hot water of an Epsom salt bath was exactly what my hips and knees needed. After all that forward motion, after all the hiding from my own mind that often tells me I can't do it, the rest was what I needed. The chance to sit and reflect and remember why I continue to fight to run. Run one more foot, one more mile, one more race. As I washed my face the salt of long ago dried sweat poured into my mouth and I couldn't help but think right back to the masks we wear. This layer of sweat. That layer of make-up. The perfectly curled hair and the perfectly paired outfit. The things that can so easily be mistaken for who I am if I let them.

Who am I? Do we all ask ourselves this question or do some of us just have the pleasure of knowing in full confidence?

I think that I keep coming back to this theme of who I am and the masks I wear over and over again because I am looking at the wrong solution to the problem of who I am. There is no me without a Savior who holds my world in his hands. In order to know who I am, I must first understand who he is. Last night I had to admit to myself, and to others, that I am just mad at God. I cannot see clearly the character of God and therefore, I cannot clearly see the characteristics of myself.

Over the last 5 months my identity has been shattered. And beyond my doing, I have been put back together piece by piece. In the rebuilding, I have lost sight of who I was before. In my case some of the shattering was just the final splintering of deep cracks. Brokenness that could only turn into the beauty in the complete breaking. As I've gathered together the shattered pieces and reconciled them to each other I have gotten stronger and a whole new me has been formed.

Recently it has been clear that the new me no longer fits into the old life. And in this growth and new life, I have become a woman who no longer pretends. The more I identify my masks the more I find myself sickened by them. The mask that tells me I must stay just doesn't fit anymore and will need to be washed off just like the dried sweat yesterday afternoon. Each day I sit in a place where there is a suitcase sitting next to my bedroom door. I tell myself just to make it one more day. The suitcase can sit empty. But it is there. I know what I need. I know what my heart longs for. It is 2,330 miles away, in a little house that I used to call home, with a family that is perhaps more complicated than my situation here but that holds me together and keeps me alive like the beating of my own heart.

Here is what I've learned in this fresh wave of brokenness: I cannot fit into someone else's mold for me. I cannot make my plans based on anything besides what is best for my family. For Porter and I.

This is new life. New life that was grown out of a love that ended. Love never fails, even when it's messy and brutal. Love grew me and stretched me and wrecked me. Even today as my legs are sore and my stomach hurts from yesterday's stretching of my physical capabilities, I know whatever step I take next is going to leave me emotionally sore.

I am here. I am willing to answer the call of whatever that looks like.

I am here. I am willing to listen for the Spirit to prompt me on what my next step of forward motion will look like.

I am here. I am ready to see what the shape of a newly constructed me looks like.

grief.

At a little salon in Olean the hairdresser asked me, hours before my wedding, if I thought I would cry when I read my vows. All my bridesmaids burst out in simultaneous laughter. Me? Cry? That was not something that I did. There are people out there who love their Excel Spreadsheets. The data all stored neatly in the correct column. Each piece of data contained within one small cell. I suppose that I am a lover of putting my emotions in whatever the heart and soul equivalent of an Excel Spreadsheet is. 

As a child I was more than emotional. Some would say a brat, others would probably say clinically insane. There was no controlling the outbursts, the crying fits, or my specialty, kicking the wall in my bedroom until my mother caved. Everyone thought it was a phase, until I was 15 and still through similar sized tantrums. As I grew into my High School years and acted the same not just with family but friends as well, I started noticing the visceral reactions to my entitlement, including the absolute distraction of my friendship with my (almost) lifelong best friend. I learned that emotions were best left inside, choking the life out of me rather than scaring others away from me. So my emotions went into their tidy little columns only for me to see and feel. 

The unraveling of this all began privately, behind closed doors for the most part. I had gotten so used to storing all these emotions away that I forgot how to express emotions in a healthy way. And so at home, shortly after the birth of my son, my emotions took hold of me as a deep depression, and towards my husband as rage-filled rants, nastier but not dissimilar to those of my childhood. The depression tore my own heart apart, as the rage tore my marriage apart. The unraveling became public and in it the admission of all I could no longer control, hide or handle myself. 

I think back to my wedding and that laughter at the idea of me crying, and then I think back to eight hours ago when the idea of not crying was just as laughable. I continue to try to repair the beautiful, awful, broken relationship that is my marriage and with every misstep and rejection I have no other choose but to let the grief and pain overtake me. Sometimes it hits in the middle of meetings, or coffee dates, or the middle of a run. It happens in front of people who have not asked to be in this awkward position but who do not look away until I have said as much or as little as I need. It happens in front of friends who never have the right words because there are no right words, but they sit with me, taking on my heartbreak and loss. It happens in front of my son who always says "Mommy crying. It's okay." and then pulls he a little tighter. 

What I've learned in this season is that my grief, my emotions, my honesty are building community that I never have built and love I never felt in all the hiding. My heart was never meant to read like a spreadsheet--tidy and bland. My heart was meant to offer all of me; the story of a woman scarred, bruised, and sinful but redeemed into a better story. My lips were meant to speak truths so my truth and my story might allow you to tell the story that's choking your heart. My soul was meant to mourn, to grieve, to rejoice, to be joyful, because without the admission of the lowest of lows, my life can also not give gratitude for the highest of highs. 

(This is more of a fresh and personal blog than I typically write. I usually try to allow the emotion to wear off a bit but today I needed to let it out knowing that in the moment, my pain is so personal, but at the end of the long journey of grief, we all have a story, a circumstance, a relationship, that have impacted us in these certain ways. You are not alone, friend. You are seen and known by someone greater.)

a gathering place.

"You're doing much better than I would be doing in your circumstance." It's a refrain that I hear often and from people who mean it with the very best of intentions. But today as I sat in church and my pastor talked about our ability to abuse our story by making light of it, by making it smaller than it truly is, I realized that I have been misrepresenting myself if people are viewing me as strong and brave.

There has been a lot of light in my story. There has been a lot of provision and love and reminders of who God is and who I will continue to be even when this chapter of my story is over. A story that feels as though it is finally nearing some sort of end, even as there's still palpable confusion for everyone involved what that is. God is laying bricks for a new foundation and a life that doesn't fully look or feel like my own yet. I find relief in the neatness of things falling into place. I find comfort in the rhythms of a new and exhausting life. I find joy in a job with purpose. As these same words escape my lips to friends, family, people at church, I know that the truth is my soul is mourning. My soul has not stopped mourning. It has not found peace.

During a yoga class weeks ago, the words "joy in the chaos" popped into my head. They have played over and over again. I know they are for me but I have not seen them come to fruition. Rather than the joy, I have found my old patterns of hiding. I have found that I can find joy if I only think about the dream job I have, the precious time I get with my son, the boy who took me on a date, or the run that pushed me longer than the day before. But don't the bruises of life always seem so much more real in the quiet, when we're sitting at a coffee shop, absolutely surrounded by people and noise but so alone that you find the breath catching in your throat?

I used to love my little hiding place. I used to love closing the door and locking the hurt away before I left the house. Now in the hiding, I find lonliness. In the hiding, I find guilt. In the hiding, I feel shame. In the hiding, I feel a hammer smashing my heart into smaller and smaller pieces. My heart, the truth of who I am and where I am at right now, disappearing a little more into dust as I hide.

It is clear to me that the bricks God is laying for this new foundation are not meant to build a new hiding place, they are meant to build a gathering place. I no longer want to be in a position where I am here, with my community, talking about all things besides the ones that matter. We were never meant to walk this life alone, especially in the hardest of times.

And so I will begin. I will begin to be brave. I will begin to feel joy in the very truest of chaos. I will begin to be honest. I will begin with the simplest of words, the biggest of truths.

My heart is broken.
My eyes are more often wet than dry.
Most nights I don't sleep.
I still miss you.

Spokane: a Love story.

By the time I found myself celebrating my twenty-sixth birthday several weeks before moving to Spokane, I didn't really know what Christianity or God looked like to me anymore. Days before said birthday, I had felt God meet me there on that mountain top, an (almost) lifelong friend singing my Grandmother's favorite hymn, my sibling's voice meeting mine to sing "All I hath needed thy hand hath provided, Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!" in front of 109 of my favorite people. But was that God, or was that the God of circumstances I was singing to? Did I believe that the God who created this perfect pocket of joy overlooking the rolling hills of Alleghany County was the same God who allowed our Porter's first sonogram to be filled with the sound of my heartbreaking into a million tiny pieces to fill the place where Porter's silent heart was? The truth is by twenty-six my idea of God was clouded by my idea of church, my idea of my own identity, and my years of falling away from faith. 

Twenty-six years is a lot of time to cover and it is not the main point of the story I want to tell today so I will make it quick. Years of going to evangelical churches had led me to believe that I would know God by a feeling. I don't know if anyone actually told me this, but church and faith became some sort of high for me. You went to church on Sunday. You felt the Holy Spirit move. You talked in the Community Hall for an hour after the service. You listened to some worship music and sent up some prayers during the week. I am sure this is not everyone's experiences in the churches I attended but it was mine. As I grew more socially liberal, all I could hear coming from many pulpits was hate speech. They were not biblical convictions, of which my understanding of the Gospel led me to have many, but rather speech that excluded those whom I loved, those whom I ran into in my college hallways, those that I had the power to invite in. 

I would say I never officially stepped away from my faith but the next six years were spent in a place where I would only accept that God existed, show up sometimes on Sunday when I wasn't hung over, but didn't want to put anymore work into it than that. When I finally listened enough to hear God again, it was in the form of the parents of a sweet Toddler in my classroom. They extended an invitation via Facebook for anyone to join them at church. Jim and I had a fight the night before and church seemed the place I would feel met. Jim not wanting me to leave in the midst of an unresolved fight joined, attending a non-denominational church for the first time. From the moment we stepped in the door we felt welcomed. The congregation was socioeconomically and racially diverse. The church had a funny, dynamic pastor. I would've paid just to get in for the worship. Each week we walked away with a tidy list of how to grow in faith and love and would spend hours at breakfast talking about what all of this meant in our lives. Even now when I see the church's updates pop up on my Facebook feed, my heart feels like the church is a part of me, and I, a part of it. Do you see how many times I've said church here and how few times I've said God or Jesus? It took me almost two years of being removed from the church to finally give it the title of following "Oprah Christianity". I love that church. I love the people I have met there and that they guided us through our time as an engaged couple, but it was like going to a Ted Talk with a little Jesus cherry on top.

Seven weeks after arriving in Spokane I was 40 weeks pregnant and had not spoken to anyone but Jim in all that time. Sitting in Starbucks I saw a man sitting across from me in a Seahawks jersey. Sports. I could do this. 

"Are the Seahawks going to be on good this year?" 

It was a simple question that led to us entering in to a messy and beautiful life that is still messy and beautiful. You see, Aaron, is the Lead Deacon at Soma Spokane. That day rather than turn back to his work, Aaron sat and listened to the story of how I landed in Spokane 33 weeks pregnant. Not only did Aaron listen but he handed me his card and asked us to come to dinner at his Missional Community. 41 weeks pregnant we arrived at Missional Community to enjoy a meal with 3 families of strangers. We weren't sure what we were walking into, or even what the point of the community was as we sat, talking and eating (If you're interested in what I'm talking about http://somaspokane.org/gatherings/missional-communities/). What I did know is there was something so attractive about the open arms of the body of Christ. One week later when Porter was born and we found ourselves alone in a NICU room, these people who had only known us a week, reached out and asked what they could do. Porter needed someone other than us cheering him on and so we asked that they come, that they show up and hold him, giving him love and hope. These people, these sweet families, they were the outward expression of God's love for us. 

I would love to tell you that my story from there was one of joy and love in God who was good but it was much uglier than that. As I fell into my depression and rage, these people who we did life with were not spared. Many days I showed up to events and was combative, rude, and found things to criticize. Even in my brokenness, they met me. They talked with us about our struggles trying to get to the bottom of it all and showing up at my house unannounced when they knew I hadn't showered in days and felt as though I was drowning. Their faithfulness was God's pursuing of my heart, but yet, I didn't see it.

For almost two years we went through this pattern. I showed up. I kept on my masks but I showed up. There was something so undeniable attractive about being in a church where you had your people who knew your mess and your story. In January 2016, our Missional Community had grown too large and so we decided to multiple. When the shake out happened, the Simon family moved with Aaron and his wife, and in that moment I knew if we were going to start this Missional Community thing fresh that I was going to have to actually commit. I had to take my toe out of the water and just dive. My commitment was to forget everything that had got mudded in the last 20 years of being a Christian and come to the table with nothing to give but to want to know Jesus more.

One year later that humbling and willingness to sacrifice has been life changing. I have been met by a God who loves me and is for me. A God who has given me grace upon grace. A God that says there's freedom to fail. A God who calls me loved, worthy, wanted, seen and known. A God who has invited me to join in this beautiful family of his and be messy. There are no more masks that I can wear that will make me better than what He's already created me to be. I have learned what community looks like. What truly loving and walking with people looks like. It is not perfect. It's messy and it's hurtful. It's discipleship and it's deep relationship.

My favorite Jesus story is the one that started that day in the coffee shop. As my life imploded several months ago I felt worthless, unloved, replaced and as I came with my tears and my brokenness to Aaron and Megan's table they said "We desire for you to live with us." There were so many things they could have said to me that night at the table but their word for me was that not just they, but that God desired to meet me, in the midst of my rejection. Right now I am having a lot of trouble not taking one day at a time. I continue to look at the destruction that will be left in a week, in a month, in a year. The truth is that 3 years ago when I spoke to Aaron at a coffee shop, I would never have predicted that I would live in his home when I had no other options. But God. God knew. He provided for me and continues to provide for my in so many little and big ways. He has set my path. 

Now, on the cusp of my thirtieth birthday, I am only beginning to understand who God is. In the midst of all the heartbreak and pain associated with Spokane, I have met God here, and that, that makes the city the most beautiful part of my story.